The OFFICIAL LICENSED 'moans about pricing' thread

[Crewey]

That does look a totally different material tbf, they're full of little holes now with just a larger nose hole for me, my heads that massive they brought it out to the waiting area to show Leah after it was first moulded
Luckily I have no issues with claustrophobia, does seem to be a common issue with people having panic attacks based on conversations I've had with the various radiologists.

 

[M4carp]

That does look a totally different material tbf, they're full of little holes now with just a larger nose hole for me, my heads that massive they brought it out to the waiting area to show Leah after it was first moulded
Luckily I have no issues with claustrophobia, does seem to be a common issue with people having panic attacks based on conversations I've had with the various radiologists.

I never had any issues with claustrophobia before getting the mask made, after that even going in an MRI is a no go, they had to send me to a private place to go in an open MRI machine. Definitely effected me, even in a waiting room my heart rate starts to go up.

Was a major nightmare being in that radiotherapy room once they buggered off and closed the door

Anyway, hope it all goes well. Sure it will (even with your big heed)

 

[M4carp]

Been meaning to drop this tune on here for a while, think I can get away with it now

 

[dave]

Like many markets, there’s a post-Covid-cost-of-living correction

Def seems like machines are sitting for a while, though some are still priced high

Definitely deals to be had though, if only I had more space!!

Yeah goes beyond pins, buyers market for sure. I'm picking up bargains all the time for collectables, I'm not a collector but collectors are kind of mad so there's money there in a few years.

 

[Antray84]

Got into this hobby at the beginning of the year as I was in a similar space to what everyone here is saying...... but with Arcade Machines. People are still after Covid prices with vids, and there is also the problem with arcades that the home arcade fad peaked about 18 months ago. The arcade scene is also dying because there are no new games being made. It's finite.

Pinball it seems is more popular than it has ever been. Stern etc making games by the truckload. As a newbie what I have failed to understand is how people can regularly pay £10k for NIB pin and then list it for sale 3 months later with 80 plays on it for 2k less, often completely covered in mods too. I think some people just get into the hype of FOMO and buying the next big thing. I would be interested to know how often people play those NIB sterns.

I only really have 1 pin. I have one that is knackered and has become a tool for learning on with repairs etc. My 1 usable pin is a 1981 Eight Ball Deluxe that works very well, and I got it for under 2k in May. I was amazed it was priced so low. It is a buyer's market but if a 'cheap pin' is still 2k plus then that still rules out a massive swath of the population. I think I do ok money-wise but there is no way I could feel comfortable knowing I had put 7k into a toy.

Anyway, I find these chats interesting, I think the business side of things is just as fascinating as the games themselves. Pinball is popular so people want pins. But people either don't have money as the world is on fire or they only want the big new pin. So that pin you wanna trade from 2022 is now old news, and they also know there will be another 15 for sale in the next 3 months.

 

[JT.]

As a newbie what I have failed to understand is how people can regularly pay £10k for NIB pin and then list it for sale 3 months later with 80 plays on it for 2k less, often completely covered in mods too.

I don't think they can afford to, and that's one reason why the market is knackered - it was fine when people were breaking even, or even making a profit, but those days have gone. I suspect NIB sales for the UK home market have dropped off a cliff in the last 12 months.

 

[VeeMonroe]

Got into this hobby at the beginning of the year as I was in a similar space to what everyone here is saying...... but with Arcade Machines. People are still after Covid prices with vids, and there is also the problem with arcades that the home arcade fad peaked about 18 months ago. The arcade scene is also dying because there are no new games being made. It's finite.

Pinball it seems is more popular than it has ever been. Stern etc making games by the truckload. As a newbie what I have failed to understand is how people can regularly pay £10k for NIB pin and then list it for sale 3 months later with 80 plays on it for 2k less, often completely covered in mods too. I think some people just get into the hype of FOMO and buying the next big thing. I would be interested to know how often people play those NIB sterns.

I only really have 1 pin. I have one that is knackered and has become a tool for learning on with repairs etc. My 1 usable pin is a 1981 Eight Ball Deluxe that works very well, and I got it for under 2k in May. I was amazed it was priced so low. It is a buyer's market but if a 'cheap pin' is still 2k plus then that still rules out a massive swath of the population. I think I do ok money-wise but there is no way I could feel comfortable knowing I had put 7k into a toy.

Anyway, I find these chats interesting, I think the business side of things is just as fascinating as the games themselves. Pinball is popular so people want pins. But people either don't have money as the world is on fire or they only want the big new pin. So that pin you wanna trade from 2022 is now old news, and they also know there will be another 15 for sale in the next 3 months.

Hi, @Antray84!

Welcome to pinball!

I think the forum (and Pinside) give a misleading impression of what's happening in the hobby because all the hype chatter tends to be about the new hotness. It's the same as board gaming (my other hobby), BoardGameGeek is entirely dominated by people buying and selling shrink-wrapped games without playing them and - if you read all that without going to a pub/meet/hanging with gamer friends - you'd think no one actually played board games at all.

I get the impression there are a lot of sales/trades of pins that occur privately between friends off the forum. Also, people who are involved in other aspects of the hobby tend to spend less time noisily discussing purchasing/sales.

I'd estimate there are probably five to six people in the UK max who are in the business of swapping modern Spike 2 Sterns. It seems to be a bigger thing in the US, but it's still the same handful of people I see posting again and again on Pinside. Most collectors, I've noticed, are interested in specific periods of pins and, if you're into 80s nostalgia, you're looking to track down your third mint Flash Gordon rather than a Venom with 10 plays from new.

I have the impression a bunch of new people entered the hobby during the pandemic, especially in the US, and most of those new entrants are stocked up now. That doesn't mean everything they're buying is NIB though (although the people posting regularly on Pinside often have the typical 'row of Spike 2 Sterns'). We bought a NIB earlier this year, with no plan to trade it out, and we're currently (hopefully) swapping an 80s pin for a 90s pin, and we'll probably rotate that for either a 2000s-era or a 2020 Spike 2 Stern sometime next year. That might seem weird, but our primary contact with the hobby is currently @MadMonzer playing in local league events, so we tend to want to spend more time with tournament pins we enjoy on location - regardless of era.

 

[Marvello]

The arcade scene is also dying because there are no new games being made. It's finite.

Wouldn't this mean prices remain steady or increase if no new games are being made? Unless maybe you mean people have owned/played them all and are now bored and want something new?

 

[Antray84]

Wouldn't this mean prices remain steady or increase if no new games are being made? Unless maybe you mean people have owned/played them all and are now bored and want something new?

I think it is more that you don't have that new game part of the hobby. Like right now everyone is losing their mind about X-Men so it creates fomo and chatter and gets people on forums where they might see another thread they like etc. It also probably continues to bring people into the hobby. I don't think many new people are coming into the arcade hobby now. I am 40 and probably on the young side of arcade fans. When our group snuffs it there is no one coming up behind us.

And @VeeMonroe I can understand that. There must be tons of pinball fans who go about their business in silence without even going near a forum like this. I have no idea how many Sterns are sold in the UK. Probably a lot less than I think.

 

[VeeMonroe]

I think it is more that you don't have that new game part of the hobby. Like right now everyone is losing their mind about X-Men so it creates fomo and chatter and gets people on forums where they might see another thread they like etc. It also probably continues to bring people into the hobby. I don't think many new people are coming into the arcade hobby now. I am 40 and probably on the young side of arcade fans. When our group snuffs it there is no one coming up behind us.

Arcade cabs and classic pins seem to be related in a hobby that's half-nostalgia and half computer preservation. Even I'm too young (at 44) for the nostalgic element of arcades, although I like fiddling with technology enough to enjoy the computer preservation side. There's a nostalgic collector community who wax lyrical constantly about how the hobby is dying because no one remembers the arcades but, if you get into the international tournament pinball scene, such as the UK Open last month, I was among the oldest people there.

I'm too old to play serious competitive pinball and our hopes, as a family, are jokingly pinned on the 'Flipper Beast' (age 7) who - like the world's current number one seed - attended his first major tournament aged 7, having started playing when he was 3. The core of the tournament scene seems to be teens playing modern Spike 2 Sterns like they're video games and the idea that 'no one is coming into pinball' is just daft.

And @VeeMonroe I can understand that. There must be tons of pinball fans who go about their business in silence without even going near a forum like this.

I think there are a lot of people who are here on the forum, but are shooting the breeze. I'm chatting on a lot of the new pin threads, because I like playing pinball and I like new pinball machines, but the number of new releases I buy is actually pretty small and I'm someone who owns *a lot* of NIB pins compared to most people on here. It's a small number of people who FOMO over literally everything and swap it out a couple of months later (mostly on Pinside) - but, they are quite visible if you're looking for them. If you check out the Technical Support threads or Events discussion section here, you'll find a different crowd.

There are people who post on here who are 100% club players and don't own their own pins.

 

[mission65]

Having run a club for two years now, one of the biggest surprises to me is how many people we get who own pins and have no interest in looking at this site or Facebook even after discussing how good I think this place is .
But lots have 1 - 3 pins at home, and at least 4 this year have bought new in box

 

[Wayne J]

Having run a club for two years now, one of the biggest surprises to me is how many people we get who own pins and have no interest in looking at this site or Facebook even after discussing how good I think this place is .
But lots have 1 - 3 pins at home, and at least 4 this year have bought new in box

That's definitely the case. I remember speaking to a number of people who do repairs, all around the country, and they reckon that less than 10% of the people they visit are on this forum or attend comps. If you base everything from what you read here, you would think that the community is quite small - but it clearly isn't. Just looking at the site visits you will see that way more people visit than actually post.

(As an example, I probably spend more time 3D printing now than playing pinball, but I have no desire to join any 3D printing forums or groups)

 

[lukewells]

Picking up pinball machines I have bought on ebay/marketplace I meet so many people who have 1-2 pinball machine and no interest in joining any sort of community

 

[dave]

Pinball it seems is more popular than it has ever been.

Pinball is popular so people want pins.

I don't think stern would be wanting to know which theme sells next if they were flying off the shelves due to a rise in popularity. Pinball is about as niche as it gets, always will be. The peasants have virtual cabs so everyone's happy apart from the manufacturers.

 

[VeeMonroe]

Picking up pinball machines I have bought on ebay/marketplace I meet so many people who have 1-2 pinball machine and no interest in joining any sort of community

I'm only here because I posted asking for technical advice on our first pin. I remained because I've a largely-solitary work-from-home job that involves a lot of tedious emailing ("Hello, scientist I don't know! Would YOU like to talk to me about your recent research on chromatography columns for a short article?")

Offline, I'm a Pinball Republic member/regular. I think most PBR regulars probably have accounts on here, but they only post rarely. As with BoardGameGeek, the people who are most active are probably slanted towards those who regularly buy/sell pins.

I don't think stern would be wanting to know which theme sells next if they were flying off the shelves due to a rise in popularity. Pinball is about as niche as it gets, always will be. The peasants have virtual cabs so everyone's happy apart from the manufacturers.

I think it was rising in popularity, but Stern got greedy. Unless you are definite you want to keep a pin (e.g. you've played it a lot on location and/or rented it for a while), there's no way most people would buy NIB at current prices. It's like a car - you lose ~£2k+ just opening the packaging so, at £1 a play on location, you need to know you're going to play it at least 2,000 times before moving it on.

 

[dave]

I think it was rising in popularity, but Stern got greedy. Unless you are definite you want to keep a pin (e.g. you've played it a lot on location and/or rented it for a while), there's no way most people would buy NIB at current prices. It's like a car - you lose ~£2k+ just opening the packaging so, at £1 a play on location, you need to know you're going to play it at least 2,000 times before moving it on.

It has grown a bit over the years but the popularity will never be on the level it was when they were everywhere.

I wouldn't put money in stern games unless it's had a decent amount of updates been burnt too many times trying to get scores when half the game and mechs are buggy.

 

[VeeMonroe]

It has grown a bit over the years but the popularity will never be on the level it was when they were everywhere.

I wouldn't put money in stern games unless it's had a decent amount of updates been burnt too many times trying to get scores when half the game and mechs are buggy.

Our two NIB Sterns were a Godzilla Prem (where I'd already played the Pro forty times on location) and a Jurassic Park Prem last year when the code was already 'complete'.

I'm disgusted by how unfinished Stern seem to be putting out their pins recently. Bond was terrible the first time I played it and I was amazed when @MadMonzer (who hadn't played it before) declared he fancied one. Turns out the code had improved immeasurably in the time I'd been avoiding it and it's now a great pin.

I'm amazed by the people on Pinside who buy Stern LEs, sight unseen, or on release in the hope the code improves. It does reliably improve in most cases, but it's still a massive risk!

 

[dave]

Our two NIB Sterns were a Godzilla Prem (where I'd already played the Pro forty times on location) and a Jurassic Park Prem last year when the code was already 'complete'.

I'm disgusted by how unfinished Stern seem to be putting out their pins recently. Bond was terrible the first time I played it and I was amazed when @MadMonzer (who hadn't played it before) declared he fancied one. Turns out the code had improved immeasurably in the time I'd been avoiding it and it's now a great pin.

I'm amazed by the people on Pinside who buy Stern LEs, sight unseen, or on release in the hope the code improves. It does reliably improve in most cases, but it's still a massive risk!

They will get round to it but there was a point in time people had to pretty much campaign to update them. Where's the code should ring a bell and probably not as bad as they were.

Most publisher in games are no different when behind schedule, patch later.