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The OFFICIAL LICENSED 'moans about pricing' thread

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.
 
Crewey said:
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.
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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😂)
 
cyberkryten said:
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!!
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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.
 
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.
 
Antray84 said:
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.
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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.
 
Antray84 said:
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.
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Hi, @Antray84!

Welcome to pinball! :D

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 said:
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?
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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.
 
Antray84 said:
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.
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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.

Antray84 said:
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.
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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.
 
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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
 
mission65 said:
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
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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)
 
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
 
Antray84 said:
Pinball it seems is more popular than it has ever been.
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Antray84 said:
Pinball is popular so people want pins.
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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.
 
lukewells said:
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
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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.

dave said:
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.
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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.
 
VeeMonroe said:
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.
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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.
 
dave said:
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.
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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!
 
VeeMonroe said:
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!
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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.
 
I thought the prices on here were crazy (when are people going to get the memo that Pros do not start with a 6 now), but my word, eBay is a complete mess price wise.

£3k for a Street Fighter II, £10k for a TZ and an Avatar for £5k. What are people smoking or are they just waiting for some idiot?
 
JAG555 said:
I thought the prices on here were crazy (when are people going to get the memo that Pros do not start with a 6 now), but my word, eBay is a complete mess price wise.

£3k for a Street Fighter II, £10k for a TZ and an Avatar for £5k. What are people smoking or are they just waiting for some idiot?
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Ebay personal account free listings = muppet prices x1000 now. There will be no end to the hopeful optimism for sellers.

Looking for a good deal is a bit like searching ebay for vintage video games and getting a billion MDF + emulator cabs to search through.

I'de give up looking if I were you, I have.
 
I'd say it's some people on Ebay having no clue about prices, googling it, coming across say HLD or another shop and seeing their machine for sale at that price. Not taking into account the many differing factors involved, such as Condition, Restored or not? warranty Etc etc

Some even put links to the shop in question.

Obviously there are scammers and some people who are hoping to cash in too, especially around this time of year.
 
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licksweets said:
Ebay personal account free listings = muppet prices x1000 now. There will be no end to the hopeful optimism for sellers.

Looking for a good deal is a bit like searching ebay for vintage video games and getting a billion MDF + emulator cabs to search through.

I'de give up looking if I were you, I have.
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I am not looking to buy, just seeing what is selling, turns out not much!
 
JAG555 said:
I am not looking to buy, just seeing what is selling, turns out not much!
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As you say - loads of ridiculously priced games on eBay. Like at prices in excess of the going rate even during the recent peak . As mentioned a combination of using HLD types as a benchmark , maybe folk who overpaid during the peak trying to get back their cash ( good luck) , and also the free to list now factor .

Anyway here’s a quick roundup of some sales from the last few weeks . Noticeably missing are any of the wildly overpriced pins, though Simpsons seemed to be punching above its weight.

Road Kings ( project, ok but displays issue) 972
Surf Side EM project - 640
Stern High Roller Casino - looked ok but said it had issues ? - 1000
Hi Deal EM - 800
Straight Flush EM - 950
Judge Dredd - nice , topper, colourdmd 3100
Cyclone - nice 1220
DE Simpsons - 3000
Jokerz - 1420
Willy Wonky - <7500 (offer)
Police Force - 1750 ( not sure that’s legit as had relist history)
Creature Black Lagoon - ok with colourdmd 4000
 
Sgt GrizZ said:
As you say - loads of ridiculously priced games on eBay. Like at prices in excess of the going rate even during the recent peak . As mentioned a combination of using HLD types as a benchmark , maybe folk who overpaid during the peak trying to get back their cash ( good luck) , and also the free to list now factor .

Anyway here’s a quick roundup of some sales from the last few weeks . Noticeably missing are any of the wildly overpriced pins, though Simpsons seemed to be punching above its weight.

Road Kings ( project, ok but displays issue) 972
Surf Side EM project - 640
Stern High Roller Casino - looked ok but said it had issues ? - 1000
Hi Deal EM - 800
Straight Flush EM - 950
Judge Dredd - nice , topper, colourdmd 3100
Cyclone - nice 1220
DE Simpsons - 3000
Jokerz - 1420
Willy Wonky - <7500 (offer)
Police Force - 1750 ( not sure that’s legit as had relist history)
Creature Black Lagoon - ok with colourdmd 4000
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Yeah DE Simpsons.... perhaps someone who got it was not a pinball guy and saw TSPP on sale on HLD or someone like that.... thought he was getting a bargain.

Did not see the CFTBL - but I would imagine a lovely one being just about worth that.

A decline is happening in prices. A lot on here that are 'for sale' are not selling as they are just too much. It is as simple as that. The difference between NIB and used will end up getting larger. There is a lot to say for a NIB PH with 2 year warranty over one that is 4 months old for £500-£1000 less. Warranty does not transfer over.

In 2025 we are all likely to have less money in our pockets. It is a buyers market on lots of things. Noticed with a lot of 'non essential' things. I just picked up a guitar for £500 that was originally listed online for £1200. He had no takers and dropped the price then put 'best offer'. I have got it for a price I am happy with but at £500 I can not guarantee getting the money back.
 
Bloody hell, just a rough count up, there are 25 unsold machines listed in the matketplace that have been listed or bumped in November (there are a lot more after this date).

Only 4 machines have sold in that same period…..

Surely something has to break this stalemate……
 
JAG555 said:
Bloody hell, just a rough count up, there are 25 unsold machines listed in the matketplace that have been listed or bumped in November (there are a lot more after this date).

Only 4 machines have sold in that same period…..

Surely something has to break this stalemate……
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Yep, buyers need to dig a bit deeper and pony up the dough 😄.
 
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