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Why pinball is not an investment

DRD

DRD

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1 10 Years
Joined
Oct 26, 2014
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Newark
I do not buy games to make money. I suspect that only a handful of titles are what you might term "investment grade".

I always thought Medusa was a really good early bally Solid State title that many folk also rated highly. But if this advert is honest, it really does not bode well for this category of games. Good location so a large buyer pool, plenty of money spent on it.

I contacted the seller and got incomplete answers to my few queries, so maybe other folk just walked away too. This could explain the low price.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/bally-med...362?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item339e8f86ba
 
Pins like houses can be money pits. Spend 20k+ on a kitchen and I doubt the value of your house would go up by more than 5k. However, you get the pleasure of using it. Parts for games are mind-blowingly expensive. I've given up telling my wife how much I've spent when a new parcel turns up. "£50 for a piece of plastic...." is a pretty common reaction

For me if you get your cash back when you sell a pin then it's great. I've had some titles that would fetch significantly more if I sold now compared to the price that I paid but some that would go for less even without the cost of parts/repairs.

However, what value do you place on enjoyment? Whether it's playing or repairing pins?

It's a hobby with really high initial barriers to entry but then as you go along it's incredibly cheap. If I go to a meet I get to play all day, spend time with people I like, get food & drink and it costs £2.50 + petrol. Surely this is the real "value".:)

Playing at home stops me from going out. Compare this to going to see a football match or concert and the money is peanuts.

So even if this bloke has lost £1000 it's not a bad investment really if he's enjoyed it. I lost a shed load on Tesco shares in the last 12 months and have absolutely nothing to show for that. It would have been far better to have stuck that cash into pins and enjoyed it.

The Whitewater on ebay at the moment may be a case in point of people investing badly. Who knows what's really wrong with it. The ubiquitous "fuse issue" or ****ed boards / DMD? Someone could take a real bath on that one but maybe they'll get pleasure from doing it up.
 
johnwhitfield said:
The Whitewater on ebay at the moment may be a case in point of people investing badly. Who knows what's really wrong with it. The ubiquitous "fuse issue" or ****ed boards / DMD? Someone could take a real bath on that one but maybe they'll get pleasure from doing it up.
Click to expand...

What's the worst case scenario on that though? Most likely battery damaged mpu and probably a few other faults that can be fairly easily sorted to get a playable machine. There will always be demand for this title, whatever it goes for now it would most likely go for the same or more next week or next year (unless its shilled or there are two very desperate bidders).
 
mark9 said:
What's the worst case scenario on that though? Most likely battery damaged mpu and probably a few other faults that can be fairly easily sorted to get a playable machine. There will always be demand for this title, whatever it goes for now it would most likely go for the same or more next week or next year (unless its shilled or there are two very desperate bidders).
Click to expand...

My WH20 was sold as non working ....got it home, reseat connector, it booted :thumbs:
 
DRD said:
I do not buy games to make money. I suspect that only a handful of titles are what you might term "investment grade".

I always thought Medusa was a really good early bally Solid State title that many folk also rated highly. But if this advert is honest, it really does not bode well for this category of games. Good location so a large buyer pool, plenty of money spent on it.

I contacted the seller and got incomplete answers to my few queries, so maybe other folk just walked away too. This could explain the low price.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/bally-med...362?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item339e8f86ba
Click to expand...

The seller spent £1200 on paying someone to fit new rubbers, capacitors and a psu board.

Best case of overcharging I have seen yet?
 
WH20 is prone to playfield wear, mine kickout (seen these down to the wood in the past), numerous inserts (rafts and other high traffic inserts) and the divot on mini pf if you are fussed, pretty trouble free otherwise though, there is a strong chance that the pf is worn when that glass comes off (all 3 of my WH20's had worn playfields) fine if you just want to play but if you are sinking a lot of money into something and looking to restore or make it nice this would be either difficult/expensive to resolve and may reflect what you recover for the machine when you try to shift after the dust has settled and the thrill of the chase has passed.
 
90% of ebayers seem to be dot matrix obsessed so ignore anything older but even allowing for that I think the Medusa went a bit low.
 
There are lots of awesome alpha_numeric games many better than a_lot of dot matrix but a lot of ebaybuyers disregard them. Black knight 2000 and eatpm are in my top ten
 
johnwhitfield said:
I've given up telling my wife how much I've spent when a new parcel turns up. "£50 for a piece of plastic...." is a pretty common reaction
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Precisely this.

I confess that I never did tell my missus how much the decals for my R&B cost to have made and then shipped to the UK.

As far as she's concerned it IS an investment. But I know that's not really the case. At best I have cash invested that I can release if I ever need to, not that I can see that happening. ;-)
 
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