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Pinball depreciation

johnh

johnh

Site Supporter
10 Years
Joined
Apr 17, 2012
Messages
232
Location
Bournemouth
Lets say your significant other accidentally left the keys to the pension pot/Christmas fund/kids education lying around and you had the opportunity to 'borrow' £5k, but you know you're going to get called on it and will have to put it back in the next 5 - 10 years. What pin from the last 4 or so years of Stern and JJP etc would you buy? Whats not going to depreciate significantly? Not thinking any of the usual Bally / Williams stuff, or the remakes.
 
The non pinhead tie ins . Star wars Dr who terminator . They won't remake these and they have much wider general public appeal
 
My moneys on JJP stuff due to build and themes which always appeal to the masses. In the past few months I have managed to get hold of a fully loaded Hobbit LE for 7k (pinstadiums, black mirror blades, topper, figures & much more) I was 2nd owner and it had 200 games. In my eyes a bargain with a huge saving from new, it has enough rules to keep you at it for many years and really is a thing of beauty in the home. I removed the pinstadiums and put on my TZ as JJP lighting is a thing of beauty to behold and a veritable overload of brain eye candy! Ialso acquired a WOZ standard on a whim after seeing how nicely built JJP stuff is and boy was I not disappointed. It cost me 5k so again a huge saving from new and is probably the most beautiful pin ever made with a light show to die for. Only regret is maybe holding out for a ruby red as it’s the go to pin for all my family and friends. I may lose a little on my hobbit but the enjoyment and fun on that thing worth it. The WOZ is a no brainier and it may even appreciate slightly. Either way think of it this way! Money in the bank is making penny’s in interest nowadays and only weird people could enjoy looking at a bank balance. Whereas we all enjoy to look at things of beauty and play with them fnarr fnarr!
The other option of course is buy sensible cheap classic Will/Bally and swap em every 6mth to keep the interest in the hobby and buy wisely.
 
TWD Premium or LE, might have to pay a little more for it but should be ok.

It will always depend on how quickly you need to get the money.

Personally I think JJP is one to avoid - build quality not great and a reasonable amount of them in the market and JJP doing special version like yellow brick road which **** all over the value of the older ones. But I’d figure to lose 500£ atleast.


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TWD, Metallica, IMDN, Guardians all would pretty much hold their value imo. Maybe Spidey if you wanna go a lttle cheaper
 
In reply to build Neil I’ve only had 3 NIB sterns which were 2 x STLE the 1st came quite badly damaged and the 2nd I sold on to a local mate after the PF started to get hammered to hell after a couple hundred games.
The 2nd was IM premium and TBH looks quite toyish and plasticy for want of better words. I don’t see this in my JJP pins. But each to their own I guess.
In defence of IM it is a thing or beauty though as the artwork is inceredible, the game layout rocks and plays really well. But somehow doesn’t ooze the quality of classic Will/Ball or JJP.
So we will agree to differ on these points.

As for remaking yellow brick road “bring it on” I’m all for keeping down prices on pins and the fact CGC are remaking pins keeps popular ones like AFM, MM & now MB more affordable to us all. (I’ve got MBrLE coming)
It won’t happen but I’d love to see TAF brought down a peg or two with a remake along with a few others I could mention.
Certain pinballs are only available to the affluent and serious collectors which keeps em out of the pin lovers hands.
I don’t think pins are an investment unless you were lucky like me and bought a lot back in late 90s/early 00ties but keeping depreciation down to a minimum is what it’s all about for me. Buy’em, play’em then sell’em. Rinse repeat
Anyhoo that’s my 2 penneth for what it’s worth
 
I think we’re already in a depreciation phase. The high end titles are taking a hit

If you can’t risk the cash I wouldn’t buy any of the newer sterns.

Maybe go for two around 2500 -3000 each. Even if they go down it won’t be by much. Possible Spider-Man or Ironman etc. If they are 10+ years old they probably lost most of what they are going to

Probably best to avoid monopoly and wof though
 
I reckon they will all depreciate. The fundamental issue is that TV in the back box games are coming out all the time.

Two flipper, fan layout, late Sterns with DMDs and very few toys will take the biggest hit imho. A number of these games are really little better than a 2k fish tales, shadow or road show

If you went back 3 years before the TV games appeared, plenty of guys on this forum only wanted DMD games. This is an over simplification I know, but basically speaking alpha numeric titles come below 2 grand whereas dmd games usually come above 2 grand

I think in 5 years time there will be a generation of top money buyers who only want TV games and who will have flogged off virtually all of their dmd titles
 
i think new games will always take a hit, and you only have to look at the posts above to see, i have bought dialled in le, afm le, star wars prem, hobbit smaug, all way less than the new price, and a few years ago twd le for a very nice price 2 weeks old.
i will be buying other new titles at good prices because you have some people that buy new in box games and move them on within a year as thats their thing, god bless them. we are all a little crazy to be in this hobby as 6 -11 k for a game is a tad excessive :)
 
mission65 said:
i think new games will always take a hit, and you only have to look at the posts above to see, i have bought dialled in le, afm le, star wars prem, hobbit smaug, all way less than the new price, and a few years ago twd le for a very nice price 2 weeks old.
i will be buying other new titles at good prices because you have some people that buy new in box games and move them on within a year as thats their thing, god bless them. we are all a little crazy to be in this hobby as 6 -11 k for a game is a tad excessive :)
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I Totally even agree though I have bought a few NIBs in my time i guess I have been lucky and not lost anything at all on them, my next will MBrLE will probably depreciate but it won’t be going anywhere.
To really put depreciation into perspective 3 years ago I bought a new car which was 30k and last week I went on W.B.A.C.com and they offered me £11250. So in the grand scheme of things pins pale into insignificance if you like a nice car or like my son lease one (Range Rover evoke) for £400 a month.
 
Ahhh well if it’s a well known fact then it must be right :hmm:

I heard it’s a well known fact that sterns lose money too so I would think again
 
Also unless you are in a unique situation like our questionable decision making OP here buying a pinball machine based on its perceived future value and expecting to enjoy it more is a bit silly.
 
Justify it this way - it’s £1 a game anywhere else. So just put 10 games on a night for two years and yout golden - don’t think about electricity, maintenance, mods, the pinshed s...

Oh god why do we do this?
 
TAF? Should be a safe bet*, prices are unchanged if not rising for the past 2 years or so.

(* unless CGC remake it, there is an animated Addams Family reboot being released later this year)

Just realised you said no B/W.
 
Im with toads - look at the prices of JJP stuff vs retail. I picked up a DILE for a lot less than retail, and Bethany has one for sale at a lot less also. Hobbit prices are hugely lower than retail also, Woz is probably the best of the lot but risky machines with light board issues. Compare the fan club threads on pinside on a JJP machine with stern games (with IMDN maybe the only exception). JJP threads are full of how to fix stuff. The support from Phil and JJP is very good though when you have a problem, much better than Stern.

CGC though was the stand out player or at least was. Both MM and AFMR been rock solid. AFMR a little bit less good, with the ball guide replacement and I also had to replace the metal popper with a NOS BW one as the one CGC put on the game is not great quality.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. Some great thoughts here. I'm mulling over...

- Original versus licensed theme. I can see that a more popular theme will naturally have a larger audience and therefore, in theory, command a higher price, but then some of the most popular machines are original themes (MM, MB (kinda), AFM etc) so a machine that is recognized as being great to a core audience can equally command a high resale than a machine that has wide appeal to a more mainstream audience.

- Perhaps the same as above for low production vs high. Low production certainly increases rarity, but it might also imply that it's not a popular theme, or one that's well liked by the core audience. TAF still sells well, so the sweet spot is low production, but a machine that is considered great (struggling to think of a good example here - BBB? TBL (despite not being 100%)).
- Great point about the move to TV displays. I could see that in a few years, as people get used to a bigger display, a machine with a standard DMD would suffer more in depreciation in the same way that alpha numerics to DMD did (although this might be an over simplification - I wasn't into alphanumeric machines, but DMD era also brought in more complex s/w, modes etc)

- Regardless of price, I still need to love the game. I've not owned a JJP machine before but I do like a fair amount of toys on my playfield and it seems that JJP are upping the ante here. Could be wrong, but Stern seem to be more cost conscious and therefore more sparing on playfield hardware.

- Software could rejuvenate a machine that's struggling. GB might be a good example - if Dwight sorts himself out and gets the update out it might give the resell value a bump.

- The classics are still the best bet as they've had as much of the NIB deprecation they're going to get, however if CGC remake everything even the originals still lose value.

- Figuring the point at which a machine is no longer depreciating, but is either holding it price or starting to appreciate (more than inflation) is going to be hard given all of the above. Maybe I need to spread bet and double my collection :) Maybe there's a formula somewhere in here. Might be a job for AI :)

Thanks again

John
 
John,

If your sole motivation is the future re-sale value, then I wouldn't bother getting a pin. There are much better investments money wise.

If you want to play a fun game, enjoy it and not lose much (if anything), then buy an older title. Pre-DMD games have already taken the hit in value because the next generation of games came out.

Don't believe everyone else's opinion about what is a good or bad game, go to show's (or large venue's) and play a variety of games and decide for yourself. I like Happy Hardcore, but that doesn't mean everyone else does (In fact most people i know don't!).

Also worth considering if you are concerned about losing money is the amount you spend. A 10% hit on a game near a grand will hurt you a lot less than the same on a game costung 5x as much.
 
Thanks, and agree. Future value is not the main concern, enjoying the pin is, but I want to buy something newish and I haven't bought a pin in a few years so wanted to buy with at least a little bit of insight (which I think I now have) . I've owned enough pins to know that they're not always guaranteed to rise in value :)

Matt Vince said:
John,

If your sole motivation is the future re-sale value, then I wouldn't bother getting a pin. There are much better investments money wise.

If you want to play a fun game, enjoy it and not lose much (if anything), then buy an older title. Pre-DMD games have already taken the hit in value because the next generation of games came out.

Don't believe everyone else's opinion about what is a good or bad game, go to show's (or large venue's) and play a variety of games and decide for yourself. I like Happy Hardcore, but that doesn't mean everyone else does (In fact most people i know don't!).

Also worth considering if you are concerned about losing money is the amount you spend. A 10% hit on a game near a grand will hurt you a lot less than the same on a game costung 5x as much.
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johnh said:
Thanks, and agree. Future value is not the main concern, enjoying the pin is, but I want to buy something newish and I haven't bought a pin in a few years so wanted to buy with at least a little bit of insight (which I think I now have) . I've owned enough pins to know that they're not always guaranteed to rise in value :)
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Hey ...John Helliwell ?? Is that you ? :D

Long time no see

Ive
 
I actually prefer dmd over these tv screens. It just feels more like how i pinball machine should be. It's difficult to see which way the market is going. I guess the 90s BW games aren't going to get any cheaper any time soon. Yes I've seen some of the bigger titles aren't selling at the top end price, but have they really been reduced that much to sell them on? I guess people aren't prepared to take the hit when the market drops so they just hang onto them. My guess is they manage to sell them eventually overseas. Still fetching top prices in some places
 
darren_ross said:
I actually prefer dmd over these tv screens. It just feels more like how i pinball machine should be. It's difficult to see which way the market is going. I guess the 90s BW games aren't going to get any cheaper any time soon. Yes I've seen some of the bigger titles aren't selling at the top end price, but have they really been reduced that much to sell them on? I guess people aren't prepared to take the hit when the market drops so they just hang onto them. My guess is they manage to sell them eventually overseas. Still fetching top prices in some places
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I was exactly the same until I got Maiden. Now I love a tv screen. As Homer Simpson once said. A pinball machine without a tv screen is like bowling ball without a liquid centre 🥴🤔
 
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