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This game owes me........

Replay

Replay

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Reading comments on one of the MM FS threads got me thinking again about the hobby. Is there another hobby that has the 'this game owes me mentality' ?

I noticed it back in 2010 when I was selling a game on the Yahoo group and I had already noticed sellers saying this. Think I had a mint WH20 for sale and also decided to price it for what it 'owed me'. A few vocal posters jumped on me and told me it was way overpriced ( £1500 - how times change ) and I didn't post there again.

Having watched prices go up and up over the years, mainly trending the Stern NIB prices, the ' game owes me X ' has been a huge factor in pinflation.

I bought X game for £2000, added £200 of mods, paid Martin £85, so game owes me £2285. Every time the game changes hands, it becomes a bit more expensive as each person tries to get what they are 'owed'.

Of course, no one likes losing money, but in nearly every other hobby, things depreciate, sometimes massively to almost 100%.

I lost a ton of money selling games when I got into the hobby but I admit to 'this games owes me X' philosophy now as it is almost a pinball urban legend!

With prices going up and up, it feels like a mega expensive game of pass the parcel. If I buy a game for X, as long as there is another person who will take it off my hands for what it owes me, it doesn't matter what the 'game is worth'.

So, when people pay over the odds for a game, they kind of expect to sell it again for that price, instead of accepting they may have paid over perceived market value.

An exception to the rule usually is NIB as unless you get lucky with a BIBLE or something, the 'what it owes me ' doesn't come into play.

Anyway, just an observation on the trending pinflation;)
 
I've never seen anything like this and I have a lot of crazy hobbies! I think the weird situation with the Pinball world is that for a time it was a very niche market and was not really a home sort of hobby, that is if you wanted to play you went to an arcade. Net result was a huge deflation of the value of the machines for a while because arcades closed as less people wanted to pay Pinball. Suddenly though loads of us who played in the 90' remember Pinball and we have dough - and start to buy machines for home prices go up those that bought low are quids in though that did but then sold up find themselves priced out of machine le they used to own. End result is folks not wanting to lose out. I don't know any other hobby where ten years ago prices have moved on as much as a 1000% !


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I sometimes try to recover the cost of expensive parts. Stuff like I had a JM I fitted a brand new left ramp to because the one on the game was smashed. This required shipping a £100+ ramp all the way from Australia which was expensive, but it was a job that needed doing as the ramp on the game had a massive piece of duct tape covering a gaping hole. I think when I sold it I made £200, but the ramp was nearly that and I had stripped the game down to give it a good clean, fitted more new parts (Full LED kit all over, re-built pop bumpers with new parts, had a colour DMD in it - buyer did not take this with the game, new spinner, and other stuff I forget). All in all the game probably owed me a lot more but I only added on the cost of the part that was a necessary replacement.

Mods are optional, I mostly do not factor these in to the sale price because I've chosen to add them and only really look at what the going rate is for a game at the time.
 
Glad you posted this @Replay as I've often thought the same.

It annoys me actually. My Taxi "owes me"'over £3k.

I'd be lucky to see £2k. Suck it up buttercup.

My ft which i just sold for £1550 owed me more like £2k.

That's not the new buyers fault. It's still a ft and it's only worth what a ft is worth.

I never profit on pins. If I decide to sink £££'s in them I don't expect to see it back on the other end.
Don't get me wrong a redecaled shopped machine will be more valuable than one that isn't but people need to realise you can't just pass your costs on to the next buyer.

"alright mate my cars got new tyres and brake pads so it's an extra £500"

Doesn't work like that.

Anyway I'll continue being a bottom feeder nibbling on the £1500 data east games which is all I can afford and even that's stretching it. I'm priced out.

Rant over

Peace out
 
Personally don't think there's anything wrong with it. I swallow the delivery costs and any minor mods but it's nice to get back what you paid for a game. Not sure why anyone would be happy buying a game for £3k and selling it on for £2k for example. The exception is NIBs of course which tend to lose money as soon as you've opened them

It works both ways though. I made roughly £2500 (iirc) selling on my TAFG as I got it at a cracking price. I lost £1250 selling my 12months old WOZ
 
Replay said:
Reading comments on one of the MM FS threads got me thinking again about the hobby. Is there another hobby that has the 'this game owes me mentality' ?

I noticed it back in 2010 when I was selling a game on the Yahoo group and I had already noticed sellers saying this. Think I had a mint WH20 for sale and also decided to price it for what it 'owed me'. A few vocal posters jumped on me and told me it was way overpriced ( £1500 - how times change ) and I didn't post there again.

Having watched prices go up and up over the years, mainly trending the Stern NIB prices, the ' game owes me X ' has been a huge factor in pinflation.

I bought X game for £2000, added £200 of mods, paid Martin £85, so game owes me £2285. Every time the game changes hands, it becomes a bit more expensive as each person tries to get what they are 'owed'.

Of course, no one likes losing money, but in nearly every other hobby, things depreciate, sometimes massively to almost 100%.

I lost a ton of money selling games when I got into the hobby but I admit to 'this games owes me X' philosophy now as it is almost a pinball urban legend!

With prices going up and up, it feels like a mega expensive game of pass the parcel. If I buy a game for X, as long as there is another person who will take it off my hands for what it owes me, it doesn't matter what the 'game is worth'.

So, when people pay over the odds for a game, they kind of expect to sell it again for that price, instead of accepting they may have paid over perceived market value.

An exception to the rule usually is NIB as unless you get lucky with a BIBLE or something, the 'what it owes me ' doesn't come into play.

Anyway, just an observation on the trending pinflation;)
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Couldn't agree more, don't care what it owes someone it's worth what its worth. Ya can bet ya **** they wouldn't sell a MM for £500 if that's all it owed them
 
Buy at the right price and the selling thing takes care of itself :thumbs: I've bought and sold plenty of pinball machines in the relatively short time I've been in the hobby and restored a decent chunk of those games.

In virtually all cases I've bought at what I considered to be the correct price and that has meant when it was time to move a game on I can sell at a sensible price and not take a massive loss or make a massive profit.

For games I restore I make sure to buy for a price that, when I've spent on parts to make the game as it should be, will still result in being able to sell it without eating a big loss. The one thing I never factor in is my time.....if I did that I'd have to try and sell pins at crazy high prices and that's grief I can do without in my hobby :) In fact, time spent restoring games is one of the most fun parts of my hobby so would be daft to try and give it some monetary value IMO.....that's what work is for :D

Buy at the right price people :thumbs:
 
See it with the vids as well (with a classic case on the vids forums recently regarding a Ridge Racer).

I hear it's also the same for vintage cars. People import stuff, do some work, and then try to sell without losing a dime.
 
I'll add my 2p worth (this is the accountant in me!)

1. Should we add delivery onto price - no!
2. Repairs/renovation. If (say) the ramp was broken when you bought it , the price reflected that, so you've improved it and should add it on . But not running repairs
3. Mods. Whilst these are improvements , to what extent is in the eye of the beholder . Not everyone would have modded as you have. If you put a colour display in and the purchaser would have done so anyway it's worth 100% of that to them . But a mod they don't care for much, less so. So on average you should add on a % of that cost.

Having said all that. Offer it at what it owes you and if someone pays it why would you listen to a bean counter like me?

And if people lose money modding them they might be less inclined to do it . That would be a shame as we have some stunning machines doing the rounds amongst us
 
Agree completely.

The biggest issue is newbs paying over inflated prices for machines they've bought of a dealer or Ebay. Then when they come to sell it they try and get the same price. Also not noticing the difference between a MM and a TOM. They're both machines from roughly the same time why shouldn't they both be the same price?

There's also the perception that buying pins is an "investment", because people have heard about the massive price rises in the last 10 years, they want some of the same, despite that bubble having burst.

Then consider Stern upping their prices due to the increased home market demand, as well as natural inflation, and prices are going to rise and continue to do so until the market dictates what people are going to pay. It just so happens that a lot of people who have had machines for a while got in while pinball wasn't popular as a home hobby so could pick up underpriced games (based on the current value).

At the end of the day the market will decide what a game is worth. If you ask 5k for a T2 you'll have a much longer wait than if you wanted 5k for a BBB
 
Regardless of what is being sold, most sellers are going to want to get as much money as possible for their item. The forum rules here state that all for sale threads should have a set price and under no circumstances can be advertised as "offers over £x."

With rules like the above in place it stands to reason that machines are going to be listed here for slightly more than a seller thinks they are realistically worth.This allows some negotiating room as most buyers will have a "punt" and try and offer a lower price unless the item is very undervalued, and even then they might still have a go. I highly doubt there has ever been a machine sold on here for more than it was originally listed for, so sellers are left with little option but to price high and be knocked down to whatever the market will pay at that time imho.
 
Lots of good points.

I think one of the reasons pinball has proved a good investment for some is this mentality is so entrenched in the hobby it becomes a kind of self fulfilling prophesy.

It is just strange when stepping outside of the hobby into other leisure activities where this doesn't happen. Buying a 4K TV and I expect to lose 95% of the value over time.

It makes sense to try and buy at that 'right price' though. Makes the hobby more affordable.

My first NIB was XMEN LE and I lost £750 after 4 weeks. My mistake to buy without waiting for code updates as the code was a total disaster for the first year or so.
 
Compare a 2017 TV with a 1994 TV - streets ahead.
Compare a 2017 Pin with a 1994 Pin. Basically the same?
 
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Classic car prices have also gone up a lot, air cooled 911's and manual ferraris for example have gone a bit nuts in the last few years I think I'm right in saying.
 
TYHO said:
Ya can bet ya **** they wouldn't sell a MM for £500 if that's all it owed them
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This is the most interesting part for me - there are people who've benefitted massively (£1,000's) in the semi-recent pin-flation, yet relative newcomers can't justify adding £100 here or there to compensate for the many more hundreds they may have spent during ownership.

If you feel a game is overpriced, don't buy it. I've learnt from my own mistakes on this.

Older games seem to be increasing in value because they're a limited resource and demand is increasing, even for the B's and C's.

Buying new games is an expensive gamble.
 
Spandangler said:
You're not wrong. I'm sitting on a small fortune now:rofl:
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Nice! Yeh, you talk to people who were buying countach's 10 years ago'ish for under 80k as well, certain classic cars have gone nuts.
But we don't have a crystal ball, it's sad with classic cars as it's all investors buying them now and not driving them :(

I see pinball in the same way, limited supply of desirable games more and more people want them, plus the price of new games going up so much because of the value of the £ in the last year must be pulling everything up.
 
I was looking at Porsche 356's on Ebay the other day (not that I can afford one but just to see).....holy f*ck they're expensive for what they are :eek:
 
The only game that has ever owed me anything was the one i bought that made me feel like chewing my feet to bloody stumps every time i played it. I won't reveal its evil to the world as i hope to one day sue its current owner for time wasted, stress and anguish, and the nervous twitch i developed in my upper lip when i got dry bummed on the sale.
 
Spandangler said:
You're not wrong. I'm sitting on a small fortune now:rofl:
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I bought a classic car for four grand and sold it for eight grand. Same with pinball machines. I just bought and sold at the going price.
As long as the price inflates then I suppose people see them as an 'investment'.
It's not helped by those people saying that 'noobs' pay silly money - the same people who sell their 'I bought a machine in the 90s for pennies' to 'noobs'

Pinball is similar to classic cars - their are different buyers. The enthusiast and the monied 'I want one' people. Sometimes they are the same person.

I bought my classic to drive and my pins to play. I spent way too much money on doing them up but I loved doing it.

Then I sold them to someone who paid more than I did. I can't see this continuing -and if it didnt I would still carry on buying and selling.

They are toys, not an investment imho.




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This thread has made very interesting reading. Coming from the "budget" end of pinball my collection comprises four Bally solid-state project has-beens that almost no one will ever love again. I've therefore bagged myself what I consider to be a bargain-priced collection costing about what most folks would pay for a "really ****" DMD. Ok, three of them were DOA projects, and I've spent hundreds of hours repairing them, which I like doing as much as playing, but I've got 4 pins for £875. If I had to sell them I'm sure the buyers would feel they were getting a good deal, and I'd probably be up a few hundred quid (assuming each title sold for say £300-500) although I've probably spent all that "profit" on spare parts, tools and supplies.

The comparison with cars is probably the only other hobby where prices can be just as wonky. It recently came to my attention that the new BMW i8 hybrid supercar had a list price starting at £99,895, but demand was (and still is) so high that second-hand prices are already up to 50% higher!

This probably indicates that pinball is subject to a current trend in supply and demand. Pinball is on the rise again. Many of you will have been around in the 80s, 90s or 2000s when there were massive clearouts of old machines from vendors or hoarders, but those days are long gone. There are very few "barn finds" any more - they all end up on eBay - just like barn-find cars do. But I can envisage a time when a certain generation of sad old gits (yes, that's you and me) are put out the pasture at the care home and our kids sell off our estates to pay for everything, and there won't be any 40-somethings desperately trying to rekindle their wasted youth from the arcades of the 80s. It's at this point that pinball popularity may wane again and there'll be a whole load of crusty 80 year old pins being flogged off cheap on eBay...
 
I don't think it's likely pinballs will drop now, it's just such a nice change from video games, they should be played though obviously, I don't think they'll be that many speculators in the pinball community or at least I hope not!

With cars, the i8's I'm not sure they're doing that well, they're crap to drive and most car enthusiasts turn their nose up at them.
If you're lucky enough to be allowed to be a GT3RS, of 458 Speciale that's a different story, but they're limited run things.
But any modern supercar with a normally aspirated engine and manual gearbox has gone up due all the new stuff being paddles and turbos.

It makes me really sad though when porsche design and build the ultimate drivers 911 in say the 911R, then, no one drives it as they won't put miles on them as they're too much of an investment!!
 
Jonwolf said:
I bought a classic car for four grand and sold it for eight grand. Same with pinball machines. I just bought and sold at the going price.
As long as the price inflates then I suppose people see them as an 'investment'.
It's not helped by those people saying that 'noobs' pay silly money - the same people who sell their 'I bought a machine in the 90s for pennies' to 'noobs'

Pinball is similar to classic cars - their are different buyers. The enthusiast and the monied 'I want one' people. Sometimes they are the same person.

I bought my classic to drive and my pins to play. I spent way too much money on doing them up but I loved doing it.

Then I sold them to someone who paid more than I did. I can't see this continuing -and if it didnt I would still carry on buying and selling.

They are toys, not an investment imho.




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I think you might have got the wrong end of the stick mate
 
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