I just played one today for the first time at our local pinball museum (recent addition).
It will be on my play every time I go now, definitely had lots of shots and variety.
I had no idea what to do but it made me play multiple times

Brutal, AIQ is such an underrated game. I've been toying with selling mine to free some space but at that price I might as well just keep it.

Dozens of games that are better.

Sell it. Buy another pin cheap

AIQ (Prem/LE) is Elwin’s best layout to date IMO. So good, so fun to shoot. Very underrated. The problem is, it’s probably Elwin’s worst when it comes to soul and synergy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just the integration of his other games are that good.

If this were themed as "720 degrees pinball" can you imagine?

720 (resized).jpg

Code. Synergy. It’s “soul less”.

It’s def a bad thing. A terrible game overall. AIQ

JP is the best layout.

That’s why the designer gets WAY too much credit.

Who is it that “integrates the games”?

When you spend a shit load of $$ these days you want “theme integration” 1st. AIQ is a crap theme and tough to do

AIQ needed to have 1 really cool mech. I like it otherwise.

I think the tower shot is freakin cool as shit.

Tower shot is awesome, tower shot with a ball in there for jackpot is so nice.

Same old boring ass iceman theme whore take that makes no fucking sense; as usual.

Well if the market is showing one thing is that all pinball companies are focused on theme and licensing.

And people keep asking for more.

So in a weird way Iceman kinda have a point lol.

This. Back when I had one I had my first billion plus game where I felt like I finally blew it up. But then once my ball drained and I had an extra ball it was like, What did I actually accomplish??? What am I supposed to do now???

Worldwide fact=themes sell games.
Has nothing to do with Ice.

sorry, not looking to sell Radical…. wait what? yeah that theme would have sold more lol

As long as the drop is relative for most pins, pin to pin, unless your trying to run a flipping business things are pretty much the same as always. Of the things I’ve sold recently I’ve come out ahead in every one except one, and that one I traded down with cash. And if we’re not factoring mods and shipping, the profits on what I sold offset any depreciation on the trade. So, in general, the difference between a used stern pro and a used premium is the same as it was awhile ago, they’re both just lower than they were a year ago. If you’re interested in playing pins and not flipping them then you’re still in a pretty low cost hobby after the initial investment. Losses on NIB aside, that is. But outside of Covid NIB has generally been a losing “investment” in the short term anyway.

Great thread for someone new into pins, the last time I played was probably pre 1990 so I had no idea until recently what the pin market was or was like. I have made some offers on pins and I'm always surprised there is little movement in way of price. I just retired from the military and found myself looking for a hobby. LOL I found it but it isn't cheap. I found a rollergames for a decent price and am happy with it. But want to add a newer title, like tmnt or jp pros are probably more in my pension plan budget LOL. For $8K Cad though I think I'm probably going to find 2 1990s pins instead (kinda of local is the hard part as well) and I'll still be pretty stoked about that. I'm definitely watching the market all the time now though and threads like this.

Style over substance. Not surprising or being critical, there's only so much you can do on a 22 x 42" surface after 40+ years of ramps and drop targets.

I was just saying being a theme whore is normal these days, nothing more.

That's it buddy

Patience is the key Gunner, i'm sure in the Ontario area you will eventually get your hands on something good.

Gunner007 you're very well located. Toronto and Ottawa are both great pinball scenes.

People were saying this same crap twenty years ago, wasn't true then or now. Pinball is continually evolving.

It really isn’t. It’s the same shit with a little window dressing.

If venom is a sign of pinball “evolving” I guess I’m a creationist. Forcing innovation in pinball is stupid and makes for bad games.

Hey! A fellow Kingstonian. I was just there for Christmas lol

Newer Canuck pinball guy here. Definitely get two 90s machines or older and nicer shape 80s machines. Pinball is great but it's often down. Having at least one game to play is really nice. Both of my games are down (one for board work, one in a restore), and while my fiancee is really understanding, even I'm starting to see the down machine in the living room as an albatross

A weird way?

You all know it’s right.

They aren’t selling to the niche audience like some of these guys. Mass appeal = theme and licensing

Especially at these prices. Doesn’t matter how much a small group might like a game because “it’s a flow monster” or “a monster layout”.

Call me the “theme whore”. That’s what I am

And we love you for it lol

retired from the military and stayed! Nice town. In comparison to a lot of others. Cheers

I have a slightly different question about pricing, but certainly don't want to start ANOTHER pricing thread, so I'll ask opinion here...

I don't believe the manufacturers will (or can) roll back pricing on NIB releases. I think we'll see some of the smaller ones fail before that happens. So, assuming that NIB pricing remains ~$7k for entry models and $9-10k for better models...what happens to pricing of past machines. How much of a 'price gap' will there be between the "latest and ?greatest?" and past models. Will they all keep going lower and lower as more and more pins flood the market?
I'm sorta thinking for good condition / fully working pins:
Stern LCD's: least desirable bottom out ~60% of NIB: ~$4200 (Mando, TMNT)
WPC's: least desirable bottom out at ~40% of NIB: $2800 (Gilligans, Popeye, JD, DM)
Other DMD's: least desirable bottom out at 30% of NIB: $2100 (Sharkey's, HRC, RCT, LW, Hook)
Alpha-numerics: least desirable bottom out at 25% of NIB: $1750
I won't venture a guess on other SS's or EM's

Does this sound about right? Or will the current crop of players/enthusiasts/collectors actually see the value in these older games and their values will migrate closer to NIB pricing.

I picked up a pretty decent Sharkey's for $2300 last year that had a few minor repairable issues. It's a good game with more in the BOM than most new releases. In terms of game substance, there's no way that a NIB pro LCD/code/theme is really worth 3x's...but that's what the market is. So will these 'lesser' titles catch up to NIB...or will they become less and less memorable/desirable despite the value of their BOM/features and continue dropping?

You should check out the market and some of the archives of these titles, for example you listed LW as a 2,100 example when its a 600 production game, maybe 350 of those still around at max, and the recent sales of non-project games still going for well north of 3k. These things move and goods like these have a somewhat unique valuation curve if you know how to make use of that you can see where machines are headed just like in the stock market, for the stock market we may/may not know what is moving a stock. Here with older machines it will be obvious what is driving the price, and that it will not see a sudden "downturn" unless an external event comes along.

I would have thought there was a pricing floor on used LCDs, but Stern is doing their best to drop it even lower by flooding the market with reruns of all their Spike 2s. Everyone has these pipe dreams of DMD remakes with the big new factory, but all we'll be getting is TMNT, etc pulled out of the "archive" and random anniversary editions with different color palettes

…the external event is that manufacturers keep cranking out a lot of games probably faster than the market is growing. I don’t think this results in a sudden downturn…but doesn’t it pretty much have to keep driving pin values lower and lower?

Unlike cars: I don’t think anyone is throwing away pins that were made post-1990 anymore. So eventually there will be more pins than people want. Maybe we’re getting to that point faster than I think…so which ones stay and which ones keep devaluing more and more until people start throwing them out again?

…am I wrong: I assume that there was a change in what happens to old pins. I think they used to have a fixed life and were eventually discarded. I don’t think that happens any more…in fact it seems that a lot are being restored.

Yeah, LW probably wasn’t fair as I think it’s one of the best DataEasts. I’m not saying it’s a $2100 title…but as market is flooded more and more can it become one?

The new in box portion of this only effects prices on old pins so much- and I'd say its fairly limited given the following scenarios over the past ten years:
Prices on 90's B&W classics rising steadily, and sometimes rockily.
Prices on NiB games going up.
The amount of pins being produced each year going up.
And how can all of those three factors still result in pricing that is at least holding if not steadily keeping pace with inflationary forces?

It's because the most important factor is the size of the market, 2004-2014 had some growth in the hobby still because it just co-incided with boomers coming into peak buying power then even though the market was contracting.

So now we have real growth in the pinball industry and this is all proof positive of that new influx of buyers of the past ten years. Now this is going to be an interesting few years, and there has still not been a major market "shake-out", but using the "on it's head" dynamics of the pinball industry of 2000-2010 will become even more silly than it is now.

Big question is whether market will continue growing or not. There is certainly potential, as nearly everyone I mention ‘pinball’ to the first time looks at me like I’m from a different planet. BUT…economy…Covid bubble…any number of other reasons…if it doesn’t stop growing, the question will remain ‘what happens to all the pins’.

Maybe a Taylor Swift pin can save us!

Yeah I think in an age group from around 40-60 it is somewhat rarer to have pinball freinds etc, whereas I know the EM pinball community is well connected with each other and there does seem to be a younger demographic that probably had little exposure to pinball when they were growing up. But I do see groups of them at tournaments etc so maybe it is easier to find pinball friends if you are 35.

Like it or not, it costs a lot more to make a game today than it did in 2000. You're talking about a used game versus a game built in a factory, where $ is needed to cover labor, overhead, marketing, materials, etc.

Yes, absolutely, modern games have a sales value well north of a $2,300 Sharkey's Shootout.

I think the point here is that Sharkey's Shootout is a vastly under-rated and under-priced game in todays market.

It is not.

That may have been true when it was 900 bucks but nobody really wants a Sharkey's.

File it under: Games Like Time Warp

Sort-of. Definitely needs a code update for some of the characters and a fix/mod for the geometry of the VUK to the pop cycle.

I recall going through the callouts in pinball-browser. Quite a few funny ones that did not make it into the production code.

I think a few Data East titles have really benefitted from recent code adjustments.

ah, jeeze, man, deep cut.

(though, actually, I only paid $900 for mine, last year)

please don't tell me what you think of Jokerz!

seriously Sharkey's is a great game for beginners. Side to side with my star wars premium it often got more play at parties. It's fun, easy, family friendly, humorous, attractive, a tad sexy... all things missing from many modern sterns. And those up posts are addictive.

New Code for Sharkey's would be awesome.

Jokerz sucks but it's probably a decent $1500 starterz game for somebody.

I had one and it drove me fucking insane, I could never get rid of an awful static on the sound. Sent the board out and everything.

thing about Sharkey's is, and I'm sure a lot of people are in this position with a lot of other games too, when I look at the market here in California there is nothing available under 3k that I would rather own than Sharkey's. I tried to sell mine at that price and got no takers or interesting trade offers so I'm stuck with it for now, which is fine.

I'll take those all day long. I love Time Warp.

This conversation took a bit of an unintended turn. I wasn’t really trying to argue for Sharkey’s.

Instead I was wondering what happens to games like Sharkey’s that have decent shots, decent code, and good BOMs (by today’s standards)…games that by all accounts other than ‘demand’ should not be valued at < 1/3 of a NIB pro.

But games values of course ARE driven by demand. So if the demand/supply ratio drops lower and lower…does demand for the Sharkey’s of the world drop lower and lower too, with no bottom…or does there come a point when people rather have 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 games like Sharkey’s over the next Venom?…then what happens? I guess one of two things (or maybe both) happens: # of new releases has to REALLY drop, and/or games like Sharkey’s get to point where they’re not worth maintaining…and get trashed.

Or, the price drops to where the folks who own them don't give a shit about resale value, but rather buy and own them because they want to play and enjoy the games. Personally, I can't wait!

it is absolutely a $2k title.

17 days is too long between bubble speculation posts. I see 1st run Jaws Premiums being advertised as in stock/ready to ship. Also see the LE pop up now and again bc the "buyer backed out". I figured this would be the case, but was waiting to see if the Elwin factor would change that

The FOMO bubble, at least, has definitely popped

Sssshhhh! we’re trying to sell games .

A lot out there besides pinside market. FWIW though, low play stern premiums at pro prices is not the norm but exception. Simple supply and demand, still the rule of thumb! A lot more to choose from and those with FOMO and 2-3 game collections wanting to buy and /or trade for the latest, its a buyers market for the most part.

What does this mean for newbs and the casual collector, on location player…imo, pay the extra freight for a local/regional option you can see, touch and play.

“The deal” boils down to hundreds of dollars in many cases and willingness to give 1 to 1 value for mods…especially factory toppers.

I personally stood on sidelines in ‘22 and early ‘23 and am loving all the great titles everyone is putting out