Pinball Machines Are Not Investments

In last week’s newsletter, we teased out some data we’ve been analyzing recently in our games database. Specifically, the change in value of modern pinball machines from MSRP on release to today.

And what I’ve found is that the adage spoken in some parts of the community, that pinball machines are not investments, rings true.

Going back to 2017, if someone had purchased all game releases and all the various trims of those releases, they’d be out $1,869,030 (adjusted for inflation). And if one were to sell those same games today, they’d net proceeds around $1,610,469, or a loss of $258,561 (14%).

If that same person had instead taken the equivalent amount of money as the MSRP value of a game at release, and invested in a S&P 500 index fund like VOO, they’d have a portfolio valued at $2.79 million today. That’d be a nice gain of $917,778 (+49%). Not bad!

Of the 183 releases analyzed, only 36 are above water, and that includes 8 new releases where we don’t have secondary market data to analyze yet.

Let’s break this data down a few more ways to see if we can get some additional insights.

• Winners

• Losers

• Manufacturer aggregates

• Value picks

• Raw data

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