But isn't it like saying my primary interest has been motor gliding but cause to stupid prices, I'm starting to branch out into hot air ballooning
.
Individual price increase may even be higher with video games, like ten to twenty times higher than the original retail price. For a piece of plastic holding a rom, which you can play in so many other forms for free these days. Talking about hot air... And if you meant switching to vintage arcade cabs, then isn't that roughly the same ballpark as pins? Anyway, you got me curious, it would be cool if you could lay out some price comparisons.
Don't wanna answer for uncivil_enginee, but if you're talking AES, (high profile games like Metal Slug), it's clearly the most absurdly expensive hobby in the arcade world... at least pins are very complex machines, true works of art, full of specific assemblies that were sometimes created, patented for a single game and never used again - not some plastic cases with a couple of boards and a label. That said, if you go the MVS route, collecting Neo Geo is still very affordable.
Just remember I live in Italy, and here we had tons of machines, before some shady companies started sweeping them and exporting them in the USA and Australia; when I started collecting pins, an Indiana Jones was around 1200, 1300 EUR - and it was on the expensive side, same price range as Twilight Zone and Addams Family. My Fish Tales was 350, Doctor Who and The Getaway 500, Tales of the Arabian Nights 800 (yeah, I got very lucky with that one), Cirqus Voltaire 2300. When I bought my Monster Bash for 2100, I thought it was a LOT of money. Now it's between 6000 and 8000, depending on the condition. Back in the day, they offered me a Medieval Madness for 3000 EUR and I laughed in their face... now I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I've seen one selling for 15.000.
You can't find any game, even the crappy ones, under 1300, and we're talking about machines in very bad conditions; if you're a player, and not some hoarder, you can't leave them like that, or you won't have any fun playing them. A normal restoration can cost you between 1000 and 2000 EUR, and I'm only talking about the cost of parts (have to buy a couple of new plastic ramps? 400 EUR, easily). And if you have to replace some board, prepare to spend much more. Also, you can be sure something will eventually break: pins are very demanding machines, they don't stop sucking your blood after you've bought them, you often must keep throwing money at them. In comparison, arcade cabs are child's play.