Womble Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 (edited) I have only been into Arcade stuff for 3 years but over that time the prices seem to have taken a major dive. Boards that used to fetch well over $200 are really starting to struggle (not my boards btw, just been cruising ebay) Capcom Ghosts and Goblins - used to be an easy $250, now even at $120 there are no bids. Wonderboy - Used to be an easy $200, now even at $140 there are no bids, seen them go for under $80 nowadays. Raiden variants always got a lot of interest, but recently have seen them sell as low as $50. Is this purely the high dollar making shipping from the US more viable, or is it more that everyone who wanted these boards and was prepared to pay now has one. Gradually the interest in arcades will fade as the older guys get out of the hobby and the young'uns are too young to remember the 80s games but the price collapse seems to be fairly stark, it cant be MAME either as that is not exactly new. Edited May 4, 2011 by Womble Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homepin Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 MAME isn't new BUT it has become more widely known since the advent of fleabay sellers flogging XXXin1 tables IMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viper Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 MAME isn't new BUT it has become more widely known since the advent of fleabay sellers flogging XXXin1 tables IMO Agreed. Whilst the arcade purist still exists even many of them, although hanging onto their old boards still, are putting xin1 board in because it's just easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator GIBO Posted May 4, 2011 Super Moderator Share Posted May 4, 2011 Yep like Mike posted ,multi game boards have killed the market for the old PCB's but in some ways this is a good thing as more people are getting into the hobby by buying cocktails/cabs with multiple games already installed,the amount of container loads of cocktails coming into the country far outways pinball container loads Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radirgyman Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 Looking forward to a similar effect with pinballs! Bring it on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank_fjs Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 I was all set to start collecting arcade PCB's, but in the end it just isn't worth it unless you know how to repair them. That's what stopped me anyhow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fish Tales Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 generic cabs are so plentiful, and cheap as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesder Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 Might have to make a bid on that Wonderboy board :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sleazius Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 Looking forward to a similar effect with pinballs! Bring it on! Little difficult to whip up a pin on the weekend, or put multiple pins into one cab, which are the main reasons the values hold up. That said things are down currently, and hopefully they stay that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crafty Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 +1 On this. Genuine boards are old and in most cases not well looked after. Therefore prone to breakdown and when this happens I for one cannot fix them. My soldering skills are non-existant and I have no time to develop some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Womble Posted May 4, 2011 Author Share Posted May 4, 2011 Yeh you might have a point, a family friend collects vintage cars, 1910 era mostly, gorgeous vehicles but they are actually not worth much, $30K tops, amazing considering a few are 1 in 5 known globally. The answer is there are so few people with the room and skills, or room and money to keep them running. With a small market comes a lack of competition which produces low prices. I imagine quite a few keen PCB collectors have had the horror of finding their $250 cherished PCB presenting them with a screen full of rubbish. That would dent their ardour to buy more I suppose. Am lucky I guess, have had a few of mine fail, but they were quickly re-fixed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gemini2544 Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 Hey Womble, I have Wonder-boy & Ghosts & goblins in the game list for blue elf 2 & I think you'll find the interest in multigame PCB is the real reason sales have dipped on originals. Not everyone is a PCB collector most just want to play the game. Why pay $250 for one PCB when you can get 300 plus games for $120. IMO :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Womble Posted May 4, 2011 Author Share Posted May 4, 2011 Am not criticising it, its a bonus for real PCB collectors anyway, just amazed it happened so fast, its not as if the multigame boards were not around 3 years ago either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MangledLeg Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 I've noticed it as well - even cab prices have fallen. Makes it easier to get into the hobby though :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nzmendo Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 personally after playing the xxx in 1 boards they just motivated me to buy the originals. maybe in a couple years some of the guys who bought all the 60s, 300s, 2000 in 1s will get a bit deeper into the hobby and start buying real boards again. sorta on the fence about this tbh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gemini2544 Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 personally after playing the xxx in 1 boards they just motivated me to buy the originals. maybe in a couple years some of the guys who bought all the 60s, 300s, 2000 in 1s will get a bit deeper into the hobby and start buying real boards again. sorta on the fence about this tbh I personally flogged off all my originals Galaga (fast shoot), Xerion, Frogger, Secret commander, Time pilot, Double Dragon & some others long forgotten. I still have them all in xxx in 1 so to speak. It so much easier this way, I got so feed up swapping PCB over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nzmendo Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 yeh, that might be more of a street fighter thing, something about emulation just doesn't feel right.. well at least for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
makaw Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 XXX boards are cheap as chps, and great for generic cabs. You dont want a $400 dollar board in a 100 buck cab. ( wonderboy / ebay USA is at $400 start price. so i dont think its the Aussie dollar killing off the market.) The dedicated cabs i am getting will have????? of dollars spent on the 2 spacies pcb's that need work. I dont know how much that will cost, but well worth it in an original cab. I cant justify spending X amount on pcb's to get them fixed. i just sold 4 on ebay for about 50 bucks as no one wants them. I still have one or 2 that need repairing, but to justify spending a few hundred on a sega rally board( i have a broken one), but just bought a working one for $70 delivered. Also have a silkworm board, i want to try to fix myself, simply because no one really wants to give an upfront cost to fix it. Rare games and definately worth keeping just for the historical value. I can get a 60 in 1, for my spacies cab, turn off all the games and leave just spacies running, but to me thats just stupidity, i would rather restore it to as close to original as possible no matter the cost. The scary part is i have been quoted $500 start price to swap my spacies pcb for a working one. WTF????? no wonder people do it the cheap way. Also check USA pcb's ebay. its a joke, no one want to test the boards, and if they do and they are dead they just pull the old bullshit line ( cant test) wtf they have arcade shops and cant test a jamma board? Then you check their other listing and they have got tested guaranteed boards. I wont buy a non tested board, i have bought close to ten lately, and not one worked. paid between 50 to 100 each and sold as non working for 6 for 50 bucks... Thats my 3 cents worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gemini2544 Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 Same thing happened to me & that's why I took the easy way out with 48 in 1 & 302 in 1 Jamma PCB's, plus my Cab & Hankin table are not dedicated units. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stu Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 Yeh you might have a point, a family friend collects vintage cars, 1910 era mostly, gorgeous vehicles but they are actually not worth much, $30K tops, amazing considering a few are 1 in 5 known globally. The answer is there are so few people with the room and skills, or room and money to keep them running. With a small market comes a lack of competition which produces low prices. I imagine quite a few keen PCB collectors have had the horror of finding their $250 cherished PCB presenting them with a screen full of rubbish. That would dent their ardour to buy more I suppose. Am lucky I guess, have had a few of mine fail, but they were quickly re-fixed. This is it for me....I have 2 original bubble bobble boards that I recently found this way and it's not the first time it has happened....really kills it. I think the multiboard has made the price drop though...most people dont care for the original hardware, so long as they can play it on their cab. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knight76 Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 XXX boards are cheap as chps, and great for generic cabs. You dont want a $400 dollar board in a 100 buck cab. ( wonderboy / ebay USA is at $400 start price. so i dont think its the Aussie dollar killing off the market.) The dedicated cabs i am getting will have????? of dollars spent on the 2 spacies pcb's that need work. I dont know how much that will cost, but well worth it in an original cab. I cant justify spending X amount on pcb's to get them fixed. i just sold 4 on ebay for about 50 bucks as no one wants them. I still have one or 2 that need repairing, but to justify spending a few hundred on a sega rally board( i have a broken one), but just bought a working one for $70 delivered. Also have a silkworm board, i want to try to fix myself, simply because no one really wants to give an upfront cost to fix it. Rare games and definately worth keeping just for the historical value. I can get a 60 in 1, for my spacies cab, turn off all the games and leave just spacies running, but to me thats just stupidity, i would rather restore it to as close to original as possible no matter the cost. The scary part is i have been quoted $500 start price to swap my spacies pcb for a working one. WTF????? no wonder people do it the cheap way. Also check USA pcb's ebay. its a joke, no one want to test the boards, and if they do and they are dead they just pull the old bullshit line ( cant test) wtf they have arcade shops and cant test a jamma board? Then you check their other listing and they have got tested guaranteed boards. I wont buy a non tested board, i have bought close to ten lately, and not one worked. paid between 50 to 100 each and sold as non working for 6 for 50 bucks... Thats my 3 cents worth. One of the issues is the dedicated cabs are so damn expensive here. This country was flooded with generic cabs with various game boards put in to them, but relatively few dedicated cabs, or that is how it looks. To sink so much coin in to a dedicated cab only to have the board fail is a worry and something I do think about with the Daytona twin and have already sort of experienced with the Ivan stewarts. The XXX in 1's would just make things easier for people to get in to it. I have often thought about getting in to original game boards, but really, I can not repair them and would worry that when I change games is it going to boot up or not! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baz Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 i generally believe original boards will go back up in the future if the market for these multi boards ever slows down or stops. original boards will always outlive these mutli boards imo firstly there repairable , well being in reasonable condition that is. multi boards are not always repairable. you actually have way more of a chance repairing a original then a multiboard. also what about the games you cant mimic on a multi board ? like vector games. i think the whole multi xxx will eventually die out as collectors want originals. cant dispute mame is here to stay thou. mame will always be here to preserve the roms no matter what and we will always have mame built cabs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Left jump left 1P Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 I think you said it nicely in the first post Womble. I can't see prices going up long term. There may be ups and downs but as time goes on so does the demand as there will be less and less new people getting into this hobby. It wasn't that long ago $50 was a cheap price for any working PCB, no matter how bad the title. Now I would consider $50 to be a fair amount for a PCB on ebay. I do see Pinballs holding their value better and longer. But arcade stuff will drop as it has to compete with 'x in 1's', MAME and the current consoles. Pinball has no real competition. P.S. - How did you get so good at fixing PCBs if you've only been in the hobby 3 years Womble?? :confused: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gameroom Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 But then again, Mame has given life to original PCBs too when roms need to be replaced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dezbaz Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 They are going down to stay I think. My brother sold a galaga pcb with an adapter soldered to the edge connector (Universal pinout??) back in mid 90's He got $1000 for the PCB Now galaga is worth what ? $80.00 - $150.00 if that Prices are decreasing as less people want them. The "less" people are the multiboard people I love the originals, but I too are downsizing my collection soon, and keeping only the classics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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