Hi,

I'm curious about the prices of a new machine in the 1992-1996 era. What was the prices for a new Williams/Bally, a Data East and Gottlieb machine? Did the prices are always the same for all the machines from the same compagny (on a short time lapse)?

I imagine that DE and Gottlieb were a bit cheaper than Bally/Williams?

Thank you

Lloyd R Olson          
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      More options Apr 4 2002, 5:01 pm
Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball
From: "Lloyd R Olson"
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 21:01:03 GMT
Local: Thurs, Apr 4 2002 5:01 pm
Subject: Re: Wondering original cost of NIB games when they came out?
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Well a little checking and I came up with the following.

Gottlieb Pinball Pool  1979  1595.00
Williams Flash   1979  1495.00
Stern Meteor   1979   1795.00
Williams Gorgar  1980  1895.00
Stern Flight 2000  1980  1995.00
Gottlieb Mars God of War  1981  2282.00
Gottlieb Black Hole  1981   2409.00
Williams Black Knight  1981  2386.00
Bally Xenon  1981     2074.00
Midway Baby PacMan 1982   2777.00
Williams Hyperball  1982   2829.00
Williams High Speed  1986   2252.00
Williams Police Force  1989   2750.00
Williams Funhouse  1991  2695.00





1988, Space Station would have set me back
$2,695.00.



Pat Lawlor and Steve Kordek compiled some prices from old games for
use at Pat's talk at Pinball Expo 1998.  I managed find an overview of
that talk on the web (thanks Scott), here are some of the prices we
had compiled:

Model              Introduced by       MSRP   Adjusted
-----------------  ----------------  -------  --------
Criss-Cross        Genco, 1934       $    92  $ 1,227
Space Mission      Williams, 1976    $ 1,160  $ 3,624
Superman           Atari, 1978       $ 1,850  $ 5,044
High Speed         Williams, 1985    $ 2,250  $ 3,717  
Black Knight 2000  Williams, 1990    $ 2,750  $ 3,741  

The first value for each game is the price at the time the game was
introduced to the public.  The second value is the price adjusted to
2002 dollars (data from the Consumer Price Index tables, US Bureau of
Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov)

Interestingly, the real-dollar cost of games hasn't wavered much in
the last 25 years or so during the solid state era considering that
new games are still in the $3600-$3800 (MSRP) ballpark.

It's something to think about when you hear someone gripe about the
cost of pinballs these days.

Louis Koziar



n 1976, I saw/played, the Spac*e Missi*on  test game  on
location.

The day that my (La, Ca) distributer got them in, I bought
one.

COST (includes shipping from Wms, to La)  was $875 - 895.

EL