Consider the Sky Jump I just bought.

$600 on ebay....filthy, not going, broken plastics, planked p/f reasonable b/g starting to flake its orange paint, missing lockbar,missing backbox door, ruined coin door, all metal needing replating. The whole thing reeks of rats and is full of dust and rubbish.

Good news is I have one of Gtbs great Krynski wedgeheads. Also it's a chance to save something from the tip. It also employs a bunch of people from Mitch (Mr Pinbologist) to RTBB to Lee at Pinball Rescue to Steve at PBR to whoever fabricates me a backbox door.

Bad news is I pay for it all as well as getting it from Sydney to mid north coast as well as spent hours and hours scrubbing, poking, prodding,

It will be worth roughly $1500 before I even get to the artwork which is easily another grand if i do all the prep and pass it to Mitch. A couple of hundred to either send the metalwork to a plater or start my own plating setup.

While I'd never get my own time to pay for itself, I am really enjoying the process but for someone who doesn't have the time, talent or access to a pro like Mitch  a single player E/M starts to  really add up.

Machines can still be picked up at a good price but with demand being what it is- to my mind increasing as the pinball generation gets nostalgic and cashed up- the era of the sub grand machine is just about over.

My buying spree is over and I've picked up a bunch of really nice titles. Nothing I bought for under a grand will end up will have cost less than 2 grand by the time it's all over and they are all E/Ms.

There is also the possibility that, particularly E/Ms due to their unique and antiquated engineering concepts, are the collectables of tomorrow and the current pricing will seem  very reasonable.