Easy / Hard To Trade Pins

[JeepMonkey]

In general, what are some machines that you would consider easy or difficult to trade when time to changing machines?  Let's assume machines that are mostly to completely working and in decent shape, assuming a "reasonable value" for the machine.

I am curious about the ease of trading a WMS IJ.  If I were to buy one, I would think that someday I would want to sell/trade it for something different.  You thoughts?

[Jeff AMN]

IJ is an easy game to turn around when you're done with it. It's much harder to acquire than to sell. Selling mine took all of one evening as I got multiple offers after posting it for sale, but it took me months to track one down for an acceptable price.

Really just about any pin is easy to sell if your asking price is fair. There are a few stinkers out there that might take longer to unload, but overall any pin for a decent price will get picked up fairly quickly.

[ChadTower]

Really just about any pin is easy to sell if your asking price is fair.

That is so not my experience.  There are a ton of games you can't even sell for parts value.  Anyone who has spent 6 months trying to sell a game cheap the whole time thinking "I would get more in generic parts" would disagree.

[ChadTower]

Even if you don't "pimp it out" you can easily burn $50 in parts.  Any game with old Bally light sockets will either run you $1/socket to replace or a good amount of labor to pull and mod most of the sockets.  It burns to spend $50 on sockets but it also burns to sell a game for $400 that you put a ton of hours into.  A lot of games that are not pretty or have damaged art are going to get parted out that would have been saved before.  I already see a lot of guys buying up cheap dups of their games so they can combine two to make one prettier one.

[jennifer]

         Replacing parts is bad? Led"s suck? com"on ..... These games need that, the upgrade, new crome, whatever. If someone doesn"t want to pay
they can go without.

[Q*Bert_OP]

Really just about any pin is easy to sell if your asking price is fair.

Bull  !!!

The pins that aren't "A titles" are tough to sell to families or collectors, with few exceptions, like Capcom's Pinball Magic.

Anyone ever tried to sell:
T2
Judge Dredd
Popeye
NBA Fastbreak
Dracula
Any Sega pin
Any Data East pin
Any game with scantily clad women in the art

How easy was it?

Easy games to sell include:
Attack from Mars
Twilight Zone
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Indiana Jones
Cirqus Voltaire
Theatre of Magic
Arabian Nights
Medieval Madness
Simpsons Party
Lord of the Rings
Spider Man(Stern)

Aren't those all "A titles?"
-------------------------------------------------

Jim: The LEDs I installed in route games have lost at least 90% of their intensity. These ALL came from BC's Pinball, the worst pinball LED supplier. Slow to ship, always short a few bulbs, and at least 2 bulbs are DOA in the package. BC's Pinball is also very hard to do business with...Bruce never answers his email or his phone, and it took me filing a paypal chargeback to get my order shipped. You'd think that if a buyer is willing to spend $3k on some LEDs, you should ship promptly?

Between all the games I have LED from BC's, there are 30 DEAD LEDs, and all have lost a lot of intensity, especially the 4x brights I put in the GI in all of my pins...those were almost $5 a bulb!

For anyone who wants a reliable LED supplier with a reliable product, go to Coin Taker. I installed their LEDs in a game that's been on 24/7 for almost 2 years now, and there's no noticeable drop in intensity.

Anyways, back to the point...don't mod any game you're planning to sell or trade. You'll loose at least 50% of the money spent on mods.

Jim: re: replacing lamp sockets

Never worked on a 60's-70's Bally? With those wonderful Bally factory made sockets in the head?

[JeepMonkey]

Easy games to sell include:
Attack from Mars
Twilight Zone
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Indiana Jones
Cirqus Voltaire
Theatre of Magic
Arabian Nights
Medieval Madness
Simpsons Party
Lord of the Rings
Spider Man(Stern)

I noticed you didn't list TAF.  I would imagine that title moves easily as well.

It seems a bit odd at first when it appears that the more expensive machines sell easier than machines worth one third to half as much.

[Q*Bert_OP]

Easy games to sell include:
Attack from Mars
Twilight Zone
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Indiana Jones
Cirqus Voltaire
Theatre of Magic
Arabian Nights
Medieval Madness
Simpsons Party
Lord of the Rings
Spider Man(Stern)

I noticed you didn't list TAF.  I would imagine that title moves easily as well.

It seems a bit odd at first when it appears that the more expensive machines sell easier than machines worth one third to half as much.

Those games are more expensive because more people want them.

I also forgot Star Trek:TNG on that list. White Water could also be on there.

[ChadTower]

I've never had to replace a light socket that wasn't physically broken.  Never had to mod one besides wiping out the dirt and maybe pinching the socket with needle nose pliers.  The Clay guides are full of lots of unnecessary rip-up-the-game "fixes".  

I fought the sockets in my Dragonfist for two weeks.  Cleaned them, pinched them, yelled at them, talked dirty to them.  Some of them just would not stay reliable unless I modded them and moved the signal wire to whatever that knob is called at the bottom.  After 15 of those I ended up buying a bag of new ones so I could just swap some in and mod the old ones as time allowed later on.  What is bugging the crap out of me right now on that game is a 9 light common ground strip that acts the same way.  I really don't feel like pulling that thing out and modding it but I'll never find a replacement and the alternative is drilling holes for individual sockets and running the ground over to them all.

I do agree that a good amount of stuff Clay's guides say are mandatory are more for "rock solid 100% NOS style reliability" and not always necessary.  That stuff is for people who can't debug their games later on once they have it working.

[jennifer]

           When people want my pins it"s almost like they could care less about the game, it"s more the reliability of it, few would even know where to start.
They will pay more for something that doesen"t have quick fixes all over it.
           What I do find however is tech"s are in short supply where I live. Anybody buying a pin/cab almost expects the "lifetime warrenty" so alas
I dont sell them anymore, I trade.
            As for the LED's, I  WAS pretty excited to try them......

[Flake]

To echo PBJ's comments, while I've only been in the market for about 3 years now I have noticed a drop-off in the amount of pins that are showing up on CL.  Also the amount of pins (and arcades) that SA has each year they come through seem less and less as well.  Not sure if thats more of a function of their business model than availability but generally speaking I think its getting harder and harder for guys like me who arent buddies with the top local collectors/operators in a given area to locate and purchase pins.  I do actually have a contact with the a guy that runs a local pinball "museum" and he has been the source for both pins I currently own and 2 others I've purchased and subsequently sold.  However, right now I'm not really in the market for a machine but if I were my only real option right now would be to contact this guy and see if he can track down what I was looking for. 

All that being said, there is a Pinbot for sale on CL right now that I wish I had the money for....

[ChadTower]

Once you're in the local circuit it's very easy to find pins to buy.  It may not be easy to find the specific pin you want, or a fun pin in great shape, but every collector has a game or two that they'll sell if asked.  Almost all of us have a couple games folded up somewhere that haven't been shopped/fixed yet.  Those are the pins that are easy to find and probably always will be.

[ChadTower]

What's it cost to join your local circuit?  The club I'm in requires ~$1,000 cash a year paid to your sponsor.


 

Boston Pinball Association

New England Arcade Collectors' Forum

Granted, groups like this don't exist everywhere, but they all start with one guy willing to mod a list or set up a forum.

[Jeff AMN]

I don't know where you guys are getting this it's hard to sell a game thing. I've sold tons of games, and I've never had to have them listed for longer than a week. Even crap like Hurricane went in just 2-3 days. Several games, like Fish Tales, Revenge From Mars, The Getaway, Jurassic Park, and Taxi all sold within one day of listing. I typically just try to get back what I've got into them, and I've never struggled to sell a single game.

[ChadTower]

None of those are crap titles.  Try selling an EM or a C list game that plays well but has worn out art.  There are way more hard to sell titles than there are games that sell in one day.  You can't even get what you put into it when you pay $150 for a project Laser Cue and spend $150 getting it cleaned up and working well again.

[Jeff AMN]

Sure, but the majority of pins swapping hands are late 80's and up pins these days. The older stuff is far more novel to the average collector. But still, older games do have their niche, it's just smaller. I'm constantly amazed at how many people want my OXO. 90% of pinball players out there have no idea what OXO is, and I haven't even listed it but I'm always getting asked about it.

Even the B list DMD/alphanumeric games go rather easily. I will concede that many early SS or EM games are harder to sell, but that's due to such a small market for them. It's hard to complain when you buy one of those knowing that you're entering a real small pool of buyers.

[ChadTower]

Sure, but the majority of pins swapping hands are late 80's and up pins these days. The older stuff is far more novel to the average collector. But still, older games do have their niche, it's just smaller.

I don't agree with that at all.  Maybe in the Williams fan circles.  For every game in that circle there are twenty outside of it.

Some of us buy those older/less desirable titles intentionally because we care about the machines and want to see them brought back to life rather than get parted out.  You're right, you go in knowing you could take a loss, but that's not what we were talking about.  It's about ease of selling the game in general.  It's not a smaller market than the more advanced games.  It's the same market with a much greater supply.

[ChadTower]

Granted, groups like this don't exist everywhere, but they all start with one guy willing to mod a list or set up a forum.

Why needs more penpals?     What are we going to talk about?  Which one of us can open up Craig's List the fastest?

Heh.  Depends on the quality of the group.  Through the BPA I've been able to play an original Kingpin, a Loch Ness Monster, and HUO instances of all the A list titles.  I absolutely never would have seen those two games anywhere else and probably never would have seen most of the others.  I wasn't exposed to pinball on location when it was common so the ability to meet up with folks who own games I've never seen is a great thing.  That includes bunches of lesser esteemed games that I always enjoy seeing in person for the first time.

[ChadTower]

Every group has its share of guys like that.  Here is no exception.  A couple "of the good guys" tried really hard to rip me off when I was a pin newbie.  I wasn't an arcade newbie and I'm not stupid.  Didn't work.  Those guys seem to have mostly disappeared these days.  You can only do that sort of thing so many times before the shallow end of the pool wisens up.