Arcade Collecting > Pinball

Pinball

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Karetaker:
Yep, NEVER use Western Union to buy ANYTHING! You use that if you have a friend in jail out of state and he needs bail money or a relative is out of state and they need money to get their car fixed.

kk99:
If everything goes through.... tomorrow, I should be the happy owner of my very first pin.  Probably not the best deal and I didn't even bargain for fear of losing it to somebody else locally... but I had almost given up on them altogether.

So it'll be a VERY clean T3 machine. With sub, special railings and LED's... well, that's what he stated.  I, personally, didn't actually know about these extras.  Private sell... after quite a few emails, I have full confidence on the guy. $2900.  From the prices listed under the pinballprice for an "excellent" pin, it's more or less the price they seem to be worth these days.

If you think I got screwed... go easy on me and don't ruin my excitement too much... ;)

Paul Olson:
Most of the people try to find the absolute cheapest pin they can get. If it is in nice shape, and it is a game you like, it probably isn't too bad of a price. I have about that into my No Fear after getting it shopped. I may or may not get most of my money back if I sell it someday, but I don't care too much about that. I buy my toys to enjoy. Have fun with it!

Fursphere:
When looking for pins, also remember that "HUO (Home Use Only)" often means "never been waxed, rocking the original rubbers, ball might be a little rusty, thank god it probably has low plays"

The majority of pinball owners I know don't have a clue how to work on them or properly maintain them.  "Just shopped out!" often means "recently wiped off with a semi-clean rag". 

nickbuol:

--- Quote from: Fursphere on February 18, 2015, 09:40:25 pm ---When looking for pins, also remember that "HUO (Home Use Only)" often means "never been waxed, rocking the original rubbers, ball might be a little rusty, thank god it probably has low plays"

The majority of pinball owners I know don't have a clue how to work on them or properly maintain them.  "Just shopped out!" often means "recently wiped off with a semi-clean rag".

--- End quote ---

I helped my inlaws pick up a pinball just last spring.  The listing was on ebay, but ended up being about 10 minutes from my house.  They came for a visit all excited about this "extra clean" and "shopped" machine (I told them what that word SHOULD mean), and it was a fairly popular machine (World Cup Soccer).  We get to this guy's house, if you can call it a house.  In an area where the average home cost is around $225,000 and that gets you a pretty nice house, this place was recently bought (by them) for over $1.1Million.  So a very nice place.

Anyway, we thought, this will be a gem of a machine...  Nope.

The guy said that when he bought it 10 years ago, it was fully gone through and was 100% perfect.  THAT was his idea of "shopped"...  Something done 10 years ago.

I swear that this thing was left in a garage or back room of a basement without the glass on it for about a month, and then played.  At least from the looks.  It was DIRTY.  A lot of the lights no longer worked.  There were broken plastics, one of the flippers was malfunctioning, etc.

I asked about the broken plastic pieces, and he said that he never knew about anything ever breaking, so either he was lying, or his 100% perfect machine wasn't so perfect.

With all of that, as some pricing information from recent sales, we were in a good position for some negotiation. 

They were asking something like $2,300 "firm" but after listing all of the things that the machine needed, and the elbow grease to clean it all up, the guy sold it to my in-laws for $1,300.  I created a parts list, and we ordered everything, and then spent a good portion of a saturday stripping down and cleaning the playfield, replacing bulbs and broken pieces, rebuilding both flippers, and giving it a good wax, and replacing the glass that had some big scratches in it.  The parts came in at about $350 shipped, including a service manual and a couple of "fun" items like the keychain piece, etc.   It now looks and plays extremely nicely. Definately a good buy in my in-law's mind.

So yeah, "shopped" means that at one point it was looked over.  That could have been a month ago, but most likely was a few years ago.

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