Milwaukee, WI Auction 11/10/07

[urbecrisch]

Hey, just want to know how many of you BYOAC members went to the Milwaukee auction this past Saturday.  Quite a bit smaller than the last one in Sept 07 but still great cause it was an auction:)  To view the results click:
http://www.gct21.net/~johns594/arcade/auction/auc.php?nam=&mat=e&evnt=173&qty=100

Also, I want to know if anyone could tell me what was up with the guy selling the home built multi-arcade cabinets.  There were a few CABS with 48-1 boards and then there was the CAB with Mame (2000 games) and GameEx FE with 2000 mp3's.  This CAB sold for $2,200, which was an obvious shill bid since he tried selling the exact CAB later in the auction which ended up in an argument followed by a PASS on the CAB from the auctioneer.  All his CABS had an LCD monitor inside and the one with GameEX had a stereo receiver inside.  The worse part about the CAB was the poor job on the CP, which had a trackball that was not flush mounted and when I inspected the joysticks, I noticed the dust washers were dirty and the shafts were rusted and beat up in a few areas indicating that the builder had used parts on his machine.

This was my third auction and the first time I saw this seller.  I noticed he was with an older gentleman who was trying to sell two cocktail CABS.  One was a Green Bay Packers theme and the other was a Harley Davidson theme.  Both had 48-1 boards inside and looked cosmetically OK since they were both hand-made.  The seller bought them back each for $1,000 since he was the only bidder.

I'm just curious if anyone knows who these guys are and why they are trying to sell mediocre CABS at an auction where 85% of the attendees know what they're doing and have the knowledge to build/fix CABS.  Sorry I don't have any PICS for the people who couldn't attend, I'll take some at the next auction.

Also, for those who attended, what did you win?  I didn't buy anything this time around cause I'm fixing the pinball machine I bought at the last auction and I'm in the process of building a jukebox.  Cheers!

[Lindner24]

Name               Bid                                Notes

Pac-Man     400.00                 Ms. Pac-Man cabinet and artwork - "a transvestite"


 

[More Cowbell]

I was there and bought the Jurassic Park pinball. The dot matrix board was effed up at the auction but works great now that I jiggled a few wires. Paid $875 so it was like $1,040 with fees. We had been wanting one so it was a good win for us. My kids jumped in that lady bug jumpy thing for hours. The multi cabs looked pretty nice from a distance but really didn't belong at the auction. I've seen those cocktails at the April and August auctions as well. Apparently, no one wants to pay his price. With the fees, can it really pay to buy back your own crap? Especially at $2,200? All in all, wish I had more space to get stuff home, I would have picked up a few of the $50 working cabs that were there.

[Ian]

any idea when the next auction is going to take place?

[csa3d]

You only pay a $14 buyback fee.  So if you buy a game back, you're out $28.

Anyone selling anything worth anything knows this, so everything (pinballs especially) get up to Ebay price pretty darn quick.

Do the Super Auction folks also collect a commision when a product does sell?  Is there a fee per entry.. etc.

[urbecrisch]

Anyone selling anything worth anything knows this, so everything (pinballs especially) get up to Ebay price pretty darn quick.

Yeah, but the problem I have is with some sellers who frequent the auctions.  There was this one guy who was selling numerous pinball games.  During the preview time of the auction my friend and I were looking at a pinball machine that my friend was interested in buying.  The seller told us, "If your interested you should buy this machine."   We asked him a few questions and the auction started.

About 2 hours into the auction they started auctioning off the pinball machines.  My friend started bidding on the pinball machine he liked and ended up in a bidding war with the seller of the machine!  It didn't make sense.  I understand the sellers want to make a certain amount of money on an item but this particular guy ended up buying back all his machines. 

I guess my point is that he should just put the pins on Ebay or Craig's List if he has a specific amount he wants to make on the machines.  Sometimes you can find better deals other than at the auctions.  Like pinballjim said, the pins end up costing the same amount for what you find on other online auction/classified sites.

All in all, the auction was fun and there are some definite deals to be found, especially on the CABS.  It seemed like this past auction had some really good deals.  Not sure when the next one is but you can bet I'll be there.  Seems like Super Auctions frequently stops in Milwaukee.