I remember when I first got started in this hobby, I was looking for an empty cab to MAME. Some dude on Craigslist had a cab listed (no picture) for $50, so I went to look at it. It was one of those weird cabs where the monitor is somewhat separate, almost like a CRT pedestal. I told him I wanted something more traditional, and he said he had a Nintendo cab on the side of the house. We went to look it it. It was weatherbeaten, faded, rained on, weeds growing up through the bottom of the cab, dogs probably ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- in it... and he offered it to me for MORE than the other cab. I politely declined.
Yeah, so, when I started, I called an operator and said I wanted something, "really cheap" and amazingly never got a call back.
Plenty of, "come take a look and make me an offer on it" types that thought their Robocop was worth "$10,000 when it was new."
Then I posted on a local usenet group in ~2001 about it, and got a phone call from a woman that bought a Tempest out of the arcade she worked at in 1982 and had it in a back bedroom. As calmly as possible I said I'd take it, but was told, "going to have to do some research on the value and think about how I'm going to move all the furniture and piles of fabric out of the way." For giggles I'd hand her phone number out occasionally and she was still banging that drum 10 years later.
Then I got the bright idea to saw a cabinet in half so I could fit it into a Mercury Sable. Drive six hours to a Super Auction. First machine was a Final Fight conversion of a Jungle Hunt. $91. Bought a rechargeable saw at Wal-Mart and got about 2/3s of the way around the cabinet before it ran out of juice. Used a hammer and a hand saw to finish the job. Got the top half into the backseat. Couldn't fit the bottom in the trunk. Stripped everything out, left the cabinet behind, and hauled ass out of there. Neck on the monitor broke on the first left turn. :-P Plus side was there was roughly $70 in quarters in the bottom and I rigged up a 'supergun' out of a monitor stand, keyboard tray, and a Commodore CGA/EGA monitor. Actually made money on the ordeal when I dumped the board on Ebay.