Anyone in Indy want to start a business?

[Hildy_42]

Looks like a pretty good collection if you have $65,000 and the time to service all of them for one more year.

http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/bfs/384743906.html

[Zero_Hour]

Anyone who describes ANY vending business as high income / low labor is not to be trusted.

[SavannahLion]

He's not the only one getting out of the business. Must be some seriously bad times.

Maybe it might be all the better for us in the short term as all these vendors try to offload their cabs on the cheap.

[paigeoliver]

Between the proliferation of Mame cabinets and the last gasps of operators getting out of games you are going to find that everything is going to be getting pretty cheap.

By and large games just don't make money on location anymore. I can't count the times I have been in a BUSY location for hours and seen all their machines sit there unplayed the entire time. Not just mostly open, I mean completely untouched.  Last time I went to a bar I was there for 4 hours on a friday night, the place as busy and the Golden Tee machine never got a single play from anyone. Pizza place by my house has a little gameroom, and no one ever seems to play those games either.

[Hildy_42]

Yeah, I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the $65,000 price tag.  Hopefully soon he will come to his senses and start selling the cabinets off individually.

I recently went on vacation to an amusement park that had a pretty decent arcade.  I couldn't believe the line for the Dance Dance Revolution game.  Made it nice for me since their were no lines for all the classics they had.

[FrizzleFried]

Thing is, Dance Dance Revolution is actually pretty fun.  Much more fun than boring old crap like Scramble or Zarzon.

Scramble BORING?  Bite your tongue!!!

[RayB]

He might be high-balling to begin with, but you have to consider he's selling a ROUTE, not just machines. Let's say he makes $40,000 a yr with this route, would YOU just pull all the machines off the route and sell them for $5k and then that's it, no income anymore? Or do you sell the whole package and pad the price a bit for the income loss? Would you buy a coffee shop for the cost of the equipment or also consider the location and how many customers it gets every day?

He also mentions the requirement that the route continue for 1 year. This tells me he's probably got contracts with everybody, which he can't just break on a whim.

[Zero_Hour]

If I'm reading his ad right, it's just a contract/games at a single location (2 game areas at same location) that he is selling. I can't believe those games listed are pulling in any kind of decent income. I think he just wants to cut his losses, and if he can find the right sucker, he will.

[paigeoliver]

No one in their right mind would sell a single location that was making any sort of real money. He probably isn't making enough there to even cover repairs, annual tax stamps and the drive to the place anymore. It wouldn't surprise me if he was seeing less than $200 a month from that equipment.

At his price to recover your investment in 2 years (assuming zero repair expenses, zero collection expenses, a 50/50 split, greedy settings on the Claw machines, and no tax stamp expenses on the machines), those machines would each have to see 10 plays per hour, 10 hours a day, 365 days a year for 2 years, and that is just to break even. I doubt the best earning machine he has even sees a fourth of that.  At 10 plays per hour that would mean the machines would all have to be occupied constantly.

Even at $10,000 you would probably never break even. At $5,000 you could break even, but only by selling the equipment.