ebay.com link: PARAGON PINBALL MACHINE BY BALLY BEAUTIFUL WIDE BODY GAME SHOPPED 199 SHIP

Not a widebody, either.

Thanks CaptainNeo. In the past, I've been put off by this dealer's generally ridiculous prices . . . until I was often seeing **far more** ridiculous prices from many others on eBay. But his listings inspired a lot of skepticism, apart from cost. One of the many things I've looked to this Pinside site and community for was to help distinguish between who you'd want to do business with, and who not. And there can be different reasons. I sent a query off on a pin for sale by Pinballzarcade, and finally got a reply about two months later. But my concerns with them are more about how beat up a lot of their tables are likely to be. (Doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy visiting there some day to play, if I happened to be in the area.) Purchase-wise though, I'm afraid that's 0 for 2 on Texas.

So far, I have mainly bought from collectors rather than dealers, and find little reason to alter that preference.

UPDATE: "This listing was ended by the seller because there was an error in the listing."
Uh . . . Yeah, kinda.

How does he (they ?) manage to have 100 % positive f/b over nearly 6,000 transactions ?

@ CaptainNeo,

O.K. That said, it looks like Fun may actually have one of these for sale after all:

ebay.com link: PARAGON PINBALL MACHINE BY BALLY BEAUTIFUL WIDE BODY GAME SHOPPED 199 SHIP

From a morning scan of eBay, I see that he's also in the Big Bang Bar sweepstakes, being one of at least three would-be sellers of these seeking $27K to $29K. (This is quite insane, if you're asking me.)

For those situations where one must consider purchasing from a dealer, it would be great if there was some kind of 'sticky' thread here covering those who are held in high regard by the community, and those who most definitely are not. This, as opposed to having to do a bunch of individual searches through the archives. Some of that is bound to be clouded by various flame wars and controversies. Testing my not always reliable memory here: Was it TNT that gained some unwelcome notoriety by tossing pins off of a roof ? Or was that someone else ? (ISTR them also getting into a prolonged mudslinging match with some rival dealer or restorer ?) And -- for example -- what does anyone care to tell me about the dealer ChooChoo Arcades in TN. ? It seems like a very large positive f/b rating on eBay does not impress you all much. {PM is fine, if you don't wish to post publicly.}