Hell yeah!! Happy thanksgiving to you!!!

Good luck on finding the decal. I have one and am in need of it also.

Is yours a production or a proto/sample?

Congrats on a great game. I love Alvin G's nice trade!

What are these worth in nice shape these days?

Around 1500 give or take on the condition.

The game play is fun and unique with the flipper buttons bumping with the pops. The mirrored BG is stunning. How many backglasses show the Two Towers and the John Hancock building in the same scene? Freakin' awesome, IMHO. The game has many features of top pins from B/W. As a Frank Zappa fan, the pin has even more desire to own. Great you got the topper!! Note that some parts are difficult to replace. All the best!!

Good luck finding one from a collector for 1500. 1500 in a dmd gets you a 90's gottlieb. Als is shallow, but its fun. It is unique and it is fairly rare with 1k made. Parts are hard to find so taking a beat and fixing it up is time consuming and expensive.

I paid 2k for the one off here in chicago 6 weeks ago with a nos pf. Mine has a nice cabinet, pf will get swapped as the one in it has fade. I know of two people who would have been buyers had I not gotten it and that was at asking. Been tracking down numerous parts to bring it up to snuff, but it will be very very nice when I am done. Mine won't be up for sale because I like the game and it allows me to swap boards with my mystery castle if one goes down.

Buddy traded for a proto/sample on the same trip and that won't go for under 2k. I know of a third in the KC area and its staying put because its uniqueness stands out in a large collection.

Played it once at Texas Pinball Festival. Does the game contain specific Zappa references?

Yes when you tilt and at the end of game, I believe. See my rating comments as I stated the specifics there. FZ RIP.

I can remember when they could not get rid of these things. There was a distributer that had 10-15 of them NIB and had them listed for $995 and it took them forever to dump them. Granted that was 15 years ago.

5 years ago I can remember not being able to get 1100 for a nice t2. Today it would sell for double that in an instant. 6 years ago I could have gotten a cv for low 2's, not today. times change.

Six years ago? I'd give you 16 years ago on that one, but CV appreciated pretty quickly after they got blown out at retail because they wouldn't sell. Collectors figured out it was a pretty fun game. CV was low 2s in early 2000s.

Nope, can remember seeing several six years ago. I was too broke to touch it at that price, just a poor grad student. By the time I stepped up to my first a-title (LOTR) it had already shot up. Truth be told though, as pretty as it is, don't really miss the chance.

Got no clue where that was. I've been quite involved with the hobby for the past 16 years now, and I have never seen them that low except when I was first getting in for routed beat examples.

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Agreed. I do think you may have found an uninformed operator letting routed CVs for sale at that price, but there's always exceptional cases. The normal market price for CV around that time was around $3500-4500.

Cracks me up, because the first time I went to look at buying a dmd the guy I visited was notorious for his high prices.
I was there to look at at breakshot which he wanted 1k for (bought one unshopped last month for 1250, some things never change).
He had a 1700 shadow and a funhouse around that price as well. He also had a really nice cv for 2700. It sat for ages until he dropped the price.

It took me a year to start dealing with operators, but you are right their pricing can be screwy. I bought a mint albeit dirty family guy off one 4 years back. At the time it was a steal, but he was wanting near the same for a beat to snot monopoly.

All of the other prices you quote sound about right for six years ago, but the CV for $2700 does stick out. Betel is right - I would have pegged that at $3500-$4500 exactly. I really like CV, but I could never convince myself to buy a CV for what I always looked at as triple what I would pay for most of the other games I wanted. So I just picked up mostly stuff that hasn't appreciated nearly as much, but I really enjoy. I discovered that I enjoy those games more than CV anyway.

Having said that, I would have bought a CV in even halfway decent shape for $2700 6 years ago.

And yeah, that's the thing about ops, you never quite know. There is an operator in town who I know who had listed a bunch of games about 10 years ago for about double what they were selling for, and they were routed and unshopped. Same operator later sold me a game that I ended up not liking and selling almost overnight for $3000 for $500, probably because it wasn't a game he could operate (it was an older EM).

I also know an operator not too far away that recently traded a friend of mine his TAF for a Nascar.

One never knows in that world, but it's a business - and I'm certain the NASCAR is earning better than TAF was for that particular op.

Good choice, don't ever sell it, you will regret it later.
Underrated title.
You can still to this day find NIB in Europe, rarely.
Maybe a couple in the past decade or so.
A brand new one will cost more than $2K though, closer to $3000-3500.
Excellent condition (not above average) including the cabinet, around $2200-2500 in the US due to pinflation.

Keep this important part in mind.
These reproductions are being durability tested right now.
Colors, rubberized texture, and adhesive are factory correct.
It's not like anybody else is going to make them for the pinball community.

NOS is getting close to being kicked, but they are still out there.
Considering doing the decal "shop out" kit as well for all the decals that is getting scarce as well.
I still have a NOS AGB sheet in my parts inventory in "unwrinkled" format.
Sometimes the apron decals get scratched and mangled.
Plastics, targets, and assemblies are a completely different matter.
The only way to find vast quantities of those is a used or NOS wire playfield.
This includes the spinner motor assembly.

No lawyer squawking from certain suppliers on these parts...

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