Quoted from MrArt2u:

Late to the thread, but as someone who has tried to open a legitimate location in multiple cities/jurisdictions in SoCal, I could tell you it is easier to open a pot selling full nude strip club across the street from an elementary school than it is to open a location with more than 5 pinball machines.

Quoted from bob_e:

Or True Barn Find, Only 4376 Original Plays

Quoted from John_I:

The couple of titles that I was hoping for were both EMs and are not on the list. They might have gotten poached in pre-sales to insiders or they were there on loan. Speaking of which, I heard the "friend" prices to insiders were stupidly high, so very few games got poached before the auction. Considering they want to clear the place out, I don't see any reference to reserve prices and I am assuming there are no reserves.
All that said, I still severely doubt there will be any good deals on pins. Maybe on vids though...

Quoted from doghouse:

Cyclopes: $8K. Harder to find than the better playing, more fun Andromeda. Still a really interesting game which people tend not to part with once they get one.
Andromeda: $7K. In my opinion this title is going to continue to increase in value as more people realize that it is one of the best playing games of its era.

Quoted from vicjw66:

Is it possible that online bidders are trolling this auction and have no intention of actually following through with payment?

Quoted from Aurich:

Everyone who's so suspicious because they can't believe a bunch of people with lots of money are just buying toys they want hasn't been paying attention to the world.
This auction was advertised around the whole country. NYTimes, NBC, mainstream press. These buyers might not be players, they likely don't care about hunting for deals or dealing with eBay. They have money, the auction is a known quantity with a story behind it, they're spending cash on themes that appeal to them. It's that simple.
Someone was a big Rocky fan I'm sure.

Quoted from NPO:

And remember..... more people in this hobby is a good thing! I'm sure a smore people enter prices will go down *snicker*.

Quoted from ForceFlow:

Fiber service is usually only available in populated areas and as long as you're not too far from a main road.

Quoted from ForceFlow:

Correct--there's a difference between backbone fiber and "last mile" fiber that ends up at a home or business.

Quoted from ForceFlow:

The last time I was involved with fiber, there was a $1500 installation fee, but that can sometimes be waived depending on the length of the contract you sign.

Quoted from MrBally:

But boy did Dragon'sLair make money. Coin boxes overfilling and all. For about three weeks, then all the laser disc players started failing. Distributors quoted three weeks to repair (under warranty). But, we could go to a Pioneer service center and buy a replacement laser & reader on the spot or with a three day turn-around. For $700.00 (1983 dollars), which we did as they were raking that in within a week. Within two months of placement in a location,, the game made only as much as an old Galaxian or Pac-Man. rive Then Space Ace came out and didn't make half of Dragon's Lair. Plus it cost $800.00 more. But it did have a better laser disc player. Unlike M*A*C*H*3, which we started sending back as they failed. Distributor eventually said just return the Control board and Eproms. They asked us to throw the cabinets into our dumpsters. The sit-down ones took up a lot of space.
All of us techs got a free laser disc player out of the deal. They worked great in a home environment.

Quoted from Karnov:

Found a better use for it.
[quoted image]

Quoted from OLDPINGUY:

I had to PAY someone to take my Time Traveler several years back. It started in Minty Condition, before
Rodents got inside.
I cant imagine what that would go for at Auction today!
(or who has the room!)[quoted image]

Quoted from alexmogil:

Oh lord that is a conversion Space Ace. 3300.

Quoted from LTG:

Fun game. Didn't to real great for me. One day no picture so I open the port on the back of the cabinet with the game turned on. If a glow on the neck of the monitor then that is good and problem lies elsewhere.
Stuck my nose in there. Had an open flame on the monitor chassis board. End of story.
LTG : )

Quoted from alexmogil:

There were some Space Ace games made in an original inverted cabinet, and some were made in a Dragon's Lair cabinet. The back panel in original non conversion games have the difficulty level lights. That one did not, meaning it was a converted Dragon's Lair.

Quoted from xsvtoys:

I don’t know what happened but I guess the whole thing halted for some reason. Only 2 more on my interest list went through.
Xenon for $4900 hammer or over $6,000 as was pointed out is ridiculous. You can get a nice one for not much than half that all day long.
Fathom for $6500 hammer is the steal of the auction so far, relatively speaking. That’s around $8,000. That is not totally crazy, that could even be considered somewhat reasonable. Still, I recently saw the chance to buy a very nice example locally for $6500. So, still too high in my book.

Quoted from Asmig:

And himself. Can't blame them, doubt you'll ever see an event like this ever again. Dave for salesman of the year.

Quoted from Knxwledge:

[quoted image]

Quoted from palmab03:

I actually picked this one up as it didn't seem THAT out of line, and didn't experience anything fishy, I was certainly not expecting the bid to hold

Quoted from Isochronic_Frost:

Game Plan time!!! The real rarities

Quoted from Heretic_9:

Yeah, that sounds familiar. There were several where my well-considered max. bid got left in the dust by the time opening bids got going. With one EM (which was never really the recipient of particularly favorable reviews, although I did not agree with them) I even doubled what had been the max., but that still wound up being laughable next to what actually went down. There was one early SS that I could have won, but I dropped the ball during the bidding. I'd never been in an auction like this, online. If I'd played it smarter, I would have made some practice, no-chance-of-succeeding bids on previous lots I did not care about, in order to be more confident that I'd gotten the hang of their auction procedures. That's my fault.

Quoted from LTG:

I've done that. Passed on some things I would have liked to get, especially since they went real cheap. And then the item I want goes astronomical and I don't get it.
That plan has always saved me money.
LTG : )

Quoted from MtnFrost:

To emphasize the point, this auction is an abomination, I've now passed over a half dozen pins offered at very reasonable prices.

Quoted from MtnFrost:

Not sure that's an argument - many rare pins were sold to people who have no clue and now they are no longer in the pinball realm? How do you know they will be sold again? At reasonable prices for the titles, not the nightmare of this auction? There's no way to spin it.

Quoted from MtnFrost:

Oh, I'm sure I'm projecting a bit. I know they have no clue by the prices, and the discussions here by people way more knowledgeable than me. No rhyme or reason, just tossing money at everything. I'm speaking on the whole, you would be the exception, and you were willing to pay way above (guessing, since I do not know what you bought).
As far as what's reasonable for a rare pin - there are data points for everything out there. No need to guess, we already know the ballpark.

Quoted from MtnFrost:

I wanted Cosmic Princess and Eclipse off that rare list. Not even close to real. But I agree with your assessment of those. But then you get to an EM - Bronco? odd

Quoted from Heretic_9:

I might have bought the Blue Note for some semi-reasonable price -- nothing to do with its rarity, either. Most of the user reviews that I've seen for Blue Note were not especially favorable. (And the EMs hold a minority interest within the hobby, anyway.) I'd be surprised if many people knew what it was. Even more so, sight unseen. It's just that after playing it in tournament, some of its design peculiarities clicked for me. Sometimes a game that's different in certain ways will have that effect.

Quoted from mark532011:

I just talked to Nitro Pinball, they said the Godzilla LE's are already sold out. So the whole "stop paying those prices" isn't going to happen this time around

Quoted from ZNET:

Blue Note is among my favorite EMs, and in my top two wedgeheads, along with Strange World.
Rock Star is the add-a-ball version of Blue Note. But, because Blue Note, the replay version, includes a free ball feature, it's really the whole package.
I find John Osborne's asymmetrical designs to produce the most satisfying shot vectors. Ripping the spinners on Blue Note is great fun and, in my opinion, this music-themed game is worth the do-re-mi.

Quoted from rotordave:

Pretty much agree with all you said here. No way I could have built up my collection at today’s prices. “Back in the day” I was buying more than 10 SYS11s for way less than the price of the 1x Banning Bad Cats. Lol!
Indeed - good time to cash it all up while the market is hot.
Enlist an auction company with online bidding, create some FOMO with some clever marketing, and stand back and watch the fun.
rd

Quoted from Gameseum:

The money will be banked by then and the guy is basically out of the community so not like he has a reputation to uphold. They will probably be huge buyers' remorse and complaining, but will he care? No.
Not that he necessarily should either. These buyers are making their own "interesting" decisions and choosing to do so with little inspection.

Quoted from RyanStl:

It wasn't an auction, but a warehouse sale. It was a fun read at the time:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/how-do-you-sell-a-warehouse-of-arcade-games-and-pins

Quoted from CaptainNeo:

can you imagine what the krull pin would have went for in this auction? Probably 100K

Quoted from jake35:

which one?

Quoted from justyn:

I don't know a lot of guys who wouldn't be
Ignorance is bliss as they say. He got what he wanted and is happy. If he doesn't know that he overpaid then good for him. We don't need to burst his bubble.

Quoted from RyanStl:

Now my gues is $20K. They are still talking about it.

Quoted from Nibbles:

9k+ for a goldeneye, hobby is dead

Quoted from RyanStl:

Non working Torpedo starts at $3500 internet bid. Oops, internet bidder didn't see not working. Now sold for $3,300. Good luck finding parts.

Quoted from Isochronic_Frost:

That’s why I have a parts game for mine

Quoted from Isochronic_Frost:

Lol so this is just a junk pile of all broken games????
Holy shit TX doesn’t even have any boards?!?? Sold for 2.6k
BRUH
[quoted image]

Quoted from cait001:

IT'S A BALL BOWLER WTF WHY ARE YOU BIDDING 15K

Quoted from cait001:

I tried to ride the snake and failed

Quoted from gonzo73:

The red food dye is worse that the pounds of refined sugar they drink???