In the other threads about this a key insight was made: lack of financial planning to the business. I had read that it was Weeks collection and also Weeks building. But Weeks didn’t likely get to where he was throwing money away. One can justify losing money a year, maybe 3, but after 5 years it gets old. Especially if it’s a lot. And I suspect it was ALOT - more in lost opportunity. You want your capital back. You want your buildings to make money again. Or you want someone else to pay the bills on your behalf (which seemed to be the play for Palm Springs) They apparently couldn’t find that. The bottom line is that a place like Vegas and PHOF is a very rare animal indeed where one can get enough of JohnQPublic coming in to pay the bills. Banning ? Anywhere else ? Not so much. Now Weeks can go back to making money again. This is kinda the story for a lot of pinball heavy locales. There just isn’t a great business models for most towns in placing a ton of pinballs in one place. I should know, we have 35 and really it’s too many, but we have just enough of everything else to barely break even. It sounds like a great idea to all of us: lots of pinball. It turns out geographic limitations make it mostly a very bad idea. Pretty much what most people looking this over for is not interest in donating, but rather buying at a discount. GoFundMes and the like aren’t a very good idea either. They get you over a one time hump perhaps, but if the ongoing business models sucks, it will still suck after the donated money is spent. Sorry, that’s the reality here. A few places make it work outright, a few places do bolt ons to make it work, and most close after a few years due to a not so good business proposition, much like any other business in this world.

Sorry when I say “planning” we are on the same page here. What I mean is what does one do when it stops being a hobby and becomes a business ? What’s the plan for inevitable losses early on ? How deep does the rabbit hole go ? But yeah “commitment” is a good word to use too. I am not playing some “holier than thou” role here. We only got serious about this at my arcade this year and it’s a work in progress for sure. But at some point it stops being “look how cool it is I have all these games” and becomes “So what were the receipts last weekend ? Where is our break even ? Can I meet payroll next month ? Do I really want to run a marginal business ?” I believe the more rich one is (and buying a warehouse and 1000 pins is rich no matter how you slice it) the less tolerance you will have for a business that is never gonna generate multiples on initial investment. Why do I still do it ? Well, I’m not rich and I find it a challenge to make a business work on its own without bailouts when it’s profit margin is really just above restaurant grade. I also like repairing machines (much like Tim Arnold) and this is my outlet to do so -though there are lots easier ways to accomplish this. I do wish them well. I think it was an awesome concept. But I do remember saying back in 2015 “that has to be one really rich dude” and “it will be really hard to sustain in that location unless money is no object”.

Anyone in this hobby for any length of time knows you just rent machines for some period of time. The sequence is 1) few in your basement 2) few now in your kitchen too 3) rent storage locker 4) decide hey I should at least try to get some income from this and rent warehouse and charge public 5) realize this is a hobby not a business and expenses will mostly increase not decrease 6) sell off most of collection 7) a couple years later after a break have remorse and buy again (muttering about how you bought this for $20 10 years ago rather than the $2000 you have to pay nowlather … rinse … repeat.

The big difference here is Weeks took it to a whole new level. I’m seriously impressed that this much free cash went to it. But with nobody willing to foot the bill in Palm Springs this was destined to end. You get tired of losing money, especially when a multimillion cannabis business awaits. It’s the fallacy of sunk cost. I am personally in stage 5, but for now we are able to run it as a business with a good manager snd my buying habits held in check. We will see how long that lasts.

Not intending to be mean, but the entire approach (except for having an open money spigot) would never work. Cheap rent in Banning and it helps if you own the warehouse, but not enough paying public to sustain. For sure the experience is better than PHOF, but it’s not in Vegas, therefore not really accessible. Even in Palm Springs I would be dubious. These businesses require large square footage and struggle to pay out on sq ft basis unless baked with other business model or in the case of PHOF has an almost limitless supply of new customers. Asheville does in a week what my business does in 2 months. IMHO my place is better, the pins play better, the facility is more airy. However, Location location location. We only stay open because we have scaled the size of our business to the number of new paying customers we can routinely bring in each week. Banning no matter what it did and how amazingly awesome the place we (and it is amazingly awesome) was never going to make that equation work, non profit or not.

Yeah I agree with all the above. I think the problem was that when a hobby turns into a business (and with customers paying come employees and insurance and complaints) it sorts stops being the carefree effort it once was. My point is that all these endeavors which are not self sustaining eventually become tiresome and have a limited shelf life, mainly because your focus is directed at the outgoing spigot of money followed closely by effort you personally have to pay for to solving problems. People want to be paid for solving problems (unless they are of the machine repair variety in ones own arcade at least for me) Banning was no different, and even my own arcade may eventually succumb to this same problematic dynamic. For now it’s enjoyable enough and is self sustaining. And I do agree that instability in location due to limited term rental is a huge issue and can take one down just as much as setting up at a posh address with high rent and limited customers can. My first location got bulldozed 4 months after we opened (expected but not that quickly), and we almost died. It is interesting to me that people always asks why there are limited opportunities for kids activities in most towns. Simple answer: it doesn’t pay enough relative to the restaurant, laundromat, flower shop, etc that can go in the same space. Simple economics. Despite the revival of arcades, there remains a fundamental business model that has not been fully solved, and for those that have seemingly solved it may be a temporary stay at best

Captains auctions can be a great source of machines IF 1) you live in Socal and can pickup rather than ship and 2) you can hang back into the wee hours when you are competing against less people. This auction is probably not one of those events unfortunately. So I shall stay away and live vicariously thru the ridiculous prices likely to be paid.

Better than turning $58M into $0 and a trip to jail

I’ve always found it interesting that we use the term “won” to describe the results of an auction. It’s a convenient one word descriptor as opposed to say the more accurate “I paid more for that machine than anyone else was willing to pay”. Won should really only apply to sweepstakes and the lottery and a baseball game.

And hence why my arcade officially lives in a building that is a designated microbrewery. I get to deal with the arcade which is what I care about. They get to deal with the beer which is what they do best and helps bring customers to my arcade. A very copacetic relationship if ever there was one.

Nic and I having the two largest public collections in Virginia can attest to how damn difficult it is to keep things operational. And I only have 35 pins. I heard MOP did a much better job (made easier by being open only a few days a year). Asheville when I went down there in June was unfortunately a mess. Never played on so many poorly functioning and out of order machines. That one has a right to be mad about given then single entry price at the door. But they have so many throngs of paying customer they don’t seem to much care. PHOF at least doesn’t have a cover charge. But yeah it’s not a good look regardless. Basic problem is that every one of these places has the unwritten “volunteer labor force” that is part of any financial equation. You can’t actually pay your techs if you hope to stay financially afloat. Luckily for us we have the worlds most dedicated and awesome pinball techs, who get just as upset when a game doesn’t play well as we all do. RPM has Nic who is double duty worlds greatest tech and manager. Tim still is mostly the solo proprietor and whomever happens to drop by that he trusts can pitch in. PPM I have heard has a great crew out in the Bay Area. If any of us had to pay the going rate of $75/hr he wouldn’t keep the lights on. The whole model of stick a bunch of arcade (mostly pins) on the floor = profit is just fantasy. The 50 % broken is more typical, and even when most arcades only have a few pins they are usually decrepit. Why ? Well let me tell ya the tail of our local university student hall that thought it could leave a brand new Spider-Man, amazing condition Twilight Zone and Roller Coaster Tycoon out on free play. The Twilight Zone broke day 1 and was soon escorted out of the building (didn’t see that coming did ya). The Spider-Man was covered in a layer of dirt the likes of which I thought not possible on a new pin with damn near every mech broken. They paid a local tech to do the best he could and he’s great but couldn’t keep up and they got tired of paying him. Lesson learned, they have no pins anymore. I totally get why people get mad when they don’t know all the details. I’m still disappointed in Asheville given how much money I saw them taking in, but maybe that still isn’t enough to service their collection. It’s a tough tough business to be in regardless

Sorry poorly worded on my part. Banning/MOP was an amazing location with well playing games. But they were not in Vegas. If they were in Vegas they would have succeeded. PHOF succeeds mainly because it is in Vegas (as you observed). If PHOF was anywhere else (my town for instance) it would not succeed. Would not have enough paying customers. And linking on to what I wrote above, PHOF doesn’t much care what one thinks of its collection. They have more than enough people who don’t care how well the game works, and they cater to that crowd, not pinside crowd. There are more non-affecianados looking for something to do in Vegas than there is affecianados there to judge the poor condition of the games. It is a very smart strategic decision of Tim even if it might disappoint us all. And it’s why my arcade has half pins (an ungodly amount for a non pinball only arcade) AND it has 2X more in video games and skee ball etc. that’s what my customers truly care about. The whole great playing pins is just an OCD thing on our part, not a requirement at all to stay in business

John better happily convey that check over to Chris. Captains earned it and cemented their reputation as the go to place when you got a large collection to sell. The Sotheby’s of arcades

I’ve always wondered how Arcade 1 Ups command the prices they do. Now I know.

This was hands down the most brilliant marketing job I have ever seen. Hats off. I somewhat doubt it will be repeated soon since I believe it to have been a confluence of circumstances that aligned precisely here. It will be interesting if round 2 sustains the steam or not

My first pin I ever bought was at an estate auction. 1957 Gottlieb Silver. I thought I was so smart I even looked up the price in the Pinball Pricing Guide. $1600 ! Cool I have a lot of room here. Bought it for $500 and was essentially self fleeced. Playfield had been repainted heavily - didn’t notice. Outholes had so much wear they were 50 % bigger than they were supposed to be. Back glass was flakier than a box of corn flakes. Plastics were melted beyond repair. I still have it at my arcade. $300 to a tech to actually get it working before I knew what the hell I was doing. And guess what it now is a $1500 machine. Replaced the cabinet, the playfield, the plastics, the backglass, bought a full second machine to make one. Why ? I’m an idiot. And it’s really a kinda awful game - pretty to look at though. But damnit it’s staying in the arcade as a monument to my stupidity. My second game was an immaculate Slick Chick for $500. I learned fast. I can easily expect a lot of these buyers are gonna unpack their new shiny and say to themselves “What the f*ck did I just pay $5000 for ?” Much like I did. Of course I’m an idiot and doubled and tripled down. Many may do the same. TNT may have a lot of work ahead of them.

Lots of calls seeking to return and that’s when Captains starts to rely on those good lawyers they paid to draft the contract language. You know the check boxes people filled out on the website when they registered but didn’t brother to read. Oh well they get over $1M out of this so they got nothing to worry about.

I listed a Spanish Eyes that I bought for $350, down to $200 since the mechs inside had rust and I had no time to de-rust it. Had an offer at $150. Backglass was worth more than that. Kept it. Maybe I should be glad I did now. Yeesh $2700

The very sad part for me about all this is simply what it means for the likely further death of this arcade resurgence. I knew it was coming anyway, sooner or later, but when you have a choice between losing money because not enough people come thru your door, and auctioning off the assets at 3X what you paid, the choice is fairly easy.

My arcade is lucky if it surpasses $2K revenue a week. That’s basically no profit after the rent, utilities, labor, insurance, and game upkeep. Fast Draw that we paid $400 for and one of our volunteers put 60 hours into refurbishing sold for $3500 at Banning and no doubt ours is nicer than theirs. I keep the arcade not because it pays anything financially to do so but because it is my attempt to try to create nice things for people to partake in in my city.

People will tell you what they think they want, but their behavior is something else entirely. They’ll say we want more open space, we want more kids activities, we want some aspect of nostalgia (arcade being one of those). Instead we mostly shop at Walmart and Amazon and whatever pre fab mall comes next. And instead of frequenting a local arcade, we overpay for nice shiny in our home that many of these Banning buyers will have sit unplayed.

Arcades are not financially viable except for those for whom it’s ok to just stay head above water. I am not lamenting this, it’s just life. But I am disappointed in it all the same.

The very fact that MOP got more coverage in closing than it ever did in being open tells you everything you need to know about what is wrong with this industry.

So what’s the hi-lo on how much John made or lost in total on this venture. Sure we see the somewhere between $2-$5M on sales. Bully for him. But how much did he invest to get there. And by invest I mean not just the original cost of the games to begin with but mortgage, utilities, insurance, upkeep, for several years. That was not cheap and it was undoubtedly negative given how little he was open. Tax write off for sure (and yes I know MOP was a non profit and separate but all the same the assets were still his and almost certainly depreciated). I strongly suspect he comes out ahead, but maybe not as much ahead as the auction sales would suggest.

So imagine for a moment that it was just a private collector auctioning off his massive collection of games. No MOP moniker to go by. I wonder how much that would have dropped interest (media, auction goers) and thus prices. 50% ? more ? It was a convenient story that the MOP was auctioning off all its games. Nobody did anything in the press releases to correct that, and for media it was a way better story talking about the world's largest ... And hey I get that at the end of the day, cashing out at the highest dollar amount possible is the goal isn't it ? That's business. But honestly, while people might call the PAPA liquidation approach leaving way too much cash on the table, in my mind for (what its worth and it ain't worth much) it had a bit more integrity to it all. Sure there is a sucker born every minute, but I don't think the goal in life should be to take advantage of that. And I say this all in full disclosure having bought their Pump it Up, which worked for a month and then died needing a new PC in there. That should make me a little bitter, but it doesn't, it was an old game, old games are wonky. But we fixed with a $900 brain transplant and the public gets to enjoy it again. PAPAs collection went to lots of other arcades around the country (and of course private collectors). John's collection went to .... the monied .... who will soon realize they way overpaid and way underrealized the difficulty of keeping their new shiny actually functional. More power to him, but it just wouldn't sit well with me.

As a counterpoint I give you this:

https://pinside.com/pinball/map/where-to-play/5616-video-zone-staunton-va

Owner found out with a months notice the day after Thanksgiving 2020 that the Staunton Mall he was in was being shut down and all businesses would be kicked out. He had 30 days to liquidate everything, all 50 games. The place had been in business continually over 2 decades run by him and his mom. He couldn't just store it all away as there was no location to stuff it all, and no retail locations with affordable rent to reconstitute the business. Many of the games were broken because there just wasn't the funds to repair. On that timetable, it became literally sell to any available buyer. Most of it went to Coinopwarehouse. He had enough I believe to pay off any outstanding debt, but that's basically it. This is how most arcades end, not with a bang but a whimper. No media stories, no outrageous windfall for having held games 20+ years. Vivisectioned and whatever remained of the carcass was given away.

We all lament the closing of MOP, and no doubt it was a loss. But the real loss, was all the arcades that ACTUALLY closed down and went out of business because they relied on the funds generated day to day to pay their rent or mortgage. There were no customers, rent was due, and so they closed. On the otherhand MOP closed down because John realized he could make bank leasing out the space for pot growing. I'm sure Mr Weeks is a very nice man, and everyone on here that helped keep up MOP seem to have little bad to say about him. Games will go to good homes and live on to be played by others in their basement. But lets be clear the "loss" if thats what we want to call it was a financial decision on his part to cash in his chips, not a loss due to the economy wrecking ones livelihood and closing their 20 year business.

Not jealously. Jealousy presumes I am somehow sorry I wasn’t able to take his course of action and reap his benefits. Umm nope, not it at all.

It is a loss. Didn’t say that at all. It is just not the loss that was advertised in the media with a false narrative. Total respect if the story goes “I can’t afford to keep paying out more than I take in so I am going to sell my collection and rent out my building to another business”. No respect for “MOP lost its home, is closing down, Palm Springs wouldn’t pony up to save it, and liquidating ITS collection”. That’s the story in the press and we all know it was a false story

It’s unfortunately a lot more complicated than that. Since you seem to profess knowledge and interest you might want to go listen this to know more about what you are actually talking about.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/queen-dying