Unfortunately I would say you overpaid, in my opinion. Replacing sockets and such is not hard, they are about $2 or so a piece and you just need a soldering iron and a nut driver to do it. Flipper rebuild kits are about $40 for that machine I believe.

I would suggest you might take this as an opportunity to learn how to work on the machine yourself instead of having to pay someone $1500 to do things like replace lights and rebuild flippers.

If you aren't happy with the machine you could try to get the seller to take it back but he may refuse.

If you put another $2000-2500 into a $3600 Bally Star Trek you will be pretty upside down on it if you ever go to sell it.

Tough situation and I'm sorry you are in it.

You already got $600 back which is a near miracle in this hobby / business.

At this point demanding more,
Or a full refund, isn’t going to be very productive. You already went around that carousel once and there are no re-rides. That $600 refund bought the seller a lifetime pass from having to deal with you any more.

Pay to have it fixed up, do it yourself, or sell it to someone. Either way, take it as a lesson learned, move on, and take steps to keep this from happening next time (ask more specific questions, more pictures, or only buy something you can see in person. “Sight unseen” is always asking for trouble in pinball).

I know there are different opinions on this but I don't think people should buy older pins if you can't work on them or are unwilling to learn. Eventually something always breaks. Even new stuff breaks. I've lost count how many times I've taken apart the drop target mech on my Star Trek Premium.

Well you got $600 back, so I would work on it myself.

Get some new GI sockets and get Yoppsicles for the inserts.

I would give Terry pinballlife a call and have him set up some wpc flipper mechs for you. Worth the money and they flip real nice.

Put the machine in between 2 other machines and forget about the cab and just

-Mike

I hear ya. It's one of those hobbies that unfortunately can require work at times. I'm always tinkering with all my pins.

Unless that tech comes highly recommended I'd seek another one's opinion and estimate on the repairs.

Find a close buddy to do the work for some drinks and play time on ur machines. Sorry for your bad experience buying. Theres lots of great people on here that can help.

$1500 to replace the lamp sockets and rebuild the flippers is CRAZY! I do complete street level playfield swaps for my friends for $500.00 to $750 plus parts and replace all lamp sockets rebuild flippers replace coils etc... If you were closer I would take care of that for about 200-300 plus parts. This hobby is getting overpriced and just insane anymore. I understand if this is his job but still this is about a day's worth of work.

When someone says " you won't find a nicer one;" they are lying to you.
Just sounds like a lot of assumptions here. Should you not have rusted metal parts for 3600? probably.
Should he have replaced all the sockets and flippers for that price? Not always
Is your pinball guy full of shit aboot 1500? Yes

This era's #1 problem if flaky light sockets. Annoying but moving the ground to the nipple might fix 80% of them.

Pictures eliminate a lot of issues...like rusty metal parts and water damage. But stuff like re-stenciling can mean diff'rent things to folks

For $3600 I would expect a perfect playing game 100%. Replacing the lamp sockets is a standard when replacing the playfield in my opinion. I know how much work is involved in doing a playfield swap so $3600 would be fair if the game was 100% funtional when you got it. I always tell people who buy pins its not if it will break it is when so anything after the purchase you are pretty much on your own but it should of been 100% when you got it. A base Star Trek is 1300 to 1600 so 2k extra for all the work that should of went into the game would of been fair. I think you are stuck with it now and should try to either fix it yourself or find someone willing to do it cheaper than the $1500 guy. Your other option is load it in your car drive 9 hours to my mountain cabin in PA and we can get it up and running in a weekend for less than your guy including gas and you will learn some stuff!
Joe

You should have received a much better product for $3,600/$3,000(after refund) for that title. Buying sight unseen was the killer on this. A sight unseen deal would’ve been $200-400, no questions asked, and be happy if it had all of the parts come with it.

That kind of money spent deserves better details and pictures before buying.

At the end of the day, an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Sorry bud, but you were taken in that deal. Of course the seller would have no issue refunding $600, he got you for a lot more.

Definitely a learning experience.

Well that's just an opinion which leads to problems like this.

On any Bally solid state game that is getting a new PF replacing the shitty sockets isn't an option unless you sell half ass games. They suck and the cost with new power braid over reusing the OE crap isn't worth a discussion. If you can afford a new PF, you can spend the extra $100-$175 to replace every socket.

The only problem with this hobby is very few people know what a true restoration is. I've worked on many games for customers who bought games that were billed as fully restored from some notable store front operations and nothing was done inside including the lack of solder on wire terminals. Best of luck

It sounds like the game has had some restoration work, new playfield and it sounds like repainted cabinet. The problem is that not everyone “restores” a game to the same extent. Some people replace every socket, some people just clean what’s there and call it good. Again, the error that you made was not inspecting the game yourself prior to purchase. Having said that you paid a net of $3000 for a Bally Star Trek with a new playfield and what sounds like an average restencil job on the cabinet. Given that playfields run $800-1000 and Pinball Pimp stencils are $160-200, $3000 is probably in the ballpark.

I guess the main issue here is just that the seller didn’t have the attention to detail you desired.

As was said above, seller has already refunded you $600 which is pretty impressive. I guess it’s up to you as to where you take it from here, I’d definitely look around if your repair guy is charging you $1500 to rebuild flippers, change some sockets and troubleshoot it. That seems about $600-700 high to me.

think of this as a $2000 lesson
You now know what can be bad about a game, if the pinball bug does bite you , you now know what to look for

In the future the best sellers to buy from are those that provide an almost ridiculous level of photos of inside outside machine AND have a full list detailing pros and cons of the machine. Look at that con list closely. A good seller knows everything that is wrong and isn’t afraid to describe it and price accordingly. Honestly, this is either an inexperienced seller or a rip off artist. An inexperienced seller will only tell you about the amazing work they did, not recognizing everything they didn’t do because they usually have zero attention to detail. It only comes back to bite them because they end up with an unhappy buyer who paid too much for a machine that was not worth it

I do not want to be critical of the op, but it’s the buyers responsibility to verify condition before handing over cash. Its unfortunate the condition is less than the seller implied, but all the issues noted are things easily verified in photos or inspection. You cant ever trust a sellers subjective Liam’s about a game.

I think the $600 refund is the best case scenario.

Yeah well, you think that and don't get pictures you end up with a thread like this.

Don’t buy without seeing the machine (lesson learned). Literally every for sale ad says “very nice” and “shopped” and “100%” working. These words mean nothing. My last game’s ad said all that and I put 40 hours labor and lots of $ in parts making it right. I knew what it was after seeing it so I didn’t mind, though. If you don’t have time to fix it I would just sell it, cut your loses, and buy another one in the condition you want. Good luck and hope you find a machine you like.

Good restorations start from a solid base (esp for a high production/ not so rare title). If the machine has suffered water damage, and you want a really nice restored example, I might suggest dumping this one at a loss, and put out a WTB for one you are happy with.

That said, if you just want a decent working example, I'm sure you can maybe itemize the work with the tech. Exactly how many lamps are bad.. exactly how bad are the flippers? Repro stuff is available for this title, so I don't see it being too costly.

$1500 is crazy to redo the lights and flippers.

Buy 50 of these for $45 bucks, and a good soldering iron, and a few hours work and you’re done.

There’s even a video on how to do it. Easy.

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1360-yoppsicle/05558-yoppsicle-omni-led-stick-panel-of-50-warm-white

Flippers - same thing. $50 of parts, check out YouTube for videos. It’s not rocket science, probably take you an hour and a half to do both flippers first time out.

rd

If all about expectations I feel. I recently bought a Bally Playboy. It was a basket case. Paid $1500 for it and new what I was getting into. Than paid kruzman $1500 for a new playfield, then bought new sockets, leds, flipper kits, proper legs, stencil kit, glass blah blah, blah. Spent a ton of money, learned a lot. Had a lot of help from folks here on Pinside. Thank you all!!

I personally don’t think you got taken that badly based on what I just paid to get my machine going but then again, I knew that is what I was going to have to do. Managing expectations is critical.

George

A King Rex, huh? Pm sent

I see you are new here, $3600 for a Bally ST is insane. Should have never pulled the trigger on that.

That's a tough pill to swallow, sorry to hear about all of the problems. I think there is a lot of good informaiton from other people above about trying to work on it yourself to learn more about the machine. Once you start working on some of the issues, you will realize most of the items you mentioned are fairly easy to correct. Ask questions here for anything you need help with.

I'm curious to know if you paid $3600 initially and received $600 back making your total purchase $3000 or if you paid $4200 initially and received $600 back for a total of $3600 final purchase price.

Sounds like he wasn't particularly surprised that you had complaints, and offering that $600 (a quite hefty refund) without you even asking was his way of quickly and cleanly buying you off.

Again, lessons learned, may as well get the game fixed up to your satisfaction and enjoy it. I wouldn't call it good money after bad at this point, especially if the game has a new playfield.

Star Trek is a pretty easy game to find, especially in the Chicago area. Buying sight unseen is never a good idea, and shipping is always a risk.

take your $600 and consider that a W. Kudos to the seller for even doing that?
This isn't the most expensive lesson I've read on pinside, so count yourself lucky.

I hope you end up playing the crap out of this machine and having a blast.

NICE!!!!

I have learned to only buy games from people who have a reputation that I am comfortable with, or I have worked with before. That way I know what their ideas of minty condition are. I will keep the experiences and opinions to myself, but I put a lot of value, meaning I will pay much more to buy a game or anything from someone who has earned a reputation. Sure there are plenty of good people selling games that dont have the reputation yet, but that is why a reputation is so valuable. It takes a lot to achieve.
Otherwise dont gamble with more than you can loose. Anyone who has been in the hobby for years has been burned hard and long. Keep it a hobby.

The only problem with that is there is no one single opinion as to what a "true" restoration means.

Great follow up. Now play the shit out of those things and just smile!

A Six Million Dollar Man will pair nicely with your Six Thousand Dollar Star Trek.

I've heard King Rex is the $5000 version of the $500 King Tut.

King Tut just sold at Captain’s but I didn’t pay attention to what it went for - the Star Trek looks awesome !

King Rex got big bucks there, King Tut not so much.

https://bid.captainsauctionwarehouse.com/lot-details/index/catalog/103/lot/26273

Same auction I got The Wiggler, Nine Ball, and Jumpin' Jacks from. Lots of rare and cool stuff that day.