I have 4 on route, and clean them weekly. If it goes a couple weeks without a cleaning, it gets pretty dirty. TFTC shows the dirt the worst, as it has bright colors in the playfield.

I do not have a route. My son wants to do it. You guys have any advice for doing it?

Just doesn't seem like that you would make enough cash to be worth the labor/parts etc...

Great thread idea... routes: how to start them, how much money is involved, etc.

Post on routes guys!

3 games on route. Spend approx. 1 hour a week to clean all 3 in total. They are fully shopped prior to going on route. If I miss a week, the players can tell.

Indeed.

On a similar subject, I'm considering putting mine on maximum cost for when I play it (not when friends are over) to start saving on another pin.

Something tells me it could work rather well.

There's a lot of work that goes into maintaining a good route of machines and it takes a lot of them to make any sort of worthwhile money. The business model is kinda a broken one now, as the price of the game being played ( fifty cents )hasn't changed, but the value of the dollar has gone down and the price of new machines and parts has gone up. My friend who is a local op has a metal shop and makes his money as a welder, and kinda just has a route for the love of the game. Once you factor in parts/labor/gas/split with location owner, your margin is almost miniscule.

Thing is is that I can't see myself giving up my precious machines ive worked on and sweated over for some slobs to come by and just treat them like crap.

I can't imagine routing to ever be profitable again. Add in the massive amount of maintenance...

Agreed. I think Stern's days are numbered. Their clientele must be so tiny and returns must be diminishing.

If you keep your machines clean, I've found minimal maintainence is needed. I do it for the love of the hobby. I have my games set at .25, and have 4 games all at the same place.

First thing you should do is call city hall/state office and check on license requirements. I got lucky, and none is required. The city next to me requires $100 for the first machine, and $50 for every machine after that per year. It wouldn't be worth it, if I had to pay those fees.

I know that ops cant be making much on the routed machines so my hats off to you all. Thank you for keeping pinball alive in the wild.

I hope not but if people keep playing all the games on their telephones there will not be a need for any real machines. Except for us. I say support any manufacturer of pins and visit your local routed games. Lets keep pinball alive!

My crystal ball says that pin manufacturing is going to be non existent within 10 years. Get your pins while you can because prices will skyrocket if this happens.

However, my scottrade account blows, so take my advice for whatever it's worth.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of business are they in and how much foot traffic do the business get? What's the split with the business owner?

I've been trying to talk a book store owner into placing my SOF in her place. Split the take 50/50 and I take care of the machine. The store is only closed for 3 hours in the early morning and has tons of foot traffic. Her other machines (non-pinball) do well. She says her contract has a lock right now but when it's up we can talk...

I like that one!

Sports Memorabila/Comic book store, Disc Go Round, sharing the same Store area. The Comic book store has a Magic card tourney every weekend. I have a 50/50 split with the owner (friend).

To tell a story on why they are set at a quarter, I had just bought my LW3, and was putting it in the store. It was set to .50 a game. A guy came over and said he only had a quarter, and would play it for that, but wouldn't pay .50 to play. I set it to a quarter for him, then watched as he put 2 bucks into the machine.

A big factor in the price for me is, I don't have any top end machines, TZ, WH2O, AF, MM, etc... I have a small affordable collection. I figure I get a place to store my machines, they get played, and I have a key to the store, so I can play them whenever I want. I look at it like this: I'm not going to get rich doing this, but I get to show the younger generations that pinball is cool, and every quarter I make on my games is a quarter less I paid for it.

Just to give people an idea of what to expect, I'm in a small town (80,000), the store is not in a well traveled area like a mall, and I average between $100 - $150 a month, my split. This will fund my next pinball machine.

I plan on having my first pinball tourney Thanksgiving weekend.

I do also have 2 Arcade games in the store also. That income is included in the above statement. (Hard Drivin makes me $2.00 a month!) I plan on having my Flash Gordon finished soon, and that will be added to the store.

I am in partnership with someone and have 23 pins on route.[I also have my own collection that stay with me].I try to keep all of them clean,lights working and fresh rubber.How often I have to do this depends on the amount of game play on each game.Even though we are making money at this, I still consider this a hobby.The time it takes to run around in a 100 mile radius to do upkeep on the games has to to be factored in to the profit.I won't be able to quit my day job with this little pin venture.If we can make $50.00 a month on a game our share,we are happy.We have some bars that do well at times,depending on the following we get.The most consistant locations for us is laundromat's.When we first started, we bought 2k to 3k pins to put on route.That will take at least 3 years to pay for it at that rate.We then went with a 1k pin like a pinbot,police force,party zone,sorcerer.They did just as good as Simpsons,Big Buck Hunter,NASCAR,Indiana Jones.If this stops being fun for me,I'm out.

I'm with you there.

Amen, I support the hell outta all my local ops! Lots and lots of quarters pass from my pockets into their machines every month.

Everyone around here does a 60/40 split.

Before and after pics of the routed SM I picked up. It was on the same location since new, and had light traffic (~10K games total), but was really ugly. It was obviously put there as a piggy bank. There are signs of some repairs - e.g., right flipper spring replaced with a stronger spring. Now I know why I couldn't make that venom ramp with the right flipper. But largely it was like buying a car and welding the hood shut.

The op for the lot I got this from was an elderly retired (and now deceased) gentleman. And the few items that were at the bowling alley I got the SM from were going to private collectors rather than being routed.

Video games and consoles were a big hit to pins (and with dvd/BR many "outside entertainment venues")...but mobile device games likely killed it. Why plunk anything into that routed pin at the laundry when your phone has any number of games you already like - and will play your playlist at the same time. And if not, you have the time to go to whatever store to get a new game or a new website/groupon/tweet/email/pinside post/etc while the boxers spin.

I'd support my local ops if there were any I knew of - I do play most anything I find in the wild; that's just the way I roll. Its certainly a diminishing entertainment mechanism for any number of reasons. In the meantime, I'll take all the deals I can find.

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That cleaned up nice!!