Well,I guess you say that you've spent a $70.00 admission fee to see this guys gameroom and shoot the shit with a "cool" guy who, in my book, isn't so cool, in fact.

I don't understand your rationale for not providing accurate, public feedback about your experience. We're a community. Sharing feedback is a service to the community. You don't have to be nasty, just explain what happened so others can make an informed decision when dealing with the seller in the future. Maybe double-check with them before investing time and effort to pick up the game.
https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/archive/53740

Two hours of foreplay was always going to lead to a case of blue balls.

Next time aim for a 15-20 minute window to seal the deal.

Upsetting for sure. Especially when we all seem to turn the other cheek in one way or another in order to avoid confrontation or making things weird. People should be called out when they do wrong.

Something similar happened to me about a year ago where I agreed to a price over text..drove an hour...got to residence...

Seller said everyone's downstairs...what do you mean everyone's downstairs?...Seller said I thought you guys could get into a bidding war for it..

I round a corner where 5 guys are surrounding a machine....I'll take it says stranger danger #1.

I turned to the seller and said give me $50 bucks for gas...He laughed and said yeah right....No seriously, 50 bucks. Dead silence. Guy buying had already given the seller a wad of cash. All I have is 20's says the seller...

I grabbed 3 20's out of his hand and said thanks for the TIP while exiting the same way I came in.

Was definitely upset and it took the entire drive home to relax but Couldn't have felt more satisfied in knowing I didn't let the seller get away with bad behavior and disregarding other people's time. Well...I guess I could have grabbed 3 hundreds instead. Maybe next time.

I had something similar happen. Basically told the seller I wanted it. He then says he's going to think about it. I said yeah I understand. It was a HUO LOTR and I even told the seller it would be hard to replace. He said he'll think about it some more and I have first dibs if he sells.

The guy sells it to a fellow Pinsider and never even tells me. Unfortunately for him I'm not an idiot. I sent him a text calling him out on his shit. No response.

Karma, I found a nicer one for less money a few months later.

Sucka

i dont' think finding a HUO LOTR is all that difficult. They did 6 runs of LOTR, and lots were bought by home collectors. TSPP was around the time many home buyers started buying NIB.

Similar experience(s) with previous purchase attempts here.. strangely with folks who have posted in this very thread - I've paid deposits to "hold" the game, then in the intervening period suddenly the game is off the market. Only to turn up several weeks later at a MUCH higher price.

Happened twice; but what are you going to do? In one of the instances in the end, I ended up with a rare version of a game I love , so that worked out for me... lesson for the seller don't be too quick to buy a new game you end up selling 6 months later

Is the going rate on a faded player BOP on the east coast 2600?

No rudeness intended...but I feel an unwritten rule in our hobby is when a guy travels long distance to buy a game, a deal is struck before hand, and then the guy bails OR tries to weasle out more cash....that is complete crap.

You should name the name...because if it happened like you said, and I believe it likely did, save the next collector from making the same drive for nothing.
I don't care how nice the guy was - you don't do that shit.

Stop browbeating this guy into being a tattletale.

He doesn't want to rat why should he rat?

This place sometimes...

This seller is a selfish prick with no honor. Unless he drives the pin to your house to redeem himself he should never get to list here again.

Had a co worker do this to me on a car once. I test drove it and went to the bank the next day and drove to his house to give him the money and when I get there he tells me that his wife didn't want him to sell the car because she felt like he was selling it too cheap. I was so effin pissed that I smoked the tires on my car half way down his street leaving his house and never talked to him again after that. What a Dick move!!

I had an opposite situation while selling a game recently. The potential buyer was extremely interested and told me that he would come asap if I was going to show it to anyone else because he didn't want to loose out.

The pics spoke for the mint game and I was pretty sure sure that he would be taking it. We set up a day and time 2 days from our conversation and I made time so that I could meet him. An hour and a half before he was supposed to arrive, he wrote and said that he couldn't make it and that I should sell it to the next guy in line.

Is it me or shouldn't he have let me know much sooner than an hour and a half before he was to come over? I lost a buyer because of him.

I ultimately sold the game to a really cool pinsider, but that other pinsider pulled a total douche bag move in my opinion.

He has been named or linked a few times already in this thread.

Perhaps, but it was a dirty deed. It's bad enough to cancel a stuck deal before the buyer comes out. It's totally unacceptable to do it in person. He owes the buyer a lot more than gas $. In my eyes he owes him an apology and he owes him a delivered pin.

Keeping your word should be more important to all of us than keeping a pin you already committed to sell. If you get seller's remorse buy the pin back someday. It's only a pin for cripes sake. Not worth more than your word and not worth screwing people over. So, yeah, I stand by my previous comment.

Sorry, disagree with your title. A seller has every right to cancel a sale ad if they chose so. I've done it a few times and had people do it to me a few times. Shit happens. I've been in the hobby collecting, buying, selling since the late 1990's and can say people change your mind. Also see no problem canceling an agreed to sale for any reason if done before hand. However agree 100% that once the buyer leaves and is willing to pay the asking price then it should be a done deal. You show up with cash the game should be yours.

How can you disagree with the title? WTF?

It seems like maybe you didn't read the original post thoroughly(?)

If it's before someone comes to pick it up I don't see the issue, I pulled a sale once on a game but at that point I'd only had a few people offering below my asking price who I had told I'd get back to if i want to go lower.

If you've already driven 2 hours and he knows you are buying it i'd be pissed off.

The title should be: "Don't refuse the sale once someone shows up."
I see nothing wrong with listing a game and then deciding not to sell it. I do it and many others here change there mind. There's even a tag for "decided to keep".

The hours of driving bit make the offense. Seller can back out any time, but to back out after letting someone drive for hours is a dick move. I'm always nervous about getting pictures that represent what buyers are getting so they're not disappointed after driving any number of hours.

I can agree with all of this. What the seller did to the OP was a shitty move. The time to have cold feet and/or change your mind is BEFORE someone actually shows up, and BEFORE you make a deal. I see nothing wrong with the OP's posting title, he was pissed and rightfully so.

Agree 100%.

Theodore-Roosevelt-e1489124922625 (resized).png

It's not yours until it's in your vehicle and you've driven away.

This is why I won't hold a game for someone for more than a couple days. People change their minds all the time.

I usually get responses that go something like "can you hold it for 1/2/3/4 weeks?" If someone really wants it, they will be there ASAP.

More often than not, they flake out, especially if it's weeks out into the future. By that point, I could have sold it to someone else already.

did milltown get the BOP? there is a pic in the what did you bring home thread with his van and a BOP

Agree wayout440 with your post. Mine didn't answer my PM and sold to another pinsider. Then had the never to say that I was the one that shutdown, but to this day still has never answered my PM.

no.

Friggin' petaQ...

I was going to say if you are going to bullshit load up first then bullshit but that never happens. Once it loaded it time to haul ass.

It is always best to get the business out of the way as quick as possible instead of lollygagging around trying to make up your mind, because while you do that it gives the other party an opportunity to change theirs. Not that it's right or anything, it's just the way it is sometimes.

Thats awesome, would have loved to be a fly on the wall to see that go down

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/what-machine-did-you-bring-home-today-post-your-pictures/page/128#post-3959536

Then it will just keep happening because there are no consequences to screwing people over.

Right...did he find another and drove 600 miles again?

Yes he bought mine. Who said I wouldn't have what he was looking for?

I have found that it may help persuade a reluctant seller if you tell them that
they will get first dibs at buying it back , should you decide to sell it down the road.
(oh, and that it's going to a "good" home - you know how
collectors feel about their "babies" )

Too much over analyzing here. If you showed up and offered his asking price after multiple conversations and a 2 and half hour drive, then the right thing to do would have been to sale the game. End of story.

From the ops telling of the story, that is not what happened. There could not have been an agreement to buy before he drove there because he offered a lower price. It also sounds like he didn't accept the sellers original price. The way I read it, he didn't say he would buy it at that price until after the two hour tour of the guys gameroom. If that is the correct timeline, I wouldn't blame the seller as much as everyone is doing. It sounds to me like there was no agreement to buy during that 2 hour period, so no deal was broken.

If I drive over to seller's house, there's a tacit agreement that the game is indeed for sale. Dude could have said at any point "hey bro, I might not sell this thing so you might not want to make the trip. I'm a weirdo who posts for sale ads when the game isn't really for sale." Coulda saved everybody a lot of trouble. The whole thing is just weird. He could have invoked the timeworn "wife excuse" at any time before the guy decided to come by. Who does that?! Maybe the seller is just lonely.

That being said I'm completely sick of it and you should be too, let's all move on.

Sometimes it doesn't even help if you're fast.

I was picking up a $900 "very routed" Whirlwind... it was back in the day so not that great a deal... the guy wasn't getting ripped off, lets just say that. We went in, looked it over, gave the guy the cash and were loading it up when the guy's wife came out in a panic with the money and asked us to stop, apparently he was inside having a panic attack because he felt like he was making a mistake but didn't feel like he could back out now. I went inside to see what was up and the dude was seriously near tears. We unloaded the game and left, at the end of the day it was only pinball.

Ended up picking up more games from the guy later... don't know what it was about this Whirlwind.

There are plenty of people with a hoarder mentality (or illness as some might call it), and the pinball hobby is no exception to these people. There are plenty. They say they want to get rid of some, but can't bring themselves to do it. But always like to show off what they do have.

Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.

I don't know if I'm a cool Pinsider or not, but for the record, I am most definitely not the suspect.

I would have to hear the other side of the story before passing judgement. I've kicked a few buyers out of my house and pinball stores over the years. I give out a LOT of rope, but I can only take so much crap. I don't give a shit how far they drove.

If the buyer's story is legit, I'm 100% behind him. I just need to hear the seller's story first.

I had one of those too. Guy wanted to swap, told me what he had, I said okay, he came out and did NOT have what he said he had. I was like, nope, not doing that. He started getting twitchy and I messaged my buddy to get here quick... but he calmed down, we loaded his shit, and got out of my life.

Man I hate when a deal goes bad.

We must be reading a different story. The game was for sale. The buyer inspected the game, and then decided to offer less than the asking price, even though he stated here that it was already offered at a good price. The seller told him that he would only sell it for asking price as he didn't really want to sell it. He didn't even have to counter with asking price. If there was no prior agreement on price, there was no agreement to sell. From what the op wrote here, if he would have handed him the money at that point, he would have had the game. I have had plenty of buyers, and a few sellers, back out if the deal was not sealed before playing games for a while.

From just the story the op presented here, it sounds like if he would have just handed over the asking price after inspecting the game, the game would be in his gameroom right now.

Don't even show buyers your other games until the deal is wrapped up or chances are they will decide they want one of your other ones instead.

This is not "odd", it is called seller's remorse, and an additional lack of preparation by the buyer.
Foremost no agreement of any kind, verbal or written.
Blaming the seller for not wanting to sell under these conditions is not the fault of the seller.
Everybody's time in this case was wasted, not just the buyer.

I have had people try to buy their games back from me, including directly on site after loading!

Learn from this experience.
Learn from my significant experience.

The proper steps of onsite private owner buying (not dealers or brokers) unless extremely close in distance for a simple courtesy inspection:

1 ) Negotiate the final price beforehand, and be prepared close the deal upon arrival.
2 ) Establish rapport on arrival, initial greetings, and unload your tool box (shows serious intent to buy), but do not bring them in the house except a flashlight as that can be unnerving for some owners initially unless you ask them first!
3 ) Conduct a final technical inspection of the game for any major deficiencies or omissions, ask any necessary questions, but be brief
4 ) Have two printed professional invoices on hand at time of pickup, and notify the owner will sign them
(I normally provide an "unofficial" copy of the invoice via email beforehand to the seller to verify intent to buy at the negotiated price, as it makes you look serious, responsible, and professional, if they waffle, it is time to reconsider your options now)
5 ) Have the owner sign the invoice in duplicate and you sign as the buyer with full responsibilities after inspection, and give one to seller for records
6 ) Pay for the game IMMEDIATELY
7 ) Have the former owner count the money (if applicable, but highly recommended method of payment)
8 ) Load the game!!! (Repeat this to yourself 3X)
9 ) Be prepared to leave with courtesy, if the owner starts getting game memories, as it is now YOUR property.
10 ) If you have a business card, this is the time to give it out
11 ) Thank the owner for their time
12 ) Leave, and go get something to eat for the drive home

No BS, do not skip any of the above steps.

This eliminates nostalgic sellers from deciding to back out.
This prevents "wishy washy" sellers from changing their mind.

Changing your offered price on site is a "no no" if a price is conferred, unless there is something seriously wrong with the game. This is commonly called "undercutting" (not lowballing) in the market, if the game is as described and is a common tactic of flippers. It will anger owners in the same manner as asking if another game is for sale out of collection while in site. Don't do it.

Take the personal "pinball tour" later, if so inclined and it works out, and things are friendly.
Business first, except to establish added rapport.
That was one of the problems here, you gave the owner more time to "think about pinball life".

There were multiple errors from both parties, because everybody was trying to be nice instead of being direct.

I recommend this post be tagged, as this corrects most common errors regarding sales especially regarding invoice omission.

Yup. Be on the road before he decides that a game is more fun than a pile of bills.