I've had my Eight Ball Deluxe Classic (1984) for two years now. Aside from the (new!) Gottlieb Neptune EM my family had when I was a kid in the 70's, this EBD was the first pin I owned. It's my favorite title from my youth....with the amount of quarters I pumped into this thing in the 80's I could've owned one by 1990 probably.
I likely overpaid for it, but that's ok. It definitely was on the top end of retail. But again, that's ok....I wanted it, and it worked. I bought it from a local Mom & Pop pinball and arcade shop and there was not much room to haggle. I played it for a couple of hours over 2 weekend visits to the store so I was very familiar with it. It played well and everything on it 100% worked. A pretty good players machine.
Here's the pin in the store's backroom workshop. The playfield looked ok, no serious wear. The original backglass was damn near perfect. The guy had put LEDs in it already. The cabinet had lots of scratches and gouges, and the paint (decals) was faded. I bought it.
While the transaction was in progress, the guy said he could repaint it like new if I was interested. I was. It would take him a few weeks but that was ok because our new basement rec room (its future home) was under construction and would finish within the next month or so. So I paid a little extra for him to paint it and I know he lost money there....it took 5 weeks and his apprentice/employee who did it ruined two Pinball Pimp stencils in the process. With the third stencil, he finished the paint job and delivered the pin. Three Pinball Pimp stencils at $150/ea....that's more than I paid him to fix the cabinet wood issues and repaint!
Here's my son the day we bought it at the store (with the faded decals).....
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