I had a GB pro that I paid 5300ish new. Ran it for about 2 1/2 years and it brought in about 5k. Sold it for 500 less then I paid. After paying the location and accounting for money lost on the sale I still made about 2k. Had a
SW pro that did about 4k in 2 years and sold it for 400 less then I paid. It's nice that they hold value as long as the location doesn't let the games get trashed. Keep your playfields clean and waxed.
I have several locations so I have the luxury of moving them around and keeping them fresh. As I said before, it's because I enjoy them.

Funny you mention that. It got me to thinking.

A friend of mine, his father operated Sandy Horses all over the US. Approximately 1950's, 60's, and 70's. Had a big operation. Made a good living. Middle of it one of the mob owned corporations wanted to buy him out. After the buy out he would have to work it for a year to help them. Which he decided not to sell when he found out that really meant he'd be working for them for free, for life.

So about the time of the video fad he wanted to retire. Everybody wanted video games, not kiddie rides. So his run was done.

I use this as an example when people think a used game has resale value. It may. But changing times, tastes, technologies, or the economy, can effect that plan.

LTG : )

I’d put a claw/crane machine on location before a pinball if I’m trying to bring in some extra income and am only putting one machine in.

Have some good prizes in them and they print their own money.

I just found a pile of quarters in the Comet I picked up a few months back. And that's just from being in my garage.

It is a job. And most jobs aren't fun.

Really do your homework on that idea.

LTG : )

And the most successful operator of the year award goes to..............................................o-din !

LTG : )

Job's can be fun. I love mine and regret forced retirement in four years.

I agree. It's just not that common to have a job you love.

Best wishes going forward in four years. I hope you find something as exciting and rewarding to do.

LTG : )

in half? who still settles for 50/50 on modern pins? any pins? i know plenty who get 100% these days esp if its a respected op who knows how to keep em running smooth.

I will. I think building the mancave I’ve been collecting for all these years will occupy my time!

I was at this arcade, they have 10-12 pins mostly newer. Well GB had a ball stuck on right ramp and another stuck off that ramp. The switch was keeping the ball permanently stuck. If you remove the ball on the ramp but don’t fix the switch it’ll stuck the very next ball. I showed the cashier she even took a picture of ball. Well next month I went back and it was still broken. I guess the right ramp is a bitch anyway and apparently people must still play the game or they don’t check the audits (it’s a free play arcade pay once for the day) Anyway I love pins but they can be hella problems so you’d need to fix or pay a tech to keep them running.

I JUST had this conversation with Mike at Great American Pinball while discussing local barcades operating pins. If you want to draw the pin crowd, maintain your machines. Otherwise just operate your bar and avoid the customer frustration of wanting to play some pinball while enjoying beverages with friends in an interesting environment and find broken drop targets, weak plungers and broken flippers.

The business model is not running pins to make money through quarters. The business model is running pins to bring people in and keep people in buying drinks and food.

If you wanted to route a single pin buy a used World Cup Soccer 94 and put it in a pizza joint or something with Universal Appeal like Jurassic Park or Star Wars. You are not catering to pinball people with a single pin but to casual players.

I would second the idea of crane or even a super basic and cheap arcade like an Area 51 drawing more quarters in a casual location with a much lower barrier to entry.

The local operator in my area had a flipper button push inside the machine. A kid put his fingers in the hole and got them stuck. The local fire department was called and prayed the coin door open to free the child. It was the Simpsons Pinball Party. Anything can happen!

Honestly I think it comes down to the location and their setup. Do they have other games/activities like a pool table, darts, shuffle board, arcade game, etc? I've found that places that have other activities leads people to actually move around and engage instead of just hunkering down at their table and throwing back beers. I don't think that one loan pin would be an issue especially if its in a trendy place.
I have one pin (TSPP) on route right now at a brewery that's doing really well. There is another pin there (walking dead) along with board games, a cocktail arcade game, etc. I will say, if your location caters to families I'd recommend a less scary theme like Star Wars or Guardians as I've seen parents dump quarters into my pin as TWD scares little kids. Just my two cents, good luck!!

I hope you TSPP isn‘t located in Darmouth.

I’ve been interested in this business for 39 years. I’ve started looking at it more closely, lately.
Here are my observations:
-To do any coin-in consistently, you need location and customers.

-Your machines will depreciate, and maintenance/service is more time/$ than most realize. (Think about what you spend maintaining your home pin after 400 plays).

-route operators can be competitive; winning your locations, or covering an area well. This is their livelihood.

-to make serious $, you need volume, service, sales, route ops, and product variety.

-pins by themselves appear to be the worst vending choice due to the maintenance, narrower appeal, overall footprint, and the fact they wear quickly.

This game is really about a labor of love. If you don’t require a lot of $, but love buying, selling, fixing, playing and talking pins, Schleping heaving equipment, dealing with complaints, then start small, but keep your day job.

When I look around at the local community of pinball focused operators, I see some really skilled and passionate guys, that have parlayed their way up and built their business over a lifetime.

Good luck on your route.

what kind of jukeboxes do you have? my distro was telling me he switched over from ami to touchtunes and his net went up like 10% across the board. Pretty good... I'm still with AMI, but I'd like to switch at some point.

And the Mob apparently...

I've been with touchtunes since 2003. All my OP buddies told us we were crazy dropping 6500 per juke. That didnt include amps and speakers. Back then nobody had them. I had 9 jukes in 2004 averaging about 1k each per month. Now everyone has them and its definitely watered down. The phone app was a big boost. Except for a couple really old boxes I have in bad locations (because of friends who asked to put them there.) My worst boxes still do 250 to 300 a month.

Not bad, yeah seems like 70% of the income comes from the mobile app. My income goes up or down based on what sports games are on. It's mainly affected during football season, since the TV sound gets played through my system. All in all is a good thing for the venues.

The good old days I would come back from collections and spend hours sorting through 1s, 5s, and quarters. Now I need to hit the bank and grab cash to pay the locations.

Funny how the location owners still get cash (maybe they don't claim the income ) while the Operator has to pay all tax as there is a trail.

In the good old Operating days, at least the Operators could skim a little.

Skimming.... now you guys are talking!

That's great.

Do you think a brand new op with one single game and zero experience can demand a good location and 100 percent of the take?

More likely they'd probably be looking at 50/50, or whatever the standard split is these days?

He is talking about the coin drop split. Most places operate this way....operator keeps a percentage, the establishment gets a percentage.

I was referring to the jukeboxes. With the phone app being so popular, about 70% of the money brought in is thru credit cards. Some locations can be as high as 90%. If a juke does $1000 and $800 of it was credit card, I need to dig deep and pull the cash from my pocket. With newer locations I can get away with check, but the old school guys who are used to cash, want nothing to do with a paper trail.

The phone app is the best thing to happen to jukes in years. Customers don't even need to get off their barstools, and will have music wars. The metal folk will piss off the country folk and vice versa. They can do it anonymously too, and don't even need to be present to send "Seasons in the Sun" as a gift for all to enjoy.

The cut AMI or Touchtunes takes off the top sucks, but it's the price you pay to do business these days.

Even my vending machine is creeping up to 50% card now.

Yeah, think it was like 20 or 22% last I checked. There are a lot people that even use that play first feature which is awesome.

My games make between $2 (for an older machine at a bad location) to $30 (the hottest new pin at my best location...but this only lasts a few weeks) per day, per pin, before split. Average for best location is $10/pin/day. Average for a bad location is $3/pin/day.

I've never operated a one machine public location before, but I think others are spot on that it isn't going to last long before you need to rotate games. I had a single pin in an office, and in less than a month they were already requesting a second machine.

So, as stated above, I don't think you can get away with just operating one machine. You'll quickly need to buy another, and then another, and another. For me, my operating "business" was getting personal loans from me for years, and the business bank account was between zero and $5k the entire time. Of course I kept buying new machines when I got near $5k.

I finally had it all paid back and money in the bank after about 5 years. The only reason this happened is because I stopped expanding (having 27 pins on location at the peak), got rid of my two worst locations, and sold some machines. Had I not done that, I would still have nothing in the bank.

Of course, I did build up a huge amount of games that got paid for one quarter at a time. And if I don't expand anymore, I'll have some steady money coming in because I'll actually be selling old games when new ones come in (since I don't have spots to put them).

I know most of the operators in the area and they don't seem to experience any of the "worst case scenario" situations mentioned in this thread. Sure, anything can happen. It's extremely rare from what I can tell. I'm in a nice area though, so YMMV.

Perhaps as you're alluding to in your last post, from what I can tell, pinball is literally the worst ROI of any coin op machine. I had two pool tables at a location. I bought them retail, for $1200 each delivered, required almost zero maintenance (and actually the brewery could fix most things on their own, which wasn't the case for pinball) and they each made about the same money as a $5k pinball machine. Most pool tables I know of do way better than that.

There is a pair of skee ball machines at a location of mine that make about the same money as 8-10 pins. I've consistently heard of Pac-Man Battle Royale machines making 3x-5x more than a pinball machine.

Pinball machines are some of the most expensive, and most maintenance heavy coin op devices that exist. You should operate them because: it will help pay for your hobby, you love pinball, and you get satisfaction out of providing good playing machines for people to play (who might otherwise not have the opportunity).

All of the large route operators I know of only have a handful of pinball machines, if any. 80-90% of their equipment is other stuff (pool, jukeboxes, crane machines, coin pushers, video games, skeeball, etc). That should tell you something. Kiddie casinos don't have any pins.

The majority of the best playing pinball machines in the country are run by hobby operators: people who have a small number of pins and a small number of locations (or locations that were built by someone who is a pinhead and operates their own machines). It's fun, and rewarding, but if it were super profitable, you would see large pinball route operators springing up everywhere.

The best case scenario is that you have a few pins in your collection already and you try it out by putting one or two out and rotating them with what you have. If you start from scratch and buy a single NIB to try and make money, you're likely going to be disappointed.

However, it is a very low risk thing to try anyway...you'll be able to sell a routed NIB game for $500 or so less than you paid for it. It's just that the ceiling for how profitable it could be to be an operator who only owns one game is quite low. (But you don't have to have a grand plan from the start. I didn't. Just rented one game to an office for a friend. Then they wanted another. Then they referred me to another office. Etc. I wouldn't have been able to do it if I didn't have money in the bank to stay ahead with buying new games before the previous ones were paid off).

As I mentioned earlier, subscribe to RePlay Magazine. Eddie Adlum and his daughter Ingrid will appreciate it.

Let's just end it here and agree that he'll be stinking, filthy, rich!!!

(After winning the lottery.)

You can make a small fortune operating, but you need to start with a large fortune

Knew a guy who did "Dialing for Dollars" on his flip phone with his stock broker. We would say "How did Bill get two million bucks playing the stock market"? Answer was: He started with four.

Sadly, the 2008-9 dump caused him to lose everything. He jumped in the Schuylkill River in Phila. in January. The body didnt come up to the surface until April.

That's why I hit bowling alleys when I wanna play pins. Cheap brews and low cost pinball! I imagine when you run out of space at home, larger collections spill over into local bowling alleys and sporting stadiums.

Pinball in general is a SLOW GRIND to get your money returned. Video games, redemption and prize type games far out gain pinball. I think people who route pinball make money over the long haul with many locations and a mix of games. One pinball its like what would be the point. You might get your money back in a year, and you'd spend a lot of your time collecting the coin, repairing the machine, etc. Sounds like more hassle than anything.

With pinball you are lucky to get your money back in 3 or 4 years. At least on new ones. If you picked up a BSD or Fish tales on the cheap, you might get it paid off in 2 years. That would be in an average to good locations.

And the point is what would be the point. LOL. I agree with your logic here.

Consider also any state registration and tax/fee/permit implications in your coin-op/amusement business model. Tax man always gets his cut.

Example: State of Texas
General Business Fee (1-50 machines) $200
Occupation tax permit (per machine) $60

https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/coin-op/

Card reader systems are usually a loophole to this. For "arcade" only environments, put games on free play but charge a fee (Daily or by time) to access the games.