18% Buyers Premium ONLINE + Sales Tax

It’s almost always better to buy from a collector.

Sure there are old threads about Captain’s auctions.

Long time friend and colleague.
Stand up awesome guy.
Ive bought and sold games here forever, since it was super auctions in the late 90's early 00's. Chris took over and made it his own Captains Auctions.
Just got a cherry Caribbean Cruise at last auction, and good buddy o-din got a game at last 2 auctions.
Deals can be had if you pay attention and not get your heart set on one game.
The auction is currently closed to the public do to covid. All auctions are online only now for awhile. Because of this its a flat 15% for all buyers and sellers, not 18.

I attended about 20 Super Auctions over the years in Texas. Shill bidding appeared rampant. I don’t know how someone would even detect that online.

I would steer clear of any live online auction. I have zero confidence anyone involved has my best interest in mind and I have no way to tell if the bidding process is fair.

If it's to high, don't bid.

The upcoming Captain's Auction is typical if you look through the catalog. Tons of video games and things like Skeeballs and pool tables, and a pretty good selection of pinball machines. (these are typically toward the end of the listings for some reason, but there are some scattered throughout). Sometimes they will have an auction more focused on pinballs and there will be quite a few.

There have been some purchases made by Pinsiders where they were satisfied with the price, but not too many. You could ask o-din (a SoCal local) about it, but I think he is banned at least for a while. I believe he bought one at the last auction that he liked.

But in the end, you have to know what it is you are bidding on, and figure out what you are willing to pay (calculating all fees), and not go over that. But isn't that true of any auction? It has been stated a lot that the sellers are allowed to bid on their own machines, and do, which I guess is probably true. In the end, the same rule applies, know what you want to spend and don't get caught up in the bidding.

For something like a pinball machine, the online-only thing is kind of a bummer. You just have the pictures and their short description to go by. Before the pandemic, you could go over there before the auction and check everything out in person and even play the machines. I did this a few times, and enjoyed scoping out all the machines, and I went to a few of the onsite auctions. That was pretty fun to see how it all works. I never did buy anything there though, but that really has more to do with my lack of space than anything else.

Just another side note, if you stick with the Pinside NorCal group and are patient, eventually you should be able to get some nice machines and good deals. Even more so if you extend to SoCal. Over the past several years, if I wanted to spend the money and had the space, I could very easily have a collection of a dozen or more machines, all bought from local pinsiders. All my favorites too. You just have to be patient and keep an eye out in those threads. There are always TZs, TAFs, Metallicas, plus many others, T2, Firepower, the occasional Tron, and many nice EMs I could have bought. No Fathoms, but there never is a Fathom anywhere....

Wondering if any Pinsiders got any deals yesterday? My bids for Guardians of the Galaxy (Pro) and World Cup Soccer were too low.

I have purchased several games and misc items from Captian's over the past couple of years. Some were killer deals... some I paid the average going price (after the auction fees and shipping from California to Michigan) and one arcade game I probably paid $700 over the "average selling price" - but it was my holy grail and absolutely wanted it. No regrets.

With all of that being said... I've probably watched several dozen of the online auctions over the years and only actually purchased 4 games.

So you just have to be patient and wait for something that you're willing to pay for (and NOT go over the price that you're willing to pay). But if you're looking to pick up a Twilight Zone for $1,200 - Captian's certainly isn't the place where you're going to find that kind of killer deal.

Side note: I was lucky enough to get a huge box of aracade pcb's and original marquees for $25 once!

I didn’t see all of the pins but quite a few. Pretty much all the pricing looked standard, not really any deals of any kind. Not too outrageously high, although you have to factor in all the fees and taxes to get the final number. The Firepower went for 1200 which is borderline ok, it had wear on the playfield.

I’m not up on all of the pricing for the arcade video games, but they seemed expensive. Most in the 1200-1500 range for the classics like Centipede, Zaxxon, etc. For some reason a Qbert sold for 3200 I think it was.

I don’t know if there is a way to look at all of the results after the auction is closed. I can’t find it.