My personal advice:
First, here's the real answer imo at that budget: what you can find that's appealing for sale
If you're not buying new you're limited to what's local to your market. It's all well and good to decide you want The Shadow after I tell you what a great first game it is (was mine), but if you can't find one and after 6 months of searching and watching you wish you'd just gotten something else that had come along ...
So be open to jumping on a deal. Good games for good prices move quickly, you probably won't be able to see something, ask about it on Pinside, read replies for a couple days, and then still be able to go pick it up.
Secondly, only because I saw you mention it, please ignore the Pinside ratings. You don't need something in the top 35. You don't even need something in the top 100. It's a silly system that is fine for using as part of your research and homework, but don't obsess over the numbers and rankings.
It's mostly a system for telling you two things: a) what's a new game, and b) which games are expensive
Aside from that it's not super reliable or useful. You're gonna have to learn for yourself what kind of games you actually enjoy playing. That's part of the fun though. The hunt, the research, trying things. Shitty time to play location pinball sadly, best of luck.