Same here. Not into EM's but every game I have aside from my Earthshaker (paid $1,800, fully working) I either got cheap and broken and fixed it or traded for:

Flash - picked up off Facebook for $400, sold as "not working". The game wasn't set to freeplay and the coin mech switch wiring was disconnected so it wouldn't credit up. Drop targets weren't dropping all the way/registering. Tore it down, cleaned it up, cleaned all the drops, rebuilt flippers, just about done.

High Speed - Traded a Sliver Strike Bowling I paid $300 for in 2012. Got it on a good deal because the game wouldn't start and the owner didn't know how to fix it. Turned out to be the exact same situation as the Flash, not kidding ha.

Laser War - Traded a BurgerTime, which I got in trade for a Space Duel I paid $400 for. Column of switches was out which turned out to be a dead resistor on the MPU.

Space Shuttle - $625. Most switches needed adjusting, alot of lights were out due to a few dead resistors, playfield was destroyed so I had an overlay printed and cleared.

This is an interesting question because the hobby is "affordable" to me, but I stick to the games I can afford. I can't see myself ever being able to spend over 2K on a game, and even then it would be once every few years. I've enjoyed getting the older games and working on them and cleaning them up and playing all the new stuff on location in our league. The longer I do this, I think I'd rather have more older games in a personal collection anyway than say sell it all for one nice DMD game.