Ogden, UT
I have a Playboy 35th that I got as part of a package deal. It's been sitting on end in my shop for 10+ years and it's time for it to go.
The game came from a bar. The MPU is badly acid damaged (I did pull the batteries as soon as I got it home, the damage was existing) and it has some funky pebbling on the playfield. Not bubbles under the mylar, the actual playfield is bumpy. I doubt if it would affect play much. No PF glass right now. Well, actually there IS glass - scattered throughout the game in tiny pieces. Apparently it had some heavy trophy thing sitting on top of it that got knocked off and broke the glass when it was on location in the bar. Brilliant. Other than that I think it is at least complete. Translite is in good shape. (On a side note, what's up with the art on DE games from this era? Seems like you'd almost have to TRY to make a Playboy-themed backglass and playfield this ugly.)
Prices on this game in the best of condition are pretty low, so I'm wondering if it's worth my effort to try to get it fixed up. The non-family nature will make it even harder to sell in my area. Until I get a working board in there I won't really know what other problems it has. A new Rottendog MPU board is $300. The existing board is in bad enough shape that I don't know if repair is a option.
I have done just enough work on games that I think I could probably get it all working, and I think that the experience would be valuable, but I'm worried that just the cost of parts may drive my cost up to the point where I'd be better off just selling it as-is or parting it out. I did some searching and saw that a project machine went for $350 a while ago. A "working" game went as low as $700. I'm thinking that if I fixed it up pretty well I could maybe get $1200 for it, please advise if that seems off.
For shopping/repairing the game, I would plan to replace the bad board, clean the game up without going nuts (i.e. stripping the playfield completely), fix any non-working stuff, re-rubber, and probably rebuild the flippers. Don't know if I'd need to buy new displays or not.
Parting out sounds like it would be a drawn-out process, but I would do that over selling as-is if I could get more money.
So what advice does everyone have? Fix & flip, sell as a "project" game, or part out?
If anyone is curious on the package deal I got, it was this PB35, a Motordome (Pinball Podcast's clunker of the month once, yeah!) and a High Speed all for $600. None were working but all more or less complete. I wanted to fix up and keep the HS (which I did) and sell the other two to cover the cost and then some, hopefully. So if anyone wants the PB35 and Motordome for $600 and can pick up in Utah I'd go for that. I do need to get my $600 back though, as that's how I convinced my wife to let me do it.
Thanks,
Ben
