A few years ago when I was seeking out rarer games, I had the chance to purchase a King Kong for 8,000 that was in a lot better shape than the one on eBay. I ended up passing on it because at the time 8k was way above what I was willing to pay. A year later I would've paid that for it, but decided that I'd rather have a CC and AFM instead. Until this current auction came up, I still considered my decision to have been a good one. I don't care much for the gameplay on KK, but the theme (I have KK poster on the wall) and rarity was what I was looking for. I would've bought Loch Ness back when it was changing hands, but I was told that after it went for 25k that the buyer would never let it change hands again. Looking at the going rates for a less-rare KK, I'm not so sure that an owner wouldn't consider testing the waters now. The others I was shooting for back then were Krull (which was unobtanium then) and Goin' Nuts (which was too high for flakey broken examples). After the one I had the best shot at went for 12k, I took my collection in a different direction. I'd still like some of John Trudeau's rarer machines (I do still have QQ and Spirit), but the market right now would require me to trade or sell too many of my current games to hit the targets. I'll settle for adding nice examples of better playing games. Maybe once my second kid gets through college in a few years something will change. Time will tell.