4 hours each way to look at an "excellent" DW.
Pics looked really good. Comments from seller about game were all positive.
When I got there I was very disappointed.
Cab in really nice shape but playfield had 2 screws coming thought, underside had all sorts of rust/corrosion. Plus it was a reimport with a really average power conversion done.
Had a nice talk with the owner and then gratuitously declined purchasing.
It was a long day but at least the drive was nice and scenic.

Me and my son drove 2 1/2 hours each way in the snow to buy a beautiful TZ. Found the seller was not home, and when his wife called him he said he had not gotten around to fixing it yet.The pictures he mailed me were of another machine. And when I asked him he said those pictures are what it was going to look like. And than he had the nerve to call a week latter to tell me it was ready. I should have sent him a bill for gas.

I bought a TSPP in New Jersey off a guy on EBAY. Description was good as new and had pictures showing it was in good condition. After a 2.5 hour drive I saw the most disturbing piece of shit water damaged game! The seller tried to say he didnt know that it had water damage. Im almost postive it was in hurricane Sandy. Either way I was pissed and made him refund my money on site. About 3 weeks later I found a HUO in Maryland that is great!

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Long:

I saw a for sale ad from a respected seller for a machine I was looking for.

I sent a PM asking for detailed pictures and better lineup, which I got. "Fully working, just dirty" was the gist of the verbal lineup.

The price was on the higher end for this machine in this condition (import, unshopped), but I was cut some slack on the price for this.

I looked the machine over in the pics, and decided to send a deposit because I couldn't get over to his location to pick it up for a few weeks.

I started looking at some of the pictures in greater detail, and had some concerns. It looked as if someone had painted some of the parts of the game with spray paint. I asked for some enhanced pictures in this area, and for the owner to confirm weather or not this was the case. Seller took the pics, and said the parts were painted, but they had been removed, painted, and reinstalled.

A few weeks later, I borrowed a truck and drove 3.5 hours to go get the pin.

It wasn't set up in 'playing' position, but rather sitting on a hand truck.
I started noticing issues. Largely, that is was missing key parts. A couple of diverters had been removed from the game, and this was not noticed by the seller. The seller actually tried to reason that the game would play fine without them. Funny stuff.
There were also Soldering iron burns on two of the ramps.
I asked for a 300 dollar discount for the obvious problems with the machine, but was met with "300 for a couple of diverters?" I'll give you 150 off.

I should have walked, but I had so much invested at this point that I decided to roll with it and buy the machine.

This is when I found out that it didn't come with legs. At least not the correct legs. I could chose from an assortment of incorrect and crappy legs. I asked for balls for the game, and was looked at like I was crazy - but the seller did give me some.

So, I drove home with serious buyers remorse.

Fun continued when I got home. Turned it on to try it out, and several switches were not working, causing problems as major as the slingshots not to work. So, my 'fully working, just dirty' game wasn't working really at all.

There were several wires cut and broken under the playfield and around the whole game (several on the coin door). I got that sorted out, and got to ordering parts to replace the diverters. Luckily, these totally custom diverters and the linkages were available in whole, across a few vendors, costing me somewhere around 200 bucks with shipping.

The parts that I had asked about being painted in place, were in fact painted in place with fluorescent pink paint as I had thought. This paint over sprayed on to the playfield in places, and I haven't figured a way to get it off. I was able to clean it from the metal pieces, of course.

Luckily, when the parts came in for the diverters, everything worked, and I've got a pretty nice machine now - after about 500 extra dollars in parts.

I probably won't ever deal with the seller again. Nice guy, but he just didn't do any due diligence before offering this game for sale, and stuck me with a lot of extra work at his premium price.

A recurring theme in bad deals reveals our all too human nature. Sometimes it's hard to walk away even when our intuition tells us otherwise.

Later, we feel like

An eBay seller in NJ of water damaged games...hmm...wonder who that could be.

I think every time I go to look at an Adams...I get lowered expectations?

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In 25 years I've only had a couple of major disappointments where I had traveled so far, that I just had to suck it up.

First one was an Ebay Fast Draw in Oregon, drove all the way down from BC in really crappy weather, to find the playfield was extremely planked, worst I've seen, and that the Rat family Robinson had been living in it. Unfortunately I had prepaid, and the seller was not present, so my choices were pretty limited. I blame myself, the pictures were too low res to show the playfield properly. I still have the game today, it works, but I've found out the hard way that FD playfields are hard to come by

Second was an Atlantis on Vancouver Island, not really that far, but involved an expensive trip on the ferries and took all day. Game was relatively inexpensive and I knew I was not getting a pristine example, but I guess it photographed well, because it was much worse in person than the pictures indicated. Still, with the time and money I already had invested, it seemed like the best plan to take the game, so I did and maybe a playfield and BG for one of these will pop up someday too!!!

Considering how many games I have purchased thru Ebay and just by pictures, I'd say my batting average is excellent, but every now and then, you get bit!!

I once heard about this new company jersey something who made some game based on a 70 year old movie for little girls. Man talk about lowered expectations.

I have not bought a single machine from an ad that fully lived up to its billing. Consequently, I have learned to expect a pin to be rougher than advertised--sometimes a lot rougher. I have also learned to expect to spend as much as 20% of the cost of the pin on replacement parts in the first few weeks of ownership. This all has to be factored in, especially when driving hundreds of miles to get the machine, which I've done several times.