This point is well made, and asked often.
There is no answer.
Best idea is to see any game in person before buying it.

No money left for a good camera, because pinball machines are too expensive these days.

I 110% agree with you. I don't get it. In the other forums I participate in for other hobbies, they do not even allow a FS thread to be posted without pics and if your pics aren't good enough, all the members jump on you very quickly. It is definitely my largest pet peeve here.

My only advise is to contact the seller directly and ask for good pics. If you are going to be a serious buyer, you will be speaking to that person anyways to make sure everything is on the up and up.

First post and first cargument....off to a great start!

The funny thing is its very easy these days to delete a picture and take a better one. There really is no excuse.

Because a used pinball machine is never 100% perfect and it's easy to sell a game with mediocre photos and vague descriptions.

One description of a game could be "works great, playfield 7.5/10, just a bulb out" and one could be "Credit dot on cannon switch, but cannon works. Unknown hack on MPU, see picture. Minor insert wear on playfield, could use a teardown, new rubbers, and a couple broken star posts. One pop bumper bulb out and replacing bulb didn't fix it, could be an SCR issue. Cabinet art slightly faded, wood chipping under legs.". Sellers don't like telling you everything wrong with a game because games have a ton of things that prevent them from being 100% even if most games have imperfections of some sort.

Pinball machines are large items and are in dark game rooms a lot of times. It's not easy to just move it to somewhere with better light. Also flaws are difficult to photograph. The machine has tons of areas to photograph. It's not like snapping a few pics of a car part or a beanie baby. I prefer a buyer come check out the machine in person so they can decide what they think the condition is. You really can't just a machine strictly by pictures.

because the site is f'd up and doesn't display the pics properly would be the correct answer in most cases

It's a joke because Pinside frequently stretches out pics to full screen and makes them useless.

Yep. There are dishonest people in the world. Buyer beware. I have never purchased a used pin that I haven't seen in person first.

yep. there was a solution but I gotta dig in my memory banks give me a few

you mean like this lol...

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-fsft-ballys-revenge-from-mars-in-socal

right click image and open link in new tab. next question please

While I agree, the market dictates if the picture quality is good enough.

Bad pictures are usually a sign to me that good pictures won't be following, even if requested.

Sometimes, I will make a decision based on price, rarity and distance despite bad pictures. If it's seems overall worth it, I'll proceed.

I definitely have a price that I won't pay above without good pictures. I'm guessing that's a highly variable number based on the buyer.

If someone's reluctant to send more specific pictures that's all you need to know.

Because most people take pictures with a phone that has oily fingerprints on the lens and you can't tell how bad they look on a small screen. That and I'm not a professional photographer.
Personally I don't want to deal with someone asking for a bunch of pictures anyway, if your interested enough in something I'm selling you'll come and look at it. If your the kind of person who needs a lot of pictures to decide if you want something odds are it will be sold before you make up your mind.

looks like brent149 and ssbodyman won't be transacting any time soon. personally if I want to make a sale and need to snap some detailed pics of areas of concern I am always happy to do so. if the requester decides not to buy then i have the pics for the next guy. conversely if i want to buy something and want pics for whatever reason and the seller doesn't take them then no deal. pretty simple.

all that said i think i answered his question with my last post

Good question, my answer is I don't put pictures in my ads. Why? First I don't know how, and even if I did I'm not in the business of selling pins and if I take a picture it's probably would fall into your category as a lousy picture. That being said I will take pictures from my phone and send them to interested party's and take more if need be.

Also even if I sell something unseen in person or played (pending pickup) I don't want a deposit because if you don't like what you see and play when you get here you shouldn't buy it and I would give back the deposit anyway. I sell to rotate my games.

poor pictures quite often get the job done. the supply of most games is low enough that people are willing to rush on out and look even if the pictures suck.

It is in the seller's best interest to post great photos and provide a detailed accurate description. Buyers who can bid/offer with confidence then they're more likely to part with more of their hard-earned cash.

I like when people link to external photo sites such as Flickr to present a large selection of quality photos on a decent website for viewing them at high-res. What's more, a good overhead gameplay video does wonders for buyer confidence, as well as turning up the volume on the "I MUST HAVE THIS" ringing through their brains

But all this takes effort and some sellers can't be bothered. They just want to quickly get the word out and have people drop by and look at the game. This is kind of ironic given the gargantuan amount of effort this hobby demands to get these games running and keep them running. A little bit of effort taking good photos and writing a description pales in comparison.

OP it seems useless for some questions to be asked if you don't post your location. Especially if you were selling something. Would you mind updating your profile?

Agreed . I know when I sell a pin a take tons of pics and tell every detail . However seeing in person is the best as even the best pictures can be somewhat deceiving. Every one ive sold to was pleasantly surprised that the machine was much nicer than I made it out to be so all very happy buyers.

Because I'm poor but still love pinball I mostly work on EM's. Since there's not always a ton of game specific info available on some of these I usually do a thread for each game. Recently I started doing videos when I was done so people can see how the game actually plays and guys who've played these games to death can point out any issues that I don't see. Three examples.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gottlieb-target-pool-how-much

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/williams-liberty-bell-1977-a-little-late-to-the-party#post-1891730

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/genco-hits-and-runs-did-dad-pay-too-much

There's guys on here that do amazing work when repairing a game so not everybody is trying to hide something.

Oh, and I usually take some decent photos of the game too.

Close enough????
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