I am looking for a few people to team up with to buy a container of pinball machines. The machines can be shipped to my location in the Puyallup area for pickup unless someone else has a place better suited. Are you looking for some games to restore and add to your collection? Frustrated with the lack of games available in the Pacific NW? Are you comfortable working on games that are in rough condition? Leave a reply on the thread or send me a PM. I have a current list of games available that I can send to anyone in the northwest who are interested.

I am looking to add a handful of games to my collection so I need to find a few others who are looking to do the same so we can fill up at least a 20' container to maximize the number of games to cost of shipping ratio. I would like to finalize the purchase by around mid-July so I have plenty of work to keep me busy through the fall and winter.

***** These games are typically in pretty rough condition and will need a lot of work. Please do not respond if you are looking for games that are ready to play*****

I am looking at bringing the container in from Italy.

They have almost all solid state, although they did just get a few EM's in (rare for them). Most of the games are early 90's through 2010. They carry all of the major manufacturers (Williams/Bally, Capcom, Stern, Sega, DE, and Gottlieb). They do not have very many, if any of the top tier games right now like AF,CC,CV,TZ,MM etc... (they had several two weeks ago, someone bought them all), but they have a bunch of other good games.

Some stories I have heard around the web make it sound like you don't know what games you will be getting. That is not the case here. You pick the exact game you want based on the pictures they provide. They typically have 3 pictures of the cabinet, a few pictures of the playfield and a picture of the bottom of the playfield. The only thing they don't take a picture of is inside the backbox. I just assume every game is going to be pretty hacked up in the backbox and factor in some extra time and money for board repair. They will tell you if the game doesn't boot (although they don't seem to discount non-booting games much) and they will tell you if the game is missing any major circuit boards.

I will definitely post photos of what we end up with if we can make this deal work.

They have a Speed Rush '75 by Playmec, an Apollo '67 by Williams, a Domino '68 by Gottlieb, and a The 100 Yards '52 by E.M. Marchant.

I hope that makes sense to you. I don't recognize 2 of those manufacturers, but that is what is on the sheet.

Thanks for the information. I have read several stories like these so I am being very careful to pick games that are priced low enough that I can afford to drop a few hundred dollars into them and not lose a bunch of money if I eventually decide to sell them. I don't mind the physical labor at all, but I agree that you have to budget for the worst and then hope they aren't as bad as you budgeted for.

I have a contact from a business I own (non-pinball) who handles container shipments for a living. His company has a office in Italy and he said he would be glad to help make sure everything goes as smooth as possible.

I can't attach the file in a PM, but if you PM me your e-mail address I can send it to you. It contains links to the pics of the games as well as the prices.

I really appreciate the information and your advice. I agree about his pricing. In some cases he is asking above Mr. Pinball Price Guide value for a few games. A very large number of them are priced too high for the trouble and cost of getting them here, but I think there are a few good deals left. I may be willing to pay a little more than some people in other areas of the country due to the fact that it is nearly impossible to find decent priced games in the northwest. I am told this is due to all of the Microsoft execs (and others too I'm sure) who have deep pockets and buy up everything they see.

One of the games that just sold off the list was a Monster Bash for around $3000 before shipping. It needed a new playfield very badly and some other work too, but that one was priced far enough below market value that I think it would be worth it to someone willing to put in the effort. Most of the games he has that have playfield wear are priced too high considering how hard it can be to fix on some games (his flipper football is a great example of this). On the other hand he still has several games with very little to no playfield wear (NBA Fastbreak is a good example), the price is a bit high but not totally outrageous.

Keep us posted on how long the container takes to arrive and what condition the games arrive in.

If you are talking specifically about getting great deals on good games from the 90's then I agree. If you are talking about Pinball games in general then I am pretty sure there are still a ton of Stern games in Europe. I assume most of the games this guy sells are operators getting rid of old inventory to make room for new Stern games. If the Euro takes a major dump we will probably see much more aggressive pricing once again. This is just my opinion along with some educated guessing.

I just sent an update to everyone who let me know they were interested in more information. If you want info on the games available and didn't get an e-mail from me send me a PM with your e-mail address and I will send the price list to you along with the games that have been spoken for already.

Another update. We now have enough people interested in games to meet the minimum required order. I am still working on the shipment details and the payment details, but I should know a lot more of the details by early next week. I also hope to get an update on Clay's order before we exchange any actual money.

If anyone in the North West (or willing to drive here) is interested in finding out more, send me a PM with your e-mail address and I will send you a list of what is available.

Send me a PM with your email address

Still waiting on the shipping quote. I think Maurizio has been off the last 2 days. I have talked to a few more people who have bought from these guys in the past. I will be sending out an e-mail to everyone who has responded with an update as soon as I have a base shipping cost to work with.

We are up to 19 games on the order which helps keep the shipping cost per game down. I have shipping set up except for the final destination. We just need to find somewhere with a dock to unload these quickly. If you are interested in getting in on this purchase, send me a PM with your email address.

That seems pretty good. I have been shopping around and with the amount of games we are getting, ours is going to be about $500 in broker fees.

So do you have your games yet or are they still clearing customs? I am curious how well they packed yours and how the condition looked compared to the pictures.

Container update - We finally received our container. Our games weren't wrapped quite as thoroughly as Clay's, but they all arrived without any real damage. Someone in the group took pics of us unloading them and we will post those eventually. I purchased 5 of the games in the container and I have was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the games. I looked at the pictures from the seller very closely before selecting my games so I knew of a few issues on some of my games, but I expected to find some hidden hacks or parts missing. The two Stern games appear to be ready to play after I convert the power. In fact the POTC looks almost brand new. Both WCS94 games look pretty good too. They will need to be shopped, but they are fairly clean. I know a few of the other buyers in our group had games with a lot of hacks so I think I was fairly lucky. I expected to be doing a bunch of board repairs to get them working, but so far they look much better then expected. I will post some before pics of the games below.

Here are the before pics of the POTC. This one was in great shape and came with LED lights even. Only thing this one was missing was the manual.
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Yes, I would consider doing it again down the road, once the seller gets some more games in stock. Their inventory was pretty low the last time I checked, but they were very honest with me throughout the buying process.

Here are the before pics of LOTR. This one will need a little bit more work, but appears to be pretty much playable after the conversion to 110V. This one even came with a manual.
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Here is the WCS49 #1 of 3. I forgot to take pics inside the backbox, but these ones were mostly hack free. These need a medium amount of work to get working and looking good.

The third WSC94 I bought that I haven't unpacked yet was the worst of the three. It has the bridge rectifiers removed from the board and mounted on the side of the backbox as well as several of the GI wires connected directly to the board. Both of these issues are pretty common in European games and pretty easy to fix in most cases.

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Here is the 2nd WCS94 - It needs some work to get it looking a playing good, but overall its in pretty decent shape.

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The games are priced individually so they vary greatly from several hundred dollars for complete garbage up to $7k or $8k for premium titles. Most games are in the $1500 to $3500 range and need a lot of work to make them playable. I got very lucky on the games I picked up and had no big surprises, but several guys in our group are dealing with some pretty hacked up machines. If you fill a container like we did, shipping ends up being around $120 to $150 per game. If you don't fill the container it can be double what we paid for shipping and brokerage.

Clay is not kidding when he says these games are not great deals. Some of them are OK deals, but in most cases you would be better off buying locally. Once you figure in all of the time, energy, and risks it takes to put an order together (it took us almost 4 months to get our games), along with all of the known costs and potential unknown costs that come with importing a container from a foreign country, its really not worth it in most cases.

Bottom line: If you enjoy taking risks and working on hacked up machines, this is way to do that. If you are looking to buy some machines to turn around and sell, forget about it. You will not make money at the prices they are charging. I would still consider doing this again down the road, but only for games that I just can't find around my area and even then I will look at the sellers pictures very carefully before selecting games to buy.

Here is the final WCS game. This one was in the worst shape. It looks like it was stored in a very damp area for several years. They playfield and most of the boards are in surprisingly good condition, but the metal parts and most of the plastics are shot. I was so happy to see they shipped the game with the rusty balls still in it. Notice the typical BR hack on the driver board.

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