I was ripped off from a local on my first bought pinball machine.. Black Knight . Had searched Craigslist for some truck tires and yet a pinball machine popped up in the search.. I had remembered putting thousands of quarters in it at my local Pizza place in the early eighties and thought damn 900 dollars is an ok price for a game(no idea of pricing being just new to hobby)and bought it .
It was set up without legs in a shack outside his house and was working but had no knowledge and not knowing anything on electronics and what to look for so it seemed legit and the guy told me he would help if anything went wrong.. So I paid for it brought it home and set it up.. played it for like 10 minutes and bam shuts off itself .. Well the 40 pin connector board MPU was giving problems after being on for 10 minutes / wound up needing a new Kohout Replacement board set to get it going since the MPU was acid damaged and hacked .. it was 2007 and at the time would have been a way overpriced sale..seller claimed it was damaged in transit but I was told by his friend he knew it had problems... Terrible conman, bad experience ,but happy I did not make it my last pin game.. instead I got STTNG for 1800 and it became my Grail even though that title is a maintenance whore// I had sold it / bought another and sold it again after getting it working solid ,just to avoid the next Problem.
Since then I just buy games notorious for there staying power .
The Short version / Overpaid for a game(900) that was supposed to be fully operational and spent another 600-700 getting it working=Total price 1700 . sold it on Epay out of state for 1100 in 2009 / total loss of 600 to 700