How much do decals cost?
Try to reduce that from asking price if the price is on the higher end and you care a lot.

I don't care much about fade, and I doubt most people do as long as the price is right.

A good decal job will run at least a thousand to 1500. Cost of decals and then all the prep for a quality install. Pain in the ass and a ton of work.

As a buyer, If you can get some cash off then of course do it!
In reality, whom really cares. If you are a new collector, and I don't know just offering advice, I wouldn't be so anal aboot stuff like this.

Depends on asking price. If they want CQ price for it then hell no, if they want average pinside value then probably not a big deal. I have gotten to where I don't care about looks much anymore as long as the price is right.

This is a personal preference. I personally would prefer an ok original cabinet over reproduction. That's just me.
It all depends on "how faded" is "faded".

It's all "relative to what".

Relative to the exact same game with nicer original decals? Sure

But keep in mind that a fully restored IJ (w/new cabinet decals, etc.) is not what the high end pinside price is generally showing. Fully restored, such as by HEP, will be much higher.

Almost all of the WMS IJ cabinets are faded. If you have it in a lineup with machines on each side you may not notice that much.

All depends on the price that the person is asking, and if they are taking the fading into account based on market value. Slightly off topic but I get a kick out of reading a thread started from someone from somewhere I never heard of. Odense? Where the H is that? Then I look it up, and am fascinated where it is. Oh to travel again to different lands...

Cab fade is something everybody pretends to care about but only a tiny percentage of buyers actually do.

Tell us what he's selling it for and we'll tell you if you should be picky about cabinet fade.

A couple points. Cabinet decals shouldn’t matter much because in most lineups you never see them. I generally don’t care. But I have found when I try to sell a game, if there are cabinet issues a buyer is usually going to want a discount. Whether they themselves care or not, some people do and so it affects resale value. The worse the damage and fading, the more it affects it.

As to why it affects value so much, it is a fairly big job to replace them. The cabinet needs to be taken apart, old decals removed, defects filled and smoothed, primed and sanded, new decals applied, and everything put back together. Plus while doing that it often only makes sense to replace several parts that have wear like flipper buttons, side rails, legs, maybe lockdown bar and coin door. It’s one of those things that once you take the time to make it look good it’s kinda weird not to make the rest look good.

You obviously have zero clue about cab restoration.

On something like an IJ given the fade you’ve described I’d expect at least $1000 off a higher end price because that’s a premium machine and most buyers want a premium condition.

Reduce $2k and give the seller Blackbeard's cell phone number so he can describe to the seller in detail why $2k is the appropriate amount.

The dude didn't ask about the cost and time involved with restoring a cabinet. He asked if it reduces the price. The answer? It depends on the price.

Take
The time to restore a cab correctly and
Then open your pie hole.

And no, you never have, cause if you had, you wouldn’t be yapping.

Pointless discussion without hearing condition and price.

Take a game. Any will do.

If on average a game sells for 5k and it has average issues and buyer asks 5k, no.

So 90s williams cabs fade. Its typical. An example without fade brings more than average. Is he asking the going rate? Does it have thousands in mods and a great pf? We dont know...

Like others have said, depends on the price being asked, but if I have two to choose from and all equal, I'm getting the one with less fade.

Yeah for those the topic question should really be more like "Premium price when completely non-faded cabinet?"

For years I never even knew that my JackBot was supposed to have the reds in it. Bummed me out when I found out, now I'm ho hum about it. I can only see the front and I never really look at that anyway. Found out how much work it would be to do new decals, no way, not worth it for me. One guy redid all his reds with a friggin' red sharpie pen and it looked surprisingly good.

If somebody has one where all the colors have faded to near-nothing, if there are such animals, they should tell sellers, "Aw man don't ya dig my concept? It's supposed to be like the cabinet on that one-off monochrome Twilight Zone."

The question in reverse can give insight as well… How much more would the asking price be if the decals and everything in the game were mint/perfect?
I mean, maybe the seller has already dropped the price based on condition and what they think it’s worth. We don’t know because we don’t the game condition and local market conditions.

.

yeah the decals aren't super expensive, I've only done one full sized decal on an arcade.
it was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be. It's almost all prep work, putting on the decal is easy. If the edges aren't all chewed up and you have a nice base it probably won't be to bad (other than disassembling everything). Even the smallest imperfections are magnified if you didn't do enough on the prep side. After that experience unless the art is beat to crap or gone, I'll live with it.

The OP is in Finland. If I were him, I would snag it up ASAP. My guess is there are not a lot available to be this picky about the decals!

I had those 2 holes from the coin door protector. Solution is to install 2 black matching flat head bolts (matching others around the pin) and you’re good. It’s an easy natural looking fix until you’re ready to do a full decal job. Did this to my Indy, looks great

Denmark.. driven through there many times pre-pandemic. But yr point is equally valid

Wow that's pretty cool. Never been anywhere near Scandinavia but would love to go.

The prep work to do it properly (everything lines up, smooth, no bubbles, etc) takes a good amount of time. Removing the original decals leaves residue that must be removed and the surface prepared for fresh ones. I've done it twice and it would have to be a really special game to do it again.

Black elevator bolts also look ok and cover a multitude of sins.

Then prepare to wait and be prepared to pay through the nose.

Not sure how many IJs pop up in your area of the world. So it may be a question of "do I wait X months for another opportunity" or do you accept the decals as faded. As others have said the price is key. If someone is selling the game at a collectors quality price and the condition doesn't match you may be overpaying.

In this market - overpaying seems to be the norm though. It is a sellers market these days especially on IJ and higher end stuff.

As a practical matter - unless the fade was TERRIBLE I'd keep the original decals over trying to put new ones on. As others have said many people with average skills (myself included) would probably make the cabinet worse trying to apply new decals.

There is NOTHING wrong with an original game with a few blemishes and aging. I worry more about cracked ramps I can't buy and exposed wood on the playfield etc. How the game plays is way more critical to me.

It should be noted that that era of WMS/Bally games did not use cabinet decals, at least not until Monster Bash came out. They actually silk screened directly onto the cabinets. Some cabinets the underlayment still seemed to have some form of a sticker over the wood as certain titles (CFTBL for instance) that seemed to have worse peeling problems where the legs attached.

All that said a collector like me would much rather the original cabinet if possible just because those are more durable than a sticker job, no matter how well it's done. If the fading is really tragic then it might be better to go with decals, but in most cases I'd rather have some fade and a few scratches to not have to put up with peeling decals. YMMV.

Pretty much all games have it so really a non issue. The important thing is the condition of pf and overall condition of cab. If chunks are missing and deep scratches then that might affect price. On a popular game like IJ, I would not be too picky. If you do not buy it someone else will if priced reasonable.

Exactly - I’ve done cab decals for JM and WW, and it’s a total PITA. Not gonna do that again.