I have seen people selling almost full playfield (no cabinet or head) saying it should work for top dollar

You should favorite this forum if you haven’t already. There are some good deals posted there.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/post-project-pins-for-sale-here-cl-ebay-pinside-and-others

Blame the internet where anyone can look up the asking price of
pins. Back in the day, project pins were in the $200-$300 range.
Nearly unheard of today.

This is a trend that I’ve seen across all eras of pins. People are convinced that they have struck gold when they have a pin for sale. These same people look at the over inflated prices of fully working pins on EBay and assume that they can get the same price for their non-working pin.

Totally agree. There are still good deals out there. In the last year and half I picked up 6 decent to nice early Bally solid state games for less than $500 each (3 actually booted) plus 2 Gottlieb EM's at great prices. Avoid the overpriced garbage.

The projects I'm running into have shot back glasses or none at all. I would buy it but it means going without one for 3-8 Months after ordering one.
A lot also have chewed wiring. I have repaired localized areas of chewed but these have scary looking wads hanging out the back.
Machines on the cusp of disappearing forever unless a saint drops in to save them.

The last EM that I bought also "worked great" with a chopped line cord and fried coils throughout.

That's the point of a project game. Save it, fix it and pass it it on.

Haven't seen much come up lately and most non-working B-C titles are starting around $500. But then again, stuff like this shows up.

Machine - For Sale

Super Soccer Archived

Used - shows wear, needs some work - “Gottlieb Super Soccer -Game resets ,cycles thru all 4 players and ends a game.Not all features are working on the playfield,will need some troubleshooting.Game is missing lockdown ...”

2021-01-30

Lancaster, PA

belbs316

350 (OBO)

Archived after: 42 days

Viewed: 529 times

Status: Didn't sell to Pinsider

I mean, in fairness, repairs are a lot easier and more of a sure thing now too. Bad MPU or driver? You know exactly what your ceiling on the repair is going to be because aftermarket boards are freely available. Isn't like the past where you might be stuck repairing battery damaged boards that would never be reliable because spares didn't exist, or where there were known failure points of a given board set so any game running it was a time bomb with no repair path except more of the same high failure rate parts. There are very few projects today that aren't repairable with off the shelf parts, about the only thing that can truly kill a machine is non-reproduced game specific parts broken/missing or a totally trashed playfield... There were a lot more items that would turn it into a parts game if they were missing/busted a decade or two ago.

I'm still pretty new here, but I was heavily into pinball machines back in 2000-2003. Had two back surgeries during that time and had 11 machines. Landlord was selling house I was living in, had to sell them pins in 3 weeks.... I got out of it after that for the last 15 years. Back then I found it fairly easy to pick up decent projects for 50-150. Now that my back has been ok for the last several years I decided to get back to this hobby. I love fixing them... I'm finding the average price around 300-500 for projects. However, there are still good deals out there. I picked up a Gottlieb Sea Shore in good cosmetic shape for 200 and I'm picking up a Stern Stampede in a few weeks(rough back box at bottom) for 100.00... I've also determined alot of the project pins that become available are homeowner purchases of working machines that gradually stop working until they become a place to throw things on top of. Good for us because as long as there are homeowners that buy working games and don't know how to fix them, they are "future" projects.

I hear you and in fact many if not most of the pins I ended up with pre-net were early SS
with battery damage. But back in the day people that could repair them did and if
done properly they were very reliable. Occasionally at shows a box of these
damaged PC board show up cheap and I'll always scarf them up. Have yet to
buy any of the aftermarket stuff. Boards or displays.

My last three project games were $300 for a Crosstown, $350 for a Jacks Open and $200 for Around the World. It took a month or so to negotiate the price on Crosstown and Jacks Open and took more than two years for Around the World. Obviously a lot of people took a pass on all three. All three had a crappy back glass, bare wood on the playfield and cabinet damage. For me they are perfect since I do a full restore and don’t care if they don’t work.