I got an e-mail today from Game Exchange offering this exact scenario. Minimum two month rental and 1/2 off if you get a second game. I thought it was a great idea. They’re based in Colorado so it’s not an option for you but it is out there.

Looking to rent in the Bay Area during this whole lock down, too!

Hit up Greg Creech on Facebook. Bay area operator. He just posted today that he is doing this.

we can rent in michigan. video or pinball. new or old. SO long as the home they go to isn't smoked in and its well temp controlled, clean.
we baby our games on location and in our houses.
message me

Someone please share ballpark price at least.

Here's Game Exchange's deal:

-Any Used game in inventory

-Delivery and Set-up Included for Denver Metro. (Call for rates outside Denver)

-$500/month for first game

-$250/month for every additional game

-1 game minimum

-Minimum of 2 months - Pre Paid

-Ground Floor, Walk-Out, or Garage delivery. Max of 3 stairs

-Must come to our office to complete order, provide photo ID, sign agreement, complete payment

-ID must match up with delivery address and customer renting the equipment

-CC # must be kept on file along with a signed rental agreement.

It’s too much IMO. 1 game for 2 months would be $1000. Fuck that.

I was thinking the same thing. $1K for 2 months feels pretty steep even with delivery (local) included. I'm guessing not many will participate in that. If they reduced to $250 a month and removed the 2 month requirement I'd assume there would be more interest. Our local arcade has been doing rentals for a long time (Pinballz). For some reason, I was thinking it was $300ish a month for a game but I could be wrong as it's been a while since I asked about it.

An interesting idea. The cost mentioned does sound like a lot to those
of us in the hobby but consider what it takes to move a pin, twice,
service it if needed and deal with the risk of damage. In that light
the price isn't unreasonable.
Steve

Do they leave keys for stuck balls or do you get a service call for that? That would be annoying to have to go back 5 times a month for stuck balls, flaky switches, broken rubber ring, lamp out, etc. But I guess that's part of the rental and that $500/mo is baked into that.

That's awesome. I know you've probably thought about it but you should let people know which precautions you'll take on delivery. I've been thinking about this myself. I guess just keeping distance, maybe wipe down the game with a wipe or two after you set it up.

Rent to own / buyout may look attractive to people right now as well. Tilt was basically doing this with leases for a while.

I'm sure people would like that, but $250 with 1 month minimum is not even worth moving the machine.

$1500 for two machines for two months, isn't horrible.

For one person, that's 50 games a day.
If you have a nest egg and can ride out this crisis, why not?

He has an amazing inventory.

local guy wanted to do that here, he was quoting $750 for first month, $500 for second plus a set up fee of like $250!

Locals in Mid TN can rent machines for $350-550 a month depending on game title at Game Galaxy in Smyrna, TN.

I operate games and have been asked about this a lot. I posted something similar on Reddit earlier today, as this subject came up there as well.

My quote is $250 a month, minimum of 3 months.

I wish it could be cheaper, or have a shorter minimum, but it's just impossible for me. It's probably 3 hours of moving to: break down a game, load it, drive to you, unload, set up, and drive back home. Then that needs to happen again when the rental is over. 6 hours of moving, regardless of the length of the rental period.

Imagine a one month rental for $300. I tried to find someone to move games for $50 an hour and had zero takers. If I had found someone, I'd be making nothing on a one month rental. Yes, I could do the move myself and make $50 an hour, but honestly, moving machines should probably be like a $75-$100 an hour job. It requires specialized equipment: a truck or something that can load a pinball machine, multiple dollies, straps. It requires height & strength if you're moving solo. And it's stressful: one wrong move and you can damage the game, the building you're moving into or out of, and yourself (I mean, to be honest...death is possible if the mistake involves stairs and a person on the wrong side of the machine).

Imagine a two month rental for $300 a month. You lose the first $300 in moving expenses, and if you have to do a single service call in those two months, you're down to making about $150 to have your $5000 machine in a strangers house for 60 days.

And even with something like a 3 month minimum, your customers are probably going to get bored of a single, unchanging game day after day after day.

It's too bad the economics don't really work out on this. The amount you need to charge to barely make it worth your while is an amount that's viewed as unfairly high by your potential customers.

TL;DR moving pinball machines sucks so bad that it changes the entire economics of this into something that almost isn't worth it for either side.

Guess I'm cheap!!! I've been occasionally renting mine out for 150 a month with a 2 month min. 2nd game is half price.

I leave the keys with them and show them how to open the game safely etc before I leave. For anything serious they have my cell. Most of the time they just clear the stuck balls themselves.

Ahhh, anywhere near or around the Detroit area I don’t think anyone in their right mind would be renting out pins because they would never get them back...Detroit is nothing but a dump!!! You live in Bloomfield nice area just go to Marvin’s museum always has new great pins and you don’t live that far from there.

This would be a reasonable scenario and would work for both if the owner would trust you moving their game/s. Maybe a refundable damage deposit to ensure no major damage during transport?

That is kinda silly $250 to setup? Why wouldn't your home be just another location for there pins to go, How much are locations (Bars, Barcades etc..) charged when they bring a game to vend to set them up? For rental prices, What are the average on pins income (250 a month per pin?), Some locations/pins more/less then others im sure?

How do you move machines to the locations that you vend in now?

I move them myself. Games are in my basement. Two doors get removed from their hinges. Stair climbing dolly to get out of the house. Transfer to another dolly with larger inflatable tires for the crushed stone driveway. Into a RAV4 one at a time (which is much easier to load than a pickup truck because of the low tailgate). Drive to locations, which are within a few miles of my house. Find loading/unloading parking if I’m lucky. My main location is below ground so that involves going a set of stairs (which sometimes I do with the stair climbing dolly and other times I use a normal appliance dolly). Deadlift machine onto my thigh so I can put the legs on while it is propped up.

If I’m delivering a game somewhere, that means I would be taking a game out, so that whole process happens again with the machine at the location.

It’s not even that practical to hire it out anyway because that person would need to have keys to the machines involved, access codes to any venues involved (sometimes that’s my house), deal with money in the coin box, know enough about pinball to set the games up properly, know how to identify and diagnose any issues when the game is set up at the new place.

This is only a side gig for me and I probably average 3 moves per month these days...but it’s been 5+ years, so you can imagine that after 100 moves, it’s not that fun anymore. I do have a good routine, but there are a lot of steps.

If I was more of a professional, some things might get easier: I’d have a building with a loading dock, a truck that can fit multiple games with a lift gate, employees, etc. But those are large costs that would need to ultimately be paid by the customer.

Not trying to be a downer! I love operating games, but the rewarding part is watching people play and enjoy my games. Okay, collecting quarters is kinda fun too. Fixing games can be really rewarding also. But anytime I’m moving games, I’m mostly wondering if this is even worth it. And that’s a large part of the business.

We have been doing arcade and pinball rentals for a while now around Napa and Sacramento areas. Local-ish we charge $300 per pinball for the month, delivery/setup/breakdown included. Set on free play and we leave you the keys just in case stuck balls or something.

krazy53 would you come as far as pacifica?

It is a bit out of our local-ish area, so would have to charge more to get it out there.

$300 is more than fair.

Dude, you need an escalate with the attachment that picks the game up, especially if you are doing this on the regular. Almost sounded like you had one though based off the stair climbing part. If so, maybe you can buy just that attachment. It literally slides under the game, wind the cable mech and it lifts the game. Easy to put the legs on and get in and out of a truck/SUV.

Maybe this is why my mind is skewed with loading/unloading. No stairs, I use an appliance dolly. When I get to my SUV I prop the back onto a sawhorse (https://www.harborfreight.com/foldable-adjustable-sawhorse-69059.html), remove the back legs, slide game in, remove front legs and slide the rest of the way. It honestly takes me 15 mins to do by myself. But my games upstairs.... That's another story, I just assumed that anyone routing games or renting as a business wouldn't be having to move them up and down stairs all the time. That would surely suck.

Maybe I could have a better process, when there aren't stairs involved. (Though truthfully, I have games in four spots and two have stairs, so it's extremely rare that at least one part of the move doesn't involve stairs).

I need a more clear step by stop on what you're doing. You're getting it to the car on an appliance dolly with all four legs on? We must not be talking about the same kind of dolly.

Greenandwhite, I don't know how far they will go, but Star World Amusement in Kalamazoo was offering rentals - https://starworldamusement.com/.

Prices seemed a little high as I think they were advertising by the week on CL, but as has been described it takes quite a bit of work to make this happen.

Good luck!

I used to rent out a furnished room for $500 a month with four machines included.

IMG_0166.PNG

I'm not sure I am following the logic here: of course moving pinballs sucks, but unless it's taking you away from some other job where you're making $50/hour (by your logic), isn't it better than the pins making NO money?

Also I am not sure about other pinsiders but I really don't need my games to be set-up.

The logic is just that I think the people who are surprised at the high prices and lack of availability of this service are underestimating how difficult and undesirable the moving part is.

If it were easier and more desirable work, you would see more people providing this service for a lower cost and with a shorter minimum rental period.

If you don’t need help setting up machines, then you probably aren’t a potential customer for this service. And as much as I don’t like moving games, I just can’t imagine wanting to let a stranger come pick up a game from me and set it up on their own. Experienced friends? Definitely.

What do you guys hold for collateral?In my previous post that’s what most pinheads didn’t quite understand my comment.When I said Detroit is a dump meaning you’d be lucky to get your property back.i mean some guy calls you up and says hey I’ll rent 3 pins from you for this amount every month then a month later you find out the guy doesn’t even live there and your pins are gone as well.

This is probably the biggest reason I've told people I wasn't interested in the past that have asked me. Moving 2-4 machines every month already is enough for me. Not to mention most of them were strangers I just met that day. It Might be a thing, If I ever get that cargo van I've been wanting for the last three years. Got a system down, but it doesn't make it anymore fun.

I’ve only done one at a house and it was a friend of mine.

I’ve done four different offices. One was a personal connection, one was a referral from them, one was random, and one was a large corporation.

I’ve done three public locations. All three were referrals.

So out of those 8 places, really only the random office was a risk, and it was only one game.

To answer: nothing for collateral, so far. But it’s just a thing I do on the side. I don’t have a website, so there are no random inbound inquiries.

I’d be curious what the larger players do for collateral.

Even brand new or high end games? That way too cheap if so. gas 4 ways (there, back, there, back), delivery and take back time, setup. you haev to shop if fully after rental is done, claim taxes. you end up with nothing. You can operate and make more.

$300 for old and newer games?

I see, thank you sharing

Here is a place in Kalamazoo that will rent arcade equipment if you want. Seems reasonable to me...

EDIT: Their website also says there's a minimum $200 set-up charge as well.

89722048_495326617828905_5828234001780834304_o (resized).jpg

These prices are per week? Haha. Wow.

Yup. PER WEEK!

Hate to see their purchase prices.

There's an ad of Facebook through Andrew Rosa for $300-$450/month depending on the game you choose. Posted yesterday. Not sure if there is a setup cost or not. Looks like he is based out of Lansing.

Nope. Towards Flint.

Damn, maybe it's the water!