Well I've got a funny story about trying to buy a popular machine in the summer of 1998:

Never bought a pinball for my house before and wanted to buy an MM. Called up a local distributor and asked if he had any for sale. He said he should have one and they could bring one in from a route somewhere and the price was $5,000 Cdn.

Told him that sounds good to me and I'd come in to pick it up when he had it there. He calls me a few days later and off I went to meet him and get the machine.

First question he asks me is "Where will you be putting the machine?". Told him "my house", and he said there was no way I should be doing that. This machine was doing awesome on location and it would be such a waste to put it in my home where it would earn nothing.

He almost didn't sell me the machine because I wasn't going to put it on route somewhere, but in the end he did sell it to me.

While I was there I noticed a nice STTNG and picked it up for $1,800 Cdn (and with our dollar trading at 67 cents to the US dollar this would have been pretty cheap in US$!). Pretty sweet!

Bought the games from a place called Pacific Vending in Vancouver (the place is still there and the fellow I dealt with was Alan, nice guy and very helpful).

That MM was in fantastic shape, it had only been on route for maybe 6 months and it hadn't seen a lot of play.