It's almost like people type something and then you infer the negativity in their statement you want to hear.

I'm here to discuss the topic of pricing in a professional manner. If you aren't interested and don't enjoy it then don't entertain it. If you are actually serious in your question:

""Good business" is making the highest profit possible."
"What the fuck are you blathering about?!"
"If Stern wants to charge idiots ."
"What’s it like running your little corner store in the 1800s?"
"You remind me of people who used to come to the bar"
"You are extremely committed to guestimating costs without knowledge"
"Christ will this gasbag please take a day off?"
"The rest of your pointless and endless word salads"

I don't know man. Ain't no point in continuing the conversation. I gave my opinions based on stuff I know.

Uh huh.

Let's hear some stories... instead of all your idiotic arguments.
What was the first game you all bought ?
Where did you find it ?
Price ? Year ?
Do you still have it ?
Sell it ? Profit/Loss?

Your answers would be better than Levi yelling at the clouds.

My first? Pinbot $750 at AAA Auction in Columbus Ohio 1991. Had a friend bought retail and paid $1800 for an 8 Ball Champ. That’s when we went looking for where ops got there games. Was second auction I went to buy at, since wife prevented me from buying a water damaged Sorcerer at the first auction with the one line- “it ain’t Pinbot” at which point she counted to ten and made up her mind and that was that. Of course I had to agree with her, we went looking for Pinbot, and there wasn’t one there that first auction. First lesion of pinball… be patient. I shopped it out, learned all about finding a flipper return spring at 10pm on a Tuesday night BEFORE the internet and smart phones. When I bought it he was a route king, made a guy or guys a bunch of money, and was about to do it again for the next op who wanted in on that Pinbot cash. I outbid the owner, which was another lesson you learned early, but he got on the right side of the bid and got me for an extra $50. There were 3 Pinbots that day, the first one went for $900 because it was still an earner in 91 and someone wanted in on that, then later mine went up. It was the best of the three, but it knocked the operator warning check switch #23 when you turned it on. Turns out the 100k vortex switch had not been made in forever because the shooter spring was the wrong limp wristed one. This saved both the ramp (it was the only one not broke) and me some money because the third Pinbot went for $950 and it needed some serious TLC. Bought a Bride at same auction in 1993 and paid $950 for her. Same thing… best one out of three, paid the least, but owner saw I was motivated and had her lackey hit me for an extra $50 just like Pinbot right as the gavel was about to fall.

Terminator 3 in 2020 for $600 during the pandemic. It was in a teachers lounge. It was in great condition but the DMD was gassed so it wasn’t used for years.

$750CDN Cheetah off CL. 2017, Thankfully, it was not on the radar of many like it is now. Had a good pinball friend help me out with it.. Quite a few people passed on it,.. but the owner was dead firm on the price, that was what he paid for it 12 years earlier.. and by gum, that's what he was going to get.

Wish I still had it, but traded a couple of years later for a really nice T3... which was my entry into DMD (DMDs were kind of beyond me at that time, I could not fathom spending so much on myself for a hobby.. lol). T3 later sold for $5400CDN, to help fund my BKSOR LE that a friend was selling, (bit of a price hike as well due to it coming with the topper [more on this later], which was already money at that stage)... . (By this point, there is no longer any mind barrier to spending higher sums of $ lol).... and by this point I have gone through 50 or 60 some odd machines, learning as I go, churning in and out, keeping what I really liked.

I really loved that topper... but reading the crazy sales on it, reading about people needing to repair the intricate machinery of it, and particularly watching the head shake back and forth as people gave the machine hard nudges, really made me consider if I have pinballs for playing or for looking at. Sooo I went ahead and took the next crazy offer on my topper this time ($3800CDN).. and really have enjoyed not needing to worry about the liability of freaking bank sitting on the top of the machine while I'm trying to play.

First purchase: $3200 for a player's condition Eight Ball Deluxe Classic (1984) in 2018. Bought from a local storefront that has been selling and servicing arcade games and jukeboxes for over 30 years. I way, way overpaid, but I was new to the owning part of the hobby (didn't know any better) and EBD was and is my favorite all-time pin.

You can't put a price on experience, tho. On that EBD pin, I had to teach myself how to:
- Do flipper and pop bumper rebuilds
- Re-pin connectors
- Clean and adjust leaf switches
- Replace drop targets
- Measure voltages at PCB test points and at solenoid lugs

What I wound up doing to that pin:
- Repainted and stenciled the cabinet
- Installed a hardtop
- Put in new plastics, legs, and levelers
- Polished the side rails and coin door skin/trim
- Cleaned, serviced, and rebuilt all mechs
- Changed out the clown-puke color LED conversion to retro warm white for GI

New tools I picked up along the way and use to this day:
- Hakko soldering station
- Weller cordless/butane soldering iron
- Desoldering station
- Logic probe
- Crimpers and assorted hand tools
- Klein DMM
- Bench Grinder and Buffer wheels
- Playfield Rotisserie
- Dremel and accessories
- Ultrasonic Cleaner
- Tumblers

They guy who sold me the EBD is a good guy - I just paid retail (perhaps above) because I didn't know any better at the time. He helped me with answering my multitude of questions after the sale, pointed me in the right direction for repairs/maintenance (I wanted to do it myself), and at one point 4 months later (well beyond his standard 30-day warranty period) the MPU died. He gave me a brand new Alltek to replace it and didn't ask for the original MPU back. I wound up fixing that MPU myself the following year and used it for a restoration of another Bally machine.

Since that overpriced $3200 EBD purchase a/k/a Learning Experience, I've restored 4 more project/players pins acquired at more reasonable pricing (Bally Black Jack $100, Stern Meteor $800, Bally Mata Hari $350, Williams Black Knight $900) that I snagged at local estate sales. That gave me the confidence in buying/owning/maintaining some NIB pins as well (Star Trek Pro, BKSoR, Mando). I've also got a STTNG ($3500) that I bought and shopped 2 years ago but could use a full restore, and I'm currently working on my first EM (Bally Night Rider $500) that I hope to complete by this summer.

First pin... I am thinking was summer of 2003. I was more into arcades but a guy on KLOV (I think) wanted to trade his "not working that great" Jokerz! for a working Pole Position. My friend had a pole position so I bought it from him for $350. I drove the Pole Position somewhere to northern Ohio and plugged the game up in his garage to confirm it worked and once he played it a couple times, we loaded the Jokerz! into my 1986 S10.

The Jokerz! had a lot of PF wear and I fixed a few minor things on it as well as a fairly complex display issue that a newb should probably not have attempted. Anyway, once I rebuilt the flippers and got the electronics worked out, I played that Jokerz! a LOT. Like a lot more than I should have played a Jokerz! (600 plays?). After about 3 months, I decided to do a playfield swap. Yeah, I know. I found a playfield that was good (off ebay!) but not perfect. I touched it up and a friend of a friend clearcoated it. It turned out ok... not perfect but back then you took what you could get!

I let it cure for another month... It took me a couple weeks to swap it out but once I did, the game played great. I can honestly say that it made me realize how dramatically different the ball moves with every aspect of a cleared PF. I eventually traded the game to a friend for a High Speed machine that I still own. I have no regrets when I let any games go. That game taught me SO MANY things. Reading pinball schematics, general pinball electronic diagnostics and repair, flipper rebuilds, how mechanics under the PF work, and a bunch of other things. Although I did not keep the game, THAT game was likely the only reason that I still enjoy working on and playing pins today. Profit/loss? I would say at the time of the trade (I'm guessing 05 or 06), it was close to an even trade. I do like High Speed a lot more than Jokerz!.

I put games through their paces and try them out. If they don't stick, there's a reason and I just cut them free. Fast forward 20 years, my next restore is that High Speed. Truth be told, I played that High Speed a LOT more than Jokerz! and now, I also have a Getaway.

You are right, this IS a lot more fun than talking about new pinball toppers, contracting artists, and startup pinball companies that don't exist.

got my first pin at the start of COVID to have something to do that wasn't sitting on the computer. F-14 Tomcat in April 2020. Paid $1400 for what was probably an $1100 machine, and then fixed it up over the next few months, sold it in 2021 for mayyyyybe a $250 total profit.

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It was a valuable learning experience, but I never want to work that hard on a machine again. Here's everything I did:

rebuilding all 4 flippers
replacing the switch on the Yakov kicker
replacing the left center pocket coil bracket
replacing the left center pocket retaining gate wire
replacing all the incandescent bulbs with LEDs
sending the boards to Missouri for a $300 repair/bulletproofing including installing NVRAM
replacing all the plastics and star posts with NOS
replacing all the rubbers
replacing the Yagov, light lock and spinner stickers
fixing a damaged piece of playfield wood on the right outlane
replacing the rollthrough sensor on the left side lock habitrail
soldering a standup target and an LED back in to place
repairing the pulley system that drives the gumballs on the topper
generally unfucking lots of "field repairs" including stripped screw holes that'd been patched with toothpicks
tightening/locking down all the posts on what had been a very hard routed machine
dipping the legs in CLR and scrubbing them to new
stripping the paint from the left side and front of the cab, sanding, primering, painting stenciling

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it did give me (and the CFO) enough confidence to get my first NIB, which is good because it turned out to be a stranger things and man, did the TK lock and demo need a lot of tuning.

Williams argosy in 2002 for $340 plus I got the seller to throw in a fresh set of rubber.

Still have it (well it’s at a friend’s house).

First digital was a High Speed off eBay later that year for $600ish.

First DMD was a jackbot (probably also in 2002) off eBay for $1000ish.

Of the hundreds of games I’ve bought the only one that could be considered NIB was a zep LE and that was out of box but not set up (still was strapped) and got at a discount.

Hey it’s fun buying and selling pinball machines. Way more fun when it doesn’t just make you furious and insane from Focusing on NIB and obsessing over prices and praying for bubble bursts. It’s supposed to be fun folks!

I wanted to get into pinball for a long time, but I was intimidated by the complications of all the electronics and mechanical bits. I didn't know the first thing about them, not really enough to even know what questions to ask.

Then I got into early virtual pinball stuff, and built my own cab. That helped me learn a lot, or at least learn enough to know what questions to ask, and I graduated to physical games. The virtual pin got sold pretty quickly after that, once I had the real thing it just lost all appeal. I still think they're a good gateway, or something to just enjoy for what they are, but not for me anymore.

I played my new pinball friend's The Shadow and knew I wanted one as my first game. My friend told me to be patient, but I didn't want to be (we've all been there) so I paid to ship one down from Oregon. IIRC was a $2800 game with $400 in shipping. Still have it, and that's the game a lot of people know me for, if I ever sell it I think that's probably the sign I'm exiting the hobby.

I didn't find one locally for years after that, never regretted shipping one down. $3200 for a Shadow still sounds pretty good.

I don't move games in and out like some people, but I did keep buying games and learning about different eras. I think at my peak I had 11 games at once, mostly used, a couple NIB games, which isn't crazy compared to some people, but a respectable collection. I'm down to 3 now, and flirting with maybe adding another, but we'll see. It's not so easy these days to add them.

I try and focus on just having fun. Playing games I like. Doing mods that bring me happiness to make. When I had too many games and too many interests that needed space I let a bunch go. Part of that was the post-Alien funk sucking some of the fun out too. I'm over that now, so yeah, maybe another game or two would be nice. But I've learned bigger collections aren't for me, I only want what I can play, not rows of games that are pretty but too much to keep up with.

Chuckle of the day: $21 for 6 EM Chime Grommets (less than $1 each most every place else). But it's free shipping! Gotta love Game Room Guys!

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