My RUO (Route Use Only) T2.
$1200 Bought
$300 Shop Job/Repairs

$100 Repairs
$100 More Repairs
$100 Mods/Upgraded parts
$100 LEDs

$1900 into my RUO T2

My T2, bought it for 1100.
New HK ship $100 shipping included
Flipper rebuild kit $50
"Professional" repair job $1800
Misc. stuff $300
Total cost?
Somewhere in the "Kill Me Now" Range.
Still Love that game, but sweet baby jesus, Ahnold should have come with it at that price.

That is quite the story Cape Town. Thanks for sharing.

Wow really great stories. Makes me think twice about complaining next time I see a game in my area thats a little overpriced, or think some raised inserts or holes drilled for a lock bar make a machine look "trashed". I really hope you get lucky one of these days and find a Medieval Madness for 100$, you would appreciate it more than anyone else.

I know Barrywnj has a horrible reputation and I'm not here to dispute that. I must be one of the lucky ones because I have bought two machines from him. I bought a NIB IJ4 as well as a NIB FG from him. I had both shipped to Calgary, Alberta and they both arrived fine. I still have FG but I sold the horrible train wreck known as IJ4. Gawd, what a terrible game IJ4 is....... I feel a little queasy just thinking about it.

So that's my catastrophic disaster............... buying IJ4.

QSS

Yeah, it wasn't $100, but I missed a MM for $6K...
Don't think I'll ever see something like that again.

Funny that Gameplan comes up so much on the bad deals thread. They'd all be boat anchors now without the $300 mpu repro. My personal current safe buy price for a nonworking Gameplan would be $-100 dollars.

And I'm the proud owner of a fully restored Sharpshooter. Go figure.

For the OP, not sure I have a really threadworthy bad deal but I'm a little worried about writing a check for $800 for parts for my basket case Black Knight.

I have much more in my routed T2. 1700 + about 400-450 in replacing broken plastics! I don't consider that a bad deal. Not like the Sharpshooter I plan to have 900ish into!

Hopefully the PF is super nice in your unit!

Ah. Another who shares my pain.

Also my worst pinball deal.

I was young and naive.

RM

My worst deal was buying a NF from a local operator. Paid $1400. It did not fully work. Had almost a 9 out of ten playfield, but was super dirty. Faded cabinet.

The good out of this was that I learned more about the WPC than I intended. The countless hours I had into repairing everything, cleaning everything etc. I bet at least 30-40 hours.. mostly because this was my first DMD and I had to learn about everything WPC. The actual repairs were: LM339 chips on the opto board, one chip on the cpu board that was getting fried because of a super simple playfield short on the GI lighting. Simply bent the tab out of the way so it wouldn't short anymore LOL. Now, The same troubleshooting and repairs would take an hour or two, then an evening or two to strip, clean and polish.

Found out that no one wants a faded cab NF, no matter what the shape.

Finally sold it for $1600.

A couple bad deals come to mind. Not including the games I used to own that now are priced into the stratosphere. Take the MM that I bought for $3600 and sold for $4000 (looked brand new).

I bought a Derby Day back before there was much pinball related stuff on the internet - about 18 years ago. I found it in one of the toys/collectible magazines that used to be published. It was somewhere in the midwest and I had no idea how to get it here. I don't remember where I heard about him but there was some guy who used to drive around and deliver games. I called him and made the arrangements for it to be delivered. That was the last I heard from him for a month or so. One weekend my wife and I were out of town on vacation. When I returned home I had a voicemail from this guy saying he tried to deliver the game but I wasn't there so he still had it but he was retiring from the moving business and going back to Michigan. I tried to contact him several more times but was never able to do so. Somebody has had my Derby Day for the last 18 years.

The other was an ebay purchase I made in the mid to late 90's. It was for 4 or 5 games and none of them were working but they were all suposedly complete. I arranged freight shipping to get them from NY to here. Took several weeks for the seller to get them ready for pick up - he was very hard to get in touch with. If I recall correctly I paid about $2K for the lot. I don't remember what the other games were as they were all going to be sold but the one out of the bunch I wanted was Indiana Jones. I was going to fix it up and keep it. Now remember back then replacement parts were tough to come by - you had to get them from Williams if they had them.

When the games showed up they were all trash. Not the games pictured. The worst of all was Indiana Jones. It was missing several boards, the biplane, many plastics and the playfield and lock bar area was covered in what looked like cigarette ash. Way too far gone for me to do anything with at that time. I ended up selling everything for a slight loss. Still haven't had a Wms IJ. One of the games I'd like to get my hands on in the future.

The guy I bought my Dredd from threw in a bag of weed.

Hard to go wrong when you are buying NIB, but if you are like me and bought two "used" games from Barry, your story would probably be a lot different. He used phrases like "Show room condition", "One of the best I've ever seen" or "Recently gone through 100%"... Sounds great, but the pictures on the eBay auction did not match the actual games and both machines I got were in awful/non-working condition. He made no attempt to correct and I learned a very valuable lesson early on in this hobby. Your milage may vary...

A coworker of mine was bit by one of those and passed away a couple of months later. They say it was side effects of the bite. Don't mess with them.

Thank you. I was looking at one of his games . I will stay away.

Best deal may have been selling MM, and acquiring BK2K, EM Joker Poker, and Metallica LE instead.

It is not a joke. I did pull out the good stuff before it did the dumpster dive. But all in all drinking and fixing pins does not go together. Its cool, it was a long time ago so I can giggle about it now. I do regret it.

about 4yrs ago got a scared stiff off eBay 2,800 what a wreck cabinet had no red or green paint on it anywhere half of the fuses were replaced with pieces pipe bottom board inside cabinet ready to fall out plastics broken. rams were crap playfield Mylar peeling up. put in new fuses,used playfield,new rams,cut and added extra piece of wood under cabinet,and spent 36 hours repainting the cabinet looks ok and plays fine.

they say a picture speaks a thousand words, this speaks a thousand nightmares...

sorry for some reason i cant seem to get pics to upload to the site.

the termite damage.
http://postimg.org/image/hpv43atql/

i think if i did see a real medieval madness i would lose my mind, not even sure they ever came this way. things like twilight zone, addams family and the likes i have seen up for sale, but i was never lucky enough to play those yet.

yea if u have tons of pins around ur lucky, back in the day i remember the arcade here used to have tons of them, now they have like 4, but as far as pins go on the trip i checked out a ton of places and none to be found, guess i should be lucky the arcade even has some. well it was not easy to dump the game, but in the end it had to be done, its only a sf2 could have been worse. this hobby can cost u alot of money if u not carefull but im sticking it out, hopefully ill get more deals in the future that are less junky, but i think chances are slim even here cause guys who import machines to the country also have to pay higher prices now.

I've seen some cabinets with termite damage but that's the first playfield.

I've actually been bitten by a brown recluse spider about 8 times in the last year. Some people have no reaction to a bite, some have some reaction, but it is short of major tissue loss. And then there are those that lose a lot of tissue and the bite can be life threatening. I fortunately fell in the middle group, but it takes almost an entire year for the bite site to heal completely. Brown recluse spiders are small and most bites occur when they get inside your clothes as their fangs can't really penetrate through clothes.

This thread continues......

If you don't like this thread then don't read it . I personally find it interesting . Comments like yours are just frustrating .

I've been enjoying this thread as well -- keep them coming!

I was tempted to state this earlier, but didn't want to derail things. But since it was brought up already... This is true, the reaction to the bite varies quite a bit. I'm not saying you don't want to have a healthy respect for the things, but you don't need to live in fear of them. They are all over the midwest, just be cautious and don't freak out about them. I'm pretty sure I've been bitten by them more than once. I lived in a duplex that had tons of them. I'm one of the people that did not have a bad reaction. It was more painful and swollen than a mosquito bite, but I did not experience any horrible effects or tissue damage. YMMV.