hmmm...

These are rare due to the back glass, but it's still a snow derby right? I can see how a collector in New York would view it as a must have.

Not a fan of this fairly spartan playfield. We shall see...

That was the one Craigslist, I think.

Yeah, you're right. A thread was posted on pinside about it. So either nobody wanted it (unlikely as $400 is fair for that machine). Or he got a lot of phone calls and realized he could get more.

Not so rare in NY - I see an average of 1 a year pop up for sale over the last 8 years or so and they sit for a while.

A few comments from the other side:

It sounds as if it was taken off of Craigslist on March 14th or close to that date.

A few people sounded interested in it because of the rarity/condition of the game (nice). We all know rarity drives up price.

Also:

If you compare the schematics for Snow Derby and Bristol Hills, you can see
that it was a sorta low-budget adaptation.

Snow Queen/Derby introduced the end-of-ball bonus as we now know it.

Now it's at $690.

$701.01

holy cow, this thing ended up going for over $1600...

edit: "interesting" bid history, to say the least...

Wow, that's more than I would pay.

Some comments about the advertisement descriptions:

"According to the "Pingame Journal", this is one of the most rare production Gotlieb pinball machines ever produced, at only 110 units made."
Does rare always = valuable?
If a particular line of machines had a very low factory run that means dealers weren't buying them. Apparently they weren't making money because people weren't playing (dropping quarters in) them.

"Add a ball" games are more fun to play then "replay" machines, especially when they are in the home, set on freeplay."
Well, I guess this is purely an arbitrary opinion. How many of our regular pins do we have adjusted to win extra balls instead of games because it's more fun that way?

"The backglass has only 2 small areas of paint missing."
"The playfield has almost no wear."
"The cabinet has the usual fading, and chipping..."
"There is also a linear cabinet crack on one side"
"...all of the contacts and mechanics are set correctly, they just may need a good cleaning."

So this pin has a flaking back glass and spots of missing paint, a PF which is worn to a degree, a faded, cracked cabinet, an unknown game count and non-working.

$1,626.99???
:-0
This only goes to show how *anything* can be worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Take that 1 away from the front of the sell price ($626.99) and I would still think twice about buying it... P. T. Barnum had it right, "there's a sucker born every minute."

You never know. Might have been great childhood memories for someone with deep pockets.

The ones that bug me are the ones that try to pass off value by ebay listings. A local selling several machines on CL said "I know my machines are worth this much because..." and points to current ebay listings. Just because somebody listed it for this much, doesn't mean it will ever sell for that much.

Now, point me to some completed listings where they actually sold, we have a more realistic number to work with.

I don't know. It looks to be in pretty good shape overall. Based on Snow Derby not a terrible player apparently. And fairly rare. $1600 is chump change compared to what a TKO or EM Joker Poker goes for. For the guy that collects hard to find Ems this doesn't seem that out of line. Especially in the Eastern US.
Alex