Spring Valley, WI
Wanted: Williams Slugfest (1991 version) in the Twin Cities or W WI area. Prefer to have the card dispenser in the machine and cabinet in presentable condition for home use.
(Topic ID: 36210)
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2 weeks later
Are there any pinball moving services close to the Twin Cities? Looking into buying a SlugFest that is currently being shopped out of NY and it would need to be moved down 12 or 13 steps into the lower level of my house (no walk-in basement accessibility). I can throw in cash, beer, etc.
Thanks.
1 month later
1 week later
Quoted from Jason_Jehosaphat:Regional Pinheads: How Are You Weathering the Pinball Market?
Just wondering what those of you here who haven't got bottomless pockets are doing that is helping you keep your spirits up.
It seems more and more I am complaining to my various friends about being priced out of the hobby. I used to be excited because there were always real possibilities around every corner. Now HUO games are bringing 20-40% more than they did just two years ago and NIB pins are backordered for months/years. I s'pose you're fine if you have a collection and you want to rotate one out. You sell your pin for a fortune and then spend that fortune to get another. Easy. But if you have a habit of taking a bath on the pins you sell (as I have), how can you possibly buy another pin with the proceeds?
To tide me over, I bought a "project" pin - my first. It's a WMS System-7 from '81. Yeah, it's OLD. I had it shipped here. It was misrepresented a bit, but when you describe a sale pin as a "project," you sort of indemnify yourself to the buyer. As in, well, what did you expect?! It's a project! So yeah, I have a lot of work in front of me before I can even plug it in. (Sent the boards off for rehab'ing today; six weeks turnaround.) I recently shopped a TZ and that was a serious grind. I said I wouldn't do it again, so I bought a Spooky pin afterward. That game disappointed in various ways, too, and I find myself yearning for a Stern again. But can I buy a NIB? Yes and no. Yes if I want to spend $7K for a PRO and get on a list and wait six months, but who wants to do that? I root around for new distributors and ask them for inventory lists, hoping to find a fresh source of worthwhile games. Right now I'm finding Beatles, STh, Beatles, Mando, Beatles, LZ, and Turtles. I will keep looking! And I will keep resurrecting this '81 System-7!
With the current market, I'm not too disappointed to only have room for up to three games right now and two openings are spoken for already.
1 week later
Quoted from Bmanpin:Now everything is challenging to get!
That seems to be the theme...non-NIB games are challenging to find now if you're looking for specific titles, especially in this neck of the woods, and NIB games you put down a deposit and wait, and then wait some more.
1 week later
Quoted from P1NBALL:New member here... Looking to get a machine for a newly setup game room. Would love the Corvette game but would be open to many others. Let me know what you have. Trying to keep the budget under $5K. Willing to drive a reasonable distance outside of twin cities metro.
Side note, I am a verified account, but still can't message individuals. Can anyone assist?
Welcome. You might want to try a wanted ad for Corvette, that way people can reach out to you. I am new to the game too and had success with wanted ads, even if in the end I didn't end up buying every game I was contacted about.
Quoted from FatPanda:Just be careful of scams. Make sure you can inspect the machine before handing over any cash. Cash being the key word here.
I bought my first pins online, so I had to take a little gamble on condition, but the games were in the process of being shopped from a dealer, I felt better about the process. The well has run dry here locally for the games I'm interested in (which in turn is going to further drive prices up), so I'm guessing my next pin will need to be shipped in as well. In hindsight, I was two years too late to the game.
Quoted from FatPanda:yeah, it's definitely hard to get a game at a decent price these days. I'm pretty much out of buying or selling anything due to the crazy prices. Thankfully, if I have the itch to play a new game, I've got several locations here that have mostly anything I'd want to play.
My advice is to stay patient. there are a lot of sellers that are willing to ship games. Just stick with reputable sellers (here on Pinside) or see if a Pinsider is willing to take a look at a game for you if your are considering getting it shipped. Road trips are fun too. New game day is always exciting. Just lots of scammers these days that will take your money and run. if it's too good to be true, proceed with caution. GL
That's good advice, thanks. Probably going to be out of the market now as I just got some unexpected medical bill news for wife's broken ankle surgery before Xmas. It went from "Oh, I'm sure my insurance will cover everything" to being $2k in the hole now...good times...
1 month later
Quoted from Dakine747:Went last Saturday for the first time. It’s pin-nirvana! I was really impressed with how well they maintain their machines too. I’m an early ss Bally fan (I have five, all ‘78-‘81) and they have a dozen or so I’ve never seen or played before. Can’t wait to go back! It’s an hour and a half drive for me, but after they close, I’ll stop at a favorite supper club in Campbellsport on the way home, and make a day out of it.
Thanks for the review. Had heard of the place before. Have some relatives that live in the Madison area and will have to stop in next time I'm in town.
1 week later
Quoted from JohnTTwo:Sounds like a awesome idea, maybe having a south east group could be do able as well. How many guys on the southeast side of town would like to do this?
thoughts?
I would be interested in a east/southeast league too with also being on the WI side.
2 weeks later
Quoted from Gopher4653:Anyone have a baseball theme they want to sell?
I may be interested in parting ways with my Slugfest, but sort of in project status now. In the process of installing a card dispenser, color DMD, and have a topper for it. Also going to swap the display cards for a 1991 Topps Kirby Puckett and Jack Morris, as sort of a tribute to the 1991 World Series being that the game came out in 1991. Cabinet is a nice example...no fade on left side and very minimal fade on right side.
5 months later
5 months later
Quoted from beergut666:The following is from a post made on reddit earlier in the week:
Well, this announcement was supposed to coincide with TILT Pinball Bar in Minneapolis, MN moving to our new, much larger space (more on that in a second), but some lawyers had very strongly worded alternate opinions.
TL;DR - TILT Pinball Bar is no more. We are now LITT Pinball Bar, same owners, same staff, same location (for now), same awesome everything except for the name.
Long story long, the pinball location formerly known as TILT Pinball Bar was contacted by lawyers from a company called Nickels and Dimes Incorporated, who operate amusement centers around the US under various permutations of ‘Tilt Studio / Tilted 10 / Tilt Amusement Center’ depending on the amenities offered. They also were issued an overly broad trademark on using the word ‘tilt’ in nearly any capacity back in the early 80’s. They’ve gone after video game manufacturers, pinball locations & arcades like ours that dare to think a word so entrenched in the pinball lexicon would have a legal owner, and be so litigious about it to issue cease and desist letters to us, pinball machine distributors, and even LITT’s friends over at Pinbox 3000 who make DIY cardboard pinball kits for kids and artsy adults. And before you assume that we just blindly opened up a bar without researching potentially competitive names or circumstances like this, the trademark they own for TILT is for “PROVIDING AMUSEMENT ARCADE GAME FACILITY ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES”. Being a bar, and having bar in our name put us into a different category where we thought we’d be safe. We could have fought this, and likely been able to keep the name but you have to realize in trademark battles like this the only people who “win” are the lawyers on both sides. After a protracted discussion with their lawyers and ours going back and forth, the bar formerly known as TILT decided to drop the fight and change the name early instead of agreeing to N&D’s onerously expensive licensing terms or continuing to spend money on lawyers. Kind of hilariously they use a lawyer for this based out of a building in downtown Minneapolis you can see from both our current & new locations, despite Nickels & Dimes Incorporated (fitting name, eh?) being based out of Texas.
LITT’s pouring millions into our next space to create a true destination pinball experience, and that’s just a better use of our limited funds than fighting some legal trolls who feel like they own a four letter word.
Hope to see you all at the new spot this summer! Just had our first 80+ attendee monthly tournament, and looking forward to doubling that at the new place with your help.
This is so asinine on Nickels and Dimes part but understand the decision to change names to focus on funding the operation rather than putting money in lawyers' pockets.
1 month later
Quoted from aaron6920:That's awesome, I got into pinball from randomly watching a YouTube series on repairing an Addams Family and said hmmmm do they still make pinball? Then lerked on Pinside for quite awhile doing research before making an account so research is key. Have fun with it!
I didn't even know Pinside existed until I got interested in starting a pinball collection during Covid. I googled a couple titles and happened to stumble across this site.
2 months later
Quoted from MasterOnion5:Sorry I’m a noob. I don’t see wanting to get rid of my Godzilla, like ever.
Also I don’t have all the neat moving tools, so physically changing them seems daunting.
My Rush watch is only because I don’t have the $ right now after my multiple table buys/builds, and Stern stopped making them.
There's a lot of things I didn't understand when I first got into pinball collecting like someone who would own the same table multiple times or constantly moving machines in and out, but everyone doing their own thing keeps it interesting.
I've heard people find their "grail game" only to sell it years later because they got burned out playing it or just didn't find the same level of enjoyment over time. No machine is ever truly bolted down, no matter what someone says. Circumstances change, life happens, etc.
1 month later
Quoted from Dan_Halen:Strange question, but anyone on here an accountant or know of a good one? I need one for my repair business, cause I'm not an accountant
I happen to be one. I work as a corporate accountant for one of the larger financial institutions in the area, not so much a CPA.
1 month later
Quoted from Keylime:What's with the TMNT and LZ pricing lately dropping 2k? Do you think they'll drop lower? Any other titles that might follow suit?
I get that they need to move old inventory, but doesn't this hurt the distributor's cut? Maybe distros are just happy to recover the cash?
I haven't been in the hobby long enough to see a price drop like this.
It seems to be happening across the board with price drops. I've also heard that Stern is dropping the price on new releases, in particular, LE models (I'm not into modern machines too much, so I don't follow new machine pricing trends real closely).
2 weeks later
1 month later
Quoted from Bohdi:I love TAXI! Miss mine like crazy. Guess my point was, I'll take Lloyd's TAXI, I give him my Police Force, and some $$$ of course
I'm in the same boat...would like to trade my Police Force also for a Taxi or Whirlwind + cash, down the road. Police Force was a Christmas gift a couple years back for the wife, but she never got into it, so I'm just writing it off as a failed attempt at a gift. I put more plays into my other machine, Slugfest. There's just something satisfying with hitting home runs and grand slams...lol.
I'd rather get machines that are played over quantity. My philosophy is that machines were meant to be played...they are entertainment devices.
Quoted from AFM95:Here is a great site to use for rainfall totals:
https://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/StateDailyPrecipReports.aspx?state=MN
Click one of the “active” hyperlinks, which allows you to scroll around and look at different rainfall amounts, times reported, etc. Typically everyone reports their totals for the last 24 hours in the morning.
It looks like Ham Lake received over 2” of rain in the last 48 hours.
It's kind of nuts. If the metro got all snow, even a 12 to 1 snow-liquid ratio would have netted two feet of snow over the two days.
1 week later
2 weeks later
Quoted from Jason_Jehosaphat:I can't even count the number of times I've read responses from veteran collectors on this forum to newbies: "Start making room now; pinball machines multiply!" I beg to differ.
I get a chuckle out of this whenever I hear this too. Can't even fathom spending more than $10k on a single NIB machine, especially when games ship with unfinished code that makes it, in my eyes, an incomplete product. Fortunately, there is location play as long as pinball continues to be "hip and cool" at the taps and brew halls. At least prices on older machines have come down a little bit from the Covid high, but I've largely turned to other hobbies and interests. I haven't been at this long, but it feels like pinball collecting went from the "lunchbox and pail" kind of guys to doctors and lawyers over the last 20 years based on how machine values have shot up.
1 month later
Quoted from foxtj24:Hudson Tap in Downtown Hudson WI got JAWS pro yesterday. St. Paul Tap has one as well.
Hopefully this sticks around in the lineup for a while at Hudson Tap. Jaws Pro is what I gravitate towards now. Fun to shoot and I love the simplicity of it, the playfield and the rules. Feels old school and fits with an older movie title.
I'm usually not a fan of modern Sterns, more so because of their business practices (pushing machines off the assembly line with beta code) and QA issues (even this Jaws has a problem with airballs near the moving shark fin and reel), but if this would be one title I would consider for home purchase. For now, I enjoy having one on location nearby to play.
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