I have reached the point of having to part with dozens of machines and a ton of horded parts that I've had over 20 years. I decided to start selling early Bally digitals as I had purchased multiples for many of them. I would repair and sell all lesser quality machines, keeping the best cab. glass, and pf for myself. Mostly after going through 2 or 3 of a title I figured would build one for my self at a latter date. For me It was a golden age of collecting no e-bay or other collectors beating the bushes like me. I got into buying 80's and 90's games off of location and my space to have games set up got full. The games I had completed for my self continued to get rotated in and out of service for a while, but the projects eventually got buried behind working machines. I always thought I would eventually complete them. I am now 66 years old have moved into a smaller house. This summer I set up Nitro Ground Shaker, Vector, and Harlem Globe Trotters, with the intention of selling them after I got them working. I got side tracked and at this time only NGS is ready to go. Trouble is if I add up what I've seen other collectors offering for good bgs,pfds,and cabs, the machines are not worth the sum of their parts. Consider the value of the boards and displays alone, and it seems to make more sense to part out even working games. I not saying I'm going to do it, but just wondering if others are doing just that. I offered the NGS to someone who had bought a game from me in the past and asked me to let it call him if I were to ever let it go. I told him I wanted $1000. and he is thinking about it. I don't want to start a bidding war, it is his for that price if he gets back to me soon. When I started looking at what it was going to cost me started me thinking about this. Opinions please.

I bought an alltek mpu and driver board to facilitate fixing these and other Ballys of that vintage. Filling machines with these would seem to be very cost prohibitive. I have working pins with original boards that I repaired years ago. I also read a thread claiming collectors prefer originals. Personally I have no problem with a new modern board that has a warranty updated components and will probably still be working when components for the originals are no longer available. As an example I have the the e-prom information from every machine that went through my hands. However it's stored on floppy disks and my e-prom programmer needs an 8bit serial port. Of course when I was doing this the only way for me to get a prom was to find a working one and copy it. Now as with the boards they are readily available. Even though the new mpu with all of it's features sells for only $200. I still see people expecting 125-150 for a old working board. I don't know if they are getting this, but for my money if I didn't have board that could repair myself I would definitely buy new. At this time I would not partout a working game. In my day almost no machine was parted out it sometime took four to make three but then extra parts were stored. I do agree the best thing to do with the projects I no longer have the ambition for is to pass them on to someone who today is as excided as I used to be over every new find. However I will be taking into account of the cost of the parts as I sell working games.

I will admit decades ago I parted out many machines that today could be restored. making 1 out of 2, or 3 out of five. That was the only way to get most parts for old machines. Mostly water or fire damaged, trashed pfs missing imposable to find back glasses. I never discarded anything I thought might be usable saving another orphan pin. I still have many beat pfs saved just for the possible future need of a part. The first pf I decided to save for parts I disassembled and cataloged the parts. It was a lot of work, and when I got done I looked at the bare wood and it looked so good I screwed it to the wall as art work. that's when I started saving extra pfs intact. Hopefully some of them will go to someone who will be as thrilled as I have been finding a part that rescued another pin.
My issue came as I started to thin my collection selling through CL. I sold a few to newbies who were respectful, and if they didn't pay my asking price, asked if id take $25 or so off, and were thrilled taking home a pin of any title. About half of the collectors were respectful, paid my asking price, or made a reasonable offer, or passed on the machine for reasons understandable to me. I enjoyed spending time with all of these people even if they didn't buy anything. No let me tell you about the collectors I didn't bond with. They came in wanted to spend hours. touch everything, and tell me my prices were too high. I have 25 or so BGs stored on a shelf just separated by pieces paper. I have a list of what I have and don't touch them myself unless I have to. One collector walked right over to them and started to paw through them. I told him to stop, if there is something you need I'll tell you if I have it and I'll get it out for you. He said oh I just want to see what you've got. I don't know if he had money or any intention of spending, but he got upset with me when told him to leave as I didn't think I had anything he wanted. I will not be parting out working games. But I will not accept lowball offers on working machines. On the other hand if someone just wanted the game without boards because they wanted to put in modern boards and I had another machine that I could bring back to life, I would make a deal. But only if I valued the boards to complete another machine. At this time I have only one working machine for sale, and it is on hold for one of the good collectors I met through CL.Today I was in touch today with The Strong Museum of Play. They are expanding there coin op collection, and want to see what I have. I have mixed feelings about this as museums can be bigger hoarders than me. They are only interested in things they don't already own unless mine is better. I have a lot of coin op other than pins so hopefully I can add to their collection and still have plenty of pin stuff to pass onto other pin side collectors. If it seems I'm making too much of this when I divorced 10 years ago it too professional movers with a big truck two days and three trips to move my coin op stuff. I know this might seem real cool, but has become a real burden to me.

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