Kevin in Idaho has a nice one for sale

Any more contact info you can provide? pinside user name or email address? Or reference to an FS post?

Kevin Rich, Idaho.
$7,500. Exceptional quality game.
Collector quality, speaking from experience.

West Coast Pinball Collectors on Facebook.

Alternatively, Todd Tuckey, TNT Amusements.
Documented HUO, $11,000.
I have only seen one better than that one in my life, and it is local here purchased NIB.

Either one fits your needs.
-TBK

There is still one NIB in Boston (where I got mine a few years ago) I believe.

Any further contact info? Can I just dial 911 in Boston and ask for the guy that's selling a Safe Cracker? (hope you realize I was just teasing there). But seriously, I would definitely appreciate the contact info if you would be willing to pass it along.

Joe (joemagiera at ameritech dot net)
[email protected]

He does not have any more. Bummer. Probably couldn't have afforded it anyways though.

No I said I can't help u... where I got mine nib there was one sitting next to it opened and only played a few times... Some day I will go back for it but I doubt I would sell it

Sent you an email

As I already mentioned.
You wanted FULL collector quality and this is a documented 100% complete HUO machine.
I am pretty sure it has a full complement of tokens as well.
It is available for immediate shipment.

http://www.tntamusements.com/inventory/pinball-machines/

The number of this particular title in this condition floating around the world is TINY.
It is a tough game to find in PROPER CQ condition, as the wings seemed to always get torn off, and cabinet damaged.
You are not going to find a collector quality SC (with no guarantee complete anyway) for under $7000, and in about 5 years, you will be lucky to find one for under $10k.
There is no doubt you can find one, if you hunt for $5000-6500, but it that the game you want?
It is not going to come to you.
Under $5000 (which is highly unlikely now) and the game is going to be missing parts, have a chewed up cabinet, and at least a broken red playfield ramp, and certainly will not be CQ.
You may be waiting years, and by then the market will just keeping pushing up this game, and you are still in the same situation as now.
It won't matter if the market stalls in general, this game will retain its value.
Experience teaches me many things with certain games.
This is one of those titles, unfortunately.

Although high for some is actually comparable right now on the market.
Sometimes you have to "bite the bullet" and accept a dealer price, or be prepared to haggle accordingly.
Todd may cut you some slack, but you have to pick up the phone and negotiate.
Since you own a BBB, I would not expect this to be an issue for you.

Awesome collection! May you find the right deal on SC.

$11,000!!!

SC is an amazing game. It is easily the most popular game I have when non-pinball guests come over. They love getting tokens and like the timed feature of play and the board game.

The Assault the Vault mode is awesome in a home environment for tournaments and parties (give people tokens to play the mode and highest score wins, the game even tracks the five highest assault master scores).

I certainly never said I liked the cost, I just "know the drill" when it comes from dealers.
Todd did not buy this cheap, and the markup is not very much in this case around 10-15%.
That is is "finder's fee".
Someone WILL buy this game quickly, like I said I have only seen a few that are equal to this particular machines quality.
If you can find another for much less, I hope you do.
I have no doubts you can find a nice one between $6500-9500, but not a documented HUO purchased from the factory with less than 2500 plays.
You get what you pay for in this case, no more, no less.

I know you put yourself as the expert of pricing and trends, but I have been collecting for a little over 5 years now and SC has perpetually been 5500-6500 in range.

It has been one of the more stable pins in the past 5 years from what I have seen in pricing.

There is one that has been on ebay for months now with an asking of 6995 obo and still no bites. In other words that is the high water asking price currently and nobody is biting. It is missing wings but appears to be low use aside form that.

If you are patient you can find NICE SC for 5500-6500 all the time. They pop up a couple times every year. If you want to buy it right now then of course you may need to up your amount. There was a HUO less than 200 plays that sold in midwest last year for 6k. It was mint and it took a month to sell.

I don't recall stating those words to anyone here or anywhere else.
I won't argue about the current secondary market, prices, trends, or Ebay.
Especially, Ebay as a means to validate market pricing.
In case you have not noticed, pinball machines have been "riding a wave of pricing insanity" in the last 5 years, which is not being caused by my words. Why is this important? 5 years watching the market without additional history is not enough time to properly evaluate trends. That is what you have multiple sources of information to use, and it is NOT Ebay.

I am not shilling or promoting anyone.
I just work with a lot of people.

What I will state is this:

There is a huge difference between a collector quality game and an "almost" or "close to" collector quality game.
The price spike can be enormous on some titles in documented HUO collector condition in excess of 30-40% mark up.
They are in same price range as high end pinball restorations. There just are not many out there, and many people don't even know what a true HUO well maintained game looks like, let alone be willing to fork over the money to buy one.

Games that are "nice" are not necessarily collector quality.
A game might be superb, but defining true original collector quality to most is an unblemished game with minimal play.
ALL components, and bright green PCBs.
We are talking games with near NOS playfield quality here, not TC polished.

SC's without wings are not full collector quality.
SC's without beacons and domes are not full collector quality.
SC's without proper token dispenser or missing parts are not full collector quality.
SC's without full NOS factory token sets are not full collector quality (I can only estimate the value on a complete set now as factory cost was $175 in 1996).
If you know the title you know what defines that game.

If a buyer wants one, they will find what they want, private seller or dealer.
If a buyer is smart, they can negotiate, there is no "absolute" in this hobby.
My price margins are VERY accurate, based on the current market.
There is range of variance dependent on regional location.
A person should not blame me if a dealer charges more for a game consistently and buyers purchase the title anyway.
I am just reporting the results, not feeding the monster, that is why people get confused that I am some "price police" advocate.

If an owner wants a superb one, the price is between $5000-6500 from a private seller, shipping not included, which I already stated before you rementioned, but that is not what the buyer asked for assistance for overall. He wanted collector quality, which is going to start at $7000 and go up from there. This was all mentioned previously.

The window was missed with Kevin Rich, this was the game and in proximity that was desired by the OP at a fair price.

The bottom line, is if a buyer does not like the price (which I do not set anyway? I provided information?), don't buy the game.
Would I buy TNT's $11K SC?
Absolutely not, I can do better on my own as I negotiate and search out other sources.
In this I actually don't even WANT a HUO SC, as I other game priorities right now. My "hit list" titles were things like the Transporter I bought. I have to wait a little while for the market to "stall" again before I drop the money on the rest of few games I wish reacquire.

I rarely buy any game a retail dealer cost, as I generally have ability to negotiate sales, or I walk away myself.

One final thought I will share is this game has SERIOUS value in the long run.
It is a unique low production game with an exceptional amount of depth and solid game design, not an "average" Stern PoTC type.
In 10 years, most people will not be able to afford one.

I'd have to agree with all of the above. I have a proto (engineering build) pf in mine, that I bought in the WMS parts fire sale back in 2000.

Cabinet is in okay-ish condition (game was a Namco operated game), but it's 100% complete.

The PF, of course, is NOS brand new. The only games played on this were at SFGE this past weekend.

If I were to sell it (and no, it's not for sale) I'd sell the cabinet + the installed proto pf, + the original pf.

My price would be minimum 7500, and as much above that as I could get.

I know of two that came up in Michigan over the last year or so - see threads below. DylanFan71's was an amazing example of the game that I thought about buying and selling mine as it was so nice and in my opinion the price was a bargain. The other one could still be available as it was never noted as being sold but maybe this is the one Whysnow is referring to and has more insight.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-huo-safe-tracker-in-grand-rapids-mi

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-safe-cracker-in-michigan

If the one in Grand Rapids is still available I would be happy to assist if needed seeing as I'm local.

Pinball Jeff

The one listed for 8k looked stunning. SC is a phenomenal game and one that will never be remade (it's safe due to the size making it impractical to do a rerun of).

Sc is one of my favorite games. That's why we did the coil cover mod in metal and the wing/hinge kits.
Tiger law has my Huo sc... It's expensive to buy now? Try waiting a year or two more, it only hurts the longer you wait...

nah, just be patient. For the past 5 years, a few come up every year, and they are always in the same general 6k range.

HUO will of course be more expensive. But nice, fully functioning games always come up in that range. High end pin prices have been trending down, not up.

Only on the remake threat titles. The rare games that are not remake threats are still increasing. Poor Fattrain can't even get into a discussion with someone for a King Kong and his starting point blind offer is 25k.

BBB dipped back down to the 15k range for awhile but the last two sales were closer to 20k again.

I agree. If he is not looking for a HUO or CQ game he will find one in the 6k range. When I bought mine there were three available, two in the 6k range that were routed and then the one lllvjr opened NIB on this site in 2012 that was well north of the 6k point but perfect in every way...which I ended up getting. If you want a HUO example they will be well north of 6k.

^^^ I generally agree...but we've also never seen so many new titles hitting the market with massive price tags. There's only some much cash available for high dollar games... older titles are bound to take a hit.

Yes, this is a tough aspect to predict what will occur.

The newer Stern LE models all seem like they will go down due to this very true facet you identify and the desire to move on to the latest and greatest all the time. Many of the 90's classics have likewise been sold by people to make room for what many believe are better playing and faster modern Sterns with deeper code. Likewise, the remake of MM and the threat of remakes of others has been pressure on the price of the 90's game.

That said, SC is a very unique game. It's small size means it will never be remade, the cabinet alone would be super expensive to reproduce for a remake batch and getting the line ready and tooled to make a small game and small playfield just isn't going to happen. The small size also means it fits into a place in people's collection that full size games can't fit into (for this reason alone it will often never leave someone's collection and be off the market forever once it settles into a nock or cranny).

SC is a collectable game that is always a big hit with non-pinball people when they play. It goes great at parties. Collectable games are not dropping value. Games like Spirit and Varkon are only going up right now. SC has a lot in common with Spirit and Varkon, and a lot to distinguish its position from the one CC, AFM, and MM are in.

Would not disagree about the collectability of those games. Good points...

The Grand Rapids SC is gone. I know this because it is in my collection now. I would suggest to anyone to get this title now while you can. With the size of the game it is not the first game to go in some ones collection that is looking for space of another.
Magicchiz

I always here people that own the game talk about size being a plus. It takes up nearly the same total playing space unless you just have that one exact spot in your game room that will only fit a pin 1 ft shorter.

It is often the pin people sell when looking for cash. Since they have sat pretty stable at 5500-6000 for years it is a safe buy and safe sell.

2013-03-02_12.41.00_(resized).jpg

Do you still sell the wing/hinge kits?

looks like you need a few more pins

SC is a great game to have in a collection because it draws in newbies. The look on people's faces when they win a coin and it's thrown at them through the backglass is priceless. So clever to then deposit the coin back into the game to start "Assault on the Vault" only available to coin winners. So well thought out.

One day I may sell mine. But, I would be looking for $7500 or more someone else stated in this thread. I'd take safecracker over many games in the market being sold now for the same price.

Working on it...

I believe 150 in each tube, so 300 total.

Yes, the tokens are very expensive (and you want at least 50 loaded if you are going to have parties as they can spit out fast in token multiball is someone knows to hit the ramp to make more spit out). $2 each now or thereabouts for domestic.

I had a meeting with a token manufacturer in Vegas last September. It was cost prohibitive to make them in my view with more than one or two art designs. I would have to look up what they told me but the cast was far more expensive than I thought it would be (my memory is a bit off now but I think they told me $600 for each cast of different artwork or something like that). I wanted to do Pinside specific theme'd tokens kind of like TPF did earlier this year for their event (which were foreign sized tokens).

I don't disagree with you at all on that point, but that one foot makes a big difference, especially if you are going to place it outside of a game room somewhere else in your house. Its amazing how many more spaces that game can fit into and not look out of place in your house compared to a normal sized pin.

Also, because it is not theme'd on a comic book hero or something else, the game can more easily blend in to a room design. Many people would not want a giant Avengers (for example) theme'd toy sitting alone in their living room as it would make them look like an Avengers (for example) fanatic to their regular guests. SC is exceedingly safely theme'd to not make you appear nuts when it is sitting around somewhere in your house standing alone.

SC is a great game for spouses to allow your collection to grow outside of your game room, if that is something that interests someone.

too late for that, lol.

Funny, I'm not sure if I've ever seen an eight day old wanted ad go on fire on Pinside before. This is the first one that comes to mind anyway.

Someone in another thread was asking if wanted ads on Pinside actually worked, this will be an interesting thread to see if the OP secures a SC and if this wanted ad helped him. This ad certainly has generated a lot of good and positive discussion.

Haha! Yea, the mega-collectors like you have long since outgrown your game room and home. I'm actually at that point myself, I couldn't imagine having three times the numbers of games I currently own like you do. Just keeping them all running would drive me insane.

Oh...and $#!+ like this never happens over any other standard pin! Believe me!

1463138_10151746961712073_1002387839_n_(resized).jpg

LOL, that is funny.

Also, never thought of myself as anything even remotely close to a mega collector. You need like 150 to even be scratching that realm.
Granted I will be loading up 1 more in about 4 hours and 2 more on Sat

yeah with standard pins they usually just get on top of them first...

Wish I was allowed to post the photos

Very good point
Mike

You can send them all to me for a pre-approval inspection.

You too! Ha!

Even funnier is watching people go chasing after the tokens after they bounce off the bottom of the glass and go flying ... then they realize "whoa, the game's still going!" and race back to the game to keep playing.

Yes, everything's up on our website now for purchase. I did a run of about 45 sets and sold 30 sets... When their gone their gone..
Pinnovators.com

Those wing kits are awesome ... if you own a SC, you gotta get a set.

Is it true you can substitute half dollars for tokens? I bought 20 from the Texas show & it's not enough...

Half dollars are very close.

BUT, there's a much cheaper solution : dig on google for "30mm pachislo" and buy a couple of 100pks of identical tokens + an electronic acceptor off ebay. That's 200 coins for like $25, and another $30 for the acceptor.

Token problem solved.

I ran these the whole weekend at SFGE, and they worked fine.

(30 of them apparently went home with people too)

Tokens : https://www.discountcasinogear.com/Pachislo-Large-Token-100-Tokens-JUMBO-p/dp11136.htm
Acceptor: ebay.com link: itm