I'm thinking anyone that knows the answer to this question will not be inclined to share it.

I work for a 30 year old amusement company on the side. Basically my interpretation is an operator with a warehouse of old "rode hard and put away wet" games from the 80s and 90s they are willing to get rid of, often in bulk. They are old, missing parts, have been broken into probably, or are otherwise deemed to be unsuitable for operating any longer on a route for profit. If you're lucky, maybe it's an operator getting out of the business and selling all his equipment, both old and new.

like everything else in this world, its who you know.

old retired ops, etc

Basically a “warehouse deal” is when someone finds a large collection of arcade or pinball machines for cheap and buys them to flip for double or triple the price they paid. Usually they buy them from an old operator that’s retiring or perhaps passed away. Most of these big deals are for 25-100 machines and the owner wants to sell as a whole to just get rid of everything as easily as possible, preferably to one single buyer. There could be working games, broken games, parts, etc. it’s a giant bulk buy. Usually these kinds of sales are not advertised its just word of mouth or knowing the right people and hearing about a big deal at the right time. I have a few friends who have done these deals. The reason most people can’t do a deal like this is they could be $50,000 or more.

About 5 years ago, a buddy of mine bought a FH from a company he used to work for that had bought a bunch of games from an op getting rid of all their pins. When we went to pick up the FH, they had removed all the op stickers from the games except for one. Long story short, I took a pic of the sticker, made a phone call and about two weeks later, on New Years Eve day, my buddy and I drove 10 hours one way to load up 21 games we bought. Took us about 5 hours to load them. We then went out to eat, almost got arrested, slept about 5 hours then drove the 10 hours back home.

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Check old phone books, the yellow pages. Check for Amusement Devices. Write down names. Do research of defunct companies. Find if owners or heirs are around. They may be stuck with things they don't know what to do with.

LTG : )

I agree with most of what you posted here but from my experiences buying warehouse deals these days you will be hard pressed to find a deal you can even come close to making double your investment on. The last "big deal" I was involved with took an investment of in excess of $50,000 and once the "smoke settled & dust cleared" my net profit was about $2500 and a couple decent dinners while I was on the road picking the stuff up.

I realize I paid top dollar for what I bought but to buy these days that is what it takes. The days of an old operator having piles of pinball machines sitting are about 15 years (or more) in the past. You might find warehouses full of old jukeboxes & arcade machines from the 1980's & 1990's sitting in a warehouse somewhere but most of the warehouses with large lots of pinball machines are long gone.

It really comes down to the math. Pinball was in its heyday before 1980 (maybe up to 1990 as a stretch). That was at least 25 to 35 years ago. So if an operator pulled machines off route when he retired in 1990 he would be close to (or over) 90 years old today. With average lifespan around 85 years his estate would have been long gone by now.

What you see coming on the market from time to time now is the estate of a pinball collector (or hobbyist) and most of the time when they come up for sale they are done by people who have a decent idea of true value of machines they are selling. Other than that you have the occasional "project stash" of someone downsizing hitting the market but again most of the time those machines are being sold near market value.

For those of you who follow Coinopwarehouse at all you will see the majority of what he is putting up for sale is arcade machines & jukeboxes. He does have pinball machines from time to time but most of those are coming from local auctions, estate sales, etc - not from an operators warehouse.

Warehouse deals are overrated anyway - way too much junk & way too small of a return for the work most of the time. Again talking from my personal experiences.

Then you are obviously paying too much.

From my experience that is your best bet. Buy machines you will enjoy playing - play them until you are ready to move on - sell those machines and buy the next few. Keeps things simple and typically a lot less stressful. Plus the thrill of the chase happens more often!

I agree 100% but if you want to buy warehouse deals that is what you have to do these days.

Talk to the bar owners the pool tables touch tunes jukebox the touch screen game on the bar normally all owned by an operator. I know my local operator and he doesn’t own or have any pins and I know who was the operator before him that he bought out years ago. On occasion I still find a pin locally that came from the older operator of this area. The current operator would sell you all of his content and his route but I just don’t see any money in it.

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Some advice...
If you ever do go to a warehouse, bring cash and a big enough vehicle. Good deals always come in the spur of the moment. No one likes to hear, “hold this for me and I’ll be back with the money.”
Cash on Glass and Load it Up.

Finding a warehouse deal like those of the past are like finding a unicorn.

I am sure there are some waiting to be found but far and few between. I have seen some in the last couple years but most of it was rough... mostly parts. And yeah you better bring cash....

Going to need more of the story =)