Quoted from shanksfornothin:Is it common to have damage when receiving a game?
Everything is WAY different now than it was a few years ago.
A few years ago I could call my distributor that is a 40 minute drive away, and ask if he had say a The Walking Dead pro in stock.
With any game back then, he normally had 5 or more of everything in his warehouse, and sometimes all 5 would have damaged boxes, but he would open the box a tad more, and show me the game was fine, and I would take the game home with me, un-box it, and the game was fine.
If you have a distributor in reasonable driving distance, and you are willing to do a little extra work yourself, it pays off.
I get cash out of the bank, saves him credit card fees, and he passes that savings on to me.
I pick the games up, saves a delivery fee.
I get to inspect the box before buying the game in the first place, HELL YES!
I get to hang out with my distributor and talk in the meantime, and I really like him, and I think he likes me, he always laughs about how I walk in wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and how he used to wear those before he got married and his wife made him throw the shirts away.
When I called Jason at Classic Game Rooms to order a GZ prem, he asked me about how well the Big Buck Hunter arcade I bought from him was holding up as far as LASTABILITY. He is thinking about bringing one to his house, and wanted my opinion.
Jason is a awesome dude, if you are in driving distance of him.
Jason also hates the scalpers/flippers, so he has raised his price way up on his LE games, and he said that pissed a lot of people off.
Does not bother me, I have never bought a LE anyway.
Pinball buying is still easy, if you have a good distributor local, and you build a relation with them.
Right now you just have to stay patient, there are no longer 5 NIB's sitting on a shelf, and you have to wait a few months, or pay a scalper/flipper his profit if you are in a hurry.
I for one will not pay 12k for a GZ prem from some flipper on here to get it now, I will wait a few months and get mine for probably 9k from Jason.
If people will stop paying over MSRP to jump ahead of the line, the scalpers/flippers would have to stop this crap they are doing to make themselves a quick buck. They are a major part of the problem, but not for me. I am patient.
And I really hope my long rant here helps to save a lot of members here a lot of money.
I enjoy reading this thread, and I hope all of you have a great week!