Do you know what finger I am holding up for you right now. YOUR the ASS that keeps starting shit. F you!

The thing with me is I am not "normal" - unlike CrazyLevi & a lot of other people I go out of my way to help people and when it comes to buying & selling it isn't just about money to me it is about helping people. CrazyLevi has had more stuff listed & sold on Pinside than I have - he has been around about as long as I have and yet he has a whopping 9 positive feedbacks compared to my 32 (and I don't ask for feedbacks when I sell stuff).

If you see my original post here I just asked a simple question and yet CrazyLevi has to start a bunch of shit. I'll never do what "most people" consider normal because "normal" doesn't work for me. Over the last 50+ years I have bought and sold millions of dollars worth of stuff and I rarely make much money on a transaction. Not because I am stupid but because I really don't give a rats ass about money. To me the perfect amount of money is "enough" (keeping my bills paid and a little beyond that in case of an emergency but not a lot of excess). My goal is always to help sellers and to get what I am selling to someone who will enjoy it - nothing more & nothing less.

Anyway - like I said originally I was just asking to help someone out. No skin in the game - nothing in it for me - just a simple question "current value of a fairly nice Rocky & Bullwinkle" assuming the condition of the machine was similar to other stuff I saw at the guys house. Yet somehow CrazyLevi has to turn it into a pissing contest?

I'll never know what it sells for because I am totally uninvolved. As far as searching "past sales" that stuff was great up until about two years ago but the pinball market is so insane right now sales history means very little. But my original question was pretty straight forward until CrazyLevi did his typical BS. I asked what the current market value for a NICE Rocky & Bullwinkle would be in today's market. (It really isn't a complicated question and didn't need a lot of drama. If machine has issues that would have to be considered once you establish a fair market value for a nice machine. Then you subtract for any issues - not rocket science!)

Anyway - there will be no updates to this post because I know nothing more than anyone else. What I know is I bought some trains from a guy who is talking about selling a Rocky & Bullwinkle machine. Nothing more and nothing less.

Zaccaria's Locomotion likely has the best train backglass you will ever see. Sadly it is a Zaccaria and I just don't want to deal with owning anymore Zaccaria machines. We have owned several of them and I am just not a fan of having to do board work on them.

I am just so glad I sold the Pinball Parts Business a couple years ago and changed over to doing the model railroad stuff again. The guy I sold the parts business to is doing very well with the parts I sold him but the pinball hobby just isn't any fun anymore for me. 4 or 5 more machines to sell from the collection and then we will be down to a rational number of machines in the basement. After that I'll just close out my Pinside account and move on to other things.

It was a fun ride for about 10 years but after the two warehouse deals tried to kill me and with the way the hobby has changed I am 100% over it. And in my book once it isn't fun it isn't worth doing. Life is way to short to not be having a good time 100% of the time. And I just don't get any enjoyment from much pinball related these days.

I will say driving to pick up a few boxes of trains every few days is a lot less stressful than the unknowns of buying pinball machines. I can't tell you how many times I darn near killed myself moving 300 pound pinball machines out of basements or second floor room by myself so I am glad all of that is behind me. And taking 50 or 60 machines to a pinball show wasn't an easy task either. A couple handtrucks full of trains sets me up at most shows and I make as much on a load like that as I did on a couple dozen pinball machines. As my kid keep saying "dad you need to work smarter not harder".

Anyway you guys that are still having fun with the hobby I am happy for you but I am over it!

Sadly unlike pinball machines train values have dropped over the years instead of going up. A "real world" price on that set would likely be in the $180 to $240 range (retail) if it is nice & in original boxes. Some cars are more valuable than others so like anything else you might get more selling them one at a time but the issue doing things that way is there will be a couple in the end that will be tough to sell.

Condition greatly impacts prices on trains also so NOS will be worth more than stuff that has been assembled and used. Stuff with broken or missing parts typically brings about 25% of what nice stuff brings. So like pinball condition is everything when talking about values of trains.

As far as selling sadly eBay is currently the best venue to sell trains on. Stuff brings a lot more on eBay than I could ever get for it at shows. So 90% of the trains I sell are getting sold on eBay. On a positive note - if priced correctly trains still sell fairly well. I am mostly a Post War Lionel guy but I buy and sell just about anything model railroad related to fund the madness.

I have had a deal with my wife for over 40 years that "hobby money" funds the hobby. That way she doesn't get made at me for spending money on stuff we really don't need. Thankfully the pinball parts business funded the step over to trains and now the trains are funding themself. Sadly stuff that was worth hundreds of dollars back in the 1980's is typically bringing about 30 cents on the dollar to what it was selling for back then. So I need to be careful when buying that I am basing my offers on today's prices and not on the prices I was paying back in the 1980's. Post War Lionel accessories have taken the biggest hit as far as values go. Lionel HO has also really dropped in value over the past 40 years. But in general N gauge & HO trains seem to be doing OK value wise compared to Lionel and I think that is at least partly due to the larger size of Lionel trains and people not having space for them.

Enough about trains - this is a pinball forum so I need to stop typing!

As with the pinball machines (or anything else you are buying & selling) price guides are a good starting point but the issue with price guides is the information in them is only as good as the author who wrote them. And if that isn't bad enough even the most recent price guides are giving you information that is 18 to 30 months old. By the time the author gathers his information and publishes a book at least a year has gone by and typically it is closer to two years.

Things change quickly these days so it is always best to use as many sources as possible to determine the value of anything. That is why I typically do my "what is the current value of ___ ________ " here on Pinside when trying to value a pin I am not sure where the price point should be. It always come with a little drama but in the end once I sort through all the BS I end up with enough useful information to make it worth it.

In the end if value of anything is basically the number someone is willing to pay for it and the amount of money the seller is willing to accept. Very often those two numbers don't "mesh up" so the item just doesn't sell. Yesterday I had a good example of that with a guy I have been trying to close the deal on a small trains collection with. He has had it listed for months because he was getting ready to move. He was asking $2000 for the stuff and my number was $1500. I told him I could stretch it to $1600 but his bottom line is $1750. So now after two months of me trying he is going to pack the collection up and store it as his son's house. A couple hundred dollars isn't a lot of money but each of us had our limits and the math just didn't work so I had to walk away.

Anyway - THANKS to all who posted here. Even with the drama I got the information I was looking for and in the end that is all that matters to me.

On the "flip side" just because you got a machine with damage on a board doesn't say that every machine has damage on the MPU. I already told the guy condition is everything when it come to the value (or price) of his machine. That is just common sense. And if you go back to my original post I said "what is the value of a nice Rocky & Bullwinkle" - I never said $4000 or that the guy was going to use the number I was giving him. All I said was from everything else I saw at his house I have to assume the machine was likely very nice.

If I was a betting person I would say if the machine isn't Home Use Only I would bet it came from Heatherly's Pinball Barn years ago because this guy was in that same area and both Dan & Bill Heatherly targeted high end customers for their machines much like HEP does today. Anyone local to this area who knows anything about higher end machines knows who the Heatherly's are. For years they did work that was well known and respected in our area so I was always happy to see a Pinball Barn sticker on a machine I was looking at and considering purchasing.

In any event THANKS AGAIN to all for your input. From everything posted it appears in this case Boston Pinball and Pinside price estimates are likely spot on for that machine. If anyone does see that machine pop up for sale please let me know. I would like to know if it is as nice as I expect it will be. I probably should have taken a look at it when I was their but I didn't want to temp myself to buy another machine and I know I am weak when it comes to walking away from a deal. Plus I had a pocket full of cash and my van along so it wouldn't have taken much for me to have loaded it in my van.

As far as "updated to this post" I was talking about nothing more posted about that machine. I didn't say I wasn't going to post again.

I know I talk too much and I know I post too much sometimes but I tend to get frustrated when all I ask is for some simple answers and things become a "pissing contest".

Unlike most people I am a deep thinker and a long term planner that likes to gather as much information as possible. So I am willing to put up with the BS here on Pinside if I can get a little useful information by doing so. In the end it is all about helping people and learning as much as possible along the way. So even some of the expected BS is worth it to me just to get the information I was looking for. I fully understand people being jealous and trying to drag me down but my success has come from helping people so I am not going to change the way I do things because of a few A-holes that don't like me.

Anyway - thanks again for the useful information from this post. I'll be doing it again sometime shortly when we decide what machines are next to get sold off from our collection. But for now I am headed back to the train stuff. Have fun guys!

"Deep thought" for today. If everyone keeps replying and mocking me this post stays on page one and I am able to keep getting information from it when someone has something productive to say. So as long as you guys keep bumping this post to the top of the page you keep helping me so thank you for that.

The "trolls" are what keep pushing this post back to the top and then I feed them just having a little fun. Like I said yesterday I already got what information I was looking for so I don't expect anything more out of this post.

As far as caring what the price is - or should be - I have found over the years by helping people it has opened doors for me that have made me tens of thousands of dollars. Since most people only care about themself when you go out of your way to help someone a lot of people remember that. And sometimes (even years later) something good comes out of it. The two biggest pinball deals I ever made came from helping someone when their was nothing in it for me. In one case 5 years later one of the people I helped out turned me on to a deal containing over 100 pinball & arcade machines. So don't underestimate what "being a good guy" can bring in return. I don't do it for those reasons but I have found helping people is very rewarding so I have always done that. Just something I learned from my grandparents when I was a kid that always stuck with me. One of my grandmothers favorite saying was "you attract more bees with honey than with vinegar" which as a kid never made a lot of sense to me but as I got older I understood what she was talking about.

Once I am finally done here on Pinside maybe I'll explain to some of the "clueless" people who have mocked me over the years how they have helped me make a ton of money. For now just saying THANK YOU for the help is good enough for me. Bottom line is while you are making fun of me I am making money so it is all good!

The information from these topics really has nothing to do with making me money. But when I have something I am thinking about selling and people keep bouncing my post back to the top more people are seeing the post and more people are sending me PM's trying to buy what I am going to be selling. Typically I actually sell more machines before I put them up for sale than I do if I have to list them for sale.

I always make donations to Robin here at Pinside so it isn't about avoiding fees. It is all about getting the word out to as many people as possible and having post stay on page one really helps with that.

As far as this topic - it had nothing to do with any of that. It was just all about trying to help someone who gave me a good deal on some trains. In any event it is time to just let this topic fade away and move on. I got the information I needed yesterday.

NONE so it is time to just let this topic fade away. Anything more is just feeding the trolls.

If anyone wants to "talk more" PLEASE just PM me. But it is time to let this topic fade away and move on.

I do agree with you about the build quality of Data East machines but some of our favorite machines are some of the Data East stuff so that is mostly what we have in our collection. Thankfully once they are done - in a home collection they seem to hold up OK. But Williams System 11 machines are by far the best machines ever built as far as overall build quality and the Bally machines from that same era are a close second.