Batman DE for $2K plus shipping that was missing the whole museum door. Was my very first pinball purchase and I learned real quick about how it goes bad when buying sight unseen.

My other would be ST. My wife wont let me sell that game but I can't stand playing it more than one time in a row. Really wish I could get a TWD or X-men in it's place

Avatar pro. Maybe I would like it if it was the LE.

Metallica LE. How in the hell did I get caught up on that hype train when those went on sale?!

Wedding ring for my wife If I never made that purchase I would of been able to buy a lot more Pins !!

Yeah, I never bought one of those and pinball machines have been coming in and out of this house like nobody but mines business.

In pinball? Nothing really stands out. Paid $500 back in 2001 for a P.O.S. F-14 Tomcat. For sure pumped over $1000 (possibly a lot more) to get it back up and running like it should. It kept breaking and I eventually sold it in 2012 for.....$500.

But....it was all worth it. That machine (and the internet) taught me how to solder, how to read a wiring schematic and pretty much you name it. I was trouble shooting that thing every other month and I learned a TON. What I learned on that machine has been paid back in spades by allowing me to troubleshoot and fix all the games that have come and gone since.

Hobbit. Bought it years ago and still haven't even been able to put a game on it

this mata hari project i have right now that i spend too much on to begin with and with all the parts and labor im in way more than its value and i can't even get it to play lol. wish i never saw it for sale

SF2...I loved the theme and figured how bad could it be? Yeah...

Paid way too much for a DESW years ago when I was new to the hobby. Took a huge loss on it when I later sold it.

My King Kool. It had some aspects I thouht would be good to practice on, but it bores me to tears and i never play it.

The games I "overpaid" for are games I love in great condition. The only game I bought that I really hated was T2, and I leaned a ton about pinball tech from everything it put me through. Can't say I regret much yet.

Cumulative- a lot of the mods I bought early on in the hobby off of eBay......some real crap out there, and threw away a bunch $$$ of it.....I credit Pinside for helping me identify the " good guys" out there...truth...

If that was the only EM I had ever played I might be under the impression they were all that bad.

STLE for me. Listened to everyone saying it was a great game without playing it myself first.
Also my first Stern so it was a double whammy.

Two mistakes stick out for me... Black rose with junked playfield and hurricane with some board problems that were over my head at the time.. I did learn a few things. You pay for an education one way or another.. In this case I'd say I picked up some good knowledge fairly cheap.

The first game. And the second. And third, fourth, fifth....

Selling my HUO Tron LE right before the huge price increase. Potentially lost about 3k or more.

My wife wanted a super Mario bros. I wanted to get her involved in the hobby and jumped at the opportunity. Ended buying one for $2000. It is decent but I have seen better ones sell for less. It is my least favorite game I own but she doesnt want me to sell it. Did I mention she never plays it either? Lol.

King kool was the first EM that I brought back from the dead, I learned a lot on that pin. With a nice freshly waxed clearcoated playfield & four PBR orange dot flipper coils it plays pretty nice. You can really get those spinners flying.

IJ4..... bought it NIB.

I owned IJ Williams and it's a great game so I thought the magic of the "8 ball multiball" would be simply amazing along side the IJ4 game play and experience.

Little did I know that IJ4 was just as brutal as the movie IJ4. Huh,...... who would of thought that "life imitating art" or "art imitating life" or what ever the hell the saying is would apply to Sterns IJ4 and the movie. I have shivers just thinking about that horrific game and to this day I am scarred for life by it.

QSS

PS F#ck you IJ4......

Bought an NOS playfield for CSI and had it cleared by Chad Keller, which added about $900 to the cost of the game. But when I sold it I had to eat most of that cost, not to mention my swap labor. It was a good lesson for me...don't improve or mod a pin beyond its top-end price.

X-Men. Also, the topic of this thread seems like it gets posted every 6 months.

City Slicker...shit game and it gave me carpel tunnel

Who knew it would turn out to be the best game evaaaaa!

Bought a whirlwind cheap that looked like it was going to be an easy fix, one year later, still not done.

Bought a Mariner EM unseen. When it arrived it was mold and moist hell. Wanted to pay the guys to take it back. But I bought it...

Axl

Had a bad period 3 years ago. "Bought" MMR, Hobbit and Predator all in quick succession. Needless to say none actually have turned up. Still hoping to get MMr but I'll never pre-order again

Paid over the odds for an ID4 as one hadn't come onto the market for ages. Then naturally the week after one appeared at half the price and another a few weeks later.

Oh well, this stuff happens. Selling at a loss isn't the end of the world as I still enjoyed playing it.

Only machine I ever really regretted buying was T3. Knew after my first game it simply wasn't for me.

When I was new into the hobby (and wayyy too excited about it) I bought a TSPP sight unseen from M&P amusements paid top dollar, The game is great and I had a lot of fun, but it was wrecked. Today if I went to see the game and it was in that condition I would pass no matter the title. Valueable lesson learned to not buy from rip off flipper companies!

the first one
should have taken up a less expensive hobby :p

nah, I love pinball

You wake up at 430 with it playing seek and destroy in a loop and tell me how long it lasts in your establishment.

If u dont know how to repair machines, stay away from auctions....i over paid for a TFTC....and took a huge loss....selling it as a project machine

metallica LE, Star Wars Mame and Xmen LE

I bought a Getaway a long time ago that had a "few problems" more than what was mentioned. I was in a hurry, so I did not have time to do my standard top to bottom technical inspection. Mistake. Broken up/down ramp assembly that needed welded, missing triac board for the mars lamp, mutiple issues with the supercharger, and WPC PDB reset and other solenoid TIP problems. Last time I ever did that.

I see two out of three were Stern late model overpriced pinball machines.

How am I not surprised?

My first BSD. I put 7 hours into it after I paid for it and before I loaded it out of the PO's house.

The PO and I knew each other so it wasn't insanely awkward, but at the end of that 7 hour stretch I knew two things:

1. I was going to learn a lot more.

2. Never let emotion outpace logic in an expen$ive decision.

Thought you were sticking to tech threads?

#75 2 days ago

TBK
xTheBlackKnightx

Pinside member
US Vancouver, WA
<1y 236 18 20
markmon said:
Yours was brought into your home when it was about 5 years old and maintained by you since. It should be in relatively good (low usage) condition. Being heavy doesn't mean better. When's last time a pinball cabinet fell apart because it didnt have thick enough wood?
Did I refer to the machine being "tank" because of weight?
I never said that.
Not all WMS/BLY widebody machines were problematic.
People need to know the "Achilles heels" and be cognisant.
STTNG? Yes, because it requires much more maintenance than others, and operators were lazy with techs, the design is fine.
TZ? Yes, some things were initially over complicated, and technicians were unskilled in some cases.
I personally did not really see any major issues, because I did my tech runs weekly.
You did not start to see the ball sensor issues until a few years, the gumball machine assembly got fixed with the added plastic tab, and the Power MPF was corrected in design from samples.
Road Show? No, turn off the $%#%ing shaker motor, to prevent issues. #1 reason for problems. Its not the "eddy boards".
Judge Dredd? Sort off, the Dead World ball locking mechanics were flawed in game design, but fixed on the final part of the run.
That was the ONLY problem with this game.
Demo Man? No, there is nothing really that goes wrong, as it its just standard opto/switch maintenance, which requires LIFTING THE PLAYFIELD, again operator laziness with sending their techs. The claw mech is not a source of problems. Nor is the lift mech for the claw. EVERYTHING is accessible.
Indiana Jones? Yes, if not checked for a LONG time. The PoA opto board and corrections are not maintenance friendly.
The locking idol is simple, the rotor lock sometimes breaks. There were parts issues with this game about 10+ years after introduction now corrected.
Corvette? Depends on opinion. Personally, I thought parts of the game were not the most well designed with the engine locks and racetrack. Engineering could have been better.
Popeye? Yes, the dual level playfield was not the best in terms of accessibility even though it was a latecomer, just not a well understood game. Parts still seem hard to come by. Just not that popular. Some people had problems with the right side spinning wheel.
Cabinet issues?
Eight Ball Champ, 1985.
(Bally-Midway)
The cabinet was COMPLETE crap made out of particle board NOT plywood, but was the right thickness.
The message I am sending here, is that there are many "old timers", and I would prefer to help, hence, I will stick the tech posts in the future.

Predator.
But's that hardly a purchase as I did not receive anything.

For a real purchase, I would actually pick the Pinball Champ I bought non functional. Dirt cheap, but given how much work and $ we had to put on it and how long it took (I had this useless piece of furniture for over a year) I would never do it again. The day it was fully working, I realized I did not like that game as much as I remembered / imagined.

I bought my wife a wedding ring and she bought me a GOT. Win win.

In this order: Kiss LE--El Sucko. Code can't save this dog. TFLE--stupid, juvenile theme and an Ironhide PF and drop target that were engineering blunders. XMLE--by the time they saved the code from Waison, I had bought and sold it TWICE. IJ4, NASCAR: Both dogs. IJ4 is an EMBARRASSMENT in pin design and programming.

My girlfriend, Amber.

Fireball. Twice. EVERYBODY had that game as the best (or close) EM of all time. It was in Playboy! Zipper flippers! Fucked up my self esteem: "How can I possibly be this stupid that I can't understand how great this game is?"

When I purchased a medieval madness, I felt like it was not enough game for the money. Sold it three months later. Other than that I've been happy with my purchases.

RAZA, though like someone else said about Predator, it never really existed......though the money I paid for it was real.

So, that leaves X-Men which I bought NIB and had it through all of the code updates. I went through so much pain on that one that even the last code update couldn't keep me from wanting to take an axe to it. Even though I took a financial bath selling it, the day it left my house was a celebration.

14k to JPop

*drops the mic

mic-drop.gif

anything rusty , ive had several , pics look good initially ie decent cab and pf , but then when you start restoring where do you stop?

I buy non-working games when I already have too many other games...

I am not sure if that is a mistake? I just have a hard time passing up a $300 solidstate with all the parts intact. I figure I am at least saving it from part out and hope to be retired someday and need projects.

Nascar and Wheel of Fortune, both dogs. I tried really hard to convince myself they were fun once I got them....I was wrong.....twice.

Ok, now the big question: who shelled out more $$$$??