Quoted from Jimmydred:Seems to me you have a great collection of expensive pins at home already... Do you really need a price guide to tell you what to pay for a machine? If you don't have an idea by now, I feel bad for you.
I have sold 4 of my pins in the last year. When some yahoo starts out telling what the latest and greatest price says one of my pins is worth... Its over. I will tell you to go f*ck yourself and your price guide. Anyone with more 3 machines should have a clue as to the value, condition, and demand of a pin in the area they live in. And if your not buying, why do you need to know what the selling price is? I don't get it. Buy a pin to play and enjoy. Not to worry about if it was over/under priced. No fun in that.
My son & I have bought and sold dozens of pinball machines over the 6 years we have been in the hobby and I still research EVERY machine I buy or sell. I don't care how involved in the hobby you are or how many machines you buy and sell each year - it is impossible to know what a giving title is worth on a given day in a given area without doing some research.
Since we are limited on space (as pretty much everyone in the hobby is) and love working on machines we constantly are buying or selling something. We try to keep our prices fairly cheap when we sell so we have to be careful what we pay for machines. We don't try to make a ton of money on machines but we also don't want to take a loss on machines when we finally decide to sell. So having a history of prices really helps.
Boston Pinball is a great FREE reference but it only tells part of the story. And price guides are basically out of date before they are even published so they are basically worthless when researching prices but are a valuable resource for other information.
I don't think leaving asking price of a machine has any down side so I see no point of posters taking prices out after a sale. And as far as the IRS argument if IRS is looking at you that closely you are already in trouble regardless if price is posted on not.
Funny thing as far as IRS & "profits" from buying & selling pinball machines. If you do the math it is pretty much impossible to make money selling pinball machines. Once you figure cost of machine, fuel mileage deduction for miles driven to pick it up, cost of parts & supplies, etc very few people are really making a profit selling pinball machines these days. And even if you do make a few dollars selling one it is more than likely you will take a loss on the next one and average out breaking even overall anyway.