There are plenty of games listed for $2,400 that are only worth $900.

If it was a screaming deal at $2,400 you wouldn't still have it, would you?

Meh.

There is no "standard for the condition."

In any negotiation for any specific piece of property there is only a buyer and a seller, and if they meet in an agreeable place for funds to change hands for property, then it does. You can point to "standard" all you want but if this claim was anything other than smoke you wouldn't have a machine for sale, you'd have a wad of cash in your hand "on demand" and wouldn't have a machine to sell any more. That you don't is proof that what is claimed as "standard" is in fact no such thing; it is simply an offer, looking for a matching bid.

Sales of single items are almost never ongoing relationships; they're one-time transactional negotiations. If either side loses sight of this fact they're doing *themselves* a disservice.

Yep.

But the idea of the "market moving against someone" is balderdash. This isn't a stock, where every share is identical to every other and there's a daily auction for hours of every weekday with settlement on defined rules. If you had a "market price" on it you wouldn't own it any more.

Pins are more akin to boats. There's no "market price" for a particular boat either because most were made in quite-limited quantity, nearly ALL were made by hand, and all have seen varied lives. Like a pinball machine.

They are bought and sold every day, but that you got $X for one does not mean that the same make, model and year will sell for $X tomorrow.

It almost-certainly will not.

Naw, not any more than Yachtworld's kissing cousin "soldboats" is evidence of a "market price" for boats.

Like a boat pins are bespoke when you get down to it, even (in many cases) right out of the box. I happen to own two prototype machines which are certainly not "production run" ones, along with others that *are* production-run machines. I also own both NIB-purchased machines that have never left my possession as well as those that have been in commercial use. But even discounting that they're all individual devices whether it be whether this one was mylar'd and that one wasn't, this one has ghosting issues with inserts, they're hand-assembled (which has its own set of issues) etc, and that's before you account for where it's been and how it's been treated.

The last decade or so has been an amusing time to be a collector of these things. The insanity that has surrounded the so-called "market" for them makes me crack a wry smile were I to ever decide I like the money more than the pins, but it also makes me chuckle on the other side of the table. IMHO its madness and it makes for interesting conversations, but at least for me, far fewer transactions than would otherwise be the case. There's a butt for every seat and capitalism is an interesting phenomena to observe but from where I sit transacting in a machine at several times its original NIB price on the premise of a "market price" instead of at a discount for depreciation since every component in same in fact deteriorates over time (like pretty-much anything else) is much like paying 1000x earnings for a stock; the only reason it transacts there is that some other fool will give you 1001x, and the day he doesn't show up you've got a pile of wood, wire and plastic. It is my sincere hope you enjoy playing it enough to justify your own personal bit of insanity because when (not if) that comes to pass you're gonna be keeping it for a long time.

If your best offer was $100 short of his ask and he didn't have a full-price offer (and if it wasn't already gone he didn't) then either he didn't really want to sell it or he was a fool not to take your money.

Maybe.

But unless he got a full-price sale later, he still has the pin instead of the money, doesn't he?