Not trying to be too specific here, lets say a Pinsider has been a member for several years, but for some reason has no forum activity and no sales history. Distance is prohibitive, shipping will be required.

Would you buy?
Is there any way to protect yourself?

Craigslist is only worth a 1/2 hour distance with cash, and a friend who's packing.

It's just weird somebody would be a member year for a couple years and never post. And this is his first for sale it would seem. Maybe he has resistance to the bug.

I'm ludicrous distance from the seller. I might try to look around for a local pinsider to verify it.
I got a non-pinhead buddy who lives 5 hours away from the seller. I'm trying to see if he would buy the game for me and ship from his place.

I read Vid's guide, again. Good read, and that escrow service sounds really nice. That's the only way I'd buy a pin sight unseen again. I'll ask if he'll accept escrow for curiosity.

Took a look at Vid's escrow, on the front page it looks like they take credit cards too.

Double protection?

I have a buddy who makes his living selling car parts on CL and Ebay. For CL transactions he only does in person in places like a Walmart parking lot in the middle of the day, and he has concealed carry. That might be a bit extreme, but he has been scammed alot. As far as Ebay, he told me he loses 30% of his money to scammers who will dispute the item, and return a box full of rocks and bricks. Then Paypal always gives the people their money back. He just accepts it as a cost of doing business.

I have never used CL for anything, but my wife has. One time she bought something in person and it was good. Every other time she bought something shipped, she got scammed. Every time she went to sell something, she ended up waiting around the house all day and the people never showed up. She quit using CL for anything. Now we never try to sell anything and just take the stuff to goodwill instead.

The horror stories I hear about CL where the game is gone when you get there, or it's grossly misrepresented, or you get there and the seller has since received "multiple higher offers" make me want to avoid CL altogether. That's why I said 1/2 hour distance, I drive a little more than that to work every day and can afford to waste 30 minutes if it's a scam.

That said, I picked up a Batman Forever off Mr. Pinball classifieds back around 2007. I never even played the game before, but the movie is one of my favorites, and the pictures off IPDB made the game look cool as hell. Called the seller, he said he had a local buyer interested but he reluctantly agreed to sell it to me without a deposit. I didn't even get pictures or the game, and drove 6 hours to get it. Looking back that was prime disaster recipe.

The guy ended up being legit, and the game was really nice. I still have it, and it's not going anywhere. It's the only game in the collection which has never broke down. I guess I got lucky on that one.

Since then I guess I have developed a much lower tolerance for risk.

As for the original subject here, I have asked the seller if he would sell it via escrow. It's been a few days now without a response...