If you are selling and get low-balled, respectfully decline the offer. If you are buying and low-balling compared to the seller's price point, be polite and justify your pricing without insulting the seller or their pin.
At the end of the day, if someone doesn't want to sell you their pin for what you are willing to pay, drop it. Don't stalk them across the internet. This community is too small and this asshole-ry will come back to haunt you.
There are only a few pinball millionaires
If you have dreams of buying pinball machines at a low price, fixing them up and selling them for a profit, I have bad news for you.
It is not a sustainable business.
The only pinball millionaires today are making pinball machines or are major distributors with large retail frontage. The fixer uppers / pin flip isn't going to return you windfall profits.
Let's look at it:
If you bought a Williams Indiana Jones Pinball machine for $3500, which is about half market price for that game.
You "shop it" (deep cleaning) - costs you about $60 in supplies and 16-24 hours of labor
You "LED it" with new LED lights, costs you about $225 in supplies and 4 hours of labor
... then there are the real repairs.
If nothing else is wrong, you got a pretty good deal. You have around ~3800 and less than thirty hours invested. But, pinball machines break and pinball machines that are for sale for a song are usually broken.
Coils will cost about $6/each, Power boards, $350 for new, $225 to repair, Main boards, $450 for new or $225 for repair. DMD's cost about $200, playfield glass about $65, playfield-specific parts can be $100-$400 depending on rarity of the title and parts availability.
So, you may have a $3800 game, worth $5500 but you also have about $1200 in risk sitting there. Your potential profit was only $1700. And your labor was free, if you did the work yourself...
So, even buying a game at a great price, you might make a little money on the sell but more often than not you won't make anything if you factor in your labor, parts and shipping on those parts. ..and to reference our example to drive the point home - there are no $3800 Williams Indiana Jones games out there. Even a Williams Indy in poor condition, sellers typically ask for the market average.
Which brings me to..
figuring out fair pricing
There are numerous sources for pinball and arcade pricing on the internet. Consider these to be more guide than gospel.
Pinside "Archive" / Pricing
PinballPrice.com
The Mr. Pinball Price Guide (book form)
For pricing, condition and title popularity tend to play the biggest role in pricing.
Stern produced 400 Tron LE's and amongst the pinball community the game was a smash hit. It is common to see a Tron LE* sell for $9,000+
*the feature matrix between an un-modded pro and an LE may have also contributed to Tron's value inflation.
Typically, a Stern DMD pin in good condition will sell for $3500-$5000, depending on the title and condition. The most popular titles, Metallica, Star Trek, AC/DC, etc might sell for nearly $6,000 if they are nice examples with the right mods.
Williams / Bally DMD games will usually sell for $2,000-$4000, depending on condition. A few titles are exceptions and will sell for $6,000-$9,000. (Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, TOTAN, Scared Stiff, etc)
Pinball 2000 sort of fall into their own category. Pin2k Star Wars Ep1, usually will go for $2000-$2600, depending on condition, while Pin2k Revenge from Mars will usually go for $3000-$4000.
LCD Games like Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, Full Throttle, Alien are typically selling used for $7500-$8500. Stern is expected to release an LCD title in 2016 but those prices are expected to be aligned more towards Stern's baseline / other SPIKE games. Probably +/- $600 f
Boutique / limited run games like those from Spooky Pinball will usually sell used for more than their retail (+/- ~$9,000) prices. Dutch Pinball & Heighway could fall into this category but as their production numbers aren't (as) limited I tend to lump them in the LCD games grouping.
Shipping and logistics
When looking for games, the natural tendency is to favor local ads, something you can drive to within a day. I will admit that I tend to associate an 'opportunity value' to something local, when looking for a game. If I can get it today, even if it costs a little more than I expect it should, I tend to favor the instant gratification over the out-of-region buys.
That said, if you open your searches to include out-of-region sources and consider shipping the pin, you will have a better selection to choose from.
When shipping a pin, you can choose a 'legs on' move, a 'palleted' move and there are some 'other ways'.
For legs-on move, you put the head down, wrap it in a moving blanket and a mover comes for the game.
The most common provider of this service is:
NAVL / STI - Contact Michelle @ mbianchi@precision-nal.com / 630-352-3312
- I've found average prices are about $475 for this service.
You can pallet a game and ship via a pallet. To do this, you secure the balls and loose items, take off the legs, wrap it moving blankets, cardboard optional, wrap it in pallet wrap and secure it to a pallet. The back of the machine will be resting on the pallet, the legs secured and bundled to cabinet bottom with pallet wrap and/or cardboard and tape.
RL Carriers is a typical conveyance for this method and prices start around $300.
Pinball companies usually by freight in packs from Freight brokers. Ask around, you may be able to find better pricing than you can find going straight to the shipper.
Another way to ship a palleted game is to use a service like Forward Air. It is a depot-to-depot shipping service. The idea is, you locate a local depot and deliver the palleted game to that depot. Forward Air, then ships the pallet to the depot closest to the destination and the buyer then picks up the game from their depot. The average price for this service is about $275 cross-country.
There are pinball-specific moving services, run by operators and pinball industry folks. One such offering is Pinballs on the Move. You basically schedule a buy during one of his routes and if the source and destinations are reasonably within his route, he will pick up your game and deliver it for a reasonable fee. ($275 ish, if my memory serves)
Finally, in the crowdsourced economy you can sometimes find folks willing to move a game. Try Craigslist from the seller's city, you can often find folks out of work, looking for side work and willing to do a regional pin-move.
Services like Roadie (think of it like uber but for packages) are growing to include pickup-truck sized loads. Today, you can likely leverage these services for a pinball move - in the future, the freight business will look more like Roadie or even to some extent: uShip than RLCarriers, FreightQuote.com, etc.
Sum it all up
If you are getting into pinball for the first time, welcome to hobby!
If buying used, find a bring an impartial (ideally pin-Educated) friend to help judge condition of the game.
If buying new, balance your retail options with distributor options. If you need service after the sale and have a local retailer, consider retail. If you plan to service the machine yourself or have a repair dude in mind, enjoy the price-benefits of buying from a distributor.
Respect that people have the right to assign value their stuff. Bring supporting materials to justify your offers and in the end of the day, whichever side of the transaction you are on - respect the buyer / seller position.
Expand your searches. Consider buying regionally or even nationally. Here on the Alabama Gulf Coast we are (often) limited in our local selection. Buying a machine nationally opens up your options. Get lots of pictures.
Shop around for shipping alternatives.