to part or not to part that is the question
ok this may have been gone over before but here goes again.
re to part or not to part
was going to print my whole life story as it relates to arcade and pinball but its too much to type, but ive been into pinball and arcades since I was 7 and started buying them when I was 10. (first game was a wms four corners pin purchased for $40 at garage sale )
bottom line of that is I am a mix of collector, operator, home sales, ebay sales, and salvage sales when it comes to arcades and pinball.
I think there is a bigger picture here some of you are missing
I did not start with any money, so I am very practical and look at things in a very realistic way.
I was a operator for 25 yrs and you can not imagine the way the operator community looks at these games, they view them as trash cans, or porta potties that bring in cash. as soon as the trash can or porta pottie does not work anymore, and it not practical to fix, all sorts of horrendous things can and will happen to them., they don't care that it is a star wars, donkey kong, asteroids or dragons lair.
over maybe 30 yrs, I purchased over 800 games that operators wanted to throw away, I told them don't toss it, I will give you xx for it and hauled them away. about 600 of the 800 are now in homes that appreciate them and I made some $$, the other 200 or so got parted and helped other games get back to working condition. the above is my stats for saving games that operators were about to take to dump or take an axe to.
For non operator purchases, people that have had games in their home or garage, I have probably purchased about 2000 games over 30 yrs from private parties that were just done with the games, and were not gong to spend any money on repairs, out of 2000 purchased, about 1500 are now back in homes, and about 500 got parted. but without my involvement which some call "carpetbagging" "profiterring" what ever you want to call it, the outcome would be much worse for the collector community, likely 80% or more of the 2000 games would have ended up in the dump with no spare parts re-distributed, and a lot less of the games in homes.
when a home owner/collector has a asteroids game, and ends up buying a original coin door, monitor parts, or control panel, where do you think those parts came from?, if no one is doing rerpo? it came from some one like me practicing selective salvage.
My best example of how my actions have saved games is in 1985 rdi went bankrupt and there was a auction in Carlsbad calif. for all assets, I went, I was a fan of the thayers quest game, I was the only person there who was into saving/redistributing arcades and interested in saving thayers quest. there were 220 thayers kits in the auction, one lot, I bid against others who wanted to do industrial salvage and chip salvage to the kits., I ended up with the 220 kits, and re sold them thru play meter and replay mags. since there only about 400 to 600 of the games out there today, my actions contributed to a increase of about 40% in thayers quest games in the field in the end. and yes I made some buks in the process.
and no I don't have any more of the parts or kits today lol, I still get asked.
In reguard to this battlezone part out, and most game part outs, I also now try to sell the whole unit before part out, but in this case, and most of the time no one wanted the whole unit.
so now as mentioned about 9 other games will be brought back to life..
but hey I'm the GAMEREAPER right? lol or am I the savior of games?