First Pinball Purchase?

BadMrFrosty

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I am debating purchasing my first pinball machine, and I understand that they can be a considerable investment (several thousand $). For that kind of money, I would prefer a machine that will hold its value reasonably well. I am a player at heart - I have no experience in maintenance or repair - just looking for something fun to play that I can sell in a few years without taking a major hit. The theme of the game does not matter as much, although I would prefer something recent (1990+) that has multiball and a dot-matrix display.

Could anyone recommend such a game? Thanks in advance.
 
You'll probably want something that's been fully shopped out then, which means it's been cleaned, had the rubbers replaced, lights replaced, and generally made to work 100%. Your best bet is to find a local pinball community and see if anyone is selling. If you go the craigslist/ebay route you are less likely to get something that is fully working. Of my machines, my best quality one is the one I got from a fellow collector. My craigslist/ebay machines needed work.

Go to ipdb.org and look at some of the top 10-20 machines, those will command the highest prices and be in the highest demand. Twilight Zone and Addams Family can cost $3-$6k depending on condition so you should probably set your budget first. Early to mid 90's DataEast games will be less expensive ($800-$1800) and be reasonably popular if you want to sell later. My Jurassic Park was $1500 from a local collector in excellent condition and it is a consistent crowd pleaser.

Try going here to see if there are some local collectors in your area, pinballbash.com .
 
Welcome to the obsession. I'm not stating this to try and discourage you, but one thing I think everyone that buys a machine needs to realize is you are going to have to be able to work on them to some extent. Unless you have a willing friend to help you out, or you have someone who works on machines handy and you don't mind paying, you are going to have to deal with a few issues no matter how nice of a machine you purchase.

Everyone starts somewhere, and with this forum and other online resources, you'll be able to keep a machine running just fine. Just expect that at some point you are going to have to pull the glass and fiddle with something. And some simple soldering will probably be involved at some point.

Also realize that pinball machines multiply and you'll soon own several, if not a dozen. :D
 
If you go for a late 80's Williams game like High Speed, Pinbot, or F-14 Tomcat, you'll pay considerably less and get a good game that has had a pretty steady value over the past decade.

-BB
 
If you want something that holds it's value relatively well you'll want a popular game. Keep in mind that pins, like vids, aren't a good investment, but you can try to pick on that has a good chance of holding its value.
To find a popular game I'd check treasure-cove.net, look at the list of top 50 pins. Then you can check bostonpinball.biz and see the typical ebay sales price, that'll give you an idea of what they're selling for.
I agree you should get a good working, shopped game. Careful though, a lot of resellers will call it shopped, that can range from a quick wipe down to a complete rebuild. Check RGP for local hobbiest, they usually have better quality machines.
 
Also realize that pinball machines multiply and you'll soon own several, if not a dozen.

Let me give you my timeline from my very first machine bought this past November:

pin01.JPG


Nov 12 - Got my very first pin, High Speed and it was in pretty good condition too.

pin02.JPG


Nov 19 - Got my second pin, Demolition Man after selling High Speed on Nov 15. I should have gone with my gut cause I wanted a pin with lots of ramps and a DMD! I got lucky with High Speed and managed to make a small profit to help fund this one.

pin03.JPG


Nov 27 - Got my third pin, World Cup Soccer '94 but my brother in-law you see flipping the bird in these pictures was fishing so I didn't get to move it in till Nov 28 and had to go out with my wife and daughter that day so I had to dump the machine out of my car into my neighbors garage. Somehow my wife found out that day while we were out from her sister that my brother in-law won't be free till tomorrow to help Mike move his pinball machine in. She asked did you buy another pinball? I was busted and said yes and told her that was it, I promise cause now I have to complete different games to keep me happy that was enough.

Yeah Right...

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Feb 5 - Got another pinball, The Flintstones and my excuse this time was it will be for my 2 year old daughter's when she is big enough to play lol

To think before I didn't think I had room for one pinball let alone two and now I have a row of four machines :)
 
Before I got into this I thought my pinball collector friends were nuts and being a bit excessive having 20+ pins but now I know what they mean when they said you either own many or none cause it's just silly to own one :)

My suggestion is get out there and play some machines before you make your mind up because I always thought my favorite pinball was Theater of Magic until I played Demolition Man in my friend's collection and never even heard or played it before. Another good way to test out the feel of a game is through Visual Pinball as it supports DMD so you get the full experience or idea of the rules and types of shots you need to make. Also try to get a machine that is working 100% as your first that way you don't get discouraged from the hobby and try to buy from a referral. All my machines were bought from other collectors referred to me by my friend who is a collector as well. It seems they like to pass their machines around and they normally won't screw you and sell you a machine plagued with problems like some stranger on craigslist would.

If you do decide to get into this great hobby you will want to learn how to fix some of the basic stuff yourself such as changing bulbs and basic soldering. Trust me the first time my friend lifted the play field on his Theater of Magic I was in awe and had serious second thoughts cause it was very intimidating. Here is my Demolition Man for example:

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When I bought the machine it worked great for the first night and I did get a TEST REPORT error popping up but my friend said if the machine hasn't been played for a while or the previous owner wasn't very good at the game and didn't hit certain shots for a long time the machine might think there is a faulty switch. You can simply remove the glass, start a game and manually hit all the switches and targets and this should reset that. I did this and still got an error and also noticed whenever I hit the ball into the upper hole the machine would do nothing and go into search mode and I still got an error code. I checked to see if there is a switch I missed and upon further inspection I found this:

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The ground wire had broken off from the opto and got out my soldering iron, fixed it and everything was 100%.

Good luck and keep us posted on your purchase and we can hopefully guide you in getting the right machine at the right price too. The nice thing about pinballs is if you get it for the right price you can pretty much get back what you paid for it minus some replacement parts costs and your time.

-mike
 
The advice of buying a working machine is good advice. However, be very knowledgeable about what to look for when picking a game up.

It's happened to tall of us, it happened to me 2 weeks ago. You see a game, it's fully working. You bring it home and things are broken. Usually it's okay, but I picked up a fully working game, 3 connectors, 3 LM339's, 2 jumper wires on the power board and countless hours later the game still won't boot.

Also, search for things on rec.games.pinball like "going to look at theater of magic" or "what to look for when picking up Adams Family" There are a lot of games out there that have game specific issues. WH20 with lost mine wear, MB with mosh pit and drac trac wear, IJ with the path of adventure issues.

Open the back box and look at the white connectors. If it's a Williams game, you might see some that are brown or burnt, that will need to be dealt with.

Certainly go after a fully working game, but also know what to look for.
 
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I would also suggest you see if there is a local dedicated pinball forum where you live or else you could also join pinballbash.com. You might not know any local pinball collectors that could guide you so I will give you a few tips that were passed onto me.

Before you go look at the machine, head on over to ipdb.org and download the PDF manual and take a quick read through it. You might even want to print off certain pages in case the seller doesn't have the manual for the machine. The one page I suggest you print off is the switch locations page, I will use Demolition Man as an example.

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When you go see the machine make sure it is not on already and if it is simply flip the switch on the bottom right off and then turn it back on after 2 seconds. If the machine starts up and doesn't beep or display "Please press ENTER for TEST REPORT" you should be good. Sometimes you can get this error but the pin will still function and play fine as I mentioned earlier if the machine hasn't been played in a while or a particular switch has been engaged the machine will report an error. If you get this message open the coin door and there should be a 4 button service panel on the coin door. Here is a pictue from my Flintstones and you can see this service panel.

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Hit the ENTER button and pay attention to the DMD as it will list off any errors the machines detect. You might have to write some of it down and if you happen to miss one just hit the EXIT button and hit ENTER again to re-run the TEST REPORT.

I will give you an example from machine, you might get a message that says "CHECK R.RAMP EXIT SW47 ERROR". This means the very right ramp exit switch #47 might be a problem. I removed the glass and located the switch and checked the wire form and pushed it forward like the ball would to see if it engages the switch. See this image here so you can follow what I am trying to explain.

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Simple solutions to this problem could be:

a) wire form needs to be adjusted so it engages the switch
b) switch is sticky
c) wires are not attached to the leads on the switch or possibly a break in the wire connecting to the PCB

As you are doing this you will want to be in the TEST MENU -> SINGLE SWITCH TEST.
To navigate it is pretty simple as I believe the two middle buttons are labelled as "+" and "-" and you can already guess + advances the menu option and - goes back to the previous option. Once you have the TEST MENU option up hit enter and it will take you to another sub menu where again you will use the + and - to cycle through the different options.

After you select the SINGLE SWITCH TEST the DMD will display a mapping of different switch locations and when you engage it a block will appear on the DMD and disappear when you disengage it. There are other types of switches as well such as target switches and you can easily test these by just pressing on them with your finger and there are roll over switches such as the ones you see on the out lanes and again just press down on them with your finger to test.

The next test you will want to do is the GENERAL ILLUMINATION TEST. If you notice a lot of lights out this could mean:

a) bulb needs to be replaced
b) bad bulb socket from corrosion
c) break in the wiring

Usually GI lighting is connected in series so when there is a serious problem an entire be string could be affected. If you are new at this I would probably walk away from the cab unless it is priced just right cause it could end up costing you more money in the end and you would have been better off just finding a better example of the same machine for a bit more money. Let's face it you want to spend more time playing your new "old" pinball then repairing it :)

There is one more test you can do is the FLASHER TEST. Keep in mind the newer machines have a safety feature due to HIGH VOLTAGE and when the coin door is open the circuit is open and the FLASHERS will not go off. You can either locate the white pegs the coin door triggers and push them in with your fingers or just close the coin door and you will see the flasher go off. I find a good test to run is under the UTILITIES MENU called AUTO BURN-IN. Run it and close the coin door and look at all the inserts, pop bumpers, GI, etc.

Going back to my initial point of turning the machine off and then on. You might not see the TEST REPORT error message but you might notice that a message "Factory Settings Restored" appear. This could be a good or bad thing. It is good if the seller say he just put in fresh batteries prior to you arriving and this message is normal whenever you change the batteries. At this point you are best to open the back box instead of taking the seller's word and inspect the battery holder and look for any signs of corrosion like this:

315simp3s.jpg


The problems I've seen from battery corrosion is it is not localized and can do quite a bit of damage on the underside of the PCB and even on IC chips adjacent to it! Now if you don't see any corrosion I would switch the machine off and turn it back on to see if the message appears again. If it does there is probably corrosion damage that is not visible without removing the board to inspect the other side. Thank the seller for the opportunity and walk away cause you saved yourself a lot of money and back ache cause these damn machines are heavy... ask my brother in-law and he'll gladly flip you the bird lol

I hope I'm not scaring the OP away but better to be informed of these things then to spend his hard earned money and be stuck with a huge paperweight.

-mike
 
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Great information, I can tell everyone definitely has a serious passion for the hobby. Thanks for the pictures Mike.

The general consensus seems to be that I should go for a pin that is:

- Well Known / Popular
- In great shape (complete working order)

After consulting the Top 10 list on IPDB.org and the Top 50 list on Treasure-Cove.net, and doing some of my own research, I have put together a "Top 5" wish list. I chose the pins in this list based on my opinion of their playability, fun-factor, and residual value -

1. Lord of the Rings
2. Twilight Zone
3. Addams Family
4. Revenge from Mars
5. Ripley's Believe it or Not!

My absolute limit for spending would be 3k, and only if the machine wouldn't lose more than 50% of its value over several years. My initial pricing research shows several of these machines to be more expensive than 3k, but I can hold out for a deal. I might consider raising this limit if the machine has historically kept its value.

The graph on bostonpinball.biz was exactly what I was looking for. If the information is correct there, most of my top 5 (at least Addams Family) have been holding their value over the past 60 months.

The question is, who to buy from? I am unable to find any local sellers... and it seems like online retailers charge, well.... retail. That leaves eBay.... Any horror stories with shipped machines? I imagine with the amount of moving parts involved, something could go wrong.
 
It is good that you are doing your homework. I don't see any problems with your Top 5 list. The best advice I could give would be to get out there and play some different types of games; flow, stop and shoot, fast, slow, open playfield, busy playfield, etc. Don't let any list dictate to you what you should get. Find what you like and go with it.

Try to get in wiht your local collectors. I bet once you get to meeting good local folks you could bribe people with pizza and beer to get time in on their machines.

Good luck finding, and limiting yourself to, one.
 
Those are certainly going to be expensive machines. To get a "deal" it'll likely be a machine that needs work or is cosmetically flawed. But since you don't want to get into repairs/maintenance, you're going to have to the upper end of the price range to make sure it's 100% working.

In my opinion, if the game is over 10 years old, I doubt it'll lose more value then what you see on the average ebay price. Since no more of those are being made, there's no reason for the price to drop unless it gets remade/reissued. The only real differences in prices are going to be condition and location. So I would really not worry too much about resale value. Just get a game that you can afford and enjoy that is reasonably popular and you should have little problems reselling it later.

Did you check out pinballbash.com? I'm pretty sure I saw some Maryland residents there. Also put out a WTB request on here and maybe someone will have one. If you go ebay, I would look for machines that are close to you so you can check them out. Shipping a machine will likely cost $300-400 and I would be pretty hesitant to pay $2k+ for a machine sight unseen unless there were lots of pictures. You can also check out craigslist and see what pops up. I see them come up about once a week within 120 miles of me.
 
Great information, I can tell everyone definitely has a serious passion for the hobby. Thanks for the pictures Mike.

As someone mentioned already, check out pinballbash.com. I'm not even from the US and I frequent that forum as much as the local forum maaca.org up here in Canada-eh :) We have some US members that post and lurk on there as well. Lots of nice people and the old archived forums had tons of tips on repairs.

The only time I can see a pin losing serious value is if you overpaid for it from the start. My best advice is be patient, I waited almost a year before I finally pulled the trigger on my first pin that I thought was priced right and it's been all downhill after that. If it wasn't for my friend Chris I probably would have overpaid for my first pin or bought a serious lemon as he said he was just like me when he first started and made many mistakes. It's really neat to be in this circle of collector friends because I get the heads up on machines they might be letting go before it goes to the general public.

Since you are just trying to get into this hobby, instead of increasing your budget why don't you open up your game choices to other titles outside of the Top "X" lists? There are tons of cheaper and underrated fun games such as:

Demolition Man
Johnny Mnemonic
Congo
Jurassic Park
Hook
Judge Dredd

For the price one game from your wish list you could own 2-3 titles. But that is just my take on it and my friend told me as you get into this hobby your tastes will change and your standard will get higher and you will get pickier when it comes to cosmetic conditions.

I wouldn't buy a pinball blind cause it is very much like buying a used car, you need to see it first. The only way I would buy blind is by a referral or else you will be paying big $ buying from some established company.

good luck and keep us posted.

-mike
 
You can expect to find machines all across the board in terms of price, but for fully working I think your $3K limit might be an issue with most games on your list. In my opinion, fully shopped and working:

1. Lord of the Rings - $3,400
2. Twilight Zone - $3,300
3. Addams Family - $3,100
4. Revenge from Mars - ?
5. Ripley's Believe it or Not! - $2K

By far, RBON is the most reasonable game on your list. I'm not saying that you can't eventually find decent working examples of TZ or TAF for under $3K but I am saying that it's not going to be easy.
 
I think all the above are great advice to someone new to the hobby. Wish I would have known about this group before I bought my first pin.

The only advice I can add is if someone does not have the keys to the coin door/backbox becareful!!! The backbox key is usually kept inside the coin door. If they can't get inside the coin door chances are they never got into the backbox which means they never changed the batteries. This can lead to all kinds of problems and expensive board swapping and or fixing. If they say "I didn't know it had batteries", another big warning sign.

Don't buy the game in your mind before you have seen it in person. Be prepared to walk away if something just doesn't seem right with it. That's why a local machine is much better for a first pin. I've driven a long way and taken a so-so hacked game just because of the time I had invested in traveling there. Not a good way to buy a game. Follow the advice posted above and keep searching the forum and you should be able to get a great first game!
 
That is exactly why I always ask if they have a key, and if not I bring a drill with me. I've never had someone tell me not to open it up.

I think all the above are great advice to someone new to the hobby. Wish I would have known about this group before I bought my first pin.

The only advice I can add is if someone does not have the keys to the coin door/backbox becareful!!! The backbox key is usually kept inside the coin door. If they can't get inside the coin door chances are they never got into the backbox which means they never changed the batteries. This can lead to all kinds of problems and expensive board swapping and or fixing. If they say "I didn't know it had batteries", another big warning sign.

Don't buy the game in your mind before you have seen it in person. Be prepared to walk away if something just doesn't seem right with it. That's why a local machine is much better for a first pin. I've driven a long way and taken a so-so hacked game just because of the time I had invested in traveling there. Not a good way to buy a game. Follow the advice posted above and keep searching the forum and you should be able to get a great first game!
 
If they say "I didn't know it had batteries", another big warning sign.

Funny story since I was a tire kicker for a few months, I called a few randoms on craigslist that had pins I wanted for sale and I had a few basic questions that I asked and when I asked does the machine beep when turned on and say "PLEASE HIT ENTER FOR TEST REPORT", the seller sounds like he is jumping up and down for joy on the other side of the phone saying "Yes, Yes my machine does that every time!". <click.... dial tone> lol

Also the stuff I detailed before in my previous post about inspecting the machine might seem like it is a lot of work or trouble but remember if the seller is serious he will let you do all that as it doesn't do any damage to the machine. Also if the seller is too lazy to remove the glass to send you better pics of the play field via email before you make it out there to see the machine that could be another red flag.

It really pisses me off at how lazy some people are when posting ads. I saw a post for someone saying they were looking for a WCS94 so I took a few pics of mine with my phone and tried my best to capture the main flaws because there is nothing worse than traveling far to see or pickup a pin only to be surprised that it is in such crap condition that what the pictures show.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59263976@N06/sets/72157626205644384/

The areas that show the most wear are the ball kick out holes and I told him it doesn't affect game play and if it really bothers you can easily conceal the wear using Cliffy protectors. Told him there was no cracked ramps, everything works 100%, and no errors ever reported since I owned it from day 1. I even took pictures of the goody bag I got with it and told him I would throw in an extra soccer ball motor which I bought in my last order from mad-amustments.com. I just figure since the ball spins so much it might fail me at some point down the road and I'm the sort of person that likes to have spare parts on hand for anything I own that could break down. I wasn't in a hurry to sell but another collector was downsizing and had a Road Show for sale and I'm on the "one in one out" rule due to my lack of space, money and have to keep the wife happy :) If I got what I thought was reasonable for my machine I would have replace it what that.

The thing you have to be careful of when checking the machine is removing the play field glass or flipping the play field up. Again if the seller is serious he would assist and make sure you don't do any damage or screw him over. If it was me I would probably just do as the buyer asked and demonstrate to him what he wants to see works to avoid a situation where he breaks something and walks out.

The guy I bought my High Speed from didn't really know much about the machine and didn't even know the back box folded down. Poor guy said it took him 6-7 hours to move the pinball into his apartment cause he had a hard time fitting it into the elevator.
 
If you're looking for a first pin I would recommend a good Data East title like Jurassic Park. My brother's JP gets a lot of attention from guests. As long as it's working - one of the better Data East pins would be a cheap purchase, fun machine, and easy pin to resale.

I would not recommend spending 3K+ on a first pin. Things do go wrong. Easier to spend money down the road on a machine that was only $1200 to purchase.
 
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