How common are cocktail pinball games?

SRS

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I really never had much interest in pinball games and don't know much at all about them, but I am buying a PacMan from this guy and he has a cocktail pinball for sale too.

Honestly, I have never even seen a cocktail pinball machine before, but it was pretty cool looking. It is called Foxy Lady, which also happens to be the name of a strip club in Providence, RI. :D

The guy wants $350.00 for it. I think it is probably worth that just for the cool factor. It looks to be in really good shape, and he says it works fine, but we will have to get it somewhere where there is power first (it is in a storage garage right now).

So I guess my questions are: how rare are cocktail pinball games, and does $350.00 seem like decent price?
 
I really never had much interest in pinball games and don't know much at all about them, but I am buying a PacMan from this guy and he has a cocktail pinball for sale too.

Honestly, I have never even seen a cocktail pinball machine before, but it was pretty cool looking. It is called Foxy Lady, which also happens to be the name of a strip club in Providence, RI. :D

The guy wants $350.00 for it. I think it is probably worth that just for the cool factor. It looks to be in really good shape, and he says it works fine, but we will have to get it somewhere where there is power first (it is in a storage garage right now).

So I guess my questions are: how rare are cocktail pinball games, and does $350.00 seem like decent price?

I havnt seen any in person but only saw maybe 1 or two on craigslist within the last 2 yrs so id say they are rare. Id buy one at the right price
 
ive never seen one either but it does have that coolness factor. i wouldnt be afraid to go at it for $300. i feel like you could always flip it for that much
 
I have seen a few in person and played them. There really aren't any interesting titles for cocktail table pinball's unless you consider Joust to be a cocktail table pin. They sometimes have them at the Allentown PA pinball show formally known as the Pinball Wizards convention now called (Pinfest?).
 
I picked a Roy Clark the Entertainer cocktail pin for $125 off of CL and it had an awesome playfield. New set of rubbers and a good cleaning and waxing and it played pretty good. They do tend to play a little slow compared to a full size pin. I ended up giving it to my father-in-law for his birthday. Keep in mind they eat more space than a cocktail video game. If you can get him down on the price I would go for it if you have the room. I miss mine some, but I still get to play it about six times a year or so...
 
There was a pizza joint in my area that had a Roy Clark back in the day. It was a lot of fun. LOVED the sound on it.
 
I wouldn't call it rare, or even terribly uncommon. Unusual perhaps.

There might not be one on your local cl every day, but there's almost always one or two on there somewhere.

There's at least 4 cocktails on mr. pinball right now.

They have the usual battery rot issues common to late '70s Solid State pins - but no replacement boards like Bally/Stern/Gtb. If it works and you get it, remove the MPU battery ASAP.
 
Before you buy a cocktail pin, you should consider that most were made by companies that are long gone. I hear some have cusom chips on them that fail and there are no replacements.

I had an entertainer once from buying out an operator. Cleaned it up and sold it to a lady in simi valley. I was delivering a neo geo and a twilight zone pin and she saw it on my truck and bought it. She had about a dozen pins in her collection.. I had intended to take it to super auctions, but it worked out pretty good.

About the only other cocktail pin other than joust that is worth bucks is rotation 8.
 
They aren't common, but neither are they particularly valuable. They were mostly a late '70s "fad". There were a couple at CAX last year. I played a few games on them for the novelty factor.

I've heard that some brands actually used Gottleib pinball boards, but most of them used their own proprietary electronics.

Here are all the cocktail pins in the IPDB:
http://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?specialty=4&searchtype=advanced
 
I had 3 of them for a while, and it was a fun novelty when I had them. I think I sold them for about $200 each. If I had more space I would keep one of them. They are not terribly fun to play, but there are definitely worse playing pins out there. I think you would have a hard time getting $350 back out of it, but if you can get it a bit cheaper, it will be fun to have...for a little while.
 
If you want a pinball machine my suggestion would be to save your money and get something decent. A real pinball. Cocktail pins are not fun, take up a bunch of space and not really worth anything.

I had an opportunity to get a couple of them for free last year and passed so that tells you what I think of cocktail pins.
 
I agree with Lindsey......they are garbage.

They are a suck fest to work on.....a lot of custom chips (at least, on the Allied Leisure and Fascination models). A lot of the assemblies are made out of PLASTIC.....you know, the stuff Williams/Bally/Stern made out of metal, are made out of PLASTIC. Guess how well that's gonna hold up, now that the PLASTIC is 30-35 years old.

Oh yeah, Did I say....shit that should have been made out of metal is made out of plastic!

Edward
 
I agree with Lindsey......they are garbage.

They are a suck fest to work on.....a lot of custom chips (at least, on the Allied Leisure and Fascination models). A lot of the assemblies are made out of PLASTIC.....you know, the stuff Williams/Bally/Stern made out of metal, are made out of PLASTIC. Guess how well that's gonna hold up, now that the PLASTIC is 30-35 years old.

Oh yeah, Did I say....shit that should have been made out of metal is made out of plastic!

Edward

Just out of curiosity - What's with the tiny font?
 
I agree with Lindsey......they are garbage.

They are a suck fest to work on.....a lot of custom chips (at least, on the Allied Leisure and Fascination models). A lot of the assemblies are made out of PLASTIC.....you know, the stuff Williams/Bally/Stern made out of metal, are made out of PLASTIC. Guess how well that's gonna hold up, now that the PLASTIC is 30-35 years old.

Oh yeah, Did I say....shit that should have been made out of metal is made out of plastic!

Edward

To be fair to the designers, the ball never really gets going fast enough to require metal. :)
 
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