How does one get hooked up with a "warehouse raid" anyway?

retroACTIVE

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How does one get hooked up with a "warehouse raid" anyway?

This is something that happens every so often around here... people seem to get info on some place that has a bunch of old games and they get a truck perhaps a few friends ... head out on a road trip and sometimes bring back a bunch of cool crap!

... where does something like this begin? ... someone knows someone who knows someone ... yada yada yada?

... I assume these 'raids' are not free... or are they?

... and lastly...

WHERE/WHEN THE HELL IS THE NEXT TRUCK... I WANT TO GO! :)
 
This is something that happens every so often around here... people seem to get info on some place that has a bunch of old games and they get a truck perhaps a few friends ... head out on a road trip and sometimes bring back a bunch of cool crap!

... where does something like this begin? ... someone knows someone who knows someone ... yada yada yada?

... I assume these 'raids' are not free... or are they?

... and lastly...

WHERE/WHEN THE HELL IS THE NEXT TRUCK... I WANT TO GO! :)

talk! especially to other collectors. that's probably the best. i don't think any other way than word of mouth. check with people (i.e. route ops/flippers, etc.) that would have more general knowledge of when/where a raid would be, they might give you info. sometimes you can 'raid' without raiding. for example, there've been some route people out this way shedding spare/duplicate games due to the economy.
 
Talk, investigate your area, watch the newspaper (a lot of these 1980's op's still use the actual print newspaper classifieds) , watch Craig's list and always ask if there is something more the seller who posted an ad might have.....

No warehouse raid falls into your lap.

Talk games to everyone; even some schmuck at a coffeehouse you strike up a conversation may say he hates games, but mention he knows someone who knows someone who has 100 games sitting in a storage unit or two.

The final post is what you see here - the seemingly jackpot score of a hundred cheap games for next to nothing. You don't often see the negatives or long, long timelines involved.

You don't often see the posts of the grimy, haggard looking collector who has literally crawled across the tops of cabinets infested with rats and spiders and dirt/dust, in 100 degree storage (which usually means metal sided buildings built in 1970 with no electricity or climate control of any kind)...And no way to test anything before buying.

I did two warehouse raids in my day so far. Both occurred before the web got to where you could post pics and talk about it.

Once I found a guy selling a Ms. Pac for $100 non working - when I called him he said he had 2 for $100 each (not what his newspaper ad said) and I had to buy both to get either. I scurried to the ATM and got the extra C note and drove out into Deliverance land where I found a gray haired, poverty stricken old man with 2 Ms Pac's and 38 other games and pins he was baiting for - the ad for the Ms. Pac was clearly a bait ad. I got hooked and bought everything at $100 per game. So $4000 later I had me my warehouse raid. It took literally 3 days to haul it all away and drop it all into my father's big shop and start evaluating the haul.

Most was utter trash (the building was collapsing, the man was bankrupt due to the crash in 1983 and this was in 1997) but I managed to barely break even and not get Tetanus. Lots of Williams games, a working Bagman and Ladybug, and Ikari Warriors...working but literally dissolved cabinet Jr. Pac...it was na adventure that overall took me 2 years to finally sell/fix everything. Or trash the garbage (about 1/3 of the games were only good for spare parts).

The second time was a guy 80 miles away I heard about from a fellow collector and we both drove out there in a rented UHaul. My fellow collector screwed me out of over half the truck rental fees (based on game haul) and I paid for half the gas. He also claimed dibs on everything good (he found the Op, so I didn't say anything) and before the day was over I ended up with the Centipede I still have for $100 and not much else aside from the death threat from the clearly Mafia connected Op who had told my fellow collector he could have "cabinets, not games" for $100 each. This guy in exact terms explained to us that if we loaded one more game into our truck he'd shoot us on his property and claim theft.

Mind you each of these "games" were rotting in a damp leaking warehouse...and the op was an obese caricature of a man who drove around in a straining, grunting golf cart in the rain while my "bud" loaded up a Duramold and Cabaret Centipede while I ended up with an Irish UR Centi (OK that was not a bust) and Tron Cabaret ( that I still kick myself over selling later) but after 13 hours of round trip, grunt work and getting screwed on the truck rental (he got 20 games, I got 2 and we split the truck rental down the middle - I would have gotten more but he bogarted the truck space) it was no big win.

Point being made is the easy, fun jackpot warehouse raid is a pipe dream that only 1 in 1000 collectors ever gets to experience and even then they probably busted ass for a decade before it happened.

It's like dropping 1200 bucks into a dollar slot machine and winning 1000 dollars over a day's worth of gambling. You look back on it later and realize you probably got screwed, but at the time it felt like a win.
 
call all the operators around you. i have in the past week had 2 ops ask me to come buy their shit. went to one going to the next next week. i cross communication with ops a little more frequently then most since i work for one but still.
 
Talk, investigate your area, watch the newspaper (a lot of these 1980's op's still use the actual print newspaper classifieds) , watch Craig's list and always ask if there is something more the seller who posted an ad might have.....

No warehouse raid falls into your lap.

Talk games to everyone; even some schmuck at a coffeehouse you strike up a conversation may say he hates games, but mention he knows someone who knows someone who has 100 games sitting in a storage unit or two.

The final post is what you see here - the seemingly jackpot score of a hundred cheap games for next to nothing. You don't often see the negatives or long, long timelines involved.

You don't often see the posts of the grimy, haggard looking collector who has literally crawled across the tops of cabinets infested with rats and spiders and dirt/dust, in 100 degree storage (which usually means metal sided buildings built in 1970 with no electricity or climate control of any kind)...And no way to test anything before buying.

I did two warehouse raids in my day so far. Both occurred before the web got to where you could post pics and talk about it.

Once I found a guy selling a Ms. Pac for $100 non working - when I called him he said he had 2 for $100 each (not what his newspaper ad said) and I had to buy both to get either. I scurried to the ATM and got the extra C note and drove out into Deliverance land where I found a gray haired, poverty stricken old man with 2 Ms Pac's and 38 other games and pins he was baiting for - the ad for the Ms. Pac was clearly a bait ad. I got hooked and bought everything at $100 per game. So $4000 later I had me my warehouse raid. It took literally 3 days to haul it all away and drop it all into my father's big shop and start evaluating the haul.

Most was utter trash (the building was collapsing, the man was bankrupt due to the crash in 1983 and this was in 1997) but I managed to barely break even and not get Tetanus. Lots of Williams games, a working Bagman and Ladybug, and Ikari Warriors...working but literally dissolved cabinet Jr. Pac...it was na adventure that overall took me 2 years to finally sell/fix everything. Or trash the garbage (about 1/3 of the games were only good for spare parts).

The second time was a guy 80 miles away I heard about from a fellow collector and we both drove out there in a rented UHaul. My fellow collector screwed me out of over half the truck rental fees (based on game haul) and I paid for half the gas. He also claimed dibs on everything good (he found the Op, so I didn't say anything) and before the day was over I ended up with the Centipede I still have for $100 and not much else aside from the death threat from the clearly Mafia connected Op who had told my fellow collector he could have "cabinets, not games" for $100 each. This guy in exact terms explained to us that if we loaded one more game into our truck he'd shoot us on his property and claim theft.

Mind you each of these "games" were rotting in a damp leaking warehouse...and the op was an obese caricature of a man who drove around in a straining, grunting golf cart in the rain while my "bud" loaded up a Duramold and Cabaret Centipede while I ended up with an Irish UR Centi (OK that was not a bust) and Tron Cabaret ( that I still kick myself over selling later) but after 13 hours of round trip, grunt work and getting screwed on the truck rental (he got 20 games, I got 2 and we split the truck rental down the middle - I would have gotten more but he bogarted the truck space) it was no big win.

Point being made is the easy, fun jackpot warehouse raid is a pipe dream that only 1 in 1000 collectors ever gets to experience and even then they probably busted ass for a decade before it happened.

It's like dropping 1200 bucks into a dollar slot machine and winning 1000 dollars over a day's worth of gambling. You look back on it later and realize you probably got screwed, but at the time it felt like a win.


That was a great story!! :)

Anyways, yeah, hook up with local arcade collectors. I'm lucky to have such a great group of guys living in my area. NEFTW!
 
I got my first games in a raid back in 2004 or 05. It was a 30,000 sq ft warehouse with two or three floors filled with nothing but games side by side. He was moving to a new location and did'nt want to move all of the games so he dropped them all down to killer prices from $75-$200. I found him as a seller on ebay and that's how I found out his warehouse was closing. I walked out with 5 games for $75-100 each, unfortunately I lived in a condo at the time so that's all I could fit. By the time I moved into my new bigger house he was already gone. I found him again a few months ago and now he only deals in jukeboxes, made me sad.
 
It's simple bro:

First Rule Of the Arcade Raid Club is NOBODY TALKS ABOUT ARCADE RAID CLUB.

Second Rule Of the Arcade Raid Club is NOBODY TALKS ABOUT ARCADE RAID CLUB.
 
call all the operators around you. i have in the past week had 2 ops ask me to come buy their %@#(*$. went to one going to the next next week. i cross communication with ops a little more frequently then most since i work for one but still.

What is the best way to find the operators in the first place?
 
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