I thought this might bring up some fun stories. I've personally done everything from buying cabs from friends, auctions, arcade operators, imported them from other countries, etc but the most unique place I've bought a cabinet from has to be right down the road from me.
So this story requires a little info setup. I live out in the middle of nowhere. Absolute nowhere. No regular size groceries, convenience stores, cinemas, rester aunts except for mom and pop smoke filled American diners, just the post office, a couple real small time businesses and the movie rental store.
The movie store has changed ownerships a couple times in it's life. The most recent owner thought it would be fun to add a couple other things so he bought a couple arcade machines. A bad dudes and a dual monitor playchoice 10. Well, no one stuck around long enough in the store to play the arcades so he put them up for sale. I can't really rememb why I even stopped in. I think it was before I had Netflix because I certaintly haven't stopped in since. He wanted $200 for the bad dudes and $200 for the playchoice. Well I gladly gave $200 for the playchoice! Probably the best steal I've gotten as well. From what I had found out he had had them for sale for months as well and I was the only one who had even showed the slightest interest. He tried heavily to unload the bad dudes on me as well but I had no interest. Now the playchoice is in bad shape but it still works which was the important part. Plus it had a lot of great games in it like metroid and mike Tyson. I've only recently started working on it and trading carts for my perfect collection.
What similar unique stories do you guys have?