Price check: Silverball Mania

drjones

Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2011
Messages
135
Reaction score
1
Location
Floyds Knobs, Indiana
I have the opportunity to pick up a dead-as-a-doornail silverball mania. I haven't seen the machine in person yet but have seen pics - playfield and backglass are excellent, cabinet is a 7/10. Not really sure where to come in on price on this one; I've never purchased a dead game, and making it undead will certainly have a learning curve. Any advice or thoughts on price are appreciated.
 
You are right cosmetics are first in line before a price evaluation. If you are looking at it as an education; you would have to consider how long it would take to fix all of the bugs and if you could fix them all without paying to have it fixed.

I would go to the seller and say " there is no hope for this game but I will make an offer to buy it for parts" This way you have told the seller that it is worth nearly nothing but that he could make some money selling it to you. Also remind him if he decided to get it repaired and then sell it that he would spend 60+ dollars an hour to get it fixed and It's only worth 600 if you found the right person. If the cosmetics are good I would start at 200 - 300 and measure your own tenacity to learn.

I bought my first "dead" pin this way for 50 bucks!

Good luck
 
Silverball was my first "dead" pin purchase. I paid $150. I LOVE IT!! Early Ballys are some of the easiest SS pins to repair. Almost all of the electronic parts are avaliable and easy to troubleshoot. Price is relative to what it is worth to you. I believe a really nice machine with good playfield and fully working should bring $600- $800.
 
Thanks for the replies - I'm hoping to go and take a look at it tomorrow. It's a bit of a drive but worth it I think. The guy is looking for 300 but doesn't seem dead set on that price. And I think after going over the machine and discussing value and cost of repair etc. he'll be flexible, at least I hope so. Worst case I walk away.

I know the possibilities are probably legion, but is a dead game generally a straightforward repair (or at least fairly easy to isolate)? This isn't a case of the game turning on and not playing, or showing some GI and just sitting there. It simply won't turn on at all. I figure if pick it up for ~200 and get in over my head, at a minimum I can turn around and sell it for what I paid for it, so I'm not worried about losing money, but I want to be realistic in terms of difficulty. I'm a novice who's looking to learn, but don't exactly want to start on the black diamond slope of pinball repair if you know what I mean.
 
Get ahold of a copy of Clay's Bally repair guide. He will walk you right through bringing that game back to life. Early Ballys aren't hard to fix. Easy-peasy.
 
Dead pingames are worth $50-$100 unless they are special titles like Eldorado, Kiss, Etc. Sometimes you can get them for free, but they are usually titles that nobody wants. Silverball is a really great game. I know where you can buy an "Over-Restored" one for serious coin (but it's really nice). Buy it cheap, fix it, play it, eventually sell it. Fun from all angles.
 
Thanks all for the advice. I took a look at it today. I'll just say, lesson learned. I drove about 5 hours round trip, ended up walking away. Owner wasn't very flexible on price, came down to $250 but no further. The pics really didn't tell the whole story. Cabinet was splitting in places, faded, stained. Backglass was pretty good but flaking in a few spots. Playfield overall wasn't bad but was worn to the wood in a number of spots. A number of the plastics were cracked. Apron was chipped and dented in a few places. Boards overall looked good, burnt connections on the rectifier board, a popped fuse (F1?). Anyhow, I didn't think it was worth dropping $250 on that sucker...there will be others I'm sure =)
 
Back
Top Bottom