Kind of hard to get upset when you don;t know the history of these. This could be helpful to someone that has a hosed side piece - but the asking price is ridiculous - the shipping would be outrageous on an item like that.
I think these came from Atari's offices in Milpitas when they shut down. I recall seeing pics of the hallways with these things scattered about as wall decoration. I dont think any dedicated machines were put to death for them.
I happen to know that Atari had extra inventory of wood for a lot of games. I worked for an Operator that had about 100 left and and right hand sides of Gauntlet cabs. The guys at Atari were going to toss them all in the wood shredder but Jim intercepted them and they gave him all the cabinet parts.
i've seen various side panels at auctions. i think people just do it if they have a dead water logged beaten to shit machine as well. realistically, i wouldn't mind having some pieces of games with really cool side art rather than seeing the cab get shredded.
The guy selling them was the ink supplier to Atari. These are test prints. You can see one of the stickers says 'sample' on it. eBay has this little link called 'ask a question'. It works great ;-)
Yes I contacted the guy about it and got the response that he had supplied ink to atari and that these were just panels never actually full cabs. I considered bidding but decided to pass. Did you buy these Scott?