Value of home use pins

Scuba Steve

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I'm not talking about those little plastic cheap toys that you buy from Wal-Mart. What I'm referring to are classic pins that are identical to what you would find in arcades but have no coin door.

Are these "home use" pins worth affected positively, negatively, or not at all? After all it would mean the pin would get less abuse from being on a route. Thoughts?
 
Generally these pins are not respected by coin op pin collectors. They are cheaply built and there is very little documentation available for troubleshooting when something goes wrong. However, many of the parts are the same as their coin op counterparts so they can be fixed.


They tend to change hands often in this area (Seattle) and almost never sell for over $150. I doubt very many coin op collectors would be caught dead with one in their collection...
 
I keep seeing these on CL here for Dallas and I just about want to throttle someone every time. Some people are kinda-sorta reasonable, saw one go for 250$.

Keep seeing this Fireball home version being posted by some antiques mall, was listed as "Mid century" and they want 800$ for it? Give me a f'in break. :|
 
I keep seeing these on CL here for Dallas and I just about want to throttle someone every time. Some people are kinda-sorta reasonable, saw one go for 250$.

Keep seeing this Fireball home version being posted by some antiques mall, was listed as "Mid century" and they want 800$ for it? Give me a f'in break. :|

Life is too short to let stuff like that bother you :)
 
Keep seeing this Fireball home version being posted by some antiques mall, was listed as "Mid century" and they want 800$ for it? Give me a f'in break. :|

That's the post that spurred this topic. I was shocked to see how much the asking price was and was curious it was justified or just someone wishing it was worth that much. BTW here is the Craigslist post. It has gone down a little but still too much.

http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/clt/2496503581.html
 
What I'm referring to are classic pins that are identical to what you would find in arcades but have no coin door.

If indeed the lack of a coin door was the only difference, sure they might be a good value. While sometimes they do share some common parts with their big brothers, they are actually smaller in dimension than a coin op game - and the quality of construction is nowhere near a "real" machine.

Garage sale fodder that would ultimately sell for $100 or less is my guess.
 
If indeed the lack of a coin door was the only difference, sure they might be a good value. While sometimes they do share some common parts with their big brothers, they are actually smaller in dimension than a coin op game - and the quality of construction is nowhere near a "real" machine.

Garage sale fodder that would ultimately sell for $100 or less is my guess.

I'm not familiar with any pins like that.


My bad. I was under the impression they only difference was the lack of coin door. I've never seen a home use pin in person.
 
My bad. I was under the impression they only difference was the lack of coin door. I've never seen a home use pin in person.

Easy enough mistake to make. I assumed there might be something out there I hadn't heard of as well. The home use pins are an interesting novelty for $100 and under but other than that I would steer clear.
 
Well in any case... having no coindoor mean it's absolutely HUO. I think like 80% of the so called HUO's are indeed just fixed up machines from arcades. Not that it's bad or anything.. it's just that the term "HUO" these days is used for every nice looking pinball.
 
Well, I'd be more apt to pay $250 for a cherry home version of Fireball, vs. the "Star Explorer" pin sold at Radio Shack that some folks seem to think have similar value - I've seen several of those pop up over the last year, and just laugh every time... I've seen people asking $500 for those silly things - I don't think they were that much new, but it's been a few years...
 
I bought a home use only bobby orr. It had a coin door, and came from brady dist, which spullied the entire carlonia area. I think it was just a regular machine that was sold to the dude i got it from. Brady did not like to sell to the home market back in the day. This dude went to church with john brady.
 
i would never buy one of those small home game without a coin door. im talking about the ones that are like 3/4 of the size of a real machine....maybe even half size.
i ONLY take those if they are offered to me for free......they are funny to look at.....in the past 5 years i have been offered 2 of them for free
one of them was a small one called "demolition derby" which i thought was cool because i like cars. but i will admit both of my small games work however i have never played them or set them up........i will one day after every single other game in my collection is 100 percent restored and working

however i have heard of normal pinball collectors who aquire these things and set them up at the end of a row of normal/regular/coin op pinball machines.....


my favorites are the people (no offense but usually women) who have the "elvis" alive pinball machine and think that its worth....crazy, insane, stupid, stupid money.
 
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