What was the original price for Arcade machines.

TrevEB

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I am curious to know how much machines cost when they were new. Perhaps someone has a link to an old pricing sheet.

I'm particularly interested in Missile Command, but cost for any of the classics would be interesting.
 
Actually I had heard that the prices were 4000+ on most machines. I know that adjusted for inflation the prices are much higher... but electronics do seem to be affected less by inflation than many other consumer products. I also heard that the profitable machines would generate a few thousand a week... if this is true, thats a pretty good return on money invested.
 
The games were just as expensive as they are now. Take any original price and adjust it for inflation. Let's say a Tempest in 1982 was $2999. That same machine would be about $6000 today.
 
The rule of thumb that most operators I knew BITD was 6 weeks. If it didn't pay for itself in 6 weeks they'd either sell it (for as close to original as possible) or put it storage until they could put a kit into it.

The only exception was for pins. It first had to make the full 6 weeks without repairs.

ken
 
The question arose after I was surprised to find coin counters in my Missile Command.
Yes, I'm very new to the scene.
The cabinet made $13K before it went into retirement on free play in a Chiropractors office. At about $2k purchase price, that was money well spent.
 
The question arose after I was surprised to find coin counters in my Missile Command.
Yes, I'm very new to the scene.
The cabinet made $13K before it went into retirement on free play in a Chiropractors office. At about $2k purchase price, that was money well spent.

Maybe. Don't forget people opening the coin door and manually adding credits because they didn't know it had free play. And Missile Command's sometimes have board issues that cause the game not to come on and the coin counters to conitnuously fire...
 
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