Won a Star Wars upright on eBay....fair buy?

SuperGunGuru

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So I won a non-working Star Wars upright on eBay last week and today I went to pick it up. I figure with being off work for a bit longer I might as well try to keep doing my normal things, so buying cabs is one of them. :eek: I ended up winning it for $426 and there were a few other collectors bidding on it as well. I took a bit of a gamble as the pictures from the auction weren't exactly the best, but I was pretty certain it was complete with a 6100 monitor. Honestly though from the pics I couldn't even see the transformer but it turns out it was there. The seller was a pretty cool guy and said he received the machine as a wedding gift and it sat for 3 years in a warehouse before he was told he needed to come get it or it would be thrown out. I'd say the cab is probably a 6/10 and has some water damage to the bottom. The manuals were included though he showed me how a mouse had gotten a hold of it. Luckily the cab only smells musty and I can't smell any nasty urine smells like I have on other cabs. I did find the skeletal remains of a mouse inside so I'm a bit concerned about cleaning it. If anyone cares to share advice on cleaning and anything I need to be careful about in doing that I'd appreciate it. I haven't had a chance to power up and see what I have yet and I want to clean it up a bit first. As we always say pics or it didn't happen, so I'll try to get a few tonight or by tomorrow. The cab and board set are serial number 122. I think being complete it was an okay buy given the cab condition.
 
Sounds like a good price, we got a working unit with monitor problems selling around here for about $900 on Craigs.

I've never done anything with cleaning the wood before, but I'd say you could use simple green for any electronics including the monitor. Windex for the glass bezel. Lysol all purpose for any plastics and the CP. I typically don't worry about smell as long as it's not anything nasty, rotting, or over bearing in my home. Old stuff just always smells musky like that, I think its like the easiest way to tell if something is 20+ years.

Just remember to have plenty of paper towels for the cleaning though lol....
 
A few pics as promised...

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It's not super easy to tell, but this is the remains of the mouse that I found in the cab.
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Not bad really! All you've got water damage on is the pedestal from what it looks like. The sideart is really nice. And the electronics seem decently clean for something that has been kept in storage with a dead mouse lol.
 
Not bad really! All you've got water damage on is the pedestal from what it looks like. The sideart is really nice. And the electronics seem decently clean for something that has been kept in storage with a dead mouse lol.
Yeah all 4 leg levelers are rusted good so the base area has seen some moisture at some point. It's definitely an interesting story and I have to wonder how long this thing has sat. I would think the seller tried to power it on, but I'm not certain. He saw the burn marks from R29 on the ARII but someone had replaced it and not bothered to clean it off. I already have an ARII kit and big blue coming from Bob.
 
Yeah all 4 leg levelers are rusted good so the base area has seen some moisture at some point. It's definitely an interesting story and I have to wonder how long this thing has sat. I would think the seller tried to power it on, but I'm not certain. He saw the burn marks from R29 on the ARII but someone had replaced it and not bothered to clean it off. I already have an ARII kit and big blue coming from Bob.

I think you can remove #1 from your sig :)
 
I think you can remove #1 from your sig :)
I'm not sure if I'll be fully satisfied until I get a cockpit cab lol. ;) I first looked at this auction as a way to get parts if nothing else, but I really don't know that I'd have the heart to do that even if I can find a converted cockpit cab. This thing isn't minty, but like I probably already said, it's nowhere near a total junker either.
 
This thing isn't minty, but like I probably already said, it's nowhere near a total junker either.


I prefer to say a game has that 'arcade character' from its time being played. Most of my games are far from minty fresh. I kinda prefer them that way..to me the flaws, graffiti, dings and scrapes are part of what the experience was like. I never played a game that was 100% brand new looking in the arcades back in the day. Someone always scratched them up or picked at the side art or took a permanent marker and to them.
 
I guess Star Wars must be more rare than I thought. Only once did I pay that kind of money for a game (other than pinball) and it was working. But, maybe its just one of those games.
 
Great score in my books

Nice one

Go ahead and clean everything, I use a 2" paint brush for getting dust off the PCBs myself

I use mild cleaner for the tube, and take your time

All of the chassis will be repairable, so what harm can cleaning do

All the best, and I hope you are happy, you should be! :)
 
Have you checked it over and plugged it in yet to see what it does or does not do?
 
I guess Star Wars must be more rare than I thought. Only once did I pay that kind of money for a game (other than pinball) and it was working. But, maybe its just one of those games.
Well it is definitely a game that can bring more than what I paid working, but I wish I could have scored it for less. Incidentally the seller had it listed in the "video games" category on eBay but I still had 2 other bidders who also had bids in the arcade category after it. The crazy part about the auction is I ended up winning it only by a dollar! I purposely put an oddball amount like $426 in case someone did put $425 and that's how it ended up playing out.

Now that I think about it, this is the second most I've spent on any machine, but I've been lucky to get other games for free or 50 bucks, including a Tempest that only needed a power cord replaced. :) I think the most I ever paid was $500 for a UMK3 in a dedicated MK2 cab which I converted back.
 
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Have you checked it over and plugged it in yet to see what it does or does not do?
Not yet but that's on my list to do today. I just wanted to get it cleaned up a bit more. I've decided that if I end up keeping it and restoring it a bit more, I'm just going to replace the whole bottom panel since I think it's only butt jointed to the wood blocks on the inside and not tongue and groove type joints.

I appreciate everyone's tips on cleaning. I was just more worried about dealing with the nasty dead mouse. I'll take precautions when I shop vac it out just because of that fact. I haven't noticed any huge amount of droppings from him at least, but I gotta assume they are some in there.
 
Decent score for the dough. Don't be too surprised if you find mouse-piss on the board. My cage looked exactly like that on my first Star Wars and it had some pretty decent mouse piss on it... not really fun to smell as you're soldering on it.
 
Hmmmm, nice score. Did you happen to notice it sold for $100 on Aug 19th? Wonder what happened...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-A...6631?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item1c1df45717
Heh there in lies the other part of this story that I haven't shared yet. I was actually after it that first time it was listed as well. The seller had it for $99 with no reserve, but also mentioned he had it for sale locally and reserved the right to end the auction early. I asked how much he was asking for the local sale and where it was listed thinking it may have been on CL or whatever. He said he was asking $300, but also that there was supposed to be that same reserve price on the auction, but it wasn't working. He ended up canceling my bid hours before the auction ended and a few others bid on it as you see there. He told me he was going to re-list it and send me the auction link, which he did. I mean he obviously wanted to get more than what it was going for at least and he said to be fair to me and at least one other guy that he said was willing to pay the $300, he re-listed it. Ironically, I'm pretty sure it was the same guy that was high bidder on the first auction that almost got me on the re-listed auction. I've thought before if the seller would have just let the first auction go, we would have still driven the price up past the $300 he wanted. I wouldn't have blamed the first high bidder for raising hell with eBay considering he did win even if the guy wanted more. I wasn't even going to bid this time, but the doctors ended up telling me to stay off work for a few more weeks so now I had time on my hands. The seller also said he had people contacting him asking to sell the machine outright outside of eBay. In this case I lucked out. When I met the seller yesterday, he seemed nice enough in spite of the chaos from that first auction.
 
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Heh there in lies the other part of this story that I haven't shared yet. I was actually after it that first time it was listed as well. The seller had it for $99 with no reserve, but also mentioned he had it for sale locally and reserved the right to end the auction early. I asked how much he was asking for the local sale and where it was listed thinking it may have been on CL or whatever. He said he was asking $300, but also that there was supposed to be that same reserve price on the auction, but it wasn't working. He ended up canceling my bid hours before the auction ended and a few others bid on it as you see there. He told me he was going to re-list it and send me the auction link, which he did. I mean he obviously wanted to get more than what it was going for at least and he said to be fair to me and at least one other guy that he said was willing to pay the $300, he re-listed it. Ironically, I'm pretty sure it was the same guy that was high bidder on the first auction that almost got me on the re-listed auction. I've thought before if the seller would have just let the first auction go, we would have still driven the price up past the $300 he wanted. I wouldn't have blamed the first high bidder for raising hell with eBay considering he did win even if the guy wanted more. I wasn't even going to bid this time, but the doctors ended up telling me to stay off work for a few more weeks so now I had time on my hands. The seller also said he had people contacting him asking to sell the machine outright outside of eBay. In this case I lucked out. When I met the seller yesterday, he seemed nice enough in spite of the chaos from that first auction.


Gotcha, I figured he messed up being it says the starting bid is $300 in the new re-list.
 
Gotcha, I figured he messed up being it says the starting bid is $300 in the new re-list.
I was really hoping to snag it the first time and that he didn't know what he had. In a way I was surprised 2 other arcade people that knew about it considering it was listed in the wrong category, but there would have been even more competition had he put it in the arcade category. I do wonder if that would have driven the price up more. I honestly don't think it is worth much more than what I paid considering its overall condition, but maybe someone would have paid even more had they seen it. I gotta say thanks to my buddy Dan and my sister's bf John for helping with picking the cab up. Between my weight lifting restriction and 6 months of no driving, I couldn't do much, but if the doc says to do what I normally do, this is definitely it. It's helped take my mind of things for sure.
 
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