welcome back to another episode of the wedgehead pinball podcast the pinball subreddits favorite pinball podcast on the air today. I am Alex, the water boy in my own house in the basement. I'm joined today by my longtime friend and faithful co-host, Alan. Alan, how are you doing? I'm doing extra fantastic today, water boy, because we're here to plug our coffee sponsorship. If you like the show and you appreciate the episodes we do, you can go to ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead podcast and support us. Yeah. Send us a couple of bones. Price of a cup of coffee. You can help send this podcast, Johnny Two Slap on Instagram's favorite podcast to Pentastic in Allentown. Personal shout out to the listeners. Yeah, that's the kind of attention you get when you're a vocal supporter of the show. And, you know, you might get a shout out, too. Maybe it's not a promise because there's a handful of you. Go to ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. Send us, you know, a couple bucks if you like the show and you want us to go to Pentastic and make content about that. And more importantly, meet some of our East Coast friends. I'm working really hard day and night slaving away on a beautiful graphic that features a thermometer filling up as we get more money to go to Pentastic. Nobody knows what will happen if we hit 100%. I don't even know. I don't know. We don't know what that illustration is going to look like. Nobody knows. If you want to see what that looks like, you have to donate. We're at 11% at the time of this recording. It's going up every day. You want to be a part of history, go donate. Coffee.com, White Shirt Podcast. Into today's topic, Alan, it's a biggie. It's something so big that we already did an episode on it, but we wanted to do another one. It's a pinball buyer's guide. Longtime listeners of the show might remember we did an episode where we basically went off the rails telling you not to buy a pinball machine, and if you do, only buy a new stern. Both of those things still are true. but we're still going to give you some more advice. Yeah, I think we should push people back towards our previous episode. It was called So You Want to Buy a Pinball Machine. Yeah, beautiful title. We did it a while ago. And I think that show, what we were trying to really do was to be like, hey, everyone, when you get into pinball, is going to be like, if you have the space and the money, everyone's going to be like, you need to buy a pinball machine. That's what the hobby is, buy a pinball machine. In that episode, we go over kind of some of the like, They take up a lot of space. They're expensive. They break all the time. All those sorts of things. You're going to buy it, and then you're going to play it a lot for the first couple weeks, and then you won't play it as much. Yeah. All the reasons why maybe you don't want to buy a pinball machine. Maybe you just want to go play it on location. Yes. That episode was very much aimed as a companion piece to our So You Want to Play Pinball episode, very much aimed at new people to the hobby, thinking about buying a game for the first time, and our advice to people in that position. This episode is for those of you as dumb as myself that really are convinced you're going to go buy one of these things, huh? There's a lot of reasons to buy a pinball machine. I know we always try to dissuade it, but, you know, like maybe you've got a child or an elderly dog or something and you can't leave the house. Maybe you just want to practice all times a day to make sure you're playing your best when you actually get to go leave the house. Maybe you just have no games local to you because you live in the middle of nowhere. We take that for granted in Portland a lot, but I know from personal experience, Sometimes there's just no good games around you and you really want to have some pinball. Those are all good reasons. If your main reason for buying a pinball machine is to save money because you're putting too much money into games on location, horrible reason to buy a pinball machine. Don't do it. I just want to rehash that. That was pretty much what the whole last episode was about. People say that, though. People justify that on forums all the time. I'm putting tons of money into this, so I was thinking I'd buy one myself. And you're like, well, OK, theoretically. and something i want to kind of reiterate the last few years of like rampant inflation especially in the pinball hobby have convinced a lot of people that like no this is like an investment and these things go up in value if you just buy the right one you got to buy a stern le and it has to be a fucking keith ellen one game and then you can't lose money that's not the case don't fall for like that kind of trick like when the economy swings people start dumping luxury goods pinballs are just expensive toys they're fun but they're definitely not an investment they're not an investment, they do hold some residual value. Yes. Like you won't buy a game and then it'll be worth nothing. Exactly. You're not spending like to own a game for a year and you're not spending seven grand. You're spending like $1,000, $1,500. Right. You know, plus the work and if it needs any parts or whatever, but if you're buying a new Stern. That being said, we'll start with the easy side of this topic. New games. If you're buying a new game, things are easy. Life is good. You go to Stern's website, you find a distributor, you call them up or you go to their website, you see what they have in stock. If you're looking for something that's not in stock or was just recently announced, it's not abnormal to get on a wait list. If it's like a new release, they'll let you know how many people are in line. They'll, you know, they'll probably know what they have in the allotment. They'll have a pretty good idea of when you can expect to receive that game. If you're like, oh, I really want to know if I was House of Horrors, can I get on the list for that? They might say, sure, they probably will because they want to make money. They probably have no idea when they'll get like House of Horrors next. They just know that another run should come eventually. Sometimes those runs don't come. And even when they do, it might be two years from now. So if you're buying a new game, just keep that in mind, especially if you're getting a wait list for something that's out of production. Absolutely. My top tips is calling this Alex's top tips for buying a new game. Since this is an Alex episode, top tips, buying a new game. If you got to distribute in your area, maybe you got to, maybe you hit them up and you see what the prices are before you commit to some. A lot of people assume that all these games are going for MSRP because two years ago, they all were. That's not the case now. If you want a John Wick, which is a kick-ass game, not everybody else appreciates its kick-assness. It's too much ass for some folks, and you could be the person that swoops in and... Yeah, if you know your distributor has something like that sitting around, don't try to, like, don't think you're going to get some fucking sweetheart deal, but they might take a few hundred bucks off or something for you. And so that's just something, it's worth, if you're like me, it helps take the sting out of depreciation if you can get for a little under MSRP. So it's kind of worth asking around. Another thing that can kind of help take the sting out is to get a new credit card. Oh my God. And I'm not saying to borrow money, but if you know anything about credit cards and reward points, you always got to spend a bunch of money up front. This is what I do. I've done it twice, but a few new games. And you open a new credit card, you dump everything on there, you get your $500 cash back, and then you just close the credit card in three months. Don't do that too much. You can only have like five active lines of credit. It'll hurt your credit rating. There's a good subreddit for churning credit cards. So don't just take my advice blindly. But if you're somebody that's into churning credit cards, remember to do that before you buy a pinball machine. I will say, do not buy a pinball machine on credit. Please don't. Yeah, but just pay it off. It's good. Please don't. I mean, I know some operators do some form of credit. Don't actually. You should have the cash. Yeah. You can use the credit card to fund it and get the rewards. That's what I'm saying. It should be something that you could pull directly out of your bank account and pay for. If you don't have the money, but you're like, hey, you know, six months, nine months, a year from now, I'll have the money. Don't do it like that. Don't finance that. Don't ever. That should go without saying, but I suppose it is a good reminder. Well, but you were saying my hot tips, and then you go right into, like, credit cards. I thought you'd like that. Alex's top tip is put a game on a credit card. But you get that Chase Sapphire, 500 bucks back, boom. That takes off, you know, 1, 12 or 12% of what I lost on Ultraman. So boom, pays for itself. It's Alex's top tips. Yeah, 40% of the time it works every time. So next nice part about buying a new game, distributors will deliver things to you. This is a big deal once you start moving these fucking 300 pound pains in the asses around. If a delivery can happen for free, that's great. But also if you do have a truck, you don't mind moving them. Sometimes the distributors will cut you $100 or the delivery might have been extra on top or whatever. You can usually pick up local as well. If you're buying your first game, just for reference, they'll probably ask you if you want it boxed or unboxed. If you're picking it up, I have no idea why you would want the box. Because unless you have a liftgate truck, when they're in the box, they have to stay standing vertically on a pallet. And they're fucking monstrous. So if they ask you if you want it unboxed, yes, don't deal with the cardboard. There's no reason. Yeah, then you've got to throw all the cardboard and packing material away yourself. It's just something – I mean, I guess it's like – It's kind of first time. It's like you get to cut open the box, I guess, the unboxing thing. Yeah, yeah, unboxing, I guess, if you're making YouTube content. A lot of good distributors, too. If you're a new buyer, you've never worked on a pinball machine ever once in your life, a distributor will not only unbox it for you, but they'll show you how to pull the glass off. They'll show you how to put it in. They'll show you how to open up the cabinet. They'll show you – It's true. They'll put the balls in the trough. They'll show you how to move the menus inside the coin door, set it up for insider connected at your house, show you how to do all that stuff that you don't know how to do yet, remind you to pop the balls out before you lift the play field and all that kind of stuff. So lots of good distributors will open up your game and show it to you and also will kind of test it a little bit because some things need little tweaks right out of the box. And the distributors will want you to be happy. either. Yeah. Like not just trying to like take your money and then like kick you out the door because all distributors know that more pinball purchases are coming if they do a good job. Absolutely. So it's like the distributors, we always kind of, I mean, we did it on the last episode and we're recommending again, if it's your first game, especially it's kind of worth just going through them and you'll figure out a lot from them. As far as transportation stuff goes though, if you are picking it up yourself or if you're buying a used game, if you're unaware, and we all are at some point, I was when I bought my first game since the mid eighties, the pinball machine's back boxes are on hinges and they fold down and that's really sweet you don't have to unplug anything but it also means they're really fucking big like when you start trying to put it in the back of like a station wagon or something you're like oh this thing is monstrous with the head still on it yeah because even folded down with the legs off takes up a lot of space yes yes so it just means that if you're gonna go buy a game long distance make sure you take some measurements and check that it'll actually fit in your car before you like drive across the state it's kind of funny when i bought my hobbit i took my wife's volkswagen it was a sport wagon station wagon or whatever across because i was drove like 12 hours because i was in the midwest so i drove literally 12 hours to go buy hobbit the best game of all time zowan i had sent the guy a message beforehand it was only the second game i ever bought and i had sent the guy a message beforehand and i was like oh is it a problem if we take the backbox off the head and he was like yeah that's not a problem and i had had a high speed which was on hinges but I had seen other games come off solid states and I was like yeah it's just a thing that happens and I showed up and the guy acted like I was fucking crazy he was like you're taking the head off and I was like yeah well I need to to fit it in the car that I drove 12 hours here and and the tech eventually like the the seller called his tech who came down because I was buying it from an arcade and he took it all apart for me and everything but like he was clearly like they had never you know they had never even considered that yeah it's like whoa like the Like I was like, I've never had to move an old game before where you have to do that. Well, he probably had, but it's still different than taking hinges off of a modern game. So it's just that's something that you want to think about, I would say, is maybe it's worth taking the hit and driving the truck with mileage because that's the other funny part of the story. I had a pickup. I just prefer driving Megan's Volkswagen. Well, you said, too, that you have here in your notes that there's a helpful pin side thread with cars that are confirmed to fit most size pinball machines. Yes. so people can go look at that and kind of cross-reference. If you're curious, if you're like, oh, I have like a, you know, a fifth generation Honda CRV or something. If you have a common car like that, that like might fit a pin, someone on pin side will have confirmed it, almost guaranteed. And it's also amazing. It's sometimes just funny to see which cars can't fit pins. That looks like they would, but they can't. Like Rivian SUVs, which are like fairly large electric SUVs. And they look pretty substantial and they can't close the hatch with a pin in them, apparently, which is nuts. oh brutal maybe i have that maybe the trucks can't fit one in the bed i might have that sorry to the rivian guys i know there's a couple of you out there listening and you're like no it can fit it but one of the rivians i know can't fit them and it's kind of interesting with shit like that whereas like a honda fit can fit a pin in it which is insane because they're tiny but it's like they can fit a pin and one person in it because the front seat can scoot so far it works it's crazy yeah you can check online you can take measurements you can find all that stuff just double check that especially if you're driving a long ways you don't want to show up and be like muscling this thing into the car and then realize it's not going to work yeah you don't want to take the legs off and fold it down and get outside somebody's house and then be like like it's just you reach that point and no return you don't want to be like stuffing it into the car and it doesn't fit that's not the point you need to know that you need exactly there's a few options for physically moving games hydraulic lift carts are the cadillacs of those options anyone in the hobby that's been in the hobby for a while has probably seen one of these they sell them at harbor freight and then guys usually kind of modify them to make them work better for pins but it's like a little it's like a scissor jack table cart that kind of slides right under the games they work awesome if you have a friend with one of those you should ask to borrow it if you can it make your life way easier the only problem with them is they heavy and they take up a lot of space too That true actually So it like Like I don know if I could fit one in my 4Runner and a pin I'm not sure. That's what I mean. It's like, they're awesome. Like, Roadsy has one. Roadsy has two of them. And he uses them to move games in and out of his warehouse. But he has a big cargo van. He has a big work van. Yeah. So he can always bring his lift and three pins. He can do all of that in one van. He has the room to do that. And if he wanted to fold them up and pull the balls out of them and stand them on there vertically, he could probably hold like eight pins in there or something. But he never does that. He keeps them kind of horizontal. It's just easier to move. But he has hydraulic carts, but he has the space. So hydraulic carts are great if you have a collection at your house and you want to move them in and out. They're hard to transport across a state or a long drive to then go pick up a pin because then you got to, they're heavy and they take up a lot of space, just like a pinball machine. So, I mean, that's the reason I don't even own one, which I'll explain a bit more in a second is because they're big, like they are almost the size of a pen just sitting in the garage or whatever. And that means you could have another pen there instead. I mean, you could roll them underneath your pen when you're not using. That's how we do it. Usually, it's true. Other option that I've seen a lot of guys use just a standard hand truck. That's how games were meant to be moved. They're kind of designed for that. In the good old days, you fold the head up, you put the truck, you know, you stand the game up vertically on its back, and then you put the truck under the base of the game, and guys will usually ratchet strap the hand truck to the game. That's a very conventional way of moving the games. If you keep it ratchet strapped and you have a buddy, you can lift it into your truck with the hand cart still attached. Oh, yeah, so they could just pull it out. So then it's like, yeah, if you have stairs, this is a very nice way to go because it gives you a very useful handle for pulling up. So you have one guy pulling, one guy at the bottom. Here's another Alex top tip. Buy a house without stairs leading to wherever your pinball machines are going. Like, that's the single biggest thing you can do for this hobby. People think having, like, a big Lebowski is a flex. No. Having a fucking, like, drive-in basement is a flex because that means you can get your fucking games in there without going up and down stairs. Alex is speaking from experience. When we bought a house, that was a big thing. I was like, I'm not taking pins up and down stairs. Because you have what? It's technically a three-story house with the finished basement, right? Yep, I have a basement, the main floor, and then like a converted attic or finished attic. Your driveway goes into your garage, which goes down a grade, like downslope into your basement. Into my basement. So it's actually, it's like... And that's where all the pins go. Yeah, I have to unload the games in the garage, and then they have to make it about 20 feet through one door into like the room here. Yeah. It's very nice. And so when you're buying a game, or when you're buying a house, you know, this is a top tip. just like putting games on credit cards top tip buy yourself a new house to make pinball easier i love all your top tips that's what i'd like to i thought you would but going back so if you don't have a hydraulic lift cart or a hand cart or hand truck you might have a friend and that's the way i do it every time because i don't own any of the things that i'm telling you you should own and i don't even have a friend i have something better i have a five foot tall wife who loves moving who loves moving pinball machines with me she's moved my williams grand prix which is a four-player em and she's moved hobbit which i confirmed with ltg online is 350 pounds fucking absurd and i always give out like shit for this i was like i can't believe your poor wife you're just like come on we're gonna go pick up a pinball machine it's three hours away like hop in the car we're gonna do a six hour round trip and you're gonna help me load it in and out she loves it she loves it and then we get home and she gets to have a new fear sitting in the house you know it makes it all worth it she gets to have a pin machine that she's not gonna play at all in the basement it's great so just to round out my transportation segment for anyone that's like i've never bought a pin before how the fuck do you guys do this really if it's a guy it's four legs on it i'll see if the seller if if a friend can come with me and then i'm not worried about it all otherwise confirm that the seller will help you load if you're going by yourself you can just carry it out on its four legs i can kind of prop the game up on my knee and then take off the two legs closest to me with an impact or whatever and then kind of scoot around the side and slide it into the back of my forerunner which works pretty well and then you slide it in take off the other two legs reverse that process at home always kind of a weird shuffle there's not like a perfect way to load things in and out unless you have one of the hydraulic lift cards yeah those are kind of the perfect way to do it but then even when you have one of those it's like you might be loading on gravel you might be doing something there yeah totally where it's like having more people always helps more like if you have like three people around you can do anything if you have three people to move a pin you could do anything you want exactly any with no tools or anything exactly that's why it's like more people especially your first time just be like get one of your buddies over there and be like hey man i'm buying a pinball machine don't tell them how much it weighs beforehand just tell them that you're getting A pinball machine has to be cool as hell. It's like when you're kids. And you can always get someone to do it once. And then you just churn and burn your friends. Exactly. They'll be having so much fun. You run out of friends, just reach out to your coworkers. People at your church. Any social clubs or groups you're a part of. It does help to have other pinball friends because they will get it. Because we're all there at some point where you're like, I just need someone else to help me get this game. because it's like a little old lady on craigslist selling it yeah and i need to get that fucking thing in the back of the car more people always at least two yeah if you have two people you could probably do almost anything you can do anything frankly unless one of you is sickly or just tiny but like megan's tiny and with one average size person and one tiny person we can do anything so it's really just about the spirit you know you got to get her mad you got to have the fighting spirit yes so yeah top tips you know you gotta have credit card you gotta buy a new house you gotta have a wife easy stuff to get a wife you just gotta go hey you're gonna help me move this pinball machine i'm gonna buy you tickets to taylor swift show it'll be cool you're like okay it's just perfect situation you know it's like how many fucking machines we gotta move let's go like okay used games though that was the new game in transportation section we're here to talk about used games or the wedgehead pinball podcast you know we didn't get to be the pinball subreddit's favorite podcast talking about new shit only we mentioned this in the last one if you're buying a new game if you're trying to pick a game you should be opportunistic and not picky because if you're like oh i only want arabian nights or something you might be sitting there looking at craigslist for fucking five years and never buy a pinball machine never find one that comes close or is a reasonable deal. Right. Because if they do, somebody else is going to buy it out from under you. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, maybe just look for a, you know, a Papaduke game and not Arabian Nights specifically. Yeah, or just maybe look for like, hey, I want a 90s Williams game. And there's a bunch of them that I like. And if one shows up in reasonable condition for a good price in a reasonable driving distance, that's the one. You know, it doesn't have to be the one forever. It's the one for right now. Exactly. Because that's the other thing. and we mentioned that in the previous episode too, is that these games don't sticker. They're not lifetime purchases, or they don't have to be, I should say. I think a lot of people tell themselves that they're going to buy whatever game it is, whether it's Jaws or it's Deadpool or it's whatever. Yeah, well, the rules are so deep, Alan. I'll never get sick of it. If you know by now, you will fucking get sick of any game you buy. Yeah. But the game doesn't have to be forever. It doesn't have to be your grail game. You don't have to hold on to that. You can just buy something in the interim, and maybe when you're getting ready to move on from it, actually, somebody has that Tales from the Arabian Nights. You have a game that they want to trade for it. Yep. You kind of have to be ready to jump on things. You have to take what you can get. And yeah, don't get hung up. Don't worry if the game's not perfect, not you're exactly what you were looking for or whatever. When you're getting into the old stuff, you kind of have to just take what you can get. Yep. Now, the actual single biggest piece of advice I can give with my experience of buying and selling games, and I'm not the most experienced, but I've kind of burned through a dozen games or whatever. So I've done this a bit. The single biggest thing is to pay attention to the sellers of used games. There's kind of three categories of sellers I lined out here. And your approach should be different to all three of them, or you should at least be aware of kind of like these categories people fall into. The first is like the dusty garage seller where it's like, oh, it's a game and it works perfect. And like, it's a pinball machine. My family's had this for 30 years and it's working great. and you can pick this up today. And if it's a person that doesn't have any other pinball machines, their definition of working perfect probably means it turns on, it plunges, and it flips. Anything past that is usually lost on people like that because they don't know what they're looking at. They're probably not malicious. Yeah, they're just not pinball people. So it's not in good condition or features might not work, but they don't know. They're like, it turns on. Yep, it's just something that doesn't necessarily mean you can't buy games from people like that. They can be fantastic deals sometimes when those pop up, But it's just factor that into the price because like, especially when you're buying cheap solid states, a new solenoid driver board or, you know, hours of troubleshooting can happen really fast. And like, if that's a bummer, if you're buying a $1,500 game and you get it home and you're like, oh shit, the sound wasn't turned down. Like the grandma told me the soundboard doesn't work in a soundboard for a stern is expensive. And now your $1,500 galaxy needs a $500 soundboard immediately. and when you fix that it'll still be a 1500 galaxy yeah exactly that kind of kills the old games can seem like such sweetheart deals and you start adding it up and you're like 500 here 500 there that's the depreciation of a brand new stern which wouldn't have taken any time to diagnose anyway so just pay attention to that kind of stuff the finances start making you know you look at it different when you look at like the sunk cost into everything if you don't look at these as permanent acquisitions absolutely yeah now old games are kind of better so it's kind of worth it sometimes even if they are money pits it's like classic cars they're just cooler just cooler and so because they're you don't see them as often you just gotta know going they look different everything's the flipper shapes a little bit different right like that all everything's different if you're buying one for your first game i mean that was like when i when i kind of gotten to the hobby it was like okay well all like they have all these new games on on location in town i lived in a smaller city at the time but there were no ems around and so i was like i want an em i'd like people talk about you know i just knew it was a different thing i think they're neat so i went and bought an em and it's like it was awesome having something different so there is value to that even if it's not always a good dollar value if that if that makes sense okay but that's the first type of seller dusty garage seller next seller with no with no games around That's kind of like a key part of that aesthetic is, oh, this is the only game in this person's house. It's the only pinball machine they've probably seen in 30 years. The other side of that spectrum is like a warehouse full of games. And sometimes if you're in a big city like we are, you might see games listed on Craigslist every week and you go, I know that warehouse. Like, I see that warehouse all the time. This guy's selling a new game every week. That's because he's a reseller. He's flipping games. And that's a thing that I have feelings on. I'm not here to condone or condemn that right now. Scumbag. Rat fuckers. I mean, you know, that's what some people would say. I mean, we wouldn't be saying that. One could say they're squeezing all of the potential money out of this hobby. Making it more expensive and providing zero value to people. Yes, one could say that. One could say that. Some people would say that. That all being said, if they have a game that you like and it presents well, and it's still priced fairly even after they've made their markup. Like, don't feel bad. You don't have to feel bad about paying the reseller tax. You will feel bad if you're me. Like, I can't bring myself to buy from resellers. But just don't, if it's like this is my dream game, sometimes you just do what you've got to do to get a game you want. I just, it drives me nuts, man. I think this is good advice. It's like everyone overpays for a game at some point. If you get into this and you start buying games, one of the games you buy you're going to overpay for. at least one if not multiples yeah but like it's gonna happen just try not to make it like a regular thing is like my actual reason for bringing up this type of seller is don't expect a game to become just because like oh this guy has tons of games like oh he says he's gone through it they're there to make a buck don't treat this any differently than you would treat the game coming from a dusty garage yeah they're flippers yeah so they're only gonna do one they want to do nothing in a perfect world just make the quick buck they just want to drive across town at 10 a.m on a tuesday because they have their craigslist notifications turned on and they saw it first they want to go buy third encounters or whatever for last encounter for 500 bucks and then they want to sell it for 1200 at night that's what these guys do that's their job which is insane yeah it is insane it's weird not providing a service it's not doing anything everywhere in the hobby and i think it's just everywhere in every hobby yeah that's always be middlemen and they just i just don't get how that's a thing but it is be aware of it treat them with caution the last group is the perfect seller it's who you're looking for this whole time i think we touched on this in the last episode but i want to say it again it someone you already know it your buddy or your buddy buddy or someone that somebody can vouch for or somebody that has a good reputation on pin side or just someone that trustworthy to some degree And there's a huge amount of value in buying a game from somebody you can trust because you just know you're not going to get intentionally fucked. Pinball machines will fuck you in the funniest ways. You know, you'll have a brand new Ultraman sitting in your house. The first time your family shows up that wants to see it, it'll just literally catch on fire. And that can happen, you know? A solenoid will just get stuck on and a whole bunch of smoke will come out under the playfield. That kind of shit will happen. You don't need the seller trying to fuck you over too. The seller being dishonest about known issues and not disclosing them to you. Exactly. So if you can get a game from somebody you know, that is the best way to do everything always because it just will make it easier for everybody. Don't expect to get a screaming deal just because you know somebody. No one's going to sell you an $8,000 pin for $4,000. Pinball machines are like cars. They have a market value. If he sold it to you for four grand, that would just mean he's handing you four thousand dollars. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. But what you do get if with someone, you know, or someone that's trustworthy is you're going to get a fair market deal. And that person, if you do have an issue, they're probably very likely to help you with it. Some people might come over and help show you what they're talking about to troubleshoot it. Or they might just be on the phone with you, go, oh, try this or that. Or it's usually this connector on this board. And kind of they'll help you with that. Yep. If they're trustworthy. Flippers, resellers, they don't fucking care. They'll be like, no, it was working good when you picked it up. Yeah, that's on you. So if that's why, if you don't know the person, it better be a good deal. Or you better fucking know your pins. But if it's your first game, try to buy from someone you know. Here's the thing is, I don't know if I saw it on your outline or not, but where do you buy pins? Like, you're looking for a used game. So the reason I wanted to do this episode, even though we already did an episode kind of on buying pins. Although I think we could say that that episode was like, why you shouldn't buy a pin. Yeah. But this episode. This episode is really if you're buying a pin. If you're really buying a pin. I've had regulars come into the bar and I know that they listen to the podcast. So you're going to hear this yourself. You've asked me particularly, you go, hey, I'm thinking about buying a pin. I listen to your show. You said like, just buy a new Stern. And then they go, I was like, yeah, I think that's good advice. And they go, what if I don't like the new Stern? Or I want a 90s game or I want an 80s game. and i'm like yeah that's fair that's fair like i like the older game like those games too we're just saying like if you're a total noob the newer games are going to be less frustrating not only to purchase and to move but they're going to be more reliable there's so many car analogies in the pinball hobby but it really is very similar to a car where you're like the new one every piece of the process is going to be easier but the old ones are cool the old ones are cool definitely be worth it and that's why we're doing this episode but it's like where where do you go to buy an old pen yeah like where do you buy pens there are three places that you should look and in the u.s yeah this is yes very u.s centric as our work sometimes critiqued a little u.s centric in our podcast so if you're in canada you go to kajiji i think is the gg i think in australia it's gum tree fucking nonsense names dude here in the u.s we have logical names like craigslist where it's a list of craigs you find one selling a game you find a good craig yeah he's got a lead up really your local buy and sell shit i know in like utah they have their own because it's utah of course they have their fucking own craigslist and so if you know of a local buy and sell thing but probably craigslist that's where you you look a lot of the time facebook marketplace also has a surprising amount of pins come up just in the general marketplace as well as facebook groups specifically try to find local groups for your region like i'm in a pacific northwest i'm in so many fucking facebook groups that's stupid but pacific northwest there's like a portland one there's a west coast one there's just all kinds of facebook groups that are local listings my biggest thing personally is i only buy used games if i can go see them because there's a lot of scams lately especially and if you know the seller if it's someone that's vetted on pinsight or something and you trust them to ship or if it's like a reseller which is whatever they're experienced and they have a reputation. There's not necessarily anything wrong with buying a used game long distance. I'm just not comfortable doing it. So I don't want to tell other people, like I don't want to pretend I have experience with that. But yeah, locally try to find games on Facebook, Facebook groups, Craigslist. And then the biggie that we mentioned often is Pinside, which has a market. But the Pinside used market, at least in the West Coast, is much slower than the Facebook groups in Craigslist. It is. It's 100% because I think that same thing. but the good thing about pinside is i think in some regions that's different and the thing that pinside offers is sellers on pinside have to be vetted yeah and people can rate their interactions interactions it's kind of like ebay how you could rate the sellers and stuff you can if someone says a game is playing well on pinside and they have you know thousands of posts on there they're putting their reputation on the line and so that is worth a lot and again we talk about pinside negatively a lot because it can be a hive mind negatively we talk about it fun at pinside often but sometimes it's a lot of guys that are good and bad into the hobby and there's a lot of good dudes so yeah you can buy and sell what the other thing that pinside does well is if you look up a game it'll give you kind of sales history data that people have sold games through their market and so pinside will give a pinside median price it's actually really i forgot about that it's a really good and so this is a good way if you're buying a pin you can look it up and you can go hey games go for roughly this much and obviously like that's different in location and condition right those things can go up or down within a reasonable margin but you can at a glance kind of know yeah this is currently what demolition man sell for you know or this is currently what big game sells for yep that's another thing that a lot of people you just see like oh so and so has this game what would be a fair price a lot of you see that a lot on like the pinball subreddit or just facebook groups or whatever when people are new to the hobby like well it's a fair price for my friends had this twilight zone for the last 20 years and i'm thinking about buying it would be a good price and you can just go look up the kind of current market value for games and it'll give you a ballpark idea yeah so i think it's super valuable for that really useful for that pin side has a lot of good resources it's just it's the pinball website to look at for a lot of shit if you're listening to this podcast you've already heard of it yeah we mention it every single episode okay so what's the approach let's say you you've you've kind of like looked at your sellers what what's the next approach you you've measured your you know honda fit to make sure a game can fit in there and you want to go buy this fucking thing what do you do when you get there my approach completely depends on who the seller is if i know the guy personally or someone that's been vouched for or better yet a specific game which guys do often if you see like a game list in a facebook group it's always funny like someone will list like a johnny mnemonic and his buddy will go in the comments be like this johnny fucking rips i was playing it last week it plays perfect yeah and you're like if that's your buddy saying that like if your buddy has played the specific game that you're looking at you're like oh i'm golden because now if anything goes wrong i can blame my buddy which is better than having a working pinball machine being able to guilt trip your friends it's like you're no fear it's like the nicest no fear i've ever played if someone was like hey like you wanted to get rid of that and someone's like whatever i'd be like this game rips like it's so nice it's as nice as it could be yeah it's kind of funny so if you if you have a game if you trust the seller you trust the game and everything i usually go over there i turn it on because you kind of have to play like a game and you play like two games while you're bullshitting you completely space out you don't pay attention anything on the game you usually start playing a different game that the guy has is in my it's like check this out isn't this cool game that's not for sale but check it out that happens every fucking time you end up playing some other game that you're not there to buy then eventually megan gets annoyed you go into the car you climb in you start the engine and the guy's like oh wait wait you never paid me and you go oh yeah like i forgot to give you later loser and then you peel out i've done that i've gone in the car multiple times without paying the person because i just get distracted bullshitting and that shows the level of casualness that you get buying these games once you've done it a few times because once you've done this you're like yeah it's all like if it's a pinball guy they're a good dude you're just gonna have fun talking and you kind of get into this rhythm of just kind of like oh we're just kind of swapping games around like no one's trying to fuck each other it's not like we're used car salesmen if you know the guy if it's like one of those sellers that's the beauty of like buying from people like that is it's just fun yeah you usually get to see their collection their their pinball people you're a pinball person so like you just get to talk pinball usually they have other games because yep nobody has two games they either have one that they just inherited and just sitting in a dusty garage or they have multiples like they yeah it's kind of funny how that works huh they fill their space but it's like that's the common the common rhetoric is like they seem to multiply they always do as soon as you get into pinball you just start looking like how many games can i fit in here yeah you start looking at the empty spaces of your house differently yeah it's it's funny how that works it's speaking of speaking of forgetting the cash cash is the only way that i've paid for used games some people might be comfortable with other payment methods i just don't even ask i just assume if i'm buying a game from someone i'm giving them cash regardless i've bought some pretty expensive games not anything ludicrous i haven't bought you know like a 20 grand fucking big bang bar but like i've bought like seven grand games right used with cash and it's always kind of outrageous because you go to the fucking bank to ask for cash and they ask you what's this for and you're like it's for buying a pinball machine they're like what the pinball machine like they act like this is fucking like science fiction shit and then they go oh i don't know if we have that much cash here and I go, aren't you the fucking bank? What place has the cash? It's for my rocket ship. I'm buying a rocket ship. Going to a fucking bank and you don't have cash. Who does? Where's the cash? I don't get it. It's like going to the fucking grocery store and they're shocked when you ask for eggs. They're like, well, we have one egg here and there's one more across town. And I'm like, well, I need a fucking dozen. Aren't you the grocery store? So if you're buying a game, you're probably gonna want to pay cash. If you're buying an expensive game, you probably want to make sure you can hit multiple fucking banks the morning that you're going to pick it up or you're going to feel like an idiot like me and you're just scrambling you're like i'm gonna be 30 minutes late because i gotta hit five fucking wells fargo's today it sucks so just pay think of that ahead of time ideally like the day before if you're driving somewhere in the morning it's just an annoying thing i think cash is almost always used yeah cash on glass man cash on glass so the common that's the common saying and that's very much just the accepted practice it's like buying in a fucking car on craigslist no one wants to like deal with anything except for he wants like cashier's checks or money transfers and like it just gets weird your fucking venmo for five grand like and i think venmos have limits that usually if you know the person and they're comfortable with like paypal or something and you're like hey man do you want cash or do you mind paypal and they're like oh friends and family paypal is good that's cool if you do this and you're about to buy your new house like me to make the pinballs easier the mortgage loan officer will be like why the fuck are you gifting people huge amounts of money oh yeah which is funny and you're like why does it matter there's still enough money in there and they're like we just don't like seeing that right before we close on a house so alex's top tip number four if you're keeping track lie to your mortgage loan officers yeah don't move large amounts of money around like the week you're closing on a house they don't like seeing that they get very pushy like pushy yeah so if you know the person they'll probably you know give you the respect of counting the money when you're out of the room or whatever if you don't know the person and they pull out one of the fucking dollar store pins the little sharpie and market to see if it's real and they count it twice that's cool they're just doing their fucking thing i never do that because i'm a fucking idiot and i believe in the goodness of mankind like a fucking moron you're a rube it's gonna burn me one day I'm going to be shorted and I'm going to be like, well, the people have let me down and like, then I will count. But until that day, I'm always just like, oh yeah. That being said, I haven't sold an ex I've sold some expensive games and I'm always just like, yeah, you seem like a good guy. I don't need to count it. We were talking, we were playing pinball, direct eye contact with them and tell them, I don't need to count it. And they, you just see how they react. And you know, it's like a fucking episode of like a TV show. It's like an envelope and there's like 200s on the outside and it's just filled with $1 bills. Like I said, so if you're buying a game from me, you can probably scam me if you're listening to this podcast. I'm a mark. But yeah, don't be offended if they're counting things. If you've not bought and sold stuff with this much cash, it's kind of how it goes. People want to double check it. It's not surprising. It's reasonable. Next, going back to the approach. Some people have a huge checklist of shit. you know a lot of people will post and be like i'm going to go and buy my first pinball machine what should i do i don't know what to do when i get there and everybody will be like this is what you got to do you got to bring this toolbox with these tools with you you got to take the glass off you got to press every switch you got to confirm every light bulb's on you go into the diagnostics menu you check all of the diagnostics you see if there's a service credit all this shit i don do any of that i never done any of that i never taken the glass off i not a nerd i not taking glass not a nerd i cool i just a cool chill guy i just explaining like the the the process it like if you know again if you know where the game's coming from i feel like does the game work and they're like yeah man it works pretty good and you're like cool that's cool like does anything not work and they'll be like there's that one switch that doesn't want to write and you're like okay yeah you know when you're buying a used game there's going to be switches that don't registrator need adjustment there's gonna be light sockets that need re-soldering on a classic ballot you know there's gonna be shit like that so when i see those checklists especially when it's someone that's brand new to the hobby and someone tells them check every switch check every light bulb what are they gonna do when one of the light bulbs is not working yeah they're gonna be like i guess not i just drove six hours here yeah i had the cash and i already convinced my partner that this is a good idea so i'm just gonna like walk away yeah like there's or i think what they try to do and i think you mentioned this in your notes is like they try to go and if there's stuff wrong then you use it against the seller you try to like nickel and dime them down and like i think if you show up there and it's grossly misrepresented yes those are my exact words if it's grossly misrepresented you can and should go hey man the sound doesn't work i might need a new sound board that's five hundred dollars like you gotta take five hundred dollars less or whatever yeah that's fair but if you show up and a light bulb's not working or one switch is out the game is pretty much in working order and you should be able to figure that out for low or no cost yep you should just pay the pre agreed upon price unless the person straight up lied don't start fucking bargaining don't show up to buy someone's eleven hundred dollar flash and then be like oh the cabinet's a little rougher would you take 900 be like fuck no man you drove over here you saw the pictures i hate it when people try to nickel and dime you and you're like you're buying the cheapest example of this game that's popped up on the west coast in the past six months like you're not going to nickel and dime me for like a cabinet being scuffed that's the other thing is like buy from sellers that take lots of photographs yeah and then make your judgments on condition based on those photographs and then be prepared when you if you offer them a little bit less than what they're offering do it before you drive out there yeah that's what i always do i'm always if i have to drive a long ways for whatever reason to make me feel like I'm winning something. I'm always like, Hey, would you take, it can be anything. It can be any price. And I will ask if they'll take $100 less. And I always say, Hey, would you take a hundred dollars less? Cause I'm driving and it'll make me feel like I got to win. And they always are like, yeah, man, or they'll be like, I'm firm. And I'll be like, okay, no problem. I'll buy it anyway. Like the a hundred dollars doesn't matter. I just do it. And I hate it when people do it to me. And I continue the cycle of, you know, it's like hurt people hurt people. But I hate it. You have a limit. But I also I never do it on their doorstep. I've never done it on the doorstep ever. I've never done it once I actually drive, even if it's just across town. I've never done it in person. And I've also this is the embarrassing part. I'm giving I'm outing myself on a lot of shit here. First of all, you could just straight up steal a game from me. I've admitted. And second of all, if I'm ever buying a game from you and I say, would you take a hundred bucks less? You can just say no. And I'll still buy the game. I've never not. I don't know if I've maybe had like one person be like, ah, I've got someone else interested. The price is firm. And I'm like, okay, cool. But I don't think I would ever. It's like, if you're buying a game, it's a hundred bucks. I'm just going for the a hundred bucks. Like I said, to feel like I'm getting a win in like to pay for gas money kind of thing. Yeah. But like, it's not really a fucking about the a hundred dollars. It's always just about the like, well, I did my due diligence. That's it. Do as much research as you can up front is a big part of it. Look at the pictures, like Alan said. Look at the pictures. You really want a game with as many pictures as possible if you're doing something. And ask for more. It's common to ask for more. Buyers will ask for more if you don't put up enough. Once we do the episode on selling a game, which is a little bit different than this, buying a game, once we do the future episode of selling a game, we'll go more into that. But take pictures. Ask for more pictures if you're not seeing what you want to see. And I think a lot of those predetermined checks, like games are prone to certain things. I think Alex wrote, if the game resets while you're there, that's not the first time. The seller might be like, oh, I've never seen that before. One thing specifically, if you're standing there and the game resets and the seller goes, oh, it doesn't do that. That doesn't ever. I've never seen it do that before. They're fucking at that point. They're lying. You shift into defense mode because this motherfucker is lying. And games don't reset for the first fucking time when the seller happens to be selling it to a potential buyer. That guy's lying to you, and you need to treat it with that in mind. They were hoping that that wasn't going to happen while you were playing it because it happens intermittently. Exactly. And it's like sometimes a game does reset once. I had my Galaxy where it would go a year without resetting, and then it would suddenly just be resetting every week. And it's like I rebuilt connectors. I replaced a board. I did so much to that galaxy trying to figure out the reset. And then after kind of like doing all this stuff like multiple times, it stopped resetting. And then I sold it after it was probably a year since I had seen the last reset. And I still feel a little guilty because I never mentioned it. But I'm like, well, I did do all this shit. Well, if it stopped resetting. But it's like a little bit of me always like I will still lay in bed and I am like, I wonder if my galaxy is out there resetting somewhere right now, man. I feel bad. And there's like that's the thing. So from that's my personal advice. I guess is also like, and we'll get into the selling one, but just if you're buying stuff, be honest. Don't go, don't go be a scumbag trying to lowball people. Don't be a fucking reseller trying to just flip things for a buck. Here's the thing. You're a buyer now. You're going to be a seller in the future. Yeah. Be a good person on both ends. Yeah. It's a circle of life. Yep. One day you're the lion. The next day you're the fucking dirt that the worms are eating. Right? Yep. And I would say that the things you're going to want to look for is just play the game. Does it feel good? visual inspections of the rubbers. Do they look cracked and worn? Because then you're going to have to do a whole rubber kit and swap, which on some games is really easy. Some games is not much fun at all. Yeah, like a Bram Stoker's. Not fun. So it's non-trivial at that point. I would look at the boards and always look for batteries. A lot of the old games have batteries mounted on the boards. It's never got moved. Look for corrosion. It's blue and white, sometimes green, fuzzy. and anytime you see corrosion stop and go just think of it like i might need a whole new board yep now that's that's not always true there are ways to mitigate it but like that's advanced repair and so you need to go nope this game it's suddenly it we keep bringing up boards because it's a really it's like a lot of the time you don't want to repair them even if that section is reparable it's just always going to be an expensive item it's like 500 minimum for any board you might need and that's assuming you have a common platform game yeah rarer games they might not be available that's another thing yeah i guess i didn't even touch on that if you're buying especially this is still kind of aimed at people buying their first game in general advice do a little bit of research on anything i know i said be opportunistic and like whatever pops up you know take a look at do a little research before you pull the trigger on anything because it's like you might not realize that like oh this generation of game like oh i didn't know that these got leaves are a nightmare or whatever like oh chicago coin ems are very different than williams ems or you know there's that kind of stuff and just doing a little bit of research beforehand is a good idea you're spending a lot of money even on a cheap game these things are expensive yeah and they're they're basically boat anchors when they're not working and they take up a lot of space so selling a broken game fucking sucks nobody wants to sell nobody yep and so that's what i would do is i would look at the boards. I would also know that if you're buying games as they get older, if you get into the 90s, definitely into the 80s, into the 70s and beyond, it's like any game can be working 100%. You could do your diligence, you fold it up, you move the game, you drive it across town or back to your house, you set it back up and something might not work. That was working before. That's to be expected. That happens more and more the older the game is. And it's almost always flaky connections or connectors and it or it's like oxidized pins for those connectors and that's just troubleshooting and that's sort of why we always go the newer ones are easier when you're first starting out because you know old games are flaky yes or especially when you first get them and then you sort of have them for a while and you rebuild some problems some connectors as they crop up you know and that's fine that's part of owning a pin and some people want to get into repairing them some people like want that and it's you know it can be satisfying to take a game that has a problem make it play nice again but you should know that going in like and so i would just always look at the boards look for batteries there are new things out there called uh nv rams which are just it can be a mod that can be done to many games that used to have batteries mounted on the boards where they put that nv ram chip in and now it no longer needs batteries but a seller if they have a game with that they will disclose it because that's a great upgrade it's a great selling point and no matter you can still have batteries but they need to look clean a lot of people will mount the batteries off the board. Those are good things to look for, you know, and just look for corrosion on boards and then play test the game. Yeah. Make sure that if you don't know the seller, just make sure the thing's planned. Yeah. Because I mean, that's going to tell you everything you need to know. Yeah. Like I was saying earlier, it's like you don't need to test every switch, but if you play it, you should make sure everything is playing. And you know, if the sounds are working, you know, if the score displays are working, you know, if it's changing players correctly or it's crashing and resetting. One thing that I never really think about much specifically because I just haven't bought a lot of 90s Bally Williams and the one I have has like no max in it. But like the big max on like a lot of those 90s Bally Williams games that are they're famous for. That's one thing I probably would specifically go out of my way. Like if I was playing like if I was going to buy a Johnny Mnemonic, I would make sure I see that fucking handwork. you know because totally that's kind of the same as like a board where it's this going to be a big expensive pain in the ass thing if it's not working yeah so if there is a big ticket game all right like if miss multiball doesn't work on dracula yep shit like that where you're like oh that's going to be a pain the very specialty corkscrew gear under that play field that was only used in that game like yeah so i guess there are the big ticket items the little don't sweat the small stuff because you can always fix it yeah broken even like a broken pop yep a pop that's not popping, that's common shit. You can fix that. It's not expensive and it's a good way to get your feet wet. Some people are always like, they feel good about it. Yeah. You always want to buy the best working game you can, but you're going to have to fix something eventually. So don't let small things right off the bat dissuade you or let you make you miss a good game. And if you're totally afraid of working on games, you shouldn't be fucking buying games. Yeah. We said that in our first episode. So you want to buy a pinball machine, but that is 100% true. If you're listening to this one, please go back and listen to that first episode. So you want to buy a pinball machine because I do think we kind of round out sort of more of the pros and cons of pinball ownership in that episode. This is more of a guide to you're going to buy one, you're sold on it. Yeah, this is like things I've learned or just kind of what I wish I knew before I was buying my actual first one. We hope you had a fun listening. We want you to go play pinball. We usually tell you to go play on location and I still will. Yeah, still go play on location, but you're going to buy a pinball machine. Part of the coolest part about it is like Alex said, is you're going to run into people. They usually have more than one pin and they usually have a cool pin. And you're like, oh my God, I haven't seen a cheetah in years. They're like, oh, check it out. Like it's the best. And if you own a game, I guess there's one quick thing to add to this. If you own a game, especially if you just bought a brand new game, if you're selling that thing, it doesn't matter if you put 10 plays on it or 10,000, the resale value is going to just depend on if things are working. So if you buy a game, play the shit out of it. Let your nephews play it. Put it on the fucking Don't worry about play count. Don't worry about play count. Play the shit out of any game that you're lucky enough to own and just fix things as they happen because they'll break just sitting still. They will absolutely break even if you're not playing them. And the only thing that matters when you're selling them is how well they work. Yep. So don't be afraid to play your games. Don't get too precious with them. If you're buying games, please fucking play them. Please fucking play your pinball machines. Yeah, don't. There's nothing that pisses me off. Like somebody having a room full of nice games that they never play. And I hate it. Dude. Or like, I mean, I just, I'm annoyed or shocked when I see games for sale and it's like, Oh, this is like a venom. It has 120 plays for sale. And you're like, what the hell are you doing, man? Yeah. You're like, wow, that was a good buy, huh? Yeah. If you don't, if you don't put 500 plays on that venom before you sell, what are you doing? Yeah. I've got a lot of plays to put on ultra man, but we want to thank each and every one of you for listening to another episode of the wedgehead pinball podcast if you want to support us like we said at the top of the episode ko-fi.com slash wedgehead podcast but until next time good luck don't suck Thank you.