When I started Pinball Medics, I had no intention of selling games to Collectors. Because unless you're incredibly wealthy, buying an entire collection of Black Label games at full retail is not considered "fiscally responsible". Best you hear that from a Pinball Dealer rather than a Bank Manager. Or a Divorce Lawyer... So generally we don't advertise our games in Collector Forums or on Kijiji/Facebook because it's a waste of time, and I don't want to live with the guilt of having given a member of the Price Police Force a twisted knickers induced Heart Attack or Stroke.
So we just sell to our retail clients as a rule.
There is one situation that comes up from time to time however, where a game is worth more to a Collector with all original parts than even a fully Black Labelled version of the same machine. When it is a rare collectible title.
In the retail market, rare means worth less, because most casual players won't even know what the game is. For Classics, everyone wants the old Bally 8Ball, Power Play, Evel Knievel, etc. All the high production games they remember because they were everywhere, and this is all about Nostalgia. Most people have never heard of games like Quicksilver or Stargazer for example, and would assume Evel Knievel is worth far more. Which means it is. To them, and by extension to us. So we place a much higher value on them than a Collector would.
The problem is, sometimes we get these rare and highly collectible games, and it's not worth Black Labelling them, which costs us about $2000 in parts and upwards of 60 hours of work, on top of the purchase price of the game. And then they are worth no more than any of our other less collectible machines, and often less because no one knows or wants that game.
So what we have decided, is that when we get a great collectible title, we will offer it here for trade to get something we really want for our collection, or trade it for multiple lesser titles to sell.
We always take games as is, we don't care if they work or not, are missing boards, have been hacked by the worst tech in the City, and have been written off as unrepairable by every tech you know, as long as the cosmetics are not absolutely terrible, we'll take it. And if I'm being honest, even if it's ugly, we'll take it.
To start things off and throw something out there, I haver a Stern Catacomb I was going to Black Label for the Arcade, but it's a game I never liked for whatever reason since it was new when I used to play it at the Wizard on Bank Street, and being rare, it will not earn well based on our experiences with Seawitch and Stargazer, which are Museum bound.
Catacomb is complete, with a decent original backglass with a few chips and minor lifting at the very bottom by the lift channel, and a cheap touch-up in the bonus area, but is overall a very nice candidate for a full restore, or a really nice players game.
The boards will be gone over by Rob and the game will be 100% functional, and we can mod the boards and convert it to LEDs, or even Black Label it if you like.
If anyone has a KISS they would be interested in swapping for this game, let me know, it is one of the last permanent wish list games we do not yet have in the Arcade!
We also take all games on trade towards anything we have, feel free to let us know what you have!
