Hey all,
I was just curious if anyone else was having problems with pinball poachers in their area. In case you haven't run into any, I'm talking about people who travel great distances on pinball scouting trips into your collecting areas in an effort to scour all the local operators and selling venues in an effort to pick up anything affordable only to return to their areas to flip them at double or tripple what they paid for them. We had a cat come into our areas just recently out of Florida doing just that. Wondering if anyone else was having these kinds of problems.
I realize this is a free country and being a collector, I have no real problem with a fellow collector traveling great distances to pick up a grail that happens to be in my area. But when you have metropolitan resellers plugged into craigslists trolling every post coming and going within a 500 mile radius just so they can charge the masses tripple what its worth, I can't help but get a little annoyed. Lots of stuff pop up on the various venues, and I couldn't buy it all if I tried, but when machines are getting siphoned out of my area to head to areas in major cities never to return, its disheartening. The general gist of the deal is in my area, pin prices are more of a reflection of the local economics. You can't ask 6000 dollars for an Addams Family and hope to get it. But you could if you were in Chicago at the big pinball convention.
I also noticed someone posted on craigslist that was heading to the Arcade auction. He posted that he would be traveling between X area and Y area and could pick up pins or arcade games along the way in hopes of picking up any pinballs and flipping them at auction. I don't even know where to go with that. That just seems like one shiftless lazy bastard to me when you aren't even willing to go out and find your pins to flip.
Anyone else had any experience with these lowest common denominators or am I just over reacting.
I was just curious if anyone else was having problems with pinball poachers in their area. In case you haven't run into any, I'm talking about people who travel great distances on pinball scouting trips into your collecting areas in an effort to scour all the local operators and selling venues in an effort to pick up anything affordable only to return to their areas to flip them at double or tripple what they paid for them. We had a cat come into our areas just recently out of Florida doing just that. Wondering if anyone else was having these kinds of problems.
I realize this is a free country and being a collector, I have no real problem with a fellow collector traveling great distances to pick up a grail that happens to be in my area. But when you have metropolitan resellers plugged into craigslists trolling every post coming and going within a 500 mile radius just so they can charge the masses tripple what its worth, I can't help but get a little annoyed. Lots of stuff pop up on the various venues, and I couldn't buy it all if I tried, but when machines are getting siphoned out of my area to head to areas in major cities never to return, its disheartening. The general gist of the deal is in my area, pin prices are more of a reflection of the local economics. You can't ask 6000 dollars for an Addams Family and hope to get it. But you could if you were in Chicago at the big pinball convention.
I also noticed someone posted on craigslist that was heading to the Arcade auction. He posted that he would be traveling between X area and Y area and could pick up pins or arcade games along the way in hopes of picking up any pinballs and flipping them at auction. I don't even know where to go with that. That just seems like one shiftless lazy bastard to me when you aren't even willing to go out and find your pins to flip.
Anyone else had any experience with these lowest common denominators or am I just over reacting.