Black Hole on Ebay

[skywalker]

That BH looks pretty solid,  Super

[Strangeways]

I bought a Space Station from this dealer some years back... same sort of listing.. unknown working condition etc.
Machine was in great condition and I had one minor fix to get the playfield to light up green.. other than that it worked perfectly.
Was a great buy!

ok then this leads me to my next point which is, why the would a customer pay premium prices from a dealer if their tech expertise would seem pretty ordinary. I thought buying from a dealer is to give a customer confidence in their purchase or again am I missing something? Why pay top dollar if the seller is guessing like a non tech home seller.

Customer confidence that you speak of does not stretch beyond DMD machines. I'm generalizing here, but from my experience, dealers focus their market on DMDs because the profit margin is high and the the technical expertise on pre DMD machines is very poor. It has been this way for many years. A key point to remember is that older games need more work and traditionally, the profit margin is not economically viable. It makes business sense from the dealer's point of view. It is interesting to note that some importers like to dabble in the older games, but quickly find out that it is very difficult to justify spending the extra time and money for a low return.

The Black Hole in the auction appears to be in VERY good cosmetic condition, and that's what would have appeared in the supplier's photos. The technical issues will only be discovered once the game lands, and the in-house tech can evaluate it. If the in-house tech is not technically proficient in this platform, then it gets passed on as a "project". That's the key here - is it listed as a project. So it could be a 5 minute fix or a badly corroded boardset.

Do your homework and you may end up with a bargain. There are Pascal boards and Gottlieb parts available from the local supplier at www.rtbb.com.au

There's a place in the market for project machines. It is a "win" for both the sellers and buyers.

What's the value difference with the animated backglass vs non-animated?
The animated looks better

Difficult to put an exact $ value on it. As a player that looks at the playfield the whole time for the playability of the game, there is no difference. For a Collector, the domestic version with chaser lights, spinning disk and dual backglass make a big difference. Add speech and you have the game nature intended. The export version was simply a deliberate cheaper game for the Euro market. You cannot buy an export version and convert it without a lot of expense. You need both backglasses, the spinning disk motor, spinning disk, chaser lights and boards and finally the speech board. The headbox is different to accommodate the dual glasses.

[goodolddays]

Sold for $1275 .. more than I thought it would get

[Retropin]

Sold for $1275 .. more than I thought it would get

Less than I thought... id have given that an estimate of $1800 every day of the week

[Strangeways]

Export version project game would be around the $1000 - $1200 mark. It was in good condition.

Domestic Version project would be $1600 - $2000.

Either way, if the boards are cooked then it would need a Pascal board that costs around $300 landed.