Monday, January 6, 2014

business hurting scott?

This ad makes me smile.  You might say "why would you basque in someone's failure in selling a pinball machine?"  Well let me tell you, this is another one of these dirty pinball flippers in the chicagoland area.  This guy used to JUST build custom multicades out of his house.  That's fine, sell them all day long on craigslist.  Then he had the bright idea to buy a local building (not much bigger than a 7-11) that used to be an allstate office, and before that it was a fish fry restaurant.  Anyway, not long after he buys it, he starts filling it up with collectibles.  Anything from pinballs to vintage signs to old pop machines to arcade games.

Here's where I have a problem with him, he swoops in and buys every deal he can find on craigslist because apparently he has nothing better to do.  Whatever he buys, he puts minimal effort into fixing them and then doubles his asking price.  Clearly he's an expert on nothing (except maybe building multicades) because if he had any knowledge he'd know that not every title is going to sell.  He's trying to sell a gottlieb mario andretti for $2200 (asking about $1000 too much), and now he's having a hard time selling a Bally X's and O's with his comment (firm at $550).  That means he probably paid $500 and put a couple hours into cleaning it and re-rubbering it (possibly replacing some bulbs) so $550 is probably honestly his break-even point, but he's running out of space because he keeps buying anything he can.

Oh also his "store" is more like a storage shed with a retail front because he's never there (appointment only), or when he needs to try to move some stuff he'll open all day on saturday.  That's not a retail shop if you have nobody to run it because you're trying to keep overhead low, and you have a full-time job that doesn't allow you to be there during the day (nor does it have space to work on pinball or multicades).  I really hope his poorly business fails and he learns a hard lesson.

Also if you're going to run a legitimate business, perhaps you should learn how to spell (or use a modern browser like firefox with spellcheck built in), because I don't know what a "backgalss pealing" means.

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