Make income with arcade machine?

[Make income with arcade machine?]

My brother bought an arcade R-Type cabinet and had it in the student lounge in

his college. Made a bit of money off it, but not much. This was in the early 90's,

though. Now, with emulation everywhere, it's probably even harder to make money

off a cabinet. If your cabinet is rare or valuable, expect it to take a lot of abuse,

so you might not want to put it in a public place... My brother's cab was eventually

stolen. They found it dumped nearby a day or two later with the coin box torn

out. Who has the resources to haul off a huge heavy upright cab for a few tens

of dollars in quarters?

 

Thanks for the input. Wow, that is a lot of work for not a big payout. It only took me a minute to drill out the locks on my machine, too bad they didn't just do that. Was the machine salvageable? I doubt my cabinet is rare, it was made in 2002, and a pricing guide I found said it's worth about $900. You can see the exact cabinet in the link in my original post.

[Make income with arcade machine?]

Thanks for the advice. Are you guys speaking from experience, or just speculation?

[Make income with arcade machine?]

It's not really worth $3000 any more.

 

Anyway, you can put it on location somewhere, but you have to register it and pay taxes to the state. Unfortunately, I would bet that Centipede would not make enough to cover your yearly tax and the gas to pickup the few quarters it would generate.

 

Thanks, I hadn't thought about the taxes part. It's actually one of those newer multi-game cabinets with Centipede/Millipede/Missle Command/Lets Go Bowling . It's funny, the company that engineered the hardware say that the bowling games gets more plays than the others. They wrote the bowling game in 2002 for inclusion on the hardware, it's not a classic.

 

I've seen this same cabinet in a couple of bars, maybe I'll talk to the owners to see if it actually makes them any money.

[Make income with arcade machine?]

Does anyone have any experience placing arcade machines in public locations to make income? Are there any good resources for learning about this ?

 

Basically, I've got a Centipede/Millipede/Missle Command/Lets Go Bowling cabinet (this one http://www.teamplayinc.com/CMM/index.html) taking up space in my house and I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. I figure I've got 3 options: 1. Sell it, 2. Try to place it somewhere and make some money with it, 3. Continue to let it sit in my house. I'm trying to decide if if option 2 is even worth my time or would I make more money/lease headache with option 1. Any suggestions? Anyone know what I could sell my machine for? It retails around $3000.

 

Incidentally, I thought I'd share the story of how I got the machine because I think it's pretty good and reading over this forum you guys seem to be able to appreciate a good cabinet-find-story.

 

I work next door to a Chuck-E-Cheese. One day I get to work and there are two huge dumpsters outside full of arcade games. They were getting new machines and they just throw away the old ones! I talked to a guy who works there and he said they used to ship them somewhere to resell, but it's not profitable anymore so they just trash them. To discourage trash pickers, they spray paint big black Xs all over the machines. The guy said they don't want people to go into the trash and get hurt and sue.

 

So anyway, there is this Centipede machine sitting right on the end of the dumpster by the door. Man I was excited. I told my boss I was gonna take a half a day. I went and borrowed my dad's truck, and loaded up the game into it. I also grabbed the ramp section of a skeeball machine. I didn't see any of the backboards or I would have grabbed one of those too. I figured I can build a new backboard. There was nothing else of interest in the dumpster. It was all those stupid ticket dispensing games. There was a seat assembly to a driving game that I considered taking, but I left it.

 

The Centipede machine needed some work. The track ball was broken in half and some of the buttons were missing, but the monitor and everything else was in great shape. I bought a nice cleaner that would clean off the spray paint and not damage the cabinet. I ordered some new buttons and a trackball and repaired everything. It looks and plays great.

 

Hope you enjoyed my story, and if you have any suggestions on my first question I'd appreciated any help.