How to Value a Vintage Pachinko Machine
When pachinko parlors decommissioned the machines after about a year of use, they were sold cheap to make room for newer models. Servicemen and businessmen started to bring them back in the late 1940’s. There were hundreds of thousands of pachinko machines imported in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and sold by Sears, Montgomery Wards, Target Abroad, Woolwort, Pachinko Palace, Spiegal, Pachinko Imports, The Pachinko Factory, Sutra Import, K-Mart, Meshulam’s, Pier 1 Imports, Osco and others. The newer pachinko machines are still imported today. They are sold around the country and online.
When video games became popular or when enough of the balls were lost to make the game unplayable, the pachinko machines were put into storage and forgotten. On any given day, there are about 300 to 400 for sale on Craigslist/eBay and other sites in the US so they typically aren’t rare. Generally, most are valued about $20 to $100 and some of the rarer or more desirable ones can go for over $1,000.00. The key words here are “rare:” and/or “desirable.” The price all depends on many factors that can influence how much you can get if you want to sell your pachinko machine, or how much you should pay if you are looking to purchase a pachinko machine
I would like to say when pricing a pachinko machine to sell, or budgeting while planning to buy one, remember the 4 C’s: Condition, Completeness, Cleanliness and Commonality. People don’t pay for sentimental value, and a machine is only worth what someone will pay for it, and sometimes it is best to just walk away. Here are some other websites that talk about the value of pachinko machines.
Most machines have a main attraction and one or more tulips, as well as pay pockets and spinners. The different combinations of these can set the value of the machine: Does the main attraction have a theme, move and/or light up? Also, how many tulips will open as a ball passes through it? The more a main attraction does, the more desirable it is. How many tulips and/or pay pockets are there and what do they do? Some pay pockets will open tulips, but most will just give you a jackpot. Tulips, however, will open and close as balls enter them, they may also open other tulips. Are there side pockets on the playing field that open and close? There are also unique machines: these are machines that are uncommon, such as two main attractions or no main attraction, some will have 9 or 10 tulips on the playing field, other may have 10 or more pay pockets on the playing field. Also, there are machines with a power shooter knob and a flipper, and there are electric-mechanical vintage machines that came with motors, solenoids and simple circuit boards. Some machines came with extra playing fields so you can replace the playing field, these are called Exchange. The more unique the machines are, the more desirable they are to collectors.
1980 is the year that most consider the cross over point from Vintage to modern pachinko, this is when most pachinkos went from a flipper lever to shoot the balls to a control knob for firing the balls on the the playing field.
More electronics, lights, motors and sounds are used on the machines, as well as video screens. Makes for more exciting play and higher payouts.
These machines that are produce now are more video game then the mechanical machine they started as.
Draw backs on modern Pachinkos
They require electricity and more care in storage of the machine. More balls are needed for continuous play, also a higher level of maintenance is needed for the machine to continually work properly.
It is hard to find somebody to work on them as there is no technical information or parts available. This makes the resell value low, when a break down happens most likely they are only good for part to repair other machines.
Is the machine clean or dirty? This has a lot to do with where it was stored. Machines stored in a closet are cleaner than the machines stored in an attic, shed or barn where insects and rodents made it their home. You may get less for a dirty machine because cleaning it takes a lot of time, and a dirty machines sometimes means the mechanical parts and levers may stick and not move property, or balls may not flow smoothly through the machine. Is the chrome on the front nice and shiny, or rusty? Rust on the front of the machines isn’t attractive and rust or corrosion on the metal mechanical parts of the machine can cause the machine to not always function property. Too much rust or damage and it is a parts machine.
Is it operational, can put balls in it and start playing, not that it was working 25 years ago before it was put in the barn for storage! Work ability is a key factor in the price of the machine, as most buyers don’t want to buy something to work on. Nonworking machines can be fixed if you know what you are doing. More severe damage nonworking machines are considered “parts machines.” Buyers may buy these just for the parts to get another machine working. Parts machines are only worth what can be salvaged off of them, and a nonworking, high end machine with a lot of usable parts can bring more than a low end common working machine.
I've just recently discovered the world of vintage Pachinko machines and my new interest is dangerously close to turning into something “I absolutely have to start collecting right now”. For those that, like me just a few days ago, had never heard of “pachinko” before, prepare to be dazzled by a far more fabulous, Japanese version of the old American pinball machine– with a Las Vegas, pool-hall twist.
Looking like something between a slot machine and a vertical pinball machine, the pachinko actually differs in several ways from their western counterparts. First of all, they’re absolutely gorgeous objects– just check out that artwork, those colours and the vintage streamline design. And they have a pretty interesting story too…
Each machine is a little different, but the play is pretty much the same for all of them. There are signs in various languages stating that pachinko is not gambling and that no money is awarded to winners. And while gambling for cash is illegal in Japan, when it comes to pachinko– things aren’t so black and white.
It’s important to remember that the house advantage of pachinko parlours is astronomically high and more than 99 percent of players lose money. At the counter, you purchase a stash of small, steel balls, like pellets and pick a machine– which operates mostly on gravity, which means you pretty much watch your metal pellets fall from the top of a weird maze, through a series of pegs, and down toward the bottom of the machine and lose them forever– until you buy more. If luck is on your side however, your pellets might land in the winning pockets along their downward descent, which will win you … more pellets!
Now, at any time, you can “cash-out” on your pellets, but of course, as the parlour signs state, pachinko is not a gambling game. So instead of cash, you can claim some cheap and useless merchandise from the front of the hall like key chains, poorly made electronics or “special prizes”, typically small silver or gold novelty items encased in plastic. Sounds like a pretty sour deal, unless you know about the small establishments located nearby, where players can “sell” their prizes for cold, hard cash. These establishments operate as “separate” units to the parlours, although often in the same building.파친코
Pachinko regardless of what the signs say, or in what language they say it, amounts to gambling. The Japanese mafia, known as the yakuza, used to run the pachinko prize exchanges until the police stamped out their involvement in the 1990s around the same time that Japan’s blanket anti-gambling law was passed in the 1990s.