Is there some level of resentment towards HLD that after paying the going rate for a game that they somehow manage to extract thousands from some unsuspecting noob with more cash than sense? Or is it just sour grapes that we can't seem to make sales with that amount of mark-up? To me it's just the difference between a private seller and a business. Exactly the same thing happens with cars. Garages get second-hand cars for a fair price from private sellers or as a part exchange, then change the oil, valet the inside and slap on a bit of Turtle Wax then added £££ to price before placing on the forecourt. Part of what you're paying for is peace-of-mind as even second-hand car sales are covered by consumer regulation and sales are made with a warranty. It's like when I bought my Zafira from Vauxhall. I probably paid about a grand more than a private sale, but I sure got my money's worth out the three-year extended warranty they included! Do HLD offer any kind of warranty/support?
I was about to reply with this exact stuff in response to your first post in the thread - you are absolutely right. There are also people that feel like they were taken advantage of because their ultimate aim was to offer a cheap game to get more people in their hobby, coming to shows and meets and posting on the board etc. For those people, I very much agree with them. But for everyone else that doesn't have that goal in mind and just wants a sale, then gets mad when it turns up on HLD, what you say does apply.
We say more money than sense in cases of sales like this - and personally I still believe that to be utterly true - but it has always been the way, time immaterial, that people with a lot of free cash will sometimes pay over the odds to us, in order to just not worry about any of the technicalities.
A £2K mark-up on a pinball would be unjustified for any amount of work to me. But I can say that because I am happy to work on repairs myself and I don't need a warranty or an installation - and I don't consider the process of learning how to do the work (or the years of already learnt skills involving restoration work on complex devices like cars, and electronic repair at circuit diagnostic level) as part of that cost. I enjoyed learning that stuff and I find it invaluable going forward.
The fly in the ointment, where all of this falls over for me, are the statements that I have read from people that have sold to HLD, selling pins with known issues that needed work, and then seeing them relisted on the site very quickly, with that same heavy markup, with photos that strongly suggest that the work wasn't done prior to sale and photography. That does lend legitimate ammunition of lazy profiteering by sales achieved with the aid of a sheen of professionalism.
But I wonder, in that case, how they can make significant profit selling machines with issues if they offer a servicing warranty... surely that profit evaporates if they have to keep tending to a machine with issues? So even those rumors must be taken with salt.
Overall I think people in hobbies, in general and not just here, are too quick to undersell the value of their skills and time - heck, your enthusiasm is a value alone.
