My brother managed to find one of these in the wild and knew I was in the market for a cabinet, so he scooped it up.  It's going to cost me $100 delivered to get it from him (his initial investment + gas to deliver).  Is this a bad deal?  I've only seen cellphone pics of the machine, and it appears to be in ok condition.

$100 for any arcade game is worth it because you can customize even if you don't like the game.

Well, any ol' cab can be had cheaply (like sub $50). 

This particular cabinet (is now in my possession) is in "ok" shape.  Everything is original, but you can tell it's been in a barn for a while... the edges are a little frayed, and the monitor has a horizontal hold issue (but appears to be working otherwise), the bezel is a little warped but everything is solid. and there's no real bad gashes or anything.  It came with the manual and has been with the same owner since 1986.  Sadly, it has been in storage since '94 or so along with some other cabinets that the woman owns, as well as some pinball machines and jukeboxes (apparently, she and her husband owned an RV park and had a game room on site.  Now the question remains... is it worth the money/effort to restore it?  I'm not a super big fan of Frogger (I don't love it, but it's a decent game), and would likely resell the cabinet to someone who does.

Does anyone know what a restored frogger goes for?  There aren't enough eBay auctions for this particular machine for me to hazard a guess...

I agree 100% with Jeff, an empty cab could cost about that much and you can always just sell the board if you want a different game in there



EDIT: You have any pics?

https://plus.google.com/photos/11...

Shitty phone pics... but I'm still waiting on my new camera to arrive...

Without seeing the screen on and based solely on the cosmetics, I'd say pass on a full restore since you aren't fond of the game. The cabinet isn't really that pretty to begin with and in all honesty could use updating. The laminate wood vinyl isn't very attractive. As is you could probably double your money, restored you may have to wait for that specific buyer but I've seen ground up rebuilds of classic titles go for around ~$1500 but damn near everything has been replaced.

I honestly would gut it if you aren't fond of the game and reinvest it back into the cabinet with a MAME box. Only cabinets I keep are the games I really love like Donkey Kong/Asteroids. They take up too much space to keep a specific cab you don't really like.

Screen has no burn-in and rolls horizontally... and occasionally stops rolling. I'm thinking it may just have gotten jostled in the move and needs a minor adjustment (my brother said it worked fine before he loaded it and toted it the hour here). At worst, needs a cap kit or something. I just don't want to sink another hundred or two hundred bucks into it with 0 chance of recouping the money. It's a classic, and I like it, but it's no Donkey Kong.