Case Study: Buying and Repairing a Mars God of War for less than 1400 €
Step 1: Find an interesting listing
To begin, look for an interesting listing on sites like Le Bon Coin using terms like "flipper" and sorting by "Most recent".
Step 2: Analyse this interesting listing
Seller's profile: The profile indicates that other users have had good transactions with him, which is a good sign.
Analysis of the photos:
The playfield looks clean.
The cabinet is correct but could deserve a little love. However, it should be noted that the pinball playfield is on the wall and the backbox in the seller's living room, so this is not a beginner. He surely wants to get rid of it for some reason, which could be an interesting topic to bring up by message.
Bottom of the cabinet: Note that the filter capacitor (orange) has been changed, as explained above
The grey areas are humidity, nothing serious but worth noting.
Under the clean playfield, nothing to report.
The glasses appear to be in good condition and are film-wrapped, which would greatly help to preserve them.
The connectors have been redone, which is good news even if we can see that there is potentially a weird ground mod attempt on the cable connecting the driver and the CPU!
We can see that the MA 216 board has an SC-01 emulator like this one: 
At this price range, the pinball machine will go very fast (this listing lasted 18h), so it is essential to make quick decisions, ask questions and, if it's a pinball machine you're interested in and it's not too far from your home, to set up an appointment as quickly as possible.
Step 4: List of potential costs
- Change the filter capacitor: 5 €
- Renovation pack (Lisy80 + Godri80) or Gottfa80_Plus: 301 €
- Transport in a 320d estate: 100 €
- Price of the pinball machine: 950 €
- LEDs or bulb: 20 €
Total cost: 100 € + 950 € + 301 € + 5 € + 20 € = 1376 €
Additional tips
The key, once you've got it, is to contact us when you receive our boards if you ordered from us, or to ask questions on the forums / Facebook groups. People are often nicer than they look!
And above all, you must always remember that:
"A fool who walks will always go further than an intellectual sitting down." - Michel Audiard
So, forget your fears and dive into the adventure. We will do everything we can to help you bring your pinball machine back to life!
