Chromizone brought up the subject of buying pinballs from husbands that don't want to sell them.

I find I have better luck with widows. Not because of the price, but because they do actually want to sell.

I have one late 40's wood rail United's Aquacade (http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=78_ ) from a neighbour down the escarpment who had kept their "family" pinball for decades until her husband passed (as he had no intention of ever letting it go) and then some.

It hadn't worked for at least 25 years, and it was taking up valuable storage space, so the husband actually broke it all down into pieces (ouch to the cabinet), and removed and labelled EVERY part, and stored it all in a few boxes.  It's a puzzle waiting to go back together when I have some time.  The reason his daughters and mother sold it to me?  Apart from my reputation for pinball love, I live in the same house where they used to a couple generations of owners back, and the pinball actually worked and was played there, decades before by the whole family - in the very same basement where the box of puzzle pieces now lies waiting for its next resurrection. So in a sense they were happy to have the pinball returned to a happier time and place, to be enjoyed by my family, in his memory.  

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=78

I seem to remember a Kijiji or Craigslist ad several months ago offering a woodrail in a bunch of pieces and thought it was a joke. Maybe it was this one.

Quoted from wbradley

I seem to remember a Kijiji or Craigslist ad several months ago offering a woodrail in a bunch of pieces and thought it was a joke. Maybe it was this one.

It probably was, they told me they had it up for estate sale for $250 or something like that before a mutal friend in town connected us.  Funny enough, before this we knew of each other, but had not actually met, nor realized a connection other than having lived in the same hosue.