Yesterday, the family and I drove out to Quail Springs Mall to get Mason’s glasses adjusted. While I’m sure the mall wasn’t as crowded as it was on Black Friday, it was still pretty bad.

After getting Mason’s glasses adjusted the two of us headed downstairs to visit the mall’s arcade, Tilt. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there and, like most other arcades at this point in time, Tilt seems to barely be limping along. If you exclude the ticket redemption machines and count multiplayer machines as one “game”, then I own more working coin-op games than Tilt does.

One of the things Tilt (and many other) arcades do (or at least used to) is put price tags on their games around Christmas. I remember looking at those price tags as a kid and thinking, “Wow, games are expensive!” Now I know better; those prices are insane and the arcades have to desire to actually sell them. The only people buying games at those prices are (A) rich people, (B) crazy people, and (C) crazy rich people (or, if you prefer, rich crazy people).

The other day though, things were different. Based on the prices I saw, it looks like they may actually want to get rid of their games. I saw House of the Dead and House of the Dead II each in pretty good condition for $795 each — more than what you would pay at an auction, but not exorbitant. There was a Gauntlet Legends for $695 and a generic police-themed shooting game for $395. Again that’s more than I pay for my machines, but they’re borderline reasonable.

When arcades start putting their machines up for sale for reasonable prices, it’s not hard to read between the lines.