bbtuna and John M, I see what you are saying. It helps to have the tables listed in a ranking from 1-10 based on their durability and quality. This is a nice way to illustrate the differences.
Thank you for addressing these issues for me BillV. I have sent a message to Mary Moore as you suggested.
jinhopark, I missed that listing. Typically, shipping prices would only go as far as Seattle. From there, it would be around $200 extra to get to us via barge from there.
bolt115, you make a valid point. A decent non-coin op table would be better than no table at all. Seeing that it is quite difficult to find a used coin-op in my location to my specifications (i.e. wood-grained, excellent condition, well-packaged for shipping, etc.), I could certainly see how I might be still looking for that mythical coin-op table years from now and missing out on many years of Fun Family Foosball with my kids. Definitely something to think about.
This is such a difficult decision. What it comes down to is: how long am I willing to wait for the "right" used coin-op table? And how much more effort do I want to put into stalking Craigslist and eBay and various other locations waiting for the "right" table to materialize? As bolt115 mentioned, if he had waited, it might have been years before he finally got a table - or maybe never if he finally got frustrated enough to give up on the hunt.
I was mulling this over with a friend this weekend. After much discussion, she made a point considering the following ifs/ands:
1) IF I couldn't find the "right" coin-op in a reasonable amount of time (which, in reality, may take a long time to locate in our location)
2) and IF I just went out and bought that higher end home model (which I could potentially order tomorrow)
3) and IF, after 10 or 15 years, we discovered that the home table simply was not holding up and, worst case, we couldn't resell it at all and just scrapped it
---> 4) then maybe we would decide that, if we'd gotten even just 10 or 15 years of fun and entertainment with our family out of the table, then we probably wouldn't care what we spent on it and that we couldn't recover any of our investment
Many of you have made very valid points on all the sides of this discussion. As so many of things in life are, this decision will end up being a compromise of some sort. Basically I have to decide if I'd rather have a decent table sooner and start enjoying foosball with my family now or wait for the "perfect" excellent table and risk missing out on some quality fun with my family while I wait.
I plan to give the "perfect" table a little more time to materialize, but, if it doesn't, I may just get that home model because it's available when I want it and A table is probably better than NO table.