___________________________________________________________________________________________

ABOUT THE PRICE GUIDE

The Silent Salesmen Too price guide is a useful tool but is often misunderstood. The purpose of this article is to tell you how the price guide is put together, the assumptions inherent in the assigned values, and the limitations of the guide. In other words, what is the price guide and what is it not?

Bill Enes put together the first price guides for Silent Salesmen and Silent Salesmen Too. Since Bill's death in 1999, updates to the guide have been managed by people who were close to Bill and want to see the guide remain current. The guide is copyrighted and the copyright is held by Bill's estate, so his widow has the ultimate say in when and how subsequent versions are written.

I don't know how Bill derived his prices, but I know that he had a "pricing committee" that at the very least advised him. I don't know how much of the advice he took, but it's safe to say that Bill's opinion weighed heavily in the final valuation.

Since Bill's death the price guide has been updated multiple times. As I write this in October 2021, the current version is the 2018 guide with an updated version due out next month, in November 2021. The price guides published since Bill's death have been driven and managed by David Cook, an advanced collector of antique vending machines, old gum, and vintage gum-related advertising. Mary Zerby is the mother of Bill's widow, Peggy, and she's also involved representing Bill's estate. David and Mary collaborate on each version of the guide. David has recruited 8 or 9 other collectors of old vending machines who are experienced, active in the hobby, knowledgable about current prices, and willing to put in the time and effort it takes to estimate and record the values of the machines in Silent Salesmen Too. When it's time to update the guide, he sends them the old price guide and asks them to carefully consider prices for the machines listed in the guide and to change any price they believe needs to be updated. During this process there are several "ground rules" to follow:

Consider the price for an example in "average condition," which---during meetings of the pricing committee for Silent Salesmen---Bill Enes defined to be 5 on a scale of 10. Left unsaid was whether the committee should price an unrestored example or a restored example.
Unless otherwise stated in the description in Silent Salesmen Too, price the machine without locks, slug rejectors, unusual globes or decals, or other unusual features of the particular machine pictured.
If you aren't familiar with the current price of a particular machine, then don't price it. Price only the ones you know and feel confident pricing.
If you think a model is rare, then mark it "rare" and don't put a price.

Members of the pricing committee fill out the form and send it to David, who compiles the information and then calculates the "average value"---specifically, the median of all of the prices estimated for the model---and rounds it to a reasonable increment. For example, a machine whose "average value" is $816 would probably be rounded to $825. If more than half of the estimates indicate a machine to be rare, then the model is indicated as "rare" in the guide and no price is given. If more than half of the estimates are prices and fewer than half are "rare," then the price is calculated as the median of the price estimates submitted for the model.

This method produces a price guide based on a consensus of 9 to 10 active collectors, each contributing independently to an objective estimate of value. This guide is a useful tool that's invaluable to new collectors and is often consulted even by experienced collectors.

That said, the price guide is just that: A guide. Valuations are not etched in stone, and the guide does not define the price, it just gets you into the right ballpark. Some limitations of the guide are the following:

Pricing committee members may have different opinions of "average condition." Pricing committee members have been collecting for awhile, and during that time they're built nice collections with machines of above-average quality---in many cases way above average. For some of them it may be truly hard to envision what "average condition" looks like for some models.
For the same reason, the make-up of the committee is not optimal for evaluating lower-priced machines. Some committee members sell machines in that range at shows or on eBay, and most are familiar with trends in that range, but the committee members tend to be buying, selling, and concentrating on mid-range machines and the upper end and have deeper knowledge of that range than they do of the lower-priced range.
Having 12 to 14 members would be better than having 9 or 10, but that's a minor limitation. To be specific, having a few additional members who are more intimately familiar with lower-priced machines would help mitigate the limitation described immediately above, but realistically I question how much difference it would make in those valuations.
Lastly, the price guide doesn't indicate any measure of variance in price opinions. A common machine with a commonly accepted value (such as a Northwestern 33 Peanut or a Columbus 46) will likely have little variance among pricing committee members. The numbers that produce a book value of $250 may have ranged from $225 to $275, a range-ratio of 1.22. However, the numbers that produce a book value of $1000 on a relatively uncommon machine may have ranged from $600 to $1750, a much larger range-ratio of nearly 3. It would be nice to know that experienced collectors vary so widely in their valuation of a given model but the book value won't give you that information.

With this background, collectors should consider the price guide a list of ballpark estimates. It probably won't help you discern the difference between a $200 machine and a $250 machine, but it should help you discern the difference between a $200 machine and a $500 machine and will definitely indicate a difference between a $200 machine and a $1000 machine.

In general, machines tend to sell for more than book value rather than less than book value. I've not figured out why that is, but I've seen it countless times. I've seen superlative examples sell for 3 or 4 times book, although a superlative example obviously isn't one in average condition. The ultimate question on any purchase is "What's it worth to me?" The answer to that question may make you pay 3 times the book value or to walk away from a bargain. In the end, you have only yourself to answer to.

___________________________________________________________________________________________