I'm a proud owner of a Sega Astro City and a modest collection of arcade games. It's been an interesting experience dealing with arcade stuff. Calibrating the monitor was no walk in the park, and troubleshooting some graphics issues on a few boards drove me nearly insane-- but it's been worth it. I'm not much of a collector, but I greatly value having the best possible experience when playing games I care about most, and that means hunting down original hardware.
I really learned to love arcade games while studying abroad in Japan, and I was fortunate enough to regularly visit some of the best arcades in the world. A lot of people talk about Tokyo arcades but the ones in Osaka and Kyoto are just as good, with equally exotic and rare offerings if you know where to look. Amusement SCOT in Den Den Town had an insanely cool collection on the top floor-- stuff you never see like Gun Frontier, Vulgus, Splatterhouse, Dark Seal, some weird Korean-made vertical shooters, IGS beat-em-ups, and an entire wall full of obscure fighting games that I did not recognize at all. Then one day I saw moving trucks and cabinets sitting outside on the sidewalk. It would be a damn shame if they closed down, but I like to imagine they relocated to make more space for their awesome collection to grow.
Anyway, enough rambling. I'm no expert, but if anyone has arcade questions I can probably answer 'em. A dedicated thread would be cool.
