Terrible news. Terrible times.

I hope there aren't more casualties of events.

LTG : (

Sorry, never heard of them. But RIP just the same.

That sucks Dame you 2020 come on 2021

Be careful what you wish for.

No shit. Gonna get worse before, if, it gets better

I always wanted to make it out to Pinburgh.

Well, I hope they can find other jobs then.

Wait.. so is all this going away? Are they selling off all the PAPA machines and no more Pinburgh for the foreseeable future?

thats how it reads.

holy @%$@ .... very VERY sad news.

Sad news for sure.

I went to PAPA once. Never ever seen anything like it. Never will again, i'm sure.

Yeah just did some digging. They're liquidating EVERYTHING. I thought PAPA was it's own organization.. didn't realize Replay ran it.

Wow! I hope not. That would be a huge disappointment for all pinball hobbyists/collectors.

It was great for those few years at Pittsburg. Thanks to all those involved for putting on some great shows and helping to make memories that will last a lifetime.

I guess it's not the saddest day for those that can acquire them?

Here's hoping someone can buy the collection more or less intact with the goal of keeping things in deep freeze until competitive play can happen again.

Are you unable to have competitive play without them?

are you unable to ever contribute something positive

Are you unable to get off your high horse?

Inferring that you might be able to have competitive play anyway is not positive?

I haven't seen anything for sale yet. Wonder when they'll start the liquidation process.

This is great news. Now a spirit halloween can move into there.

Bummer news.

Makes me wonder if a very-deep pocket pinball enthusiast (or group of enthusiasts) can step in and help out -- perhaps buy up enough of the block of games, so they can stay afloat another year -- but leave all the games there...

-mof

Maybe Stern?

I thought the American pinball brothers came from a wealthy family. Fantastic opportunity for them to get the company recognized and they would have the appreciation from the community and tournament players (FWIW).

I’m disappointed that replay didn’t bother to ask us if we would be willing to donate our ticket money to keep the foundation afloat. I would have no issue in doing this and I bet I am not the only one who feels that way. Even a gofundme could have prolonged this decision for another year.

Good point. Keep in mind they have at least a couple full time staff and the facility to store everything. It certainly would have been a good idea to ask (or maybe they did investigate this..) I would have thrown a wad of cash their way to keep it alive.

In Doug's post he alludes to the fact that any prepaid fees not donated will be refunded. So at this point it would seem your donation would be to just keep the lights on while they liquidate.

Yeah. Very bad news. Maybe the amount they needed was so much they felt what was the point? But they could have presold papa slot rights or something? E.g. donate 1000 now but you get first dibs on future events? No guarantee there will be future events but with your help it will be more possible....

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

You've got to think that once the world returns to normality a lot of these things will come back to life.

If they were not liquidating, maybe. But, they are, so without games it would be a bit more difficult to bring it back.

Even if citizens in the States started to take the pandemic seriously, you would still have the anti-science and anti-vaccine kooks spreading "facts" on social media to keep others from protecting themselves.

vaccines (resized).jpg

This^. We have people sick in the hospital that still deny it’s real.

"While the Foundation is not dissolving, we are liquidating most of our physical assets and cancelling all of our public events. Over the coming months, the Foundation will retire all of its debts, including the refund of prepaid tickets, and will exist solely as an online resource for the foreseeable future."

What a true shame.
Pinburgh and Replay FX were simply awesome.
PAPA was a true standup organization too.

At Replay FX, they had the nicest assortment of pinballs and vids that I had ever seen in my life - cherry and great to play.
Thank you all to the staff for the many wonderful memories and all the HARD work to make things happen and keep things going to this bitter end.

You provided many of us some very Good Karma.
Especially at times, when we needed it most.
And we thank you.

Sad that they were able to survive the 2004 flood and rebuild but not able to survive this.

Of course you can have competitive play without them. But a match play tournament of the scale that Pinburgh had gotten to is HIGHLY unlikely. It hosted 1000 players and still had hundres more wanting to get in. You need a huge venue and a huge collection of machines that work great to pull that off. Pinburgh was an outstanding event that nothing else matched and it'll be sorely missed by tons of people.

no insurance to cover the loss of a pandemic, unlike a before

What i dont understand, why they must liquidate. I know that i dont have even remotely enough information but here is why i say this, and of course, its merely my opinion

Monthly cost, i have no clue what size warehouse they have, or what the cost is, but im guessing its in the 5-7.5k range for monthly storage. As far as staff, that should be down to almost nothing currently, to be in survival mode. No need to have staff to maintain machines that you dont plan on keeping. So why cant staff be minimalized, and sell enough games a month to cover cost, and try this for at least a while longer. With having 1k games or so at the show, you know that they have many more reserves. They have plenty of doubles. So they could sell a double like an Addams Family, and that alone would almost cover the carrying cost to last a month itself. Even if my numbers are way off, then maybe they have to sell 2 or three games a month to cover cost. if they try to survive this route, they could easily make it a year and probably still have 1k in quality games

Now like i said, i dont have enough info, so maybe this was just the push they needed to be done,

This is a pretty tasteless joke; but a pretty damn funny tasteless joke.

Terrible news.. I'm not even sure I can completely comprehend the impact of this on Pinball world.

You'd think A Kickstarter or Fundraising event might make up the difference? Terrible news even
with news of a Vaccine on the wind.

They weren't in a flood plain before and couldn't get flood insurance.

Kevin rebuilt on his own.

LTG : )

So PAPA is seriously done? C'mon seriously?

Edit: Wait, this doesn't read as if PAPA is done, maybe just the events and assets for the foundation are done.

Edit 2: CRAP:

How will the sale of physical assets be conducted?

We have already received high levels of interest in our collection of pinball machines, video games, consoles, board games, and more, the majority of which consists of games in excellent condition with a high playability factor. We also have a number of rare and unique pieces.

We will be selling the collection through our newly relaunched Web site, as well as through outlets such as eBay. If you are interested in a bulk purchase, please reach out to us at [email protected].

In accordance with our mission, we are particularly interested in sales to persons or companies who will be operating games for the public to play. That’s what these games are for, after all.

Very sad for pinball and Pittsburgh. I would gladly donate and I’m sure many others, to a Go fund me or something to keep them from having to sell everything off.

There are very intelligent, pinball-passionate, business-savvy people on the Replay Foundation board so please give them the courtesy of knowing they considered all options before making a move like this. Pre-selling some tickets or a Kickstarter wouldn't have gotten them where they needed to be or they would have done it.

Sadly I am sure you are right.

Wow this super duper sucks. :/

Truly a sad day for PAPA. I have spoken with many of our friends that were involved with this event. They are gutted. It's something that was truly a part of Pittsburgh and I have a tremendous amount of respect for all the efforts by Mark, Doug and team over the last few years make this a must attend event. Hopefully there will be some form of this in the coming years. Pittsburgh has benefited greatly from all their hard work. Thanks again for all the memories at papa, all the way back to when pinburgh was at a hotel in banksville.

This is such a bummer. Big thanks to everyone at Replay.... Pinnburgh was such a great event.. it was the only competitive pinball i ever really participated in, i met so many cool people there every year.