Quoted from ddebuss:

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.

Quoted from DrJoe:

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.