When we screen playfields we aim to have every playfield a Gold but the medium is wood which is a living medium AND silk screening is not an exact science. We usually have about 10% of the fields culled as Silver and Bronze, but Shit Happens as they say and we have had as high as 40% go Silver or Bronze and we won't know until its finished printing. It takes months to get any number of PFs to the point that they can be screened. We can screen roughly one color a day but the white layer takes two because we do it twice to give a GOOD solid base for the layers of color above. This allows the colors to pop better. The long and short of it is a 14 color job can take almost 3 weeks of shop printing time. It basically impossible to go back and reprint the hopefully few Golds and Silvers.

With silk screening we USED to be hooped. Things should be much better now at least in some cases. Now if we silk screened a run and had some Silver or Bronze results we could sand them down and run them through the digital process. If we are using digital prints, like Mirco of course there are no Bronze, they are all as perfect as Mirco's. Because if they are not you just sand them off and do it again. That being said I still prefer a screened PF, it might be the collector in me and in most cases I can't easily tell them apart unless I examine very close up and in some cases with a magnifying glass. The big give away that's its digital is the fades are perfect!! LOL.

It would be impossible for us to promise a GOLD to everyone or, in fact, to anyone at least with silk screen PFs. Most are gold but again its a little bit of a gamble for us.

Mike

Its all chronological, first guys on the list get first crack. We literally start at the top of the email list and just go through them in the order the people emailed onto the list. Please keep in mind we are moving more towards Mirco style with digital prints. We'll always do some silkscreening but in comparison its very risky to silk screen. If we get 100 orders and make 100, we'll only have 40 guys buy them and we are stuck with large losses. If instead we anticipate only 40 guys buying them and then make just 40, then 60 guys are pissed at us. The only way that works is if the last guy who wants a PF buy the last PF, otherwise someone gets disappointed. Digital printing though is very different, we can make 8 examples of a title and when we get down to 2 left we can make 8 more. Theoretically we should always have all our titles in stock forever. However, we have used multiple CNC over the years and they all cut a little differently so each of our old PFs have to be prepped and test cut several times to make sure they are perfect. But as the old titles are converted over to the new system they should be available from then on. We have almost 50 PF titles from our past so this is going to take some time, especially as we still want to add new titles as well.