My LOTR is for sale right now but I no nothing of a remake in the near future. I need the cash and space.

Very true....this is a wild card but I guess re running Tron, IMVE and the making of TWD and TBL is a big fat "X" in the possible column.

same here. $3400 delivered to my door.

Nissan sells an entire car for less than $13,000. I am talking an entire car, including such things as keys, wheels, tires, horn, wipers, rear view mirrors, radio, seats, engine, floor mats, engine, transmission, brakes (forget what else) but a crap ton more material than is in a pinball machine. I would say the 'parts' meaning the toys, ramps, magnet, flippers etc.. Can not add up to a lot of money can't be much more than is on Met or TWD. The guts such as controllers are all the same and likely very cheap for Stern.

I keep saying the same thing all the time and getting flamed for it.

It's like Stern has the box, legs, back box, flippers and the 'guts' meaning the controllers lights already paid off in development so probably (just a guess but for the basic things probably less than 500 including building). Then you have the unique parts (things you can see like ramps, magnets, bash toys, shaking tower etc.. realistically I can't figure what they cost, but Balrog is probably same as Sparky, toy figurines probably $50 for the lot.

Depends on how many they can sell, obviously that works in favor of LOTR because it's popular and highly rated like MM is and (IMO favors a lower price) if they can sell 1000 pins at $5000 ea. that could be a lot better than selling 300 units at $7000. The HIGHER the cost will mean the LOWER the sales, I don't think anyone is saying a $7000 LOTR is a good idea. The idea (IMO) is to sell the brand new ones for maybe less than the pristine HUO LOTR, or just a tiny bit higher than a Met pro to TWD pro.

Supplying bras for Madonna videos is not the same as acquiring a pinball license.

However, I do agree with you.

So...was the Stampede VE post that briefly popped up during Expo just an elaborate joke or what?

I wish I could remember what I paid for my NIB. I bought it from Brady Distributing in Charlotte in 2004, probably close to full retail because I didn't know any better. What was the MSRP then?

Well, Gary said at expo that there would be more vaults......if it's not Lotr, then it's tron. Those are the two main candidates to make $ imho. What other pin could it be?

Waa Waa Waa and Boo Hoo to all the owners of games who don't want remakes to keep game prices high.

I would like to see POTC you do not see many for sale and when you do it is some silly price.

Revenue doesn't matter, profit does. For arguments sake, if they can sell 1000 pins at $5000.00 and they are making 1k profit off of each machine, they just made 1 million. If they sell 300 machines at 7000 making 3k profit, they make $900,000. Arguably because they are purchasing fewer parts, using less line time, etc. making 300 machines vs 1000 the profit per machine at 7k is would be even higher, so might end up being a wash. Bump that to 350 machines at 7k and they are definitely ahead of the game.

In that situation (as a business), I would do the 300 machine run at 7k myself.

I'd be curious to see if there's the demand for POTC that there seems to be for Tron, LOTR, etc.

Maybe POTC would be a 2017 VE release to coincide with the 5th installment in the franchise, rather than in the near-term when interest may not be peaked.

I wouldn't buy any VE unless they changed it up a bit, LOTR's VE with colour changing GI and inserts, maybe some updated code and modded with the POTDead figurines lit up, cool armor, side art and speaker art etc. I would pay Premium price for a LOTR's Pre. Just a duplicate of the pro with led's, no way.

What's the average selling price for an excellent condition Iron Man Pro these days? I haven't seen many for sale. Makes me wonder how real the implied price drop on original pins will be when vault editions come out. In the case of MM, I've seen used ones drop a little in price but still on par with what PPS is planning on selling their remake for. Regardless, love it or hate it, it's an avenue for STERN to generate more money to develop new titles and a way for people to get brand new versions of pinball machines they love and adore. Seems to be reasonable to me.

The price of a pinball machine is not the sum of its BOM and labor. I don't doubt that Stern could release a LOTR VE at current Pro prices and turn a profit. The problem is one of perception. Stern wants people to keep paying Premium and LE prices as much as possible as they are raking in the cash at those price points, which leads to things like nice new big factories, etc.

LOTR's mechs, ramps, complexity are more in line with Stern's current Premium line than a Pro. If LOTR VE comes out and sells at Pro level, especially if it has upgraded art, LEDs, etc., the question becomes why pay Premium prices for new machines? Let alone LE prices?

A lot of pin buyers are already asking these questions (or answered them with "I'm out") as pin prices keep going up and up. IMO, Stern has to be careful with these VEs so they don't kill the golden goose that is the Premium/LE pricing.

The VE's have definitely had an impact on pricing. There is a very nice IM near me that is for sale for $3500.

I'd say IMVE truly caused the price of the originals to fall at least a grand. Right before IMVE was announced, really nice HUO pros were going for $5,500-$6,000. It would be virtually impossible to sell one for that much money now.

Cool. Thanks for the info. Market has been slow on Iron Man's where I'm at. Encouraging to know that LOTR's might be more affordable if a vault edition comes out...

One way or another LOTR will likely be my next game. I'm in for a VE at 6k or less... love the thought of it shipped to my door with potential upgrades. I'd also be down for buying a reasonably-priced original, but those are hard to come by and there is the cost of transportation.

I bought mine from Brady in Feb 2005 for 4200 shipped. Still haven't beaten ROTK!

Yes, its much better to lose thousands every time we buy a game... yes, its much better to flood the market with more of the same... yes, we all know space and money is endless... etc., etc., etc.

I'm willing to bet your solution to our 18 trillion dollar debt... print more money!

please tell me you're not a registered voter...

I've had mine since 2010 and still haven't beat that either. Only beat FOTR once and killed the Witch King one time only, and that was during a multiball. Lots of challenges to be had.

I beat "Kill the Witch King" the first game I ever played on my machine. I was like, "Why does everyone say this mode is so hard?" I then went on to own the game for two more years and never beat it again.

I heard its Roller Coaster Tycoon VE

Lol , been there. First night of owning the game I got to destroy the ring. Shots lit up and I nailed them all in 56 seconds. Put my initials on for a good game but did not know it would ask for a second set for the ring so it now it says A_ for that : ( . Like I will ever do that again.

Nissan's car sales & manufacturing costs are not a very good comparison to Stern's. One is a high-volume, world-class manufacturing operation with HUGE economies of scale. The other is a niche manufacturer with much fewer economies of scale.

For example, Nissan's manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tennessee is one of the top-producing auto plants in the world. It has almost 8,000 employees and an annual production capacity of 550,000 vehicles. Nissan recently reported record sales for several Smyrna-produced models: i.e., 36,053 Altimas and 18,722 Rogues *** in May alone ***.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/cars/2014/06/04/nissans-smyrna-plant-become-worlds-largest/9955033/

Stern has produced well under 10,000 variants of Lord of the Rings in 11 years.

http://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?any=lord+of+the+rings

Don't worry everyone, with Teekee Economics™ our debt problems are history, because he's invented the pinball that always appreciates. Depreciations on goods is for loser countries!

Don't miss his seminar, "Everything You Buy Will Be Worth More When You Sell It!". Admission is, of course, not free.

If you enjoy that one you won't want to miss the rest of his seminars, including:

"Supply and Demand: Ignore It When It's Not Convenient!"

and

"Market Forces: How To Make Them Revolve Around Your Needs!"

Act fast, the price for admission will keep going up indefinitely!

I bought a new IMVE and have to say the quality was top notch. The game looked gorgeous and played perfectly. Just wasn't a keeper for me. Was actually tough to unload for anywhere near what I paid for it because after it was released ALL IM prices dropped including the brand new ones.

I owned LOTR in the past and traded it off for ToM. Still think I got the better end of that deal. Anyway I'd consider owning another but not for what people are paying these days. $5K? No way. $5K for a brand new one with factory LEDs, redesigned back box, better quality graphics on EVERYTHING & please, for the love of all things pinball, durable VUK switches?!? Maybe.

$6K? Nuh-uh.

I don't get why so many people assume $5k+ for a VE, especially as it's not an LE. As everyone likes to point out, like MMR the game has already been designed and as such there are minimal costs outside of parts and manufacturing relative to creating it from scratch. IM VE did well as well as it did primarily because the NIB VE price was less than the street price.

Stern already does tend to improve decals on pro re-runs, hasn't yet resulted in devaluing an LE. Tron is a good example.

I'm confident you can do it faster than that. My best was around 27 seconds when I owned it. Most of my times were closer to the 56 seconds you did it in, though.

Stop whining. A local collector, John Dayhuff, has managed to pay for his whole collection by buying and selling pins. He's been around for a long time and managed to roll through multiple pinball economic tides. Like I've said before, in the last year or so pinball prices were stupidly inflated and an idiot (see Neo - j/k ) could resell pins for huge profits. As most intelligent people suggested multiple times this was a temporary trend that would correct itself in time. You were obviously not perceptive OR experienced enough in this hobby to see that. I don't see John whining about any of this. You just make yourself look really dull by constantly whining that it's hard now to make long dollars on pinball. Again, a majority of us actually enjoy playing the machines and don't cry if we take a little loss when it comes time to sell. You're argument has no basis in reality and defies standard economics.

Try Gold? It worked for Cubeta.

The only re-run that had better decals than the LE was Tron…however, Tron Pro still doesn't have many of the playfield and code features of the LE, therefore it had no affect on value. In the case of LOTR, a theoretical re-run would have the same playfield features as that game was made before the multiple-version concept. A LOTR re-run at minimum would have better cabinet art quality than the LE.

If they made a LOTR VE for the price of the current VE's I'd be in. I love LOTR...still miss mine...it would be the first game I sold and brought back in to the collection

If this is legit, I may consider selling all my games except Pinbot...Would be the first and last NIB ever. Sorry Rudy.

I personally don't count the LOTR LE as much of an LE. It didn't have much "special", and if you don't remake the backglass you're pretty much not messing with it anyways.

Same with Spider-Man. I doubt we'll ever see a VE of that one, but if we did with new nicer decals it wouldn't be a Black edition.

Not sure calling Neo an idiot (even with "") is appropriate.

Someone go check and see if they also got in a shit ton of tron parts

Sorry, only the OPs friend is privy to Stern's inventory counts

I agree. In fact, I have a hard time looking at the backglass for the LE version - the heavy gold outlines really detract from the original painting.

I agree, it actually looks horrible in gold outline.

If Stern were to remake Lord of the Rings today adding newer decals, etc, I would be curious as to the MSRP. Looking at older Stern games (Lord of the Rings, TSPP, spiderman) there are many more items packed into them than today's sterns.

We're friends and he knows I'm joking.

Well that's where the "theoretical pricing arguments" come from. The game has "paid for itself" many times over…they don't have to design it and hope it sells well - that phase is done. So, the cost of developing a game is gone. They could probably sell it cheaper…but, that would make their current lineup look less desirable, woudn't it? There's more going on with LOTR than TWDLE.

SPECULAAAAASHUUUUUN! WOO!

If LOTR VE were to be released, I would imagine it would be any day.

Doesn't make sense to release it after The Hobbit.

My understanding is the Hobbit is still a ways off from being released and STERN would most likely wait a bit longer to maximize TWD sales before offering another NIB.

Perhaps that's why (or a contributing factor) they dumped the premium line. In essence, if forces le sales to get the extra features and stems any backlash from devaluing a past LE that received a VE upgrade.

What happened to The Hobbit being shipping in December?

I haven't heard anything different, that's why I'm asking.

A great game is a great game. Hobbit doesn't change that. After Hobbit comes out, I'll still play my LOTR!