Vail, AZ
Quoted from greenhornet:if stern indeed produces 50 games a day and using $6000 as their avg NIB price [after adding shipping and a slight increase for factoring in LE pricing] that means the market must absorb an additional $900,000 worth of products every THREE days stern operates. the value of existing pinball inventory increases nearly ONE MILLION dollars every THREE days. where is that money going to keep coming from $6K at a time? i gather some of you have not experienced a 'collectibles' market where more and more 'collectibles' simply continue to be produced. its a good thing that outfits like JJP, CGC, and spooky arent getting their titles into the market place at an appreciable rate, otherwise you might see some effects even sooner. watching games like this DP, a TNA for 3 weeks at $6K, and houdinis @ well below MSRP sit are not encouraging signs. and this is assuming all current/future games produced are marketable successes/resellable. what happens when some suspect/not so hot titles hit the market?
I wonder who can best weather a sharp decline in sales. Gomez said they CAN do 50 a day, but I want to say that a Stern employee also said they do 25 a day at a minimum since moving to the new facility. How low can they go (if they had to) and still keep going?
JJP claims 300 a month, so 75 a week assuming things are humming along. Same question, how much of a slowdown in sales can they actually handle? I think JJP is a little different because they seem to have external funding or at least have had it in the past to keep things going.
American does ~35 a week. Seemingly less overhead, but for now only a single title to run. Stern can make whatever they have the backlog for, not everyone can/does.
Spooky does 10-12 a week. That's in the ballpark of 520-624 a year. That's ~3 weeks at Stern. I see Spooky being just fine if/when the general economy slows because they really don't have to find very many buyers to keep up with their manufacturing pace. If they put out a major dud though, that could really hurt. But, the TNA get out of jail free card could get played to keep the line going while they figure out plan C.
Fun little exercise, and really I wish everyone the best. I'm a NIB (or similarly priced) buyer every 18-24 months at best, so the $900k every three days blows my mind. On one side, that's very exciting that the market is that big. On the other side it's terrifying because I just can't see that flow being sustained without some hiccups.
