Have you talked to your distributor? They should be able to advocate on your behalf to Stern.

Has it been confirmed that Stern is making the Spiderman VE playfields in-house? I would have thought those were contracted out since Stern is supposedly still getting its playfield production capacity up and running.

Tom Waits said it best: "the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away."

You turn your girlfriends on to play pinball?

A classic rookie mistake.

Are you in Europe? If so sounds like you should contact your distributor directly if Stern doesn't respond favorably. With the consumer protection laws at work in the EU it sounds like they'll have to take the machine back. You're paying a significant premium over US prices for a reason, might as well make use of the protections you're buying when you pay up!

o-din, I think your next avatar has just presented itself ...

I wonder -- I assume plenty of ops now factor in resale of the game down the line, so they'd have to weigh the cost of benching the game for a month or two now vs. potential to get more in resale when they move it along in a few years. Plus the benefit of six months of "free" wear and tear on the original playfield before they do the swap, of course. But as you say, likely not worth the hassle for many ops.

I realize it's not under $6k, but looks like Full Throttle is $6,300 and Alien is $6,450. So Heighway is still ~$1k above Stern street prices, but not terribly far off from your target.

How do they determine "full value"? Internet search? That could be a bit of a crap shoot I imagine.

Tons of 'em on the location SW near me (which is of course getting serious plays). I think that's par for the course with Sterns at least (if not all pins, haven't looked closely at JJPs during early route life). Good for me to see that so I don't start crying when mine dimples up after a few games.

It came from the factory looking like that?!? Almost unbelievable.

Just did a little pinside research and they were evidently shipping 'em like that. Incredible. Glad they've stepped up the Q/A a bit over the past few years!
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/unhappy-with-my-kiss-decals

No offense to the Iceman, but him on a (daydrunk?) roll x2 ≠ wholesomely foxy twins bearing refreshing candy.

This might be more on point:

fat twins (resized).jpg

Sorry to hear this!

When was your playfield made (I think there's supposed to be a date stamp on the playfield?)

Also, don't you have strong consumer protections in the EU that allow you to return the machine to your distrulibutor in cases like this? Hopefully bringing that up would get you some prompt action on a replacement populated playfield!

Is this documented somewhere?

CGC was the licensee for both MMR and ATMR from day one, so they weren't "brought in" by PPS. Technically CGC hired Stern to do the MMR assembly (using CGC-provided parts) once it became clear that CGC couldn't get its production line up and running in time to do MMR. As I understood it CGC's trouble getting parts to Stern on time was at least partially responsible for the delays in getting MMRs out, though some might have been on Stern's end as well.

All of this was confusing because Rick was the public spokesman for the MMR project, which made the roles unclear. Seems CGC figured out with ATMR that communicating directly is the way to go. And by all accounts CGC's build quality is very good.

But are you saying that CGC no longer makes playfields and cabinets for Stern as a result of the MMR experience? Haven't seen that anywhere else. I thought the story was that Stern moved those elements in-house as part of its move to the new, large production facility?

What would? The new facility? Or rumored shift to in-house production of playfields and cabinets (to be clear, I don't know that to be true just saw it repeated here as a rumor/theory)?

I know CGC is planning to do future MMR runs in-house, but have they actually made any yet? Will be interesting to see what the differences are.