One would have to be Centaur for sure. Didn't they do a Whirlwind? Xenon would be another I would think

Thinking about a little business venture, eh?

Yeah, instead of working full time, I just buy out every CPR playfield run, wait for a few years, then... profit

But the reality is most CPR playfields have not gone up ridiculous amounts of money (fathom, centaur being the exceptions).

Correct me if I'm wrong?

Thing is you've got to know when to sell 'em.

Look how people were selling used (restored) AFM playfields for $1300, and then Mirco came back with repros for $799.

I know a guy who has 4 restored AFM playfields that he is stuck with. Who's going to pay more than $500 for them when you could get a new one?

I've seen little evidence of this. In fact, most CPR playfields, (including Fathom, Black Knight, and Xenon), could be found for less than $100.00 more then they originally sold for 18 months after the initial release by CPR. I have actually been surprised that the price hasn't jumped more quickly on some titles.

Playfields abound, but here I am out in the garage sweat soldering gears back on shafts so I can watch some planet go around. WTF?

Are you from the future?

Maybe.

Buy a few and see.

If CPR does not make enough for everyone and they sell out instantly, you could make money.

If the playfields you buy have popped up inserts or runs in the clear coat, you might lose money.

You've got to have the balls to roll the dice.

Australia, always ahead of America :p

When I went to Australia in the 90s, I thought I had got in a time machine and gone back to the 70s
Do you guys still have the Hamburglar and Grimace statues outside your McDonalds?

th-3.jpeg th-4.jpeg

Nice I was waiting for someone to question you on that.

Back on topic, I'd say there's always opportunity in a small market driven by supply/demand. If you lower the supply by buying up a limited item, and demand remains high, you can make money. I don't get into that sort of thing, but I think a lot of us know people who tend to buy up playfields, color displays, LE machines, etc.

I bought 2 BK playfield sets, thinking I would run one in the game, and hand the other one down to my grand kids (you didn't know BK was an heirloom?). Decided this was a silly idea 3 years later and sold it for what I had in it. Hoarding is dumb, IMHO, unless it's some electronic part that the game needs to survive (e.g. Cyrix CPU for RFM).

do you ever drive by one?

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whatever playfields they don't run anymore is desirable. You have to be willing to sit on them for years to cash in.

Am I the only person who's not totally happy with his Mirco playfield (shooter lane fails every 10 launches, other minor issues that may or may not be related to clear coat being too thick or holes not being the right place/size)? If these are great restorations I'd think there'd still be a market for well-restored original playfields. Is your 4 AFM PF guy advertising these anywhere? What's his current asking price?

I'm not hoarding mine but I did make this display case for it. It's my favorite playfield of all time and CPR did a spectacular job on it.

FYI: I paid $1000.00 for this Fathom playfield and have turned down offers of $12 & $1300.00 to buy it.

Kim
http://www.WrongCrowdProductions.com/

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When you hoard playfields and other people cant buy them .. somewhere a game dies..

fathomdead.JPG

Shame thats a wasted playfield

I should add that I also own a Fathom.

Kim
http://www.WrongCrowdProductions.com/

yeah so do i .. its the one in the photo... i want to not hate you .. honest ... *cough*hoarder

ps. no second prizes.. its not 'hook into kim' time .. he paid honest money for it so he can do what he likes .. i was just having a laugh with him.

The obvious question here is, why doesn't CPR rerun playfields and plastic sets that are sold out and in high demand?

They usually do after a period of time, if there is enough demand.

Apparently the inserts have a 9 month lead time, so it seems to cause a huge time lag in re-running them. Or even doing new ones.

If one of you is interested in buying up cpr pf's and making money on them, I have a whole bunch I will sell you for cost if you buy them all. Way back before ther was a pinsides, cpr had a hard time selling out their runs and I bought them because I loved pf;s and wanted to support them. You may not know but for every hit, they have 4 that don't sell for what I paid for them.
I have like 4 flight 2k's
plenty of 8 balls
2 captn fantastic
2 cyclone
4 space shuttle,s
2 pinbot
1 black knight
matta hari
2 silverball mania

Plus there were plenty of titles I had in stock for more than 2 years.
I keep 50-80 nos and repros in stock at all times, which translates to 40k .but if you have 15k to let sit around for a year or 2 you should hoard 20 cpr pf's. Its a good investment!!!!!

I'd gently suggest you need a new shooter rod and mount, more than it's the playfield's fault.

A guy was bitching about his CPR Space Shuttle playfield making 1 out of 5 launches flub. I told him to replace his rod. He said nothing was wrong with it, but kept crying about it for months.

Last time I was there, I just quietly replaced the rod with a good used one. We played a bunch of Shuttle and he said "The dang thing has not flubbed once; probably because you are here!" (he is going to read this and never talk to me again, LOL).

This happens with CPR too.

It could be that the NOS playfields were missing the holes that CPR used to copy, or it's simply an oversight. On the Williams assembly line, the workers probably just drilled them on the spot.

I don't know, that post was almost a year ago.

I'll email him.

I am not sure if this is what you are talking about, but I have a nos afm and a mirco afm, and the shooter lane is about 4 or 5 inches longer on the nos. could this be the reason?

I could see that being the reason if it flubbed EVERY time, but one out of 10?

not sure either

When you clear those Mirco, do you route out the last few inches with a ball-nose bit to make them exactly like the NOS?

I just figured it out just last week, so now I extend the shooter lane to the proper length. I have a bunch of used afm pf's but I just happen to get a nos in for clear, and I was clearing one of mine. what I really wanted is to figure out what size insert to use in the usless insert at the bottom of bally Williams pf;s that mirco leaves empty. It is a different size than the originals, so none of my stock of inserts fits his hole. any idea's?

I would take a restored AFM PF over a Mirco one for more money in a heartbeat. I have heard about endless issues on Mirco PF's from those that have bought them.

That's a really good point. I'm sure if I cleaned/tightened up the assembly it would be more consistent...

Swap rods and sleeves from a good game and see if that fixes it.

A bent rod or worn sleeve/housing will flub a certain percentage of balls, depending on the direction of the bend on each launch.

Swapping rods and new sleeves didn't fix it. Replacing the rod with a new one helped some - it flubs less but still flubs.

There's still seems to be (to me) a lot of play between the plunger and the sleeve, but I feel that way about most of the assemblies I've worked on, so that slop must be normal. So my diagnosis at this point would be that the variation (why it only happens some of the time) is due to the normal amount of play in the plunger assembly, and that the shallower launch trench on the Mirco causes the ball the ball to hit the wall and slow down, whereas on a playfield with a deeper trench, a ball that is launched a little bit off-center or whatever still stays in the trench and makes it to the top.

Anyway, it's playable now. In fact even when the launch occasionally flubs and the ball doesn't make it to the bonus multiplier lanes, the skill shot stays lit for a while so if you can send it up either side lane you can still get the skill shot.

Based on what HEP said in one of his AFM videos, I spent some more time looking at this. Sure enough, the left-right plunger placement has a slight biased to the right. If I adjust the plunger mount (it has a little bit of play when the screws are loose) so the plunger goes straight up and down, it hits the ball to the right of center, sending it into the left metal guiderail (which is worn from the ball hitting it). So I have to adjust the plunger so it shoots up and to the left a bit. Then it hits the ball more centered and the ball is more likely to go straight up (see photo).side-to--side centering.JPG

Another potential problem (that HEP also mentioned in his video) is the vertical placement of the plunger. It seems higher than it should be:top-bottome-centering.JPG

I think these two non-idealities, combined with the apparently normal play in the plunger, combined with the more shallow depth of the Mirco trench, means an inevitable flub every now and then.