Every time I see an add go up for this game I ponder if I should sell it. Then I look at that playfield and know that there will never be a game as packed as this again. And I know I would never get one back because of price tag.

Could it be what? I'm guessing nothing related to POTC.

Well count me in. I would be all over a great interactive topper. Thought of doing something myself, but would be just for looks through.

Ideally Eric's next game.

Likely Guns n Roses, since that's Eric's next game, and it's supposedly done.

Well it’s rumored he did GNR. And they could reveal it at or just before TPF.

Anybody else getting tired of the "couple more weeks" response from Jack on your replacement playfield? Seriously, it has been since September 5th when I addressed my playfield issues with him. Guess my money is safe from buying another JJP until this is taken care of.....

Good luck Jack, I haven't forgot!

TWIP picture's worth a thousand words...
TWIP_2019_jjPotC_trend (resized).jpg

Jack will make more. Whether he knows it right now or not. There's too much money sitting on the table.

I'm in the market, as it were.

Where does one find such a chart for the collector's edition? Was this chart self-made?

TWIP just used sales data from Pinside, so the scope is limited, and due to the number of people that list on pinside and sell elsewhere or sell and say they didn't (which counts as "not sold") the actual sales are likely much more than reported.

CE wasn't tracked on their chart, but I know of two CEs that changed hands off pinside at more than $20k around the turn of the year, so yeah, expensive and getting moreso daily.

$20K???? Were they NIB?

The $20k one was not. The $22k one was NIB. The appreciation percentages are almost exactly the same as the LE, strangely. The LE and CE appreciation is tracking pretty close...

There's a NIB LE on craigslist by me that they are asking $19K for. Wow. Looks like a import.

I have a NIB CE. Maybe the last one. Or not.

What if licensing is a prohibiting factor? Isn't that what we were told?

Yeah, I'm not getting a Wonka anymore for my next pin, Spooky is my new favorite (R&M!!).

I paid for the replacement discounted playfield, Jack never contacted me after he contacted others telling them about the free playfield (but I don't think any announcement was ever made anywhere). I disputed my charge since he never responded to my contacting him and they denied the claim, CC company never contacted me so I don't know why and I haven't called them yet. Sounds like I am out $550 for the thing everyone else will get for free. If/when others get their free playfields I'll contact JJP again and see if they will make this right.

JJP really dropped the ball on this. Such a sad showing of "committed to their satisfaction"....

I sure hope this isn't an empty promise to help boost their Wonka sales that were sluggish. Remember Wonka playfields had issues as well. Did any of them get replacements? Shitty way to treat NIB customers, I own 3 of their games too. Not going to buy another until this gets resolved.

There’s probably a decent amount of revenue to be had, but how much profit - and more importantly, how much profit compared to using their resources to make newer pins? Beyond any licensing issues, I think the prospect for more POTC’s largely depends on the success of their new games and if they need to leverage open production capacity.

Sorry but I have to disagree with you. Not because I own a Pirates and am wishfully protecting an increase return on my game... Rather there is a lot more to this than “there is money on the table” I assume you did your research before posting this and have some facts to legitimize your claim?

I too hope they make more, but realistically I just see this as potentially giving people false hope.

Big Bang Bar - $20k used, remake happened (the first time), remade pins $15-$20k now too, another remake rumored
Big Lebowski - $12-15k, more coming
Medieval Madness - $15k used, remake happened
Cactus Canyon - $12k used, remake rumored
Attack from Mars - $10k used, remake happened
Monster Bash - $9-10k used, remake happened

jjPotC CE and LE are at the TOP of that list for values now and still rising.

Any time there's those kind of huge resale prices, the machines get remade. JJP could easily sell another 500 LEs (especially if they changed the PF art, replacing giant Jack sparrow with an ensemble piece) at YBR money $12,500 - that's $6.2 million gross.

He'll make more eventually. But no one should wait based on my theory. Buy jjGnR and enjoy the crap out of jjPotC's designer's next game in the meantime.

Hmmmm, kind of tough examples you used there??

BBB - there were only 12 made and the remake put Gene into bankruptcy. Remake if ever will be a Longgggg time if ever.
TBL - Is still a loss with Millions of dollars in collected funds and a Crap ton of people that never Got a game?
AFMr, MMr, MBr, were all done by a company that Owns the rights to these games with a company Sole direction to reproduce said titles.

Theres Millions on the table for Stern to make Tron LE. Why not take the cash??
Theres Millions on the table for LOTR refresh art. Whn not take the cash??
Alien is a cash cow of awesome, why isn't someone cashing in?
Many, many games like this that Seem logical but more then likely not going to happen. Sadly with costs, market saturation, Licensing, complexity, reliability, Disney issues, etc I suspect POTC is sadly done. WAY to many ways for JJP to make money on a less complicated problem. JMO nothing more.

Really dumb question here, but what’s the correct way to remove balls from the game to clean/replace etc?

Take them out!!

Gene wasn't set up to make the machines nor hit any kind of economy of scale. JJP (and Stern) are.

True, but the POINT is once the value hit a certain high, it becomes all but a lock for SOMEONE to want to make more.

Disney will license toilet seats. They may be a bitch to work with, but they will take money, especially if you have a prior and ongoing (Toy Story, possibly still Muppets) relationship. With a sales price 50% higher than Jack's first go round, there's plenty in the jjPotC vault pool to cover this.

It'll happen.

The biggest vault of all time. It'll happen.

Because it's an engineering disaster and would essentially have to be re-done. This is one I do not think will happen.

But it's just my opinion. I have a pretty decent record. People were dogging me for calling the AC/DC re-release for half a year that Stern continually denied, until they announced it. Hilariously, it was like a day or two after the most recent person was saying I was an idiot and there's no way.

We'll see. Just an opinion, folks. Get your preorder in for GnR and give this one time.

There's an empty ball trough option on the menu. Or you can manually operate the coil to force the balls out one by one (make sure the coil isn't powered!).

I think it will happen if JJP is in business long enough....I think their running on fumes at the moment...I think they need to demonstrate profitability and making a couple hundred POTC's isn't gonna get it done.

Strange. I don't think so.

LTG : )

Time will tell....

Thank you to both - super helpful and glaringly obvious now haha!!

Based on what? Not sure I've seen the "OMG make more POTC quick so JJP stays Afloat" argument.

Not trying to argumentative....its just my gut feeling about JJP. I wasn't a big fan of how they handled all the play field issues, and sending people a free play field is not a solution. What it tells me is they don't have the $ to solve the problem in a reasonable way. My gut tells me their under a lot of pressure to actually turn a profit. The only way they do that is to build new games that sell thousands of units.

Pretty sure Stern with all their profit handled the recent Playfields in the same manner? Or lack of handled? Yet I don’t think it’s a sign of closure.

What do you know, you only Work there! Lol

Need to make a small friendly wager with a date against it.

“$10USD that by the end (31st December) of 2020 a “new Edition“/re-release Jjp pirates will NOT have been made and unboxed by a customer on pinside*.”

*Foreign re-imports/back of warehouse distributor finds/new old stock don’t count! It’s got to be new off the line.

Specific enough? Anyone want to take this one against me?

2020's too soon. Likely 12-18 months at the earliest, so Jan-July 2021. I'd take that for $10.

One difference is potcle is twice the pin of any of those pins previously remade. I'd guess if they do make more they will be 11.5-12.5 and only make a run of 500 or so and may take something out? Like ybrwoz ?

YBRWOZ was limited from the start (until the Wicked Witch of the West black and neon green edition is announced, heh), so yeah, I can see jjPotC starting up on the secondary line once JJP sees where Wonka/GnR production is at later this year. Essentially getting CE pricing for 500 more LEs is pretty compelling, and by then the secondary market could be even higher.

I'm just glad I was able to purchase a le 7 month's ago... I paid up alot at the time and glad I did or I probably wld have never owned one. Just hope this new code is released soon so I can enjoy it before i pass it on to a collector friend .

The code is fine as it stands except for the missing wiz mode that 95% of owners will never get to. You were commenting on other threads that you don’t understand the rules. A code update isn’t going to help you understand them any better.

But Stern has actually sent people the promised unpopulated playfields. And properly staffs and supports its in-house tech/customer service group. I have no idea if their business is in trouble, but there are definitely signs that they are compromising customer service and goodwill to improve short -term profitability.

There must be 5-10 actual bugs identified in the code request thread, some which sound like they aren't going to get taken care of in the next release which is sad.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/potc-code-change-game-play-requests-

The inconsistency and non-responsiveness is pretty amazing. People still buy the games, why should they change? The only real stink that was made were a few people contacting JJP, maybe one or two mentions on Kaneda's podcast and the things I did. But it's all swept under the rug because no one wants to take any further action.

I've never been treated worse for a product that costs anywhere near this amount. Sadly, there are some good eggs at JJP who do their best but with leadership that doesn't seem to care about all customers equally there isn't anything they can do.

Can you be specific on what these 5-10 bugs are? The page you linked seems to be mostly feature requests. Since there hasn't been an announcement on what the new code update will entail, I'd wait to be disappointed. Unless you are privy to these code updates. Perhaps you are a beta tester?

I think you missed the context of what I replied to. He was referring to JJP sending out Unpopulated playfields which was the Same (not for all only a few) case with Stern support.

Well there is issues with getting rewards before they are called out. For example light extra ball but it lights up before the fallout is made.

Bp gate has horrible logic and will close with ball on pearl and should open with boardings and does not

Pirate hat and parrot are almost non existent. Should have better trigger.

3 off top of head that I would consider bugs. Don’t get me started on ost super jackpots that are impossible. 2500 games and I’ve seen ost super like 3 times including games where that was my only goal to get super.

I agree on the pirate hat and parrot for sure, I’ve seen the hat just one time and never the parrot over hundreds of games played.

I understand that they both basically offered the same solution, but it seems Stern quickly shipped playfields once promised while JJP has shipped few if any replacement POTC playfields months after promising.

I received a replacement playfield for my IMDN and while it’s been a hassle for many to get a favorable decision from Stern, my sense is that they’ve actually supplied many hundreds of new playfields across the effected games

Also to disable post assist when COTBP MB is qualified and to fix crash if you bet your soul in Liar’s Dice. It would definitely be nice if they fix that BP door not opening with boardings. Seems like you shouldn’t have to hit a switch up there to get the gate open.

I don't know if anyone has brought this up already but the Full Translight RGB Mod by LERMODS is the real deal! I bought 2 of them, one for my WONKA LE and one for my POTC LE. I have just about every mod offered on each game but with these, I think they are complete. The best part is that they are so easy to install. I am especially really loving the Pirates Translight kit. The way that the bottom and sides look like flames really adds to my Tilt Topper mod and makes the whole game really pop. What a difference! Wonder why I waited so long to get the mod but no diff as my LE is bolted to the floor. Full confession; I like how they make both games look so great that I just ordered the same kit for my HOBBIT Black Arrow. And, in case you are wondering, this is not a 'paid endorsement for or by LERMODS; I am just sharing my excitement.