Sounds like an embarrassed mind justifying overspending on junk.

Well, I paid a lot more for the Mando LE pin, last year, and did not tell what I had to do to buy that. I assure you that the money did not come out of my trust fund, if that matters.

The “Mac daddy of all pinball toppers” -
Funny listing.

I shouldn't post after heavy drinking on a Sunday football day LMAO. I'm done talking about the topper for now, can't wait to see it in person and laugh at the guys that paid $2K for it.

I think y'all are getting just a little more worked up over this than the money involved warrants. Why so mad at people who feel like blowing a little dough to be happy? It's not that serious.

toppers.jpg

Mando topper seems like a good deal compared to these Hermes Birkin Bags. They can’t keep them in stock.

7EE1A478-5554-461E-8E33-FACA21FADFEC (resized).png

That’s in peso’s, right?

Soft goods are where real profit is at. 1000%. Doesn't matter what industry. So cheap to make. If a line doesn't sell, just make something else.

I took it as this guy works hard for his money and he can spend it on whatever he wants to spend his money on.

That’s the spirit!

Lighten up, take a break and go watch and enjoy your Eagles and Phillies. As for the topper everyone knows it is overpriced, I wouldn't rob the kid's college fund to buy one but if someone wants one and can afford it then why not.

Stern could be doing either, the funny thing is how both of you proclaim to know with certainty without any direct knowledge

Or maybe the guy with much more disposable income than you have - has the last laugh

You are a thousand percent right but it doesn't mean it's not a stupid decision.

If you have to do some weird roundabout way of tricking your own brain into how you saved enough money to buy this thing it means you probably shouldn't buy it.

That's a distributor.... Unreal.

Not to give Stern any ideas, but just wait until Stern has a Pro,, Premium, and Limited Edition topper.

or ..... maybe you make a lot of money and 2 grand is a less than a day's pay so it's a neither of the above

Love this line: "THESE ARE SUPER HARD TO FIND AND SOLD OUT EVERYWHERE. "

Uh, yeah. Maybe the first run but Stern has confirmed more are coming. Feed the FOMO.

This thread is hilarious, buy what you want, it's your money. It's like saying, why buy a Porsche when you can buy 3 Honda's for the same price, the logic here is just stupid. The price is what it is and you either have the money to buy it or you don't, plain and simple.

Didn’t BM66SLE already introduce this?

What if you have the money to easily buy it, but don't want to because people are continuously overpaying for stuff due to FOMO, causing even more overpaying.

You're right, it's their money. But don't pretend like this behavior doesn't cost other people not caught up in FOMO more money or the ability to buy things like this. If people weren't caught up in overpaying for stuff, this is a $500 to $700 topper. People buy anything regardless of production value. Well now it's a $2000 topper, a 3x increase.

It's the same sort of behavior that caused:

2008 housing crash
2021 housing boom
used cars to be worth more than new cars last year
video cards to skyrocket 3x to mine crypto
etc.

So you're right, buy what you want, but don't 'act surprised' when people are pissy about the price and people actually putting up with it because it just means less and less bang for the buck in the future. Maybe you're ok with spending 3x over what toppers used to cost, but maybe other people aren't, and feeding into this frenzy only makes it worse for everyone honestly (costs buyers 3x more, other owners can't afford it, and then there's the group that refuses to spend 3x the normal price for a topper).

Let me lay out two scenarios here.

a) Topper comes out at $2k, completely flops, nobody buys it. Price eventually has to be lowered back to where the other toppers are before anyone will buy it. Everyone can then get their topper, and everyone saves money. Future toppers back at the normal range.

b) Topper comes out at $2k, and everyone is falling over themselves to pay 3x the normal rate for the topper. Now it's not only an acceptable hike, future toppers start at $2k and up.

Who wins with a) and b)? Consumers win with a), company and flippers win with b).

Nothing weird about DIY to save some money for your family.

There's a forum somewhere with a thread laughing at all of us for spending all this money on stupid pinball machines.

It’s funny how relative everything is. In here people are “idiots” for spending $2k on a topper they’ll look at and enjoy for a long time.
On another thread I “screwed someone over” a watch for $85k because people think it’s worth $120k+ and last year sold for nearly $200k.
On another thread I’m a dumba$$ for trying to sell a Jeep for $50k because the $100k invested in it isn’t how someone else would have done it.
All I can tell is hobbyists are funny, and if you don’t think just like them you’re dumb because they know the best way to spend your money. ‍♂️

Here's another scenario.

Stern Pros jack up in price, selling for $12,000 bucks. LE's and Premiums are now only sold to rich basketball players. In order to even think about getting one you hope to get drafted in the top 3 picks. JJP follows notice and their machines are now double that price, with you having to play like Bo Jackson and do (2) sports in order to put a deposit down on a machine.

People get tired of spending wads of money on basically toys and quits buying pinball machine and it's useless "additions" to it.

Stern's sales go down, the market crashes and Stern has to lay off people and close their business. The other companies follow suit and now we have no more pinball machines to buy.

Pinsiders get tired of playing the same games over and over, causing some to turn over the tables and look back on the old threads of pinside deciding to get a gang together to put flaming bags of feces on their front porch of other pinsiders, ringing the doorbell and screaming as they're running away "that's what you get for over-paying for things I told you not to buy".

The world spirals out of control. Dogs and chickens begin to live with each other and reproduce. The rooster now wakes me up every morning at 4:00 am barking like a dog.

I lay awake at night thinking about this, wondering what time that damn rooster is going to wake me up. I now spend my hard earned money on the robotic hawk that shoots lasers out of his eye to kill that damn rooster and for my therapist (she doesn't know I'm on here, so please don't say nothing)

And to think, this nightmarish dystopian future could have been avoided if only Stern had priced their toppers reasonably

Sweet imagination, except that his post is kinda right. We just keep paying more and more for a product that doesn't deserve it. How much better are pinball games or toppers now than 3 years ago that justifies paying twice as much or more? I think peeps are starting to say no for real now... TS4 and the current pinball prices are indicators.

Hearing Zach on The Pinball Show talk about people without the Mando table still FOMO buying this topper was surprising to me.

Didn't realize that I would be contributing to the next housing market crash or starting the end of the world, but I am getting one of these toppers. I just got the invoice from my distributor yesterday and they said I should see it within 30 days. Keep in mind I did tell them I want to get a topper when I bought my Mando pro and I usually add the other options as well, art blades, shooter, side armor. It's not FOMO, it's not a lemmings situation, I'm not a Stern slappy, I just like Star Wars and most of its universe. I hesitated when I saw the price, but when I showed it to all the people that come and enjoy my game room, it was pretty much a done deal. I'll make sure to post a video of it in action if the world is still spinning.

Sort of. They had the Batmobile topper which was exclusive to the LE and SLE. It was interactive with game play and certain parts of it lit up depending on what was happening in gameplay.

The SLE also added the batsignal ceiling projector. It also turned on and off during gameplay based on what was happening.

Stern subsequently sold the bat signal celing projector as a standalone acessory. There were 2 versions available.

One version was for LE owners who didn't need extra node boards since the LE owners already had them in the batmobile topper that came with their game. LE owners who added this acessory effectively made their topper be the same as the SLE owners.

There was another version for premium owners which did come with the necessary node boards. Having the node boards makes the batsignal come on and off at appropriate times during gameplay.

Lastly there was the villians topper for premium owners it was just flat plastic with art of the villains on it that had no interactivity whatsover, it was always lit up whenever the game was on. Ironically, the villians topper which had no interactivity was the most expensive option at the unheard of price (at the time) of $400. You could combine the villains topper with the projector topper as well.

Batman66 is the only Stern game I can recall that had multiple topper options as well as an optional acessory for the topper:

1-Batmobile topper
2-Batmobile topper with projector
3-Villians topper
4-Villians topper with projector
5-Projector alone

A lot of the people on pinside are saying this in their head as they complain about the price.

Sad voice "Man that Mando topper should be 1k so I can make 1k easy"

Thanks pin scalpers. Indypin it's 13k for a stern le not 12k. Get your numbers right.

I've said it before, will say it again... Mando hasn't performed well as a pin as exemplified by it's resale value- Premiums are in the $7K's and THE cheapest Stern Premium that has been produced in years as far as resale value. Those that bought a NIB from Stern are feeling it, too.

Stern SHOULD have and COULD have made this topper a reward for those that actually bought the game from them by making it available to those that bought a Mandalorian Pinball machine brand new and confirming it through their serial number and a verification process (kind of like how they track warranty). I mean, they are trying to exclude flippers, right? So now those stuck with a $7500 Premium can now have a machine that a lot of people would buy, AND NOW PEOPLE WILL WANT TO BUY THOSE NIB STERN PREMIUM Mando's that are sitting at distributors collecting dust.

This eliminates the raw flippers (those just speculating on the topper with no intention of ever associating it to their game) and makes those that bought Mando (the REAL Stern customers) happy.

Would have been a WIN for Stern and a WIN for their customers.

Pipe dream..... or is it?

Yes your bizarre, convoluted scenario is a complete pipe dream. Stern doesn't care about the resale market or the fact that you might not make a profit on your Mando Premium. You don't deserve a free topper for buying a pinball machine and potentially losing $300 on it.

Stern is selling pinball toppers. Buy one or don't.

Lot of people in here are focusing on and arguing the extreme viewpoints, but the reality is that a lot of people find themselves in the middle here, feeling ambivalent about the pricing decision.

Not upset that people are biting at $2k (good for them!)
Not upset that they sold out for this first run (can't afford one anyway!)
Not upset about the quality of the topper (looks great!).

Am bummed that Stern's increase in price over the last released topper was so extreme.
Am bummed that the topper seems to be gatekeeping some gameplay features to topper owners only.

For example, I'd been on a list since June 2021 for the topper (was actually going to snag a topper before the machine if I needed to), expecting it to be maybe $750 or $800 or something like that. Nobody made me a guarantee or promise on price so I can't really complain, but it was still disappointing to learn it was like 2.5x what I had mentally budgeted.

Is what it is. I don't see the value in beating each other up over it.

Ugh... Repeat after me... It's. Not. Personal.

Why is it so hard for people to grasp this very basic supply and demand concept? The supply of money went way, way up due to a number of factors most of which I can't discuss here. In conjunction with that, people who had the money couldn't travel due to COVID which had the nasty side effect of disrupting every supply chain out there. Well... They found other areas to spend their money... houses, cars, computers, pinball, stamps, coins, virtually anything collectable has skyrocketed. Yet here at pinside people still cannot grasp this and think it's some kind of giant conspiracy by Stern (and others) to gouge them out of their money... It's a farce. I'll continue to repeat this, demand is crushing supply and when that happens you get inflation. This is exactly what's happening in pinball, and virtually everything else out there...

You either can afford to play or you can't. Trying to blame those that can for the reasons why you can't (not saying you specifically), while emotionally strong, is intellectually lazy. Prices will eventually plateau and then decline and depending on the industry the decline could be quite steep. No one has a crystal ball so we have no idea how high prices will go nor how far they may fall...

Only game that also gave you the privilege of sending in a video begging to be able to buy one. Truly a field of innovations.

Do not confuse maximizing profits with some altruistic view that they are trying to exclude flippers from the market. Stern cares about their bottom line. They don't care about flippers or the second-hand market.

Wait... Stern doesn't care that you might make a profit on your Mando Premium? But they sure as hell don't want you making a profit on a $500 topper offering and have raised prices over and over to account for the resale market (ask LE buyers about this).

I already totally get what you're saying, don't confuse that- STERN doesn't care about it's customers (and I'm good with that).

This scenario is a "wouldn't it be nice if" and nothing else. I could give 2 shits about Stern right now anyways, I enjoy my collection as is and vote with my wallet. If I really want a $2K topper, I could buy a flat of them. I have plenty of money for this hobby and this topper, doesn't mean I can't have common sense or look at an alternate scenario.

I think it's funny people keep calling it "overpriced" when the first allotment sold out in a matter of hours. It may be "really expensive for what you get" and that's fine, but supply and demand would tell you it could have been priced higher.

I bet everyone in this thread got an A in economics.

You're right. They should 2.5x the price of LE's now to $30k just like they did toppers. Sell them out immediately. I would actually be in favor of that, in fact they should do that. Get it so far out of my zone that I no longer have to even think about it anymore. Make Godzilla topper $5k, sell them out immediately. Get it up and so high that it's no longer a decision. They should do it, just supply and demand. Clearly $30k LE's and $5k godzilla toppers would sell if a $2k topper to one of their least popular recent game sells like hotcakes.

Dear lord. Is this meme paid by the word or something?

Yes, $1999.

Never fear, it's quite easy to reproduce on the cheap. Simply lay your smart phone flat at the top of your machine, angle a piece of clear plastic at a 45 degree angle next to the phone, which will reflect and display the video playing on the phone as a 'hologram'. All you need is some fancy animations to play in a loop on your phone.

Decorate around the phone with some plastic and voila.

the two basic arguments are:

a) this is stupid and expensive and i can't afford it so it sucks
b) this is stupid and expensive and i can afford it so it rules

good luck reconciling those two positions

This is my future topper for MM. Maybe I'll put it above Mando now, lol. Under $500.

Many are also in another group:
c) this is stupid and expensive and i can afford it but I would never pay that much for a topper regardless

Questioning if things are worth the money is for poors

Are you familiar with the concept of NFTs