I buy to play, not collect. I will buy what ever one is cheaper so your statement is good for me. Not for the collectors. But as I said, I only want to play...

Oh no, we're only one step away from getting out calipers to measure playfield components and discuss which has higher quality.

If they can't put together MMR for $5.5k, considering all the costs, especially when NIB Stern Pros sell for less than $5.5k and they have to, you know, be designed and coded, then I can't imagine what they are doing wrong. Yeah, PPS had to create the boardset, but if they are planning on doing more remakes as Rick has already said they will do, you can spread that cost.

My argument when the game was being released was that at $5500 or $6000 it would have been a home run because ops would snap them up to put back out, since there are still a ton of MM out and earning, but with the $8000 price point and now no coin mechs, they aren't targeting that market at all. I think it's a missed opportunity, and will hamper any future sales, but the real reason they were asking for $8,000 was...

I disagree about the collectible value part of it here, but the rest is right. People were going, "Oh my gosh! A NIB MM should be like $20k+! I'm getting a $12k discount on that! BUY BUY BUY!" Only later did people realize they were getting an $8k game for $8k.

My suggestion is that the main reason that MM was so expensive before was in huge part because in the not-too-distant-past, machine prices were heavily tied to how the machine was doing on route. MM earned better than a brand new machine, consistently, every week. Route operators wouldn't sell them unless you gave them a significant premium over new machines, even for beaters. The pricing continued, and as prices inflated, they inflated on MM the most.

I don't think the original held it's value because it was collectible, I think the original held it's value because it earned like no other pinball machine. That drove the collectability of it. The new one isn't built to earn, it's built for people to collect, and thus it's driving the collectible market down on it. And honestly, without the coin mechs, I can't see many ops buying used MMRs from people to route, which will hamper the secondary market for them. The original MM will hold a premium, but it will be for it's intended purpose (money earning), while the remake being ONLY for the collectors market will suffer from that a little.

Whoa Teekee, you gotta start watching yourself here. This is exactly right. What I long said about the hobby is that the rapid price inflation we had a few years ago was not good. There was an equilibrium back about 10 years ago where if you bought a machine that wasn't NIB, you knew you could get about what you paid out of it if you had to sell it. NIB machines would take a hit of anywhere from $300-$1000 usually, but that was the known cost for buying a NIB, and if you couldn't afford the hit you just didn't buy the machine. If you bought $500 in parts for a machine you loved, it might raise your final value of that machine by $200 when you sold (depending on what they were, I'm looking at plastics and playfields, not mods). It was sustainable.

In the last few years of crazy inflation, it became expected that you could buy a NIB machine and sell it a few months later for $200 more than you paid. Put in $500 worth of additional of stuff, and you would be able to sell it for $700 more than you paid! This is unsustainable, because it means the marketplace isn't producing enough NIB machines to meet demand.

Now, I'm really curious to see where things end up. We suddenly have enough machines to meet demand. And we might actually have more than enough machines to meet demand, which will see prices start falling across the board. We will see some who used the hobby only to make money drop out. We will see others who felt they couldn't afford the hobby join in. And my hope is that we can go back to the equilibrium that we had a number of years ago, where you take a hit on the NIB machines to own them new, and other machine prices mostly stabilize.

The next few years will be a fascinating time in pinball.

Please make the mmr price threads stop. Please.

It will not happen so stop asking for it to be cheap. They are running a business based on sales, they are charging what they need to charge to make money and balance their production. I unlike many here hope it costs them 4k to build and are doubling their money. I highly doubt it though. If you guys want to keep rehashing the mmr price, leave it in one of the 100 threads already discussing it and stop creating new ones.

So, we should keep prices sky high for everyone so a few people who can't afford to buy machines can? What?

Id buy it at 5k!

YES!

Now lets dance…

HEP is as good as it gets. The big however is the value is diminished by the game its done to. Just because the money and work is spent on it does not mean that the price its worth. Sorry.

You guys are all wrong MMRLE is a $7986.00 machine, those that get it... get it.

Oh I'm familiar with all the HEP guys and their work. However, it doesn't seem like you are very familiar with the difference between know and no......

I KNEW he is still alive!!!!

rarely anyone calls even though my cell # is pretty public ... and when they do I think they are enlightened by the discussion.

rick

Yeah yeah. I swore that up and down until a few weeks ago. Damn expo change my tune and now I am out 24k. F this hobby!

Not to you but to HEP guys yes… sorry.

You guys stick with your $8000 remakes and I'll stick with the HEP's.

Yep, that's the interweb for you.

I would take a any title restored by hep over a mmr, but then again I would take a piece
of gum over a woz

While we're at it, why is $5500 a reasonable price for a NIB pin? I'd rather pay $2500. If manufacturers can't hit that price point, shouldn't they just sell the machines at cost? Anything else would just be greed.

Stern is by far the market leader and sets pricing in the NIB market. They likely make a healthy profit on the LE's and this has opened the door for a number of competitors to enter the market that would otherwise struggle to get off the ground if they had to compete with pro level pricing. Having a wide range of price points provides plenty of buying opportunities and is good for the long term health of the hobby.

HEP mm's arent in the ballpark of a 8k mmr. A HEP mm would cost a whole lot more and I agree it would be nicer.

The 8k price was the perfect price at the time. Pinside almost exploded after the announcement. Pinsiders were buying multiple machines like it was not a problem.
Everyone bought the Kool Aid. Unfortunately PPS brought the Kool Aid to the party and than drank their own because they released another version after the first bunch sold out.

If they just stuck with the original MMr whatever the number was, this would be a non-issue today.

They could have probably sold 2,000 machines give people a choice between gold or chrome trims @ $7,500 per and instead of talking about refunds, people would be starting can't wait for the day my MMr shows up threads.

Thanks
Mike

That's all pretty easy to say in hindsight, isn't it?

I felt that way since day 2 whenever they released the additional pins. I stood on the sideline and watched it all unfold. With my jiffy pop!

I would be lying if I didn't admit to the fact that I was tempted in all the hysteria to just buy one.

I didn't buy one, but if I did I would have stuck with it because the reality is that nothing changed except perception. They will still deliver a game. So if you wanted a brand new MM back then, and couldn't find one for under $10- 15k well that still hasn't changed.

Personally I think right now is the best time since the announcement to sell the original MM. I don't think you will get a better price for that pin for quite some time. I think you have to wait until all the new ones are released and in homes and then resold and settled in with longer term owners. Only then will the whole MM market stabilize a bit.

Thanks
Mike

I haven't thought about this in over a year because I don't own one.

But this thread was interesting. This was day one mind you and I commented that they would make an additional 1k machines nobody said anything......then BOOM next day another 1k machines

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/original-mm-price-crash-poll

Good times for pinball

Well, in hindsight, if PPS was making them as exact copies of the originals, and seeing as how they're using Stern to assemble them(unknown back when it was announced), I'm fairly certain that price point could've been much lower(given that they wanted to achieve the same percentage profit margin).

Keep in mind that just about everything in the backbox is gone and a whole new set of boards is in place under the playfield. It's not cheap to develop a whole new system like that. Those development costs get put into the retail price of the item and voila, $8k. I think if they knew going in that they'd have Stern assembling the machines, given their employees experience building largely identical machines, they might not have gone with the new board system and kept it true to the original, therefore lowering the price.

My guess is, they knew what the selling price point was going to be before they even started this project because they knew that's what the market could bear at the time. They knew they could undercut original MM sales by thousands and have people lining up to buy them. Then, upon seeing the profit margin being larger than they anticipated, they decided to innovate and spend into that margin to make a better product(more durable, easier to service, uses boards of their own design not someone else's, upgradable, etc.).

Where this new remake board design might take a hit is when it comes time to remake other titles like MB and AFM. I don't know how much "universality" they built into their design.

I could be wrong, but those are my semi-educated guesses.

They couldn't replicate the boards. Either because of parts availability or for regulatory reasons.

I'm just posting in this thread because I love any opportunity for wild speculation.

Ahh, that sucks.

So there you go. It was a necessary expenditure and most likely drove the cost up more than they expected. Makes perfect sense to me.

i'm thinking of joining a stock market forum

I would certainly get one of these at 5k....probably even 5.5k. At 6k+ I'm out.

So do I care that I can't get an MM in my price range? Not at all. Way too many other GREAT pins out there for well under 5K. I like my STTNG better than MM anyway.

Any NIB pin will go down in value just like cars when you drive them off the lot. Don't forget that MMRE will eventually get the color dmd upgrade so the 8K value yes may go down but I would say not less than 7k if kept in excellent HUO condition. As time goes on and PPS stops making any more they may go back to over 8K if kept in excellent condition. The ones put on route and get beat will of course be way less after being in bars and arcades. Anyone that is negative on this seems to be the ones that are envious of those of us that will have one which we could never had done in the past with current original prices. Even if you bought an original for say less than 8 I highly doubt it would have been a HUO pin and will never be as nice as the remake unless of course of one that has been restored but could you find that for 8k or less. Not

You are correct. There is alot of cost in the development of the electronics and the team that had done that for the past year. then there is a BOM cost for a small number of games (1000LE's + Stds, with initial batches to confirm parts, etc), there is tooling associated in making number of these parts which is a one time cost for the game, then there are the costs for contract manufacturing (research to see generally what CM's cost to manufacture something - this usually saves on the infrastructure/setup costs as well as increases the speed and QA but usually comes at a price (which we are willing to pay to get the game rolling much faster than would be a home grown line). Then there all the other parties involved who develop and license the game who do not do all of that work for free, etc, then there is the testing (UL I think is $30K-$40K to test and certification, the test games (about 10x of these, etc), on and on and on. So, there is ALOT of $ spent up-front to make these games happen. So, I think if you work on your excel spreadsheets of all of the things it takes to make a game, you would probably find alot of cost in many things that you are not considering.

rick

I agree and think $5500 would be the very top of what the market would bear.

Tron LE

tron cupcake.jpg

You guys are so cruel. Kickin Tekee when he is down. He is still payin rent on that building he allegedly has that is full of MMs awaiting to be refurbed and flipped. Poor guy. PPS already destroyed his tax free 401 plan.
I feel sorry for you bro since you can't get $15,000 for cleaning up a routed MM anymore. You are probably the most skilled/experienced MM restorer on this whole site. Maybe PPS can put your skills to use. Call Rick. He most certainly can recognize a good asset when he sees one.

I don't know what you are reading, but it seems like more and more people are agreeing with him. His comments on this thread have more thumbs up than Fonzy impersonators at a Happy Days Convention.

"Yes, that's top of the mark son"
1281999673_5.jpg

lol.... just like you any MM owner can buy a MMr, you are not in a special little club

Just my $0.02 but I think that MMR may have been worth $8000 when it was initially unveiled. Now that the novelty has died off and we have learned so much more about it I think the value dropped fast and will continue dropping probably until it ships. It's just such an unsure market and it's new so no one knows what it's going to be like. We know HEP pins and we know that they are top quality. Many people have thrown $8000 onto a machine that they don't know what play quality it is. I realize that this isn't the case for everyone, but for many it is the case.

In the direction of the original post, I keep coming back to the fact that it's all about the price point and I think Rick did a good job with that. Had Rick priced this at $5500, they would be gobbled up faster than you can say "money in the bank." However, people were willing to pay $8000 for the machines which is fine. And if Rick can get that for them, you'd better believe he's going to sell them for that. And there is nothing wrong with that at all.

That will change when the MMR come out and everybody loves them. You seem to forget that Tekee thinks and predicts they will be junk and will not play as well as his own refurbs (or remakes actually) that have been resurrected from the dumpsters behind pizza parlors. People are just pissed off right now because they don't have the game in their collections yet. I don't know why he thinks he is the only person who can remake a MM. Other guys on this site have made MMs from other games and they seem to be working fine. Regardless.... its a skill level way beyond my own and kudos to him for being able to do it. Its just too bad that he cannot admit Rick has the skill and backing to do it properly.

I'm not sure it's a question of whether or not Rick has the skill or backing to do it properly. It's a question of whether or not he WILL do it properly.

I would buy a new MMR for $6500. Not $8k.

I ordered MMR day one, but after I played a SM, found them to be quite similar the SM was almost $3k less.

For rarity, more Pinsiders list MM than SM and from estimates ~3500 SM for ~4200 MM and another ~1000 MMR.

PPS did themselves no favors by offering unlimited 'regular' editions without shaker and without color trim but for the same cost.

On the one hand, who would pay same cost for a regular edition? No one, it's preposterous. On the other hand, PPS killed the 'LE' aspect by offering a regular edition at all, so they got greedy and killed the goose that laid the golden egg, if they had said 1000 and not a game more ever, they would have kept their orders instead of half of the people dropping off the game so that likely they may not even sell out the first 1000.

You're close -------> its the HIGHEST price point that people will buy it at.

Well, Rick has managed to get all the licensing for all the previous BW games (including BBB as rumor has it) so he certainly knows his way around the hobby. And he has managed to contract Stern to assemble MM, and has been remaking all the MM parts for years that guys have been using to rebuild MMs in their garages and basements. And he loves the hobby.
Its doubtful he would let his first assembly project with the new company fall on its face. If he has a problem I'm sure he has plenty of guys in the background who have been restoring B/Wms games who would point him in the right direction.
Its doubtful that PPS will fail in this endeavor other than not achieving their deadlines as promised. But no manufacturer has yet hit their deadlines on any of these new projects. I would put my money on it being done properly but personally do not think the game is worth that money in old or new form. I had one and rotated it out of the collection when newer offerings came out. My humble opinion is its just not an $8000 game new, old, rebuilt, remade, HUO or whatever. But its a fun game and most newbies really loved it. I know darn well that its the "holy grail" game for many pinheads as it was for me at the time. And everyone deserves that opportunity to own their holy grail game at least once in their lives at an affordable price.
So go for it guys. You finally have a chance to own a NIB MM for much less than you would have paid for a worn out rebuild two years ago. No drawbridges mechs that have hidden wear, drawbridges that are cracked or broken, no reglued moats, no raised inserts etc. And you will have a warranty. Worst case scenario is that you will lose a few bucks if you sell it a year later. Thats no different than any new LE game coming on the market now.
Enjoy!

They should love them, the prototype has been out for close to 20 years.

The big mistake is confusing the quality of the remake versus the value of the remake.

From everything I have heard, the quality will be there. From everything I have seen, if a person wants a MM at a good price, either remake or original, patience will get you the better value.

I'm in agreement with many others on here who say that an $8,000 price point for a pinball won't be a lasting trend. My guess is that the demand for these $8,000 pins will eventually go down. It's really a ridiculous price point if you think about it and I still can't believe the cost even comes close to that price tag. Just look at the contents in the backbox and under the playfield and compare that to the older Williams and see how much less material is used and needed. Compare WOZ and MMR and the pricing doesn't make sense either. I understand there are costs that we don't know since we are not in the market of making pins but how can both WOZ and MMr cost the same? WOZ was a completely new concept with everything new on the drawing board....the playfield design, all the art work, the toys etc etc. With MMr all this was already done. The art was there...the playfied design was there....the toys were already designed and there. Look at the enormous cost saving in just that fact alone yet the price point is the same for these two games. Remakes should be cheaper than any other pin to make. Some people will buy these 8k pins but how many are they going to buy? When they finally figure out they won't sell anywhere near what they pay for it then buying that other new 8k pin will be a bitter pill to swallow. It will happen.

I'd buy one of the reissues in a heartbeat if the price was $5500. At $8000, it's more than I'd ever pay for a pin and will continue to gladly stick a few quarters here and there into the one on location near my house.

i also don't see the reason for the price. I cannot; and even if I could, would never spend 8k for a game.
but for a classic established game like mm I'd find a way to swing 5-6k delivered.
I don't care about leds, trim or even losing money and it not being "collectable".
I just want to play one of the greats every day.
I thnk at the lower price they would sell soo many more to collectors on the cusp of the high end market and more importantly sell to operators. The game still earns!

Many having to middle the machine through stern is the reason for the price? Stern is making the game for its competition.

You are an idiot!

I wish a little more thinking could of gone on before pricing for the standard MMr was announced.
MMr could of been the #1 selling game in pinball history..(still could be..).
Let me explain., (a little long-winded, please bear with me)....

First, LE's ($8K or so..), These games are for/targeted to the top 5%
of pinball buyer's.(the well off , so to speak)..That is why there are only 200-1000 produced, That is what the 5% can handle. (For the most part).. (I will call them the 5%, just as an example).

The MASS majority of NIB pinball buyer's are the premium to Pro buyer's., that mean's, THESE people have a budget, and stick too it. And to a EVEN GREATER extent, buyer's of machines in the Used market.(I will call these the 95%, just as an example) By far, there more Used machines bought and sold in a given year, than than all NIB combined, no doubt.

SO, back to MMr, when it was first announced, Yes, I agree, great price point for an LE.
Rick should be congratulated for bringing back #1 pin back to the pinball community
at a much affordable price than the going rate for said game.(and a great deal NIB)..
Then It sell's out in a few hour's, but the problem with that....
Is, The Top 5% who can spend 8K on an LE, ALREADY have a MM in their collection.(for most part)
And may I say, even alot of premium, pro, used guys , sacrificed alot to get a MM over the years too.
So, what you had at Expo 2013, the premium, pro, AND Used buyer's, basically Over-extending their
budget's in a frenzie atmosphere wanting a MM...$1000, I can do that..!

After a little time thinking about it, Reality set's in, $8K is a boatload of money for one machine.,
even for a MM say the (95%)...SO, they start to cancel order's.., and that's where we are today.

Now, even if PPS would of just said, 1000 LE's, that's it, $8K , take or leave it..,
we would still be where we are today, alot of (95%) , who realize, $8K is out of my league..
hence, due to the (5%) who can absorb that, already have one.

Now, saying that, I believe ALL of the Le's will sell out, eventually, too good of a game, NIB, it will.
SO, now we get to start at my original topic, STANDARD MMr's...
These should be at $5500.00, basic, plain (pro, so to speak) model's..Your getting $1000 more than any Stern Pro model ever.!!

What you would get is 80% of the (95%).Market....DONE DEAL. You would get all of the premium buyers, all of the Pro buyer's, and a BIG % of the Used market. I know ALOT of people who have NEVER bought NIB,
But they would of bought this [email protected].

Let's do some math...
$8000 x 1000 = $8,000,000.00 - that's $8 Million
Let's be conservative and say - $4 million in cost = $4 million profit, free and clear.

BUT , If they were to say $5500.00 for the STANDARD.
I have no doubt 20,000 in sales , so $5500.00 x 20,000 = $110,000,000
that's $110 million...
Minus cost, let's say cost is $3,500 a machine...that's $70 million.
$110 - $70 Million= $40 million....Who wouldn't want that?
Even at a generous $4K a machine- $80million = $30 million , free and clear...
well,minus taxes., 24 million maybe..
This would keep Stern pinball totally productive , for 2 years at least...,
AND think of the PARTS PPS sells to these new 20,000 machines over the next 2-20 years..,
sounds like a win-win to me...