There was only one Stern model of each game up until about Spiderman (when they made SM Black), Lord of the Rings, Elvis & Avatar (however these were not the LE's as we know them today really, same game play, not individually numbered)

The True individually numbered LE's, along with different gameplay, started with Tron LE
(400 production run)

Then with ACDC's success they kicked off their first "premium model" which play the same as an LE but are not limited nor sequentially numbered.

Pricing on average for the new Stern game (since there was only one model) was about the low 4k's shipped

Now you get a pro for that same price, Premiums in the 6k's and LE's in the 7-8k range.

There weren't any premiums or LEs back then. Only one model of each game was produced, roughly equivalent to the current pro models. Stern has since tried The Pin (without much success) as a cheaper model intended for home sales to wealthy people who aren't pinball enthusiasts but would like a game in their family room or den. And now offers premium and LE models to cash in on the high-end market created by collector-quality restorers and the high-end competition from JJP with WOZ. The question is: if there was still only one model produced per game, would it have the stripped down features of a current pro or would it have all the features of a premium/LE? If only one model, it would have to be priced like a current pro or else it would drive out the vending operators, and without them it would probably be the end of pinball.

MSRP on Sterns from 2000 to 2004 was $2995 to $3795.

Avatar LE has # plate 250made and somewhat diff game play cause of power ball. Rolling Stones LE also is numbered and has different game play cause of power ball and extra flip buttons for ball saving posts. I think both were before Tron LE.

I bought a NIB Monopoly in 2001 and it was $3600 which included tax and shipping. IIRC, the game was $3200ish.

I paid 3400 delivered for my LOTR in 2007. That's what the prices were for everything. They didn't change to much. Game would maybe go up $100 in a year or two and that was one.

One complete game is what you got. not 3 versions.

Elvis gold is also numbered, but doesn't have different gameplay. Has gold trim if i remember right?

Monopoly had a special run of machines in 2001, one each for Baltic through Boardwalk; each game came with a plaque and silver armor, and cost $5k-$5.5k ea.

Here is one http://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=4505&picno=7178

Look at car prices guys; all manufacturing has been going up over the past ten years it stinks.

It is called inflation. That and the cost of metal, particularly copper, has gone up drastically due to increased global demand.

I guess so!
http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/GAME-POP

One other reason for the price run up, from someone that has been selling pins for 35 plus years... Up until a few years ago Stern sold a lot of pins to the operator market, but that has all but gone away. With those sales nearly gone, there is lower volume now in just home sales. I hate it that they have different versions of the same game now, but it shows how much they cater and focus on the home market. This would have been unheard of back around when Lord of the Rings was made....the coin op distributors would not have supported this business model for the most part. Amazing how much things have changed in a short time. I feel like a dinosaur!

The first game I ever sold in any kind of volume, brand new in the box, was Data East's Batman. I believe we got around $2600 for them. I laugh at all the supposed HUO games that are for sale. Very, very few Williams games were sold to the home market in the box, even up to their last game Cactus Canyon. I don't recall ever selling a new in the box game and Batman only sold for me because I loved the game and knew I could "sell" it. Their was much more profit in selling used pins back then, so that was another reason most of us didn't try and sell games new in the box to the home market. And the home market was very, very small then. No way you could make a good living specializing in home sales back then....now you could never survive only selling pins to operators! Also, the max you could get for just about any game to the home market was around $2500, and that is still true today unless you are dealing with a client that already has a collection, or someone that buys new. The average dad that wants a pin for bis family will still only spend in the low 2's.

My NIB Medieval Madness was $3400 in 1997 and AFM had been a little less. They were bought through a local operator friend. It was the first time he'd bought for a homeowner. According to www.usinflationcalculator, there has been 46% inflation since 1997 leading to $4955 in today's dollars. REAL inflation numbers are higher according to www.shadowstats.com and others. FWIW...

that's only Pro inflation. Which back then you always got a premium because you got the "FULL" version of every game. not the dumbed down version.

so in reality, you have to compare the prices we were paying in the mid 2000's to the Premium prices, since that is the actual comparison to todays standards.

Yeah, Stern had essentially 100% price inflation in less than 10 years, and the quality is reduced in that same timeframe.

In 2008, I had IJ4 delivered for $4,000 and in 2011, I had IM delivered for $4,200.

The new pin prices don't kill me now as much as the prices for nice used B/W games. Like a lot of people, I was buying nice condition TZ, IJ, SS, etc for $2,400 - $2,800 for years during the 2000 - 2010 time period. Games like WW, FT, NF, WCS, I got sub $2,000. MM was like $4,000 which was mania. Those days are over.

He paid $3840 for his Stern IJ (including shipping) in 2008. A 2018 Stern Pro costs $5400 shipped. So a 41% price increase in ten years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation is responsible for a 15% increase in prices over that same 10 year period.

A Stern 2008 pin was comparable to a Premium, not a current stripped out cost-reduced Pro. The 100% comparison stands.

LOTR sure, don’t know if Stern IJ feels particularly Premium but to each his own.

If you’re doing a Premium comparison though, you’re looking at an 87% price increase (GOTG Premium is $7200 street price, I believe). To get your 100% price increase, you’ll want to compare to the LE.

Prices way up and quality way down.

If you want to get really picky, I was getting Spidermans for $3300 delivered then, and that's DEFINITELY a premium level machine, so compared to that street price, it's more than a 100% increase to the current Premium prices.

But the POINT is, the price inflation has been insanely high, and the cost reduction cheaping-out has been extremely aggressive at the same time. Thank god for AP and JJP. At least there's some correlation between price and value there.

Do higher NIB prices affect the market for used pins? It seems there's a correlation. I'm seeing where Fish Tales would sell for $2K-ish a few years ago, but $3K+ now. Even some cornball 80s SS like Hollywood Heat that used to sell for 700 or so, now over a grand.

$3650 in 2008 with inflation is $4627 in 2018

Even with the Stereo sound, no EPROM re-programming, color displays, LED lighting.........you guys are getting your asses ripped!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Absolutely. Used games have gone up far more than NIB the past 10 years. You used to get games like TX Sector for $600. I bought a Judge Dredd off eBay fully working for $900 in '09. These games all go for at least 2 to 3 times that now. For me it's getting to the point where HUO Stern Pro's are a better value than WPC titles. I'd rather spend $4500 on a HUO Metallica or TWD than $4k on a used Congo.

I wish I could upvote this post a thousand times.

The good old days will not return ...

Some of this is probably a result of JJP - looked like they’d be a competitor for Stern but instead they just proved that there’s a lucrative market willing to pay much more for NIB pins than anyone could have imagined.

The good news is that you can still play them on location - coin drop prices barely seem to have tracked inflation, so there are still great bargains to be had in pinball courtesy of you local operator.

You guys need to get out more. Currently there are WAY more issues with AFMr and Dialed In than all the Stern games combined.
The last unresolved issues for Stern games that I’m aware of is a very slight (but numerous) insert ghosting GoT, and a routed StarWars playfield. Am I missing any?

Compare that with everyone on the AMF remake thread or the Dialed In thread.

You're missing a LOT of relatively recent Stern issues. Splitting cabinets, display problems with the LED display, Node board failures galore (two service bulletins to try to address the most widespread issues), general early component failure of coils, etc out of the box, general QA issues like the GB scoop that was getting electrified and taking out the node board because the light leads were right on top of the scoop, cheaper cabinet wood, cheaper playfield wood that dimples more (confirmed by someone with a density checker)...I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but there's a pretty substantial list. Overall more than JJP or CGC by quite a margin, and mostly attributed to ill-advised cost reduction. Not sure about the AMF bowling game you're talking about, but probably that, too.

If you say so.
As I’ve said ad nauseum: I’ll take these “issues” far more seriously when real people with unresolved issues make posts about Stern not addressing QC issues. Not so much when a select few Pinsiders keep chirping that the sky is falling.
That IS what’s happening in the JJP Dialed thread (Cliffy told me himself recently that he is making almost nothing but protectors for Dialed In, lately) and the AFM thread -the good news being that they’ve supposedly shipped out replacement chips that will prevent boards from burning out.
Real owners with real QC issues.

I didn't say the issues weren't being addressed by Stern. By and large they are (cabinet wood and possibly playfield wood excepted), as are CGC and JJP. I'm not sure what your point is. All the stuff I listed is documented here on Pinside, and Stern has the MOST issues, as expected due to their volume and aggressive cost-cutting.

I guess my point is this: you go ahead and find all the current Stern owners with issues.
Then let’s compare them to the Dialed In owners with problems, and the AFM owners with problems.
I’ll bet Stern owners with issues are far fewer despite Stern pins being produced in far greater numbers.

Don't pinball machines and "issues" go hand in hand?

From the DI threads I've read, some DI issues seem pretty minor and have been easily fixed by owners (especially with LTG on board there).

But that misses the actual issue - that the problems with Sterns recently due to cost-cutting absolutely dwarfs any niggles from JJP and CGC machines. Sterns have doubled in price in 10 years while noticeably declining in build quality. All three have clearcoat issues, so that's a wash. But Stern's other issues like cabinet splitting, ghosting, node board failures, etc are much more serious than JJP/CGC, with the exception of WoZ light board issues, which JJP handled, even for 2nd and 3rd owners years after the warranty was up.

We have pins from all three on the route I help with and Sterns are by far the crappiest made. They ooze cheap at every turn now, but they cost almost as much as JJP/CGC for the Prem/LEs. It's crazy.

While I do value the fact that you are now bringing some sort of evidence to help make your point, I’m still not seeing numerous posts on here indicating that other Stern owners are having the same issues. Very few, in fact.
I wonder if they are just not holding up as well when routed, being treated tougher than owners do when playing pins in their personal collection.
What concerns me as a buyer more than anything, is the security of knowing if a manufacturer will replace anything defective. That certainly is different from an operator who is losing money every time they are waiting for a replacement part.

The crazy part is we weren't affected by the cabinet splitting issue. I don't know if that's because we got lucky or because I put B/W type leg brackets on our new Sterns as soon as I saw the pictures of other unlucky owners with cracked and/or splitting cabinet corners. So some of these issues have hit us, and some haven't. All are documented to varying degrees here on Pinside across many, many threads.

The warranty support is a valid concern, especially if you're the second owner and companies like CGC void warranty coverage since you're not the first owner, while JJP and Stern will usually cover you for major issues as a second or third owner under warranty.

I would not say SM as it was in 2007 is a premium machine by today’s standards. Aerosmith Pro makes a 2007 SM look a bit dated. If you had a time machine and brought an Aerosmith Pro back to 2007 it would outsell SM.

Still, you are right about Stern appearing to be cutting corners, I was comparing a first run Metallica pro’s cabinet to a Aerosmith cabinet and it seems like the wood they are using now is a far lower quality on the under carriage, it’s seems like it is some sort of partical board to me.

Stern needs to lower prices. Hopefully competition eventually brings this result.

Sterns playfield issues were far more widespread than just GOT. SMVE and GB had even more reports than GOT for defective playfields and Stern was far behind assemble deadlines for QC in 2016 and into 2017 to even produce the games with the defective playfields they were able to produce. Stern does seem to have the playfield ghosting issue in hand now.

What I’m more concerned with on the newer Sterns are the boards. A lot of people who work on boards are scared of the Spike 2 boards and this scares me because the replacement board price is high once your game is out of warranty.

Just looking at the features, it's a premium. The only thing missing is a color screen - for $3500 less.

Spiderman
3 Ramps
1 Magnet
2 VUK
1 3rd flipper
1 Motorized 3 bank target
1 Motorized Doc Ock

Aerosmith Prem
2 Ramps
1 Magnet
1 VUK
1 3rd flipper
1 AirVUK/Toybox
1 Scoop

Compare any current Premium to the much-earlier, even cheaper at the time LotR and the comparison is even more stark.

Color RGB lighting vs incandestine bulbs as well. The LCD display vs the DMD is a big deal too. A stock SM from 2007 looks rather dim next to an Aerosmith Pro.

Also, I think the inflation rate for manufacturing has been greater than the 3% annual rate we all assume is the inflation rate and Stern has moved into a larger (presumably more expensive) factory while finally shelling out bucks on good artwork; still I’m not challenging you that the price increases have far outstripped inflation while material cost cutting measures (moving the darn power switch!!!) seem to reign supreme.

More on topic, someone bought a game from an operator that had the leger of the operator from the 70’s through the 90’s on it with NIB prices. I can’t recall who it was but maybe he will see this thread and post that list again for us.

Yep. My Stern NIB issues have been minor compared with my DILE & AFMr issues. AFMr was the worst by far...2 solenoid board burnouts within the first 25 games! (and I know I wasn't alone). DILE didn't have any major issues, however had lots of minor issues in terms of build quality. In terms of the electronics, DILE has been great so far.

snaroff

A great example that most OPs bought many of is Bally KISS.

No multiball, no ramps, no music, no speech, no stereo, plywood with patches and boatmen up and down the sides, fiberboard cab floor, back and head back, 6 digit scoring - rolled over back to zero, incandescent lighting.

It cost us $1,800 in 1978.

Adjusted for inflation that works out to $7,212 in 2018 dollars.

It's funny that this impacts where I put games. I have 3 game rooms in my house, and having an incandescent game next to an LED game looks horrible. Having a regular DMD looks pretty bad too.

That said, location pins could be charging $2-3 a play to keep up with inflation on the coin drop from the 50-cent norm in the 80s/90s.

Truth. I saw a White Water restored with LEDs next to an incandescent-lit Theatre of Magic, and it put ToM to shame, and on its own ToM is one of the most beautiful pinball machines ever manufactured.