Colorado Springs, CO
Quoted from LTG:Plus what ever Nova's mark up was. They wouldn't pay more than $1K over their cost. Doesn't really say what it would have been priced at.
And I wouldn't put a lot of faith in a hand written card in a machine. Especially one that says only two were made. We do know there were more. One for sure went to Germany and disappeared.
And pieces of others have popped up.
LTG : )™
Disclaimer : I hope that those that one one can get one and at a good price.
Regarding pricing, I was one of those guys that had to try and sell pinball to operators. Let me tell you, more often than not it was a hard sell, even when they were $2495 new. Once they crossed $3000 that was the end. Pinball Circus would have had to have had very strong, long, and consistent collection numbers from reputable sources (ie, not the BS numbers factories liked to give us) before most guys would have bought these. You have to remember that Williams were the kings of pinball, even in the 80's, so we all looked to them to innovate and they really did try! But with the exception of Pinball 2000, they all pretty much flopped, and all of us took it on the chin. Varkon's went for $200 after it failed. Basically, you couldn't give any of the WMS experiments away after they flopped. Fast forward to Pinball Circus. There is no way, given those test numbers, that WMS would ever have taken a chance like that, especially in a very poor pinball market. There was virtually no home market then....which is why I laugh and shake my head at all the ridiculous HUO ads for games in the 80's and early 90's that I and anyone else in the biz then know aren't....so the operator was the only outlet during this time. And when Pinball Circus was made, most operators were hurting big time, still waiting for the next high earning Street Fighter game that ultimately never came. Had Pin Circus come out, we would have ended up offering one of those one year interest free finance deals just to get rid of them, once reports came back that earnings were so so. And WMS would likely had to have closed them out at a huge discount. They had too much history behind them to release this game, though I too would have loved to have seen it happen. Timing is, and was, everything. I felt bad when Data East or someone else came out with a truly great game, but because another game was earning well at the time, the operator would go for the proven game instead. There were too many pins being made then. Had Pin Circus come out in the 80's, I think it would have sold well, plus operators had more money then to absorb a lower earning game.
