10000% agree. Spooky did it. Albeit they sold out instantly.

New to the Hobby? heres some advice from a early buyer of many LE's, don't buy LE's. The Pre is usually the best in terms of art and the extras for the most part if needed can be added after the fact. For me after may LE's and Pre's unless its something extremely important and a must have I stick to Pro's, much happier.

Weren't people selling their pre-order slots for Halloween after it was sold out initially?

Distros themselves are flipping LEs. Stern could address that portion of it I think.

Just don't buy from a flipper. Not that hard really. Problem solved.

I have yet to see a "must own" title yet

This is really wrong. And some of our favorite distros are doing this. Is there a thread on how to become a Stern distributor? Because this may be easier than actually finding an LE.

Stern could address this by simply selling all LEs direct. Cut out the middleman.

Stern requires that the distros pay in full and up front for the LEs. They don't care if they then get marked up due to high demand. Indeed I would expect it might even been encouraged as it helps the distros to make a few extra bucks. Gary likes the to spread the love a bit and wants operators and distributors to stay around. He knows the "lean times" for pinball can come back and it's okay to put some fat on your bones in the mean time.

Ultimately in a market with high demand and limited supply there will always be participants who don't get what they want and there will always be flippers.

Yeah but many of them got cold feet and weren't tacking on additional padding to the pre-order price. They were simply having you take over their spot. Don't get me wrong a few people on pinside / and likely other platforms successfully flipped for a profit. This wasn't instant sell out I think majority of the people who wanted on got one.

A long standing relationship between the distributor and Stern likely won't cease based off of them going above MSRP... aka Manufactures "Suggested" Retail Price.

AGREE.

Or stop all of this 3 game tier shit and just go back to an unlimited amount of whatever the new game title is... you know the good ol' days.

The whole LE concept is fabricated anyway. Buy a premium.

If you let as many people buy it as want it, doesn't that defeat the point of "limited"? Also, the whole reason for the LE model is to get extra money from people with too much money. If Stern is selling them all at the price they set, the plan is working. No need for them to mess with it.

The confusion and FOMO is what drives the LE sales, so Stern isn't going to get rid of it. It also forces people to create long term relationships with distros in the hope of getting in the front of the line in the future. There there are benefits for distros too.

If they really wanted to maximize the $ to Stern and make the most number of customers happy, they would auction off the LE#'s. I'm not saying this because of Banning, but because it would eliminate the flipping premium going to third parties and hand it to Stern.
Any customer could get one if they wanted to pay for it, so they would be 'happy' since they at least had a chance.
I'm sure they could determine some rev sharing process with the distros, or they could just piss them off and cut them out completely for LEs.

Preach it! I do not get how crazy the LE market is. It is just so insane how many posts there are of people desperate to get an LE. The entire LE concept is textbook manipulation.

Yep!

FOMO marketing at its best.

It is sorta funny watching people fall for it over and over. Not just pinball either … everything is marketed this way these days.

Jump off the FOMO TRAIN people!

Your life will be become vastly better, I promise you.

rd

Premiums are the way to go and often have the better art packages. The armor color on Godzilla is just awful.

Yup, Spooky does things the right way. Put's out a total set number of pins to be made, then out of that you select what edition you want.

1,000 LEs. Isn't that the most LEs offered by Stern to date?

Raise the price of the LEs to $20k sold directly from Stern (no distro) and do 1000 of them. Then lower the price of the pro and pre for use common folk.

But that doesn't benefit Stern. With the current system, they know going in that they are going to sell X number of LEs at their set price. That money is basically guaranteed to them. There is no benefit to changing it. If there weren't a stupid demand, partially in place because of flippers, there wouldn't be a guarantee of sales.

Stern has no reason to care if the machines are flipped and the people who want them have to pay more. If Stern cared about their customers, there wouldn't be an LE model in the first place. It exists only to take extra money from whales. With they system in place now, they know those sales will be made and they can count on that money. The people who didn't get one and refuse to pay a flipper will just buy a premium anyway. And there is a decent chance the flipper buys one too with their extra profits.

This would
1) Eliminate FOMO - bad
2) Eliminate urgency to buy - bad
3) Eliminates 'limited' -- If you just offer as many as people will buy... that's a soft limit. See points 1 and 2
4) Eliminates the draw of scarcity

Ever hear how vendors WANT a line in front of their shop? The point is the noise about 'hot' and wanting to see what all the fuss is about draws people in too. Same with scarcity.

Stern doesn't need to make as much money on selling more of a certain LE... that contention will sell the next LE release...

I saw it's called JOMO.

JOY OF MISSING OUT!!!

Sure they care - that's money someone is getting instead of Stern. It matters to them - its just how do you manage the big picture.

They'd love to sell more LEs too - but again, it's about big picture and not just one win... keeping the image is important to fueling more sales.

I guess I should have said They don't care enough. The system in place is working great for them. Sure they'd like to sell even more LEs, but they have to be careful not to mess up the good thing they've got going. So they aren't going to do anything drastic.

I agree before the price increase but I believe LE is the better value now when you consider future resale value.

I feel like this is the case for many Stern LEs. They either pick the most obnoxious putrid neon color from the art (sky blue LZ, banana yellow AIQ, neon green TMNT) or they pick a finish that has you scratching your head. Godzilla is the latter. Reminds me when they picked metallic gold for GOTG. It's really a 50/50 chance at this point that they will mess it up.

This describes the exact method Deeproot used to sell RAZA. Stern knows what they are doing.

I thought about Stern enforcing the MSRP (not sure if that is legal) and if you buy an LE you have to hold it for atleast a year to buy a new one / next one. Somehow prove you still own it. Not sure if any of that is actually feasible, was just trying to think of ways to prevent people flipping.

The single best way to prevent flipping is to adjust pricing till it's perfect. The spot where it's so high you simply can't flip it, but it's not so high that nobody buys it.

Unfortunately this is an incredibly hard thing to adjust right. I literally think Stern could sell the LE's for $18k and they would still get listed for $20k.

Any silly shit like enforcing terms of ownership is gonna get laughed out of court and never be a real tactic you can use.

Stern knows today that they have a guaranteed sale of 1000 LEs at $10,000 for their next game before they even announce it. Why would they rock that boat? How much total money are flippers making on LEs for a specific game? $150,000 if 50 people each flip it for $3000 more. Maybe $200,000? That seems real high to me. Sure Stern would like that money, but the guaranteed $10,000,000 in sales is something you don't mess with too much.

Let go of the idea that Stern cares about the end customer and ask yourself why they would drastically change the model they have now.

^^^This ^^^
Stern only messed up by not making it a 1200 or 1500 LE run.

I’d suggest that Stern would sell fewer LE’s if they didn’t cap the number correctly in advance. FOMO and the perceived potential margin that FOMO creates for flippers must increase the demand at least some from the true number of buyers that want to own the LE model just for the sake of having ‘the best’ regardless of whether it is exclusive.

The foil cabinet looks amazing though check Facebook . And I am a sucker for a nice bakcglass...but ... It's getting out of control .

Even though Spooky let you chose what platform of the game you wanted. The game was still limited by a maximum number. 1000 for Halloween and 500 for UM.

I wish I could just buy the populated playfield and a translite. I would temporarily convert my BM66...

Rob

I think this would work, especially for the true fans. Limit it to 1 per person during an initial window and then after that they could open it up to the distributors. There are many ways they can do this if they wanted, Stern Insider for instance. They've already done it to some extent but how this could really, really work is to let the fans know when and what days ahead of the drop date, let the orders come in and then close it, that's it. Everyone's happy.

That is a direct hit on the FOMO... if I just know I can do it at my leisure within a reasonable amount of time... there is no more FOMO. That is now 'just don't forget...'

The issue isn't the # per say - it's about perception of scarcity... because FOMO is fueled by concern/fear. If there is no concern of scarcity, there is no FOMO. So if the number is 3000 in a market where most pins don't sell that much period... there is no FOMO in the buyers.

The FOMO is so strong people are committing to buying games BEFORE THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THE GAME IS. Let that sink in... that's how strong the perception is these days that people are literally jumping over each other to get a spot.

If you turn around and say "These are as plentiful as needed" - people are in no hurry. People that aren't in a hurry don't commit. Now instead of having a MOB throwing money at you to buy your product.. now you gotta SELL IT and convince people to buy it. Who wants to kill that golden goose and risk games not being sold??

The very aspect Stern can sell out a game with just a name or a few photos is PURE GOLD. The fact they can do time and time again is the Golden Goose. You want that Goose to keep producing so you are going to manage it and not risk blowing up tomorrow to get a few more eggs today.

Your post approaches things as a consumer... You want ready access to the product. You're not wrong for that desire... but you are not fully recognizing the value to the business to basically sell out a product without doing anything and KEEPING THAT AS A STREAK.

Stern doesn't increase the LE to 2000 for a game because they want to keep selling LEs into the future with the same vigor they sold prior games.

What happens years after the sale doesn't concern Stern as much... the focus is how to sell today and tomorrow's game. Stern has a vested interest in your games retaining value so that new buyers feel more comfortable with the price point and retaining value... and building an auroa of 'collectibility'... but for the purpose of selling the next game.

Think like the business, not the buyer.

But if anyone can buy... as long as they are present... you again hurt FOMO.

And more specifically, you hurt the ability to get people to commit early and stronger.

"I was there Sept 14th..." doesn't carry as much collectibility perception as "there were only 500 made"

Stern did raise the number to 1000 this time. So that was an improvement. Only problem is they are still behind on that number when it comes to titles in demand. Mando and Godzilla could have been 1250 easily. If they want to make a super limited title then start making the SLE on every title.

Maybe, but things are changing now.. true fans were able to secure LE's. There's tons of flipping going on. Allow insider access to buy LE's, limited to 1, Stern makes money on more memberships, less flipping. Then they could make as many LE's as the demand for those few days.. after that? Let the last 500 go to the distributors and they can do whatever they want with them, like charge $20,000.. plus they'll still sell a ton of Premium's and Pro's.. so everyone wins.

How much flipping is really going on? Does anyone have a real estimate of the total number of machines flipped per game?

And I agree that you are underestimating the influence of FOMO here. The limited number is what makes this work.

I think the only fear of missing out would be missing the alloted time frame in which one could buy the LE. There's more people involved in the hobby now whether we like it or not and their will definitely be more LE's made going forward. I still think the biggest problem here is that as soon as a game is released? The flipping already starts, whether it's by a personal buyer or a distributor, people are buying 2 or more just for the sake of flipping and sport, rather than the love of the game. Just wait till the foreign investors get involved, which will most likely happen soon if this keeps up.

Agreed and the art on the LE cab is better than the Prem and pro hands down... (Mechagodzilla)
A2576C3C-5F67-4361-8783-97374FC3B105 (resized).jpeg

But if people want it, a limited buying period isn't limiting anything. They will buy it then, they've already said they want it. And if enough people are already in before the game is announced, what incentive is there for Stern to change it? Sure maybe more people will buy it, but maybe less will. Because the exclusivity is actually gone.

Yeah, probably a good time to learn that the customer is rarely right. Particularly on Pinside.

The foil looks awesome!

https://www.facebook.com/sternpinball/videos/600176774680200/