329 left is my guess.

https://pinside.com/pinball/archive/star-gazer/owners

I figure if 49 are known on pinside, then I have ACCESS to talking to 49 owners.

There may be another 25-50 out in the wild, but if they are in attics and basements with owners who are dead or not on the internet, it has no VALUE to me -- they are as good as gone until the estate sale.

-mof

I have around 30 machines from various years and makes. Of which maybe 5 were on some internet list before I bought them. Most owners are oblivious to posting information about their pinball machines on the internet is what I've gathered from that.

All I know is, I played one for the first time last weekend and I fell in love. That sweet, sweet spinner action!

99% of all pinball machine owners are not on Pinside.

I'm with o-din, a lot more than 87 left.

I want one. I promise to preserve and take care of it. So yeah, someone get me one.

Um, it's a Stern

And how much would Stern make if I bought that game?

I happen to own a Spider-Man, Tron, TSPP, AC/DC Premium, GBLE, and Iron Man. I'll buy a Stern on the secondhand market, but not new.

Great post.

If CPR makes the playfield, plastics and backglass, would it be easy to make one?

Easy butch...it was a jab, not a stab.

I expected Stern would have announced classic Stern remakes by now.

I'm just explaining because this is coming up in every thread. People have literally posted more about my thread outside of it than I actually posted in it. Haha.

They've got the cab to do it with the WNBJM cab. I think the question would be how many could they sell if they price it the same. Would it be worth it?

FYI John Greatwich made repro playfields and they look killer!

There was a guy that made one from scratch a few years ago using spare parts and lots of labor.

He also made the glass. Stu was doing plastics, but I don't know if they're going to happen or not.

Youd think if they could make "the pin" or whatever those costco brand games are they could remake these early sterns for the same price

Pretty much all the games I've found were never posted online until I acquired them.

I think 329 might have been a little conservative. I would imagine as many of these as possible were saved. Some were too far gone I'm sure. So how bout we kick it up to 611 units left.

1 is in Sweden at my friends place, so thats one you can account for.

Probably Redketchup https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-stargazer-crazy-project

There's probably 100-150 of them left.

Eleventy

I'm doing 74 new playfields. 50 are gone, & the last 20 will be the first 6 months of 2017. Backglass I continue to do on demand. There are some more guys interested in building ones from other Stern games. Plastic sets are still in demand, & Marco Specialties said they would step up & order a bunch.

IMG_0527 (resized).JPG

Cool Beans.

I'd say way more than 87 games exist if John has 74 orders for replacement playfields.....

My guess is that there is somewhere between 20% to 80% (174 to 695 of 869) still around.
Some qty likely were destroyed by fire/smoke, floodwaters/rainwater/mold, rats/mice, and some of those in bad/broken/worn condition were thrown away or parted out by owners/operators.

Any suggestions or data available that can help us narrow down the possible range of number of Star Gazers left?

I really wish Stern would do some remakes of their classic's, StarGazer, Quicksilver, Seawitch Etc. That would be so great.

I know people that have bought replacement playfields that don't have a machine. Hard to logically guesstimate a number; but I'd suspect a large number were parted out or tossed starting in about 1985 (5 years after release). Then whatever ended up in collections or in operators back rooms is what we are dealing with now. I'm thinking maybe 200ish max.

The one I have was found in an operator's back room and sold to a video collector as part of a package deal with a bunch of other stuff. The video collector didn't want it and couldn't care less that is was a SG. To him it was a crappy pinball and something he did not want to deal with. He was happy to get rid of it...I was happy to take it off his hands.

I'm sure you were!

I bought one before I had the game. The way my search was going I thought I was going to have to Redketchup one.

This actually seems like a decent guesstimate. 329 is just under 38 % of the 869 machines produced.

If we are to try to be the closest without going over the actual number of remaining Star Gazers, I could guess 333, but I don't want o-din to be mad at me. But I want to win. But what if someone else guesses 334. Oh, what to do??

priceisright-price_guesstimates (resized).jpg
Priceisright-I_hate_you_smile (resized).jpg

I'm working on converting a Meteor cab to a Star Gazer for my wife for Christmas. Only hangup on that right now is I've heard at least three seperated rumors on replacement plasticsurgery, but no physical proof or official announcements.

Almost all the people that have ordered a playfield, need it. Very few I know are speculating, & a few have a playfield & searching for the pin to install in. I will never do anymore of these.

So, Redketchup becomes a verb. I am in the process of preparing to Redketchup me a SG as we speak.

How difficult is it to convert a Metor to a Stargazer?

Anybody ever play Star Gazer while listening to Stargazer?

Haven't tried that. Nor have I played Genesis while listening to Genesis.

FWIW, I have listened to the song Iron Maiden from the album Iron Maiden by the band Iron Maiden while playing Iron Maiden.

Not too bad since you already have everything except 7-digit displays as far as the electronics go. You'll need cobalt star posts, ball guides, plastics, stand up targets, pops, pop caps and spinners. You'll need to modify the backbox harness for 7-digit displays and a different physical layout and you'll need to modify the playfield harness to fit the new layout. Probably missing something, but that's all I can think of right now.

I know of one that is not on the list. +1
I know of game that was scrapped. -1

I'm pretty happy to became a verb!.. Building my owe stargazer was not to difficult, but it takes times (3 years) and a lot of love.

that was very fun project... located all the part, fabricated a lot of it, making the new harness for the playfeild. The best moment in 25 year of collecting juke and pins... the moment I plug the Stargazer for the first time and it was working... that was pretty awesome.

Kinda jumping out of the blue on this one but this makes me wonder:
Has anyone figured a general equation or rule for accurate estimate of surviving machines?
I know there are so many variables but there has to be some general trend right?
Say for every 5 years, the amount of surviving machines decreases by 5%?

Just curious! I know most machines are like old cars, just getting to that point where people realize "Wow maybe after 40 years that POS rotting in my barn is actually worth something if I sell it"

Star Gazer wasn't even made yet when we were listening to Stargazer.

What makes you think that was a guess?

Everybody has access to Craigslist and Ebay nowadays, so it's not like people are throwing away old pinball machines at the dump.

Nowadays, I'm sure more pins are discovered and returned to service than lost each year.

My guess is there is probably 50 left. I have personnelly owned 6 of them. I have sold 4. Have enough parts to make 1 more and have 1 in my collection. Reproduction parts don't mean much because people buy them thinking they will find a game. In this case most folks won't. The list doesn't mean much because those games are doubled up on some because both the owner and buyer are on the list.

I love the game along with my other classic Stern's and I am blessed to have an unmolested perfect original.

Way more than 50.

There are 30 unique serial numbers alone on the IPSND, and 99% of pinball owners do not bother to register their games.

I listened to C&C Music Factory while playing Lethal Weapon 3. Come on, it was the 90s!