Based on your hypothetical numbers and both games being in pristine shape it is more like a tie...

Beatles - purchase for $8k and sell in two years for $6k ... it costs you $2k.

Seawitch - purchase & restore for $3k and sell in two years for $2k ... it costs you $1k.

So what about earnings with Beatles at $1 and Seawitch at 50 cents? Lets assume 50 plays per week, so the annual revenue generated is $2.5k or $1.25k.

Beatles makes you -$2k + $2.5k = $.5k
Seawitch makes you -$1k + $1.25k = .25k

both are break even. Of course the big assumption is that both would be played only 50 times per week. If you location saw this little traffic, you'd be out of business.

there is a reason when we put out a good old games, they stay out for years... They earn and earn well (pound for pound).
JMHE

I dont think the resale prediction is low. High dollar games are losing around 15-20% even as HUO examples it seems. Some more and some less, but that is the average. No matter how nice you maintain a game on route, people expect a bigger bargin due to that lack of "huo" moniker.

JJP games (well not all, but WOZ and DI) have proven to not drop off in play for months/years. If you dont have to sell a game after 12 months, then both your effort and rate of depreciation slow. JJP games cost too damn much, but if they earn for the long haul and players drop coins then they make sense from my perspective. I am not sure where you get higher maintenance costs from? Parts are the same/similar for anything that may need replacement and comparatively any issue has taken less effort on our end w JJP compared to others. JJP games also have much fewer issues on route IME.

no, your faulty assumption is the resale on Seawitch. That is going up in price over time. It is a used game and already took the depreciation hit 2 decades ago.
Worst case you are selling it for the same as you paid.

I'd think these numbers are better to use since this is just an exercise.

Beatles makes you -$2k depreciation + $20k earnings ($200/wk) = $18k
Seawitch makes you -$0k depreciation (resell for same amount) + $10k earnings = 11k

ding ding ding we have a winner - Beatles by a country kilometer!

It's way low. Have you seen a BM66 premium sell for close to that? It's cheaper NIB.

JJP games tend to have more down time that they are not playable. I really like JJP, I think they make awesome games, but at best 50% that I see on route are up and running. Many have signs on them saying out of order. JJP games are taking the biggest hit on the secondary market as it is because they cost the most to begin with. Even if it's 10-15% like other games that's more loss. Add in the additional loss for it being routed and you are going to likely lose $2500 from the purchase price. For a stern pro you are looking at more like $1200 or less for a well kept routed game. The JJP game has to have around 1300 more plays to keep up with the stern pro just to break even.

I get that 8K games don't make sense to route. But that is the case for all of them, not just The Beatles.

Very true, the great thing about bringing back a classic. As long as you take care of it, they don't lose value. Route it for a few years, keep it cleans and waxed, when you are done with it shop it and sell it for what you paid or more.

Not my experience at all for jjp games. Maybe we got lucky? Maybe we are awesme techs, lol. Jjp games are built well and hold up ime. Few small things but nothin the scale of others.

Biggest headache to date on any NIB game was GOTG pro, shit code combined with corrupt node board and super bad customer service to get the node boards all figured out over multiple months. Had stern service rep end a call whileI was actively working on the game and giving feedback, measurements to help them diagnose a larger scale problem. It was 5pm and his day was over... finally got it figured out but went thorugh multiple node boards and months of an intermittently broken game. Uggh that was frustrating.

But i degress. Concerning beatles, yes the pricepoint just won't work out for me on route. Bummer cause I wish it could. Pro price and I am on board, but Won't fall for this psycology trick to try and get peopleto buy a pro at premium pricepoint just for the fun of it.

"Yes I can help you with your problem, with whom am I speaking?"
"This is Hilton..."

This is really the key. Any game priced at 8k (whether made by JJP, CGC, or Stern itself) is going to have to do insane business to outperform a Stern Pro on coin drop alone. If you're routing an $8k game, you've got to be doing it for some other reason (bring prestige to a location where you're making money off of beer sales, keep location owner happy so he keeps letting you route your Stern Pros there, "love of the game," etc.) than just the basic math of purchase price - resale price + cash receipts.

With all this being said about routing games, factual or hypothetical - I would really like to see a JJP POTC opened, set up on location and document the breaks, tweets and fixes done to it along with play audits. A truthful one and not done by someone who lies, forgets, and/or is just plain full of shit to go "against" other companies, games or Pinheads. Seems to make sense because Pirates should earn well.

If a game has superior quality then it should hold up hold up on location. Perfect? No. Solid? Yes

Please do this. I am sure a lot of folks would have interest.

Depends on the location. The op for the local pinball bar here has actually pulled out DI and Walking Dead for a Firepower and Seawitch, set at 2/$1. There's been a Flight 2000 there at 2/$1 and it's been consistently earning.

But, it's a dedicated pinball crowd who drink a lot. It's not a Family Fun Centre. That said, the "normals" who walk in off the street tend to play those games more than the WPC/Stern lineup.

Man my guy has a bunch of great games at 3/$2. Anything from IMDN to AFM. I think I would do 3 plays on them over 4/$2 on FP and F2000. I mean FP can be challenging to play.

But you were talking about earnings, so if the older games work well and earn, then that is good for him and the players who play.

Has anybody here actually seen a Platinum or a Diamond in person yet? Any opinions or photos?

Let's take a break from the hypotheticals for some actual hot-off-the-presses news!

The Beatles store FINALLY sold another Gold. That's 1 sale in the last 3 weeks from the biggest Beatles fan store in the world! Beatle...mania this is not.

LOL

I don't know, this game seems to have worked a couple of you guys up real good.

Vic reminds me of that guy who was camped out in the basement for 6 weeks endlessly reporting the steadily dwindling box office receipts of the Ghostbusters remake.

Surely you have more to offer us Vic!

I have graphs, too, but don't get me started.

It's just some anti-hype reality to counter the initial non-stop shilling (that's finally calming down). Beatles store sales are factual and measurable and if the game with the outrageous pricing is aimed at Beatles fans who will supposedly buy and pay anything, it should be selling like hotcakes at the #1 Beatles fan store. It's not. So the price is likely way too much for what's offered and the machine may not see a second run to get to 1964 made since there won't be any Diamonds to sweeten the 10 packs.

Cool, that means my Gold edition will be even rarer!

It was my understanding that distributors didn't have to buy the 10-packs, they could order any number of Golds. That was just the only way to get a Diamond/Platinum. But they wouldn't get them until after the 10-pack orders shipped. So the 10-pack deal is over.
How many games (or 10-packs) do you think the Beatles store was able to order?

Mine arrived Wednesday. Fast and very fun with short ball times. Better than expected.

beatles3 (resized).jpg

beatles5 (resized).jpg

beatles1 (resized).jpg

beatles2 (resized).jpg

beatles4 (resized).jpg

I saw this at the IAPPA Expo a couple of weeks ago. The playfield was littered with pock marks — it looked like The Beatles were performing on the surface of the moon. No way of knowing how much play it had seen, of course. But meanwhile, over at Chicago Gaming Co's booth, the Monster Bash tables all looked flawless.

I'm a Beatles fan, I had posters hanging up in my room as a kid, but I'm not sure how I feel about this one. 50 years too late, I guess. "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" Probably not.

It almost sounds as if it was covered with DIMPLES!!!!

That's interesting because there's not a lot of things that causes airballs on it.

Yes, dimples, pock marks, whatever you want to call them. They were all over the lower part of the playfield and clearly visible. I don't know that I'd want to invest in one of these if it's gonna look like sh*t after a couple/few weeks.

Yeah, I didn't have any airballs when playing. It plays fast, but I didn't see the ball hopping around. I'm telling you, though, the playfield looked awful. I'm OCD, so this would be a game I'd have to just look at instead of actually ever play! LOL!

Dunno for sure, but they only burned one and started into the second 10 pack. So it seems likely they sold 2 Diamonds and 4 Platinums to go with the 8 Golds they've sold so far. I would guess that means they bought two ten packs.

If you are OCD then pinball in general isn't for you.

Just buy some pins to stare at and admire.

Or bring Kman down to help you install that F ing ridiculous Pf protector!

LOL! I’m not that OCD, but this one was painful for me to look at. They had two of these at IAAPA. One was fine, but the other looked like they were staging a moon landing.

I like the little toys at the back of the Playfield, I didn’t realise the machine had these on it

I guess they got their money back off those 14 and the last 6 will be all profit. Sounds like a great investment to me.

Thanks. I added those.

Remind me never to ask you for investment advice.

They sold another one. 5 golds left.

Man, if people are actually buying these at $2,000 over face at the Beatles Store because they are too lazy to google, imagine how many are selling at $8,000 to internet savvy types!!!

This thing must be selling like hot cakes from Stern distributors!!!

Cool, we’re did you get those, I’d like to add them to my up-coming machine also

Trying to take the data from only one date point and extrapolate that into some sort of figure to estimate sales is a fool's errand.

This says it all. You are guessing. Just like everybody else.

And while we do not have to listen to the shilling, since there now a few who have had a chance to play the pin and have said it plays good, we also do not have to listen to those who were here crabbing about how lousy game play is going to be when they never played it. Those guys have disappeared to which I assume they understand that to try and say a game is going to play like crap would sound idiotic when they are facing off against someone who has actually played it.

To continue playing the one-data-point extrapolation game, last week there where 5 different vendors with ads for Beatles for sale at the bottom of the page. Today, if you look, there are only two vendors with a Beatles for sale. A look in the market place ads ads shows only two venders with Beatles for sale.

Did the other 3 sell the Beatles they had advertised? Can we count that as 3 sales? Or maybe they just killed their ad for no reason, but that would make no sense. I'm guessing there have been 3 sold that you/we don't know about.

2 or 3 have come here with pics of their brand new Beatles pin and we ooh and aah. But as far as I can remember, and I could be wrong, but I don't recall any vendor coming here shouting out loud about how many Beatles he has sold.

Life is full of surprises. I think you will wake up one morning and realize that they have all been sold.

You can find them on eBay or Amazon. Xmas ornaments

Making $30k off a 10-pack doesn’t sound good to you? Or clearing 6 NIB machines if they’ve sold 14? (Now 15)

If you are going to extrapolate, please at least use real data instead of made up numbers to push your agenda.

2 weeks ago there were only 2 vendors on pinside selling, last week there were 4, this week there are 9
Sorry I dont have screenshots of the previous weeks but here is current showing 9
https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/stern-the-beatles/market

The number looking to sell a pin "not meant for pinhead" on the #1 pinball forum is a great data point and it makes it pretty clear that more people are trying to sell now and looking for ANY customers (even ones not in their supposed demographic for this title).

Simply put, people have gotten tired of dealing with distributors masquerading as Pinheads to hype games on here (i.e. FUN) and then they tell lies like "this is limited" and "only 800 in US" "buy now or miss out", only to have people turn around and re spout the falsehoods as fact.

Seems plenty think this reskin looks fun to play, obs cool theme, and nice art package and code, but all have been clear the price is BS and a money grab. It is rightly a kick in the junk for any passionate pinhead that likes the beatles, older style games, etc... to not only have the huge pricepoint but then all the false hype around here.

Between you, Levi, and hasslecassle... these should have been long gone the first day they were available (just like every real LE of a good theme that Stern has done in the past 5 years)

Instead the facts we know to be true:
-Only the first ~964 are bring produced at this time and were sold as 10 packs to distributors. The remaining portion of the edition is supposedly made sometime in 2019 when there is demand (if? there is demand).
-Beatles store which markets to the demographic target for this pin sold its first 10 pack quickly, but now has only sold 2 golds out of the 2nd ten pack and sales have slowed. Worth note that the Prem and LE versions were also sold for 10k on Beatles store.
-Distributors are now marketing more specifically to pinheads since the game is not selling as well as predicted to Beatles maniacs. Call any distributor that bought a 10 pack and they have stock on hand currently. I dont remember the last 'limited' game where this has happened 2 plus weeks post on sale and typically most of a hot game the limiteds are sold out the first day.
number 9_number 9 (resized).JPG

I think I met that guy at the bar next to Expo a few years back. After he showed me pix of a _gorgeous_ wedgehead collection, I asked him how games he played in an average day; he looked at me like I'd just asked him how many times a day he porked his grandmother.

Weeewewww weeewewww
Dimple police!

Just as a public service, these do happen to the CGC remakes as well!

Either demand better from all companies or accept this as normal. But don’t attribute it to one manufacturer only.

1A667284-BAED-4D34-83D8-44873725D330 (resized).png

837D9761-5206-4BE5-B2B6-475FFF31CDA1 (resized).png

Bottom line is that price is too high for 95% of pinheads to even consider this game.

Does look fun but not $7999 fun.

Man this thread is turning into a runaway sewer of fake data punctuated by a detour into dimple
Land. I love it!

Let me add my own fake data point: pretty sure that greater than 5 percent of
The people in this actual thread have either bought Beatles or are “considering it.”

My made up data beats your 95 percent.

Where is the CrazyLevi gameplay review? Surely there must be one on location in New York.

Pretty sure all Stern LEs and every JJP machine is above 95% of pinheads budgets.

seems like a good guesstimate.

5% of the number currently posted in this thread would only be 21.65. Seems like a good guess that 22 Beatles have sold to those that have posted here.

Granted, you claimed it was already sold out and people ought to act quick? Yet here they all are, still lots for sale...

I will likely make it to play one of these later this week. Excited to drop a few quarters in it and play some games for myself
Maybe then I can hype like you Levi.

My girlfriends mom and boyfriend just bought their first pin..... guess what it was..... a Beatles gold. I mentioned it at Thanksgiving and few days later they wanted me to order one for them. They have wanted a cowpoke for years but i cant find one ....let alone one in excellent condition. So i told them a Beatles pin was just released and showed them the pictures and said the gameplay was old style and simple. Now i will be setting up their first pin within the next few weeks. Im happy bc we get to play pinball when we go visit now lol.