One thing to focus on ... Beatles catalog is deep (maybe 500 songs)? and what people want is for the pin to have a lot of it included. I’ll say the game should at least 50 songs. I don’t want 7-10 songs, I want 50-100. No need for the ability to swap in songs after release, the game should have them included. If not what is the point of a Beatles pin? As a counter point, if KaPow tells me they’ve selected 12 songs, I’ll be staying away, far away. Of all music pins, Beatles needs a catalog of music when it leaves the factory ... or else.

$10k / $15k / $20k is the maximum these games will sell for. If Stern charges more, they will own 100% of the Beatles pins they manufacture. One thing that you are paying for is music rights. So it better include at least 50 songs and these should not be swappable. Alternatively, Stern could cut these prices by $2k -$5k and put in placeholders for 50 songs and allow user to replace all songs with their favorite Beatles jukebox.

Joe Kaminkow suggests a wise (and rich) man buy two Beatles pins. One to open and enjoy and one to leave in box as an "investment". I am going to be passing on this one, so you are free to acquire my allotment.

If you’ve spent any time reviewing company financial statements, you recall seeing the term good will. This is commonplace and it can be used to gross up assets and allow a company to build an offsetting liability. Good will can also be used as a black box to generally define all that cannot be explained. So a $10k prem might be valued as $7.5k plus $2.5k of good will or FU.

You are suggesting Stern and Kapow would like to maximize the size and impact of their FU. And I’m ok hearing that, but I choose not to participate.

I agree that you can’t pass judgement on a game without knowing prices (and without playing it first yourself). The price sets the level of expectation. Seawitch has a nice layout and the new magnets and spinning disk add value. With no lcd though, Stern can’t expect to sell at pro prices. Should be more like the Zizzle schedule.

Full disclosure - willing to pay $4.5k / $6k / $7.5k per model of Beatles. Anything above that is Good Will, something I’m unwilling to pay for. Pass!

Standard pricing just went up on all future Stern pro’s. There is a new $300 line on factory invoice labeled - 4 insects extermination fee.

Which would U pay $6k for? MBr classic edition or Beatles gold? Hahahahaha no contest. MBr is a complete game, it is a beauty and one of best pins ever designed. What if Beatles gold was $10k, which would you buy then? Hahahahahaah. Beatles will not sell!

And where’s my 50 songs, Stern? You paid $500 per games for Beatles catalog, so you should be giving us the full gamut.

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After $500 license fee per machine, Stern should have said thank you and we will be building machines right away. THEN Stern should have spent another $200 per machine to install a DVD player, buy a top 50 Beatles dvd and wire it thru the game’s enhanced sound system (amp and powered woofer). It’s a shame too, because this could have been a successfully resolved, win-win situation.

Does this make sense? Why not build a dvd for Beatles collectors @ $19.99 and a pinball machine for pinheads at $5k? You are implying Stern has flipped this around and are targeting Beatles fans with a pinball machine, a product which they have no connection, aren’t interested and won’t be buying. What next, Delta Airlines pinball targeted at frequent flyers?

Looks similar but it is uncolored and there are numbers inside each shape. Kapow provides a water coloring set and a number chart. Don’t like the colors as presented - customize yours to your liking.

At $3k more than they are “worth” and I am being liberal in my estimate, a few may make location, but I can’t see many going into Pinside collections. Probably a $2k/$1k Stern/Kapow profit split, this is too rich for me to subsidize.

It’s how much reskinned Seawitches with added magnets and a spinning disk go for in my area. Street level games without an lcd are often under $2k. Beatles is closer to higher valuation because it is special.

I’m confused by the old adage - pinball is not a good investment. Now I find out pinball is actually a collectible with limitless potential for profiteering. Going to have to rethink my approach to buying pins and my investment allocation in collectibles.

How about if your parents brought you to see the Beatles when you were one week old in 1966? You’d be 52 and have some nice mental images.

As the source material has been determined to be ready steady go recordings of 1964, all 8 songs including the extra 3 should be among the 15 listed here. I hope it includes Mr Postman, because Ringo is such a good dancer.

Oddly four songs listed on playfield are not shown on disc - drive my car, all my loving, ticket to ride, I should have known better.

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How can I change my vote from NO to HELL NO!?

I am going to change how I sell games. If potential buyer shows a Beatles or BM66SLE in their collection and they are offering $1 below ask, I won’t accept. Obviously have no idea about the value of money or the stupidity in paying an insane price for a leisure toy. Will I buy the Honda Accord for the Ferrari price? Sure, I have no idea what money is.

That’s a great idea! Find 10 people willing to buy gold edition and band together and buy a lot of 10 pins. It might take awhile to find 10 people, but you’d eventually get there. Maybe advertise on Craigslist. Chances of winning each edition -

7/10 gold (70%)
2/10 platinum (20%)
1/10 diamond (10%)

Fortunately I don’t meet the qualification of wanting to buy a gold.

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Plus I’m turned off by the pricing which seems like a 100% money grab over what these pins should be selling for in a competitive market place. Stern is a Goliath. All in all I am not excited about this one in the least. Meanwhile I’m poppin for a Munsters.

Why not hold off buying that gold and join a pool of 9 others to buy a lot of 10 games? Seems like a fun and easy way to buy a game and maybe get a free model upgrade. If you are spending the money, do it wisely.

Well if Stern sells blocks of ten games for $70k, then all are less than $10k for the initial sale. Golds have a minimum price of 7.6k and most distributors are planning to mark them within a few hundred of this number. Since distributors will be establishing resell pricing of the two top models, that is beyond KaPow’s control.

Start a signup list thread maybe. There are 36 people voting yes they will buy one, Shirley that may fill out the first lottery. By starting a thread to solicit names or private pm’s, you may wrangle enough domestic orders. This approach may have tax / importing complications for overseas sales. Good luck.

Yes that’s the step you have to figure out. One approach is talk to Stern about a direct purchase or in becoming a distributor yourself. Stern is motivated to sell you a block of games.

Another approach is to solicit a distributor to make the purchase and offer them $1k-$2k. That adds 100-200 to price for everyone. Worst case is distributor demands $6k, so that each pin would sell for $7.6k. But you’d still enjoy the 30% chance of winning a free model upgrade. Side benefits include making 9 new friends on Pinside and becoming part of Pinside folklore. If you streamed the lottery part and showed who won the upgraded pins, we’d watch and cheer from around the world.

Step one is collecting names of real buyers - those who have the money and are ready to part with it. That is simple to start with a post, but may take the most time. Since no money is changing hands until the plan is hashed out, odds are high that someone in the group can broker the buy (should you welcome the assist). Don’t worry about having all the answers or the deal unraveling, someone in your team can figure it out.

My spidey sense is tingling and that tells me something is up at Stern. There has been plenty of public discourse on pricing and my bet is Stern has reconsidered and will be changing their policy on Beatles from a week ago. On Tues, expect them to set MSRP on all models at 7.6k / 8.8k / 10k. This will establish price levels that are reasonable and alleviate bad feelings from price gouging, while keeping their pin under $10k, as claimed by Joe K.

Stern will still require a 10 game block purchase in order to receive 2 platinum and 1 diamond editions. Buy 10 pins for $70k and sell them for $80k. $1k per pin is good margin for a distributor, but chances of them being stuck with golds in the warehouse, collecting dust remains high. These margins seem too low for the risk of this bulk purchase model.

Continue expecting Beatles to be the same pin for all models except for artwork and trim. With all three packages being similar, why buy anything other than gold? This is a missed opportunity by Stern. There should be visible differences and upgrades to differentiate models. With four days to go, pricing details could still evolve, but Stern will define pricing and show us their final pins at reveal.

These refinements are a good idea, as they increase Stern’s chances of selling pins and eliminate unknowns for distributors. They also introduce a unique problem. Let’s say sales are luke warm and 1000 games are bulk sold to distributors. That is 100 units of 10 games - 100 diamonds plus 200 platinum plus 700 gold. It would leave unmanufactured 50 platinum plus 914 gold. If there are no more orders, there are no more made. What if all 1964 games sold in 196 full pallets plus one misc pallet of 4 games. But wait ... 196 people can’t get a diamond edition if only 100 diamonds are being made. Likewise 392 people can’t get a platinum edition if only 200 are being made, right?

The dirty little secret of this bulk buy model is that Stern only plans to make/sell 1000 pins and then call it quits. Sad that they won’t be making 1964, but that was just marketing gimmick. At 50 pins a day this might take Stern one month to run. If The games were cheaper they could have sold these out quickly and been able to make one run. Current plan may start off slowly.

Remember our pricing above? Stern will be making 1000 pins - grossing 100 pallets x $70k = $7M. On a unit basis a game may cost Stern $2.5k to manufacture plus $2.5k for engineering / procurement / support / marketing / OH & Profit = $5k per game or $5M. Licensing cost of $1M and Kaminkow fee of $1M if all goes well = $UCCE$$

Bobble head topper offered as accessory purchase for $899

Interest in Beatles pinball s highly correlated to pricing. See my edited post above for the economics but all things aside, if Stern announced golds were $5k and platinum $7.5k and diamond $10k, they would have sold out 1964 pins much faster than with the current pricing model where gold starts at $7.6k. That is too damn much! I don’t think Stern likes that model anyways. Much better to have a higher MSRP and only make 1000. but worse for buyers!!

Beatles were big in 80’s with me and friends. We never went to their concerts, but their music was constantly on the radio and was everywhere, and we loved it. So I am interested in the Beatles theme. But the old Beatles show theme was before my time and offers no hook. I woulda liked a sgt peppers pinball with ramps and subways and magnets and cool stuff and awesomely good sound.

Can’t wait til tomorrow when we learn Stern’s pricing, model differences and availability.

^^ this is the kind of enthusiasm that should have come from us after seeing the Beatles pin. Instead interest from Pinsiders has fluctuated from ice cold to luke warm. Something must be off.

No doubt it looks good, but the art style is dripping in sugar - Beatles glam! While everybody I know prefers relaxed, hippie Beatles who were all about love. Issue one raised by everybody - price is too damn high! Issue two - 9 song segments are not Beatles music.

I have a beef with the spinning disc. It looks great but doesn't perform a function. Set in front of drop targets, it does not stop or deflect the ball. It doesn't speed up with additional strikes. It should be repurposed to spin 33 1/3 rpm whenever a 2x multiplier is earned, 45 rpm when 3x and 78 rpm when 4x. At least it would have a visual purpose. If the magnet in center of disc catches and holds ball as a physical ball lock, that is cool. It would work well with the disc spinning at one of the three suggested speeds to launch the ball afterwards.

Not for Pinside and supposedly not for other pinball enthusiast either.. That leaves first time buyers who are unaware of pinball and Beatles fans. True to strategy, Stern released info on facebook, not directly on Pinside and they are not maintaining an official presence here. So why did Stern use their existing distributor model to sell their pins if the pins weren't for pinball fans? Quite puzzling

Sgt Pepper's - Lucy in the sky with diamonds. This diamond is priced so high, once sold you can afford to throw the other 9 pinball machines away.
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Well what did he sell the platinum & diamonds for?

45k dirham

There have been a lot of complaints about the artwork on Beatles pinball being the only difference between models, yet pricing between models is unjustified. There was another Stern pin where art was the biggest difference - and it was another KaPow title - BM66. Prem, LE and SLE played the same, but had different artwork. The LE/SLE buyer’s got a nice topper, bat signal and trading card too. But there was a huge jump between a Prem at $7.5k and the SLE model at $15k. There wasn’t as much backlash as today.

In the case of Beatles, we see the same game with 3 models ranging from $7.6k up to $25-$35k and with no shiny SLE artwork, no topper, no trading card and no Adam West personalized greeting. Man, the Beatles Platinum and Diamond pins suck more than the Gold edition.

So RCT was lent to distributor consignment? I can only guess Stern was paid in full for this game 16 years ago. NOTE - RCT run was officially SOLD OUT!

Just found this thread and am too lazy to read it. I like that the spinning record is lit from below and shines around the edges and that reminds me some of Trons recognizer. I don’t like that record is spinning all the time. I have $4.5k set aside, which distributor wants to sell me a BeatlesWitch pinball?

I hope Munsters is targeted and priced for pinball fans instead of just monster lovers. I understand enthusiasm for playing a Beatles pin, but hearing it called a 10 out of 10, or finding out someone traded an Iron Maiden pin for one is lunacy.

Has spike2 been cracked? Wondering about possibility of swapping in some of Beatles later tunes for current mix in Beatles pin. Would also be handy for those Beatles fans wanting some variety. This option might also be impacted given short, irregular song lengths already announced.

Is that the same Joe K who claimed the Beatles pinball was going to be reasonably priced? FAIL!

Only reasons I can think of for a man to wanna buy 8 Beatles golds is that you either wanted to shut iceman up or you clearly love gold both are fine with me.

So Beatlemania pinball is “supposedly” a throwback to 1964 and what the pin would have looked like. In spite of using a cabinet in the style of a modern pin and an lcd, which was not commercially viable. At least the game uses score reels and the backglass is authentic, right? Well there are no score wheels, but it looks like them somehow and the number of digits has been expanded to infinity. See list of 1964 pins and highest produced backglasses.

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I'd insert two in front of 13:

13 Critique game
14 Analyze code and bugs
15 Sell Beatles for $5-6K to fund next game? After mas Cerveza!!!
16 Critique game more
17 Analyze code and bugs more
17 Threaten to withhold future purchases until Stern fixes this sh*t!
18 Request code changes
19 Lose interest and stop following thread
20 (New code drops) Analyze code and bugs
21 (New game announced) Buy new Stern!

The price of most pro pinball machines drops $1k after a year, if it is not currently a hot title and ignoring the added mods. So a $7.6k game might be selling as low as $6.6k. Not all sales will be that low, but many will. If the title is still hot and if Stern doesn’t have any available, price of huo 1 year old game will be selling closer to original amount.

In the case of Beatles, most who expressed interest said they would buy a gold between $5k - $6k. So the resale value on golds may need to dip to $6k to guarantee a resale, and the first owner takes the first hit. A second group of Owners will be buying and establishing a new price level for the game. Now, if the game play holds up, the value dropping stops. But if the pin is only mediocre, the game may head downward another $1.5k to around $4.5k, as the second level buyers experience the second hit to their wallet.

The third level of buyers steps in at the new price level and this establishes a resale value.Would I be in that third wave of buyers? The bigger question is how long would that take .... probably five years. However, Beatles golds could just as likely be selling at the original price or even higher in five years, but it probably won’t get to the level I want in less time. So for now I’ll enjoy playing Beatles, wherever I find one. No need to worry about the cost or the depreciation, instead I’ll focus on the song list and whether they can be swapped out in pinbrowser. I’ll add - playing a diamond Beatles pin - to my bucket list...... not happening.

I can’t be taking risks anymore

There have been quite a few sales of those games in the $4.4k to $4.8k range, just this year. Not every sale but many. Not always next door, so you may need to drive a distance or pay to ship.

You chose two hot titles - TWD and GOT and one warm title - GOTG, so they won’t reach all the way down to the literal $1k drop. See pics.

When they come up you need the fortitude to pull the trigger. Don’t ask a bunch of extraneous question or try to get the price $100 lower. Heck, you can buy huo of 90%+ of the top 100 titles for under $5k if you are paying attention. You can likewise get 90%+ of the top 200 also.

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First I’ve noticed the score display, sweet! Wonder what happens when you roll it over at 99,999,999? Might take you a few weeks to get there.

Biggest Beatles pricing scandal has gone largely unnoticed - metalsgate. Stern is upside down on platinum prices, with no plans to hedge bets or correct course. Should they have named the basic Beatles pin platinum since it is worth so little, followed by gold and then diamond? Did Stern check commodity prices before calculating the bill of materials or deciding on a naming convention? Gold is expected to continue to be worth 50% more than platinum for the foreseeable future, so should Distributors be lowering the price of Beatles platinums to less than golds, based on the value of underlying metals used? Distributors set pricing and if they were to adjust platinums to $5k, the market would be in equilibrium. Any platinum owners here feel enraged by this sham?

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edit - it also appears this release may have been downsized 10% from a modern pinball machine. Not quite a Safe Cracker footprint, but definitely not Star Wars shoe size either. This was difficult to determine, as packaging lists serving size as 1 pinball machine.
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Could always buy two pairs of these and put one under each leg. Problem solved. Two inches should be just enough.

Buy 2.75 if you want your Beatles to look down it’s nose at B/W and Stern pinballs. Barely enough to notice, but enough.

3.54 inches should only be ordered by those looking for extreme pinballin experience. May be illegal in tournaments.
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Weren’t you going to buy one for her at one point? Does she live in a house or apartment with space?

Primus pinball
Limited - yes, 100
Rare - yes, 100 made
Valuable - tbd ???

Let’s say Team Pinball announces it will make 100 limited edition Mafia pins. They get orders for and make 20 games and stop because there is no more demand.

Mafia pinball
Limited - no, announced 100 but demand was not there
Rare - yes, 20 made
Valuable - no!

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.

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!

Trending down ... cocaine prices. Shoulda give Ricky a call.

Was it ever approved by the guy on Stern’s Facebook who has been “patiently” waiting? Lord, I hope so. If not they’ll have to face his wrath.

Sharper Image was still going strong with pinball machines in their showrooms in 2006. One week before any operators or locations received POTC, Sharper image had one each in their Atlanta stores. First ones I’d seen, beautiful and set to 50 cent plays. You could buy the very machine you were putting your grubby paws on for something like $8k. (no thanks, assholes, a Stern distributor could deliver one to me for $4k after the initial surge). I put a lot of quarters into that game and it brought much excitement. I was able to rule out buying one for my growing collection. A month later they were found everywhere so it was easy to get your fill. Fast forward and the first JJPOTC are coming off the line. Is it a bit spooky, odd perhaps, to be at the same intersection exactly 13 years later? Happy with JJPOTC btw

$6,800 may be a deal but not a good one. Now if you’d said they could be found for $5k, my ears would have perked up.