History tends to repeat itself. BBB comes to mind here.

Steve

If Stern would complete code rich games like the old days they'd be fine

Maybe back in 2001 $15K was insane, but not now.

If you are buying a $8K pinball machine, you sure as hell not living in Section 8 on government assistance.

I think they were limited to building a certain number of BBBs only because of one of the boards that was no longer available. I can't remember how many of them they had to work with. Lots of the other parts on it had to be remade though. Can you imagine the nightmare that project was for Gene Cunningham?

I doubt that NOS parts effected a price change given the new BBB's sold for around $7-8K after the reserved games sold. This is close to what the new MM's are going to sell for. Every once in a while, you see a later run BBB go up for sale, I haven't been watching the prices much, anyone know what they're selling for now? I'm thinking that the new run of MM's will go up in price once they sell out the run but not as dramatically as the originals have done in the past and the originals will drop a bit but stabilize once the fear subsides.

Same goes for any other runs *if* they can pull them off. The problem I see for other runs is that the original has to command a price higher than $8000 in order for there to be a chance to sell any. In todays economy selling a new game, if you have to cut the price to sell, you also have to cut the build quality. I don't think most collectors will go for that but maybe a route op would.

Steve

In one case I'm hoping you're wrong. This kind of reminds me of the mid 90s when there were new companies popping up, and pinball was in a boom. We all know how that turned out.

This is AWSOME!

Stern games are shit compared to W/B and always will be because Gary doesn't care about making a great product. He cares about selling you a pinball machine and as long as people are lining up to buy his stuff he will never make them better.

That's like saying Price Gougers after a disaster are just 'helping people out'

The pure profit motivation pulls the prices people are willing to sell for UP.. it artificially drives prices up when the supply alone can't flood those sellers out.

This hobby used to be dominated by people willing to sell at a price that made them whole so they could just enjoy their next game/interest. Flippers disrupt that harmony of 'give and take' and suck more out of people than they would have paid previously.

How can they justify the $8k price tag on a game that has already been designed/coded and likely had a bunch of parts purchased on the cheap back in the day? It's awesome they're making more MM's, but seriously, what does it cost them to simply build with new boards? $3.5k? $4k max? Selling for $8k...

It's justified by the fact that they can sell them easily for that price. I don't know of any business that doesn't try to make as much money as it can. Lol

Sell 1000 for $8k, or sell 1500/2000/2500 for $6k?

Or say you only made about 500 and they're for sale at $8K and sell 3000.

I doubt they'll ever reveal what their production cost for this game was, so you can second guess their decision to sell less games for more profit all you want. I wouldn't rule out them running more non le at a reduced price.

Interesting take on it.

I agree that MMR sales will hurt Stern LE pin sales, and all JJP sales. I'd think overall this will hurt JJP more than Stern, because all of JJP's pins are $8k, while Stern can still sell their pro models at $4500.00.

But the more interesting question is whether this really will have an impact on prices across the board. Like you say, there is already the situation of people selling pins to buy the next new one, and that's no different with MMR. But the difference might be that you have more people paying $8k for a pin for the first time, when they may have never paid more than $5k or so before, meaning they will need to sell more pins than usual to fund the purchase of MMR.

Who the hell knows?

That I didn't know, but some others have commented on a regular model also being available; I originally thought they were only doing the run of 1000 total. But are they also making standard games without the gold trim/plaques/etc?

Yes, they just announced a standard for the same $7995 price.

Yes, but for the same price.

Fleecing confirmed

Lot if people got into pinball for the Money
Not for love of pinball

Lower prices you will see more people will drop
Out of this" hobby" and along the profits

Remaking titles us a bad idear ,
The market needs something to thrive on
Just make new good titles !! At a acceptable price level

GOOD.

see ya!

Respectfully disagree. IMO, right now, most used prices will come down, as people now weigh whether to put their money towards "X" used game they were considering or the new MM. Maybe games like AFM and MB get a little bump....but if this MM things takes off, you don't think the other A listers are next!? Who in their right mind is going to plunk down $6k for a routed pos AFM now? What will not be truly felt for weeks or months started yesterday in Chicago.

The potential availability of NIB games with proven rules and charm also FORCES Stern to put forth their BEST effort. We know they can do it. No more mailing in incomplete and BS rules sets. No more lazy designs. No more crappy art packages. The world is watching! Come correct or don't bother!!

And if new designs improve, that presses the used market down even more. Oh happy day! The hobby just took a huge step forward. The collector and flipper market? Not so much.

Well....they must have priced it right to sell over 1000 games in 6 hours! The "standard" version will not have the shaker, extra coat of clear on the playfield, gold trim or numbered plaque. It looks like they did'nt plant on a second run of games so soon, but being that they oversold in all the commotion it looks like they will just be doing continuous runs. On another thread PPS posted that the non LE games will be run later in 2014.

There will be many games coming up for sale in the near future to fund all the new games so many of us are buying. Stand by for the spring clearance sales.

You're either in or you're out. Whatever.

Just goes to show that good intentioned smart people on a Friday can be clueless greedy pigs on Sat. Big mistake. I'm totally out on a standard at $8k. No tears necessary people. I'll be fine! Probably playing Hobbitt

Another pin company showed be that the BOM of a recent game was $1800.

Of course, you have interest, labor, overhead......

Since JJP is a distributor of the MMRs, not sure how much "hurt" this will cause his company. He's getting a piece of the pie and he looks pretty happy here at Expo....