And whatever you do, LE owners, NEVER EVER EVER EVER lose your certificates of authenticity!

Given the deluge of cheap knockoffs flooding the market, it's the only way that you can conclusively prove - and that a buyer can be 100% certain - that your LE which they're contemplating buying is genuine. But should your certificate get lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed, just let me know the game name and serialized number and I'll print you another one.

Just a little friendly ribbing of the whole notion of having a certificate of authenticity for a pinball machine

I'm sure it's still cool to have and (I presume) frame.

Yep. Unlike many of my friends (many of whom have 50+ pins in their collection), I’ve been fortunate (if not economically constrained) enough over the years to the point that I only acquired games that I had absolutely no intention of ever selling until retirement. A couple did have to be sold in that time (due to some of those same economic constraints), but if every game I ever owned at any point in my life were to magically materialize in my game room, there would still only be a total of nine pins. My current collection is just six pins I again have no intention of selling until retirement. When I want to play new games, I’ll go to local A+ pin spots or play them when one of my friends gets one.

I love pinball, but there’s no way I personally could have a huge collection even if money, space and time were no constraints. But I have to chuckle when a non-hardcore-pinhead friend sees my games for the first time - they feel that having just two pins would be a “huge” collection. LOL

Another aspect is to consider exactly how much of that extra $1,500 is actually there to begin with for you personally.

Exercise: Pick a Premium and figure out how much it would cost you to add features to it that you *must have* that are "LE-only" (HD glass for $239, shaker motor for $99, whatever, etc.) that you could easily do by yourself. Deduct the total cost of these off-the-shelf upgrades from that extra $1,500. Look at what remains now - both in terms of your "must-haves LE features" and funds to do it. Question: is it really worth the extra $(remaining cost) to you to have all of that done for you upfront in an LE?

There is no wrong answer because it is what YOU prefer on a SPECIFIC game. You may very well think that it's totally worth going for an LE on game A, but for game B there's no way in hell. You may always go LE simply because you like the whole "exclusivity" angle and you are in a position to do it. You may never go LE, opting instead to always mod out the Pro or Premium (or pass on the title) as you see fit.

In the case of BKSOR (a game I truly do like, despite the current "bully/wuss" persona of the BK in 1.00 that I hope will become adjustable), I personally liked the art package choices better on the Premium than on the LE from the start. While I was initially (sight unseen) thinking I'd be going LE from the moment the rumors were beginning to solidify (Black Knight is a theme that means a lot to me personally because of everything else in my life that was going on when I was playing the two of them; the thought of a 3rd one finally emerging 30 years later was absolutely awesome for me), it was the art package that drew my eye to the Premium and started me thinking about making my own "Ultra Premium Edition." I also liked the fact that the Premium's backglass translite showed the Black Knight wielding the titular Sword of Rage versus the "Flail of Rage." So in the end that's the route I went with and continue traveling along in the case of BKSOR.

When I'm ready (and able) to get another game and one draws my attention, I'll do all of that analysis all over again before making the decision on that game.