Guys,
I would direct you all back to my post (#18) in this thread. Nobody seemed to get the underlying message on that one...I'll try to expand on it a little more this time.
I was going to come back to this thread a month ago - just to write a "monument post" to acknowledge (and could forever be linked back to) how this always goes down. Just so it won't happen again. I never did, so I guess this post will have to suffice.
Two months ago this thread started, and I knew (like clockwork) how it was going to go. It goes like it always does. Names would begin to be collected, there would be an inital rush of a handful of people (see: "There are 5, just on PinSide, already!")... then a week or two would go by, growing the list to a final 12 (see: "We've got 12 on the list already!")... then... dead silence... and the thread dies. Crickets.
This is the thing, guys... these re-run hopes are not what they seem. Yes, a few people would love to see certain playfields released again. But I can't risk the time, the float, and the materials
to make 50 (baaaare minimum) to 100 (true sweet spot) to warrant a re-run. Why? Because 50-100 won't sell. That's reality right now with EBD.
What would happen is 50-100 go up for grabs, done and clearcoated, ready to go... and 20 will sell. CPR is left holding the bag on 30-80 playfields that just sit here, damming up a ton of float that won't budge. Believe me, I'd love to make a couple dozen people happy, but I can't at the expense of tying up a run cycle with a playfield that will not sell out (or near sell out).
NOW THE BAD-ISH NEWS
Truth be told, as of 2014 (start of this year) something serious is happening/changing in the hobby. For 9 years prior, every playfield run we did sold out to none left (except Cyclone & PinBot because we tried an experiment to make double the number of preorders to see what it was like to have stock afterwards - big mistake, 4 years later we STILL have a couple dozen of each left in stock). But beyond those two, every other run sold out in 1-5 months and we could move on, with the Preorder/Request Group having a 95%+ reliability rate. Meaning, if 100 guys had their name in the inbox, 95 bought....
As of 2014, all this years' main runs (not counting the Q1 CNC test-runs of Centaur, Xenon, and Fathom) such as Strikes & Spares, FIRE, and now Star Trek have had a Preorder/Request response rate of around 60% !!! These are new releases, folks. First stab at the hobby, ever. Out of 100 guys, 40 are forfeits or no-shows now. Unheard of 9 years prior. Even Star Trek playfields with custom nacelle LED kits are as "meh" as anything. We're frankly stunned. Barely moving 60 playfields out of 100. It's tipping the books - badly.
Why the sudden shift on these last 3 runs? There is only one thing that has changed in the last year... and (IMHO) millions and millions and millions of dollars in this hobby have suddenly shifted eyes to like 12 new shiny prospects of NIB machines. Just my theory. Original machines have lost their luster suddenly, and the hot thing in pinball is planning bankrolls for huge purchases 1-3 years out. We're feeling it bigtime - and it's changing things around here right now, as Star Trek is the last time we can sustain a 30-40% sitting stock afterwards....
Big changes are coming shortly at CPR - run lengths are being pulled back bigtime, to fit the ACTUAL buying requirements. The Request page is going back to an actual Preorder page - and rules are being put in place for joining the lists. (Full details when changes are launched). But essentially, your email will be a Promise now, and we will be treating it as such - and we equally will owe you a playfield. The old two-way-no-obligation, will soon be a 2-way-promise. Counting heads just doesn't work any more. It's not that simple any more. Before, the counted heads came through. Anyway, we'll leave this part until I get it all posted in the future.
There has been no EBD artwork here since 2009. We borrowed Fabulous Fantasies' overlay silkscreen films (hand cut/drawn by Marti Sperling) back in 2009. They had to be returned. We'd never use them again anyway, as we never completely liked the alignment to the inserts. Even in it's best orientation, there were still non-fits to many playfield features. It was "OK" but not typical CPR results for alignment. PPS most likely has factory films, so we'd be going that route anyway if we had the ~100 names (which would take years to collect - and they'd have to be Promises under the coming new system, for example). That's what it would take for EBD to boot a new release off the CNC. 100+ people, locked in.
As for some liking the "creme" - please know CPR will never run an intentionally aged/antiqued looking playfield. EBD was never "creme" on the playfield. No Bally playfield (or any I can think of from any brand) ever had the base layer done in anything but pure white. All areas under plastics (and the first ink layer down on the wood) has always always always been white. What folks are seeing as "creme" is yellowed/aged white. The reason IPB repros look that way is because Gene gave the screen printers a 25-year-old playfield and said "match these colors"... so they did. NIB back when EBD was released, please trust me that all the areas under the plastics were clean white.
Anyway guys, also know that a re-run bumps a new release down the line another 2-3 months. We've got the next 2-3 years laid out (as Stu said, with all the inserts already here and/or on order to be molded - which takes 5-9 months...plus the wood, inks, and artworks allocated). Sticking in a run from left field can be done from time to time, but it's gotta be a Seller, to take us off course from what playfields we're already doing.
Plastics are relatively easy to re-run, because we can stick them in here and there (and do). We do a new run of plastics every 7-10 days. That's ~40 plastics runs a year. It's no problem for even half of them to be re-runs. And looking at the next couple years, we think they will be. We have a huge back-catalog of nearly 100 different plastics sets CPR has brought from scratch over the last 10 years. So many of them haven't been available in years (and sold out everywhere for ages).
Remember, we did ~30 Xenon playfields in the CNC Trials of Q1 - and it took a ~month to sell 28, and 2 lingered for the longest time...3+ months actually... and they recently just went to Starship Fantasy to sell at York & Expo. The last time we ran Xenon was 2008... and 5 years later we could barely move 30 more.
Maybe one of the other playfield makers can do EBD?
KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com