Happy Friday! Whew, I’m beat. Long week. I have big things in store though. Rob and I have an epic Arcade Road Trip lined up tomorrow that will enable me to capture pictures of some of the rarest pinball machines ever made for everyone. I can’t wait to share them with all of you.
For now you’ll have to settle for another Random Stuff article :).
First up we have Chicago Gaming Company. CGC announced this afternoon that it has experienced another production delay with their Pulp Fiction Bad Mother Flipper Limited Edition machines. LEs continue to ship to Europe, as seen in the below pictures, but LEs for North America won’t begin shipping until January.
Chicago Gaming is currently forecasting that it will take them through early April to finish producing the domestic LEs.
Next up we have Stern Pinball. In its regular Factory Friday social media post it showed off the new Metallica Remastered Premium machines on the line.
Regarding Stern’s next cornerstone game, I did some digging to try to find out why there is so many different theories about what game is next. Despite the chatter on Pinside that Stern never had the Dungeons and Dragons license, it definitely does. The uncertainty about whether D&D is next is coming from the game’s mechs. There had been talk amongst Stern employees that the game had an absolutely mind-blowingly awesome mech in it. Rumor has it that there was issues with that mech’s reliability and it had to be pulled from the game, causing the need for a partial redesign. So it’s tough to say whether D&D will be ready for the late December / early January production slot. If it is not, another game would have to be moved up…such as the rumored Keith Elwin King Kong game.
I pieced all of that information about Stern’s upcoming games from rumors and discussions with knowledgeable people and I believe it to be true, but as you know rumors are rarely 100% accurate.
There’s also been talk about a possible price increase on Stern’s games. I personally think that the $600 number that has been mentioned numerous times out there is a pure guess.
Distributors’ margins are by far the thinnest on Stern Pros, so a price increase at that level makes some sense. Also, Stern’s new Spike 3 board system is coming in the near future. That could be used to justify a price increase as well.
Having said that, the main reason for a price increase if one happens is neither of those things. It is going to be Tariffs. Below is a message from the electronic parts supplier Mouser Electronics that my friends in a local arcade collector group that I belong to shared with me earlier this week.
Many of my collector friends use Mouser’s parts to repair classic arcade games, such as capacitors aka caps for monitors and voltage regulators and resistors. As you can see in the message, the Company is raising its prices on certain parts in response to new tariffs that the United States is implementing in 2025.
This tariff war with China started back in 2018 when the U.S. government implemented a 25% tax on specific Chinese electronic parts. Well, on January 1st, 2025 that tax is set to double to a whopping 50%. Ouch.
As a disclaimer, this isn't a political post. The initial Chinese tariffs were implemented by Trump in 2018 and they continued under Biden. This latest bump is happening before Trump starts his second term.
Generally speaking, tariffs are inflationary, especially in the beginning. This is something that I am keeping a really close eye on because if we see another 10% tariff on goods imported from China and 25% on goods imported from Canada and Mexico we may see pinball prices increase as well.
That was the theory behind my earlier prediction that a price increase is coming. Well, that and a discussion that I had with an insider who said that we would see one and the recent high prices of Stern’s accessories. I still don’t think that the $600 number that has been floating around out there is accurate. We’ll see.
Last up we had an announcement this morning that the TWIPY pinball industry awards are coming back with a live show in 2025. They are holding it on February 22nd at the awesome Houston area arcade Wormhole Pinball.
Speaking of the TWIPY awards, they are looking for people to nominate their favorite Mods and Toppers of 2024:
I hope Chicago Gaming gets the message that operators won’t ever buy their LEs again if they ship second. The opportunity to capitalize on new game coin drop has gone by now.
I can't believe I'm waiting this long to get my Pulp Fiction LE pinball.