Numbered Plaques

A numbered plaque is a small engraved plate fitted to a machine built in a capped run, carrying that machine’s own number within the run. It travels with a certificate of authenticity, and it is the piece of a limited edition that cannot be reproduced afterwards.

The plaque belongs to a commercial arrangement rather than to the game: the same design sold at two or three specification levels, with the dearest level limited to a stated number of machines. Stern listed “1-500 Numbered plaque and certificate of authenticity” among the limited-edition-only features of Transformers (Limited Edition) in 2011, with 125 more numbered machines each in the Transformers Autobot Crimson (Limited Edition) and Transformers Decepticon Violet (Limited Edition) trims.^[1][2] The wording has barely moved since: Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (Limited Edition) is capped at 750 machines worldwide and ships with a sequentially numbered plaque and a signed certificate.^[3][4]

The practice is not one firm’s. Turner Pinball caps Merlin’s Arcade (Legendary Edition) at 500 machines, each numbered and accompanied by a signed certificate, and leaves its cheaper edition unnumbered and unlimited.^[5][6] Pedretti Gaming gave Funhouse (Remake Limited Edition) a numbered metal plaque and a certificate signed in the name of the game’s talking head.^[7]

That contrast with the cheaper edition is the point of the thing. Much of what separates the tiers — code, a shaker motor, a topper — can be bought later as an upgrade kit and fitted to a machine that shipped without it.^[8] The number cannot, and the plaque is what fixes a machine’s place in a run that is closed.