One of the pioneers of reproduction parts for pinballs, Classic Playfield Reproductions, is undergoing a restructuring and downsizing following the retirement of one of its founders.
Classic Playfield Reproductions (or CPR) was formed in 2005 by Mike Purcell and Kevin Wayte in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The company evolved out of an earlier business, Halifax Pinball, managed by Mike and Greg Walker who made reproduction playfields for the Fathom game.
Following that project, Greg transitioned Halifax Pinball into Fantastic Pinball, while Mike teamed up with Kevin to found CPR.
Their first commission as CPR was making reproduction Centaur playfields for Gene Cunningham’s Illinois Pin Ball (IPB). That project required CPR to be able to cut and route their own playfields, while using the original Bally artwork screens from IPB to produce perfect reproductions of the original playfields.
Further reproduction playfields followed. In some cases Mike and Kevin were able to use the original silk screens to print the artwork, but in others they turned to the collector community to source high quality existing playfields to use as their reference.
Later, production increasingly moved from silk screens to digital printing, as they secured licensing agreements with Planetary Pinball (for Williams and Bally titles) and Mondial Group (for Gottlieb games), allowing them to create many more authorised reproductions.
In addition to playfields, numerous backglasses, plastics sets and speaker panels were also produced, along with a range of in-house designed toppers and other bespoke game enhancements.
The number of employees expanded along with their product range, but the market for reproduction playfields was changing. Where new production runs would once rapidly sell out, demand began to slow as many of the games which needed new playfields now had them.
Kevin described the problem to Pinball News. He said, “A finite population of surviving ‘legacy’ games eventually leads to an inevitable decline in demand for reproduction parts. Obviously the absolute end has not been reached yet, but the last twenty-one years of legacy machine ownership across the hobby has meant that those who needed major parts replacements have already been customers for those items. You only need and swap a reproduction playfield once.“
In 2023, CPR used their expertise to broaden the business, adding contract manufacturing of playfields for full pinball machine manufacturers, including Euro Pinball Corp. in Italy and Barrels of Fun in the US. They expanded the business, buying more equipment and bring on board more employees to manage the increased volumes. At its peak, CPR employed a dozen full-time staff, along with two or three part-timers.
But contract manufacturing is a fickle business, with the lower per-unit margins typically offset by increased volume and steady demand. If either of those start to weaken, it can leave the company in a vulnerable position.
Consequently, as CPR’s manufacturing of playfields for other pinball makers wound down, it left them with some decisions to make about the company’s future direction.
At the same time, co-founder, Mike Purcell, is both retiring from his full-time job as a pilot for Air Canada and stepping down from his role as President of CPR.
Co-founder and Vice President, Kevin Wayte, will be taking over as President and plans to make sweeping changes to keep the business both manageable and profitable.
Firstly, with the contract manufacturing ending and the continued slowing in sales of reproduction products, the company will move to a much smaller location. It will still be based in Halifax, but will employ just two or three staff working alongside Kevin.
Kevin expanded further on the scale of the change in the reproductions market, telling us, “Back in the early years, with large playfield batches being 100-300 per run, those would be all snatched and shipped within a few months. Today in 2026, those same titles have tapered down to selling a few a year.“
He continued, “There is now the phenomenon of releasing a first-time-reproduction playfield title in 2025 – and it sells six. Yes, six. Then it goes dead quiet. Ten years ago, shipping 100 immediately after a run was standard fare. There was never a doubt that you could at least get 100 copies out. Not today. In recent years, we launched first-time-available playfields with a debut batch of only twenty pieces, tops. Now that number is usually only ten. The risk has been too high to pile on more. This is the new normal in 2025/2026.”
CPR is also pruning its product range down to the three core reproduction lines on which the business was founded – playfields, backglasses and plastic sets. There will be no further sales of the toppers, plastic upgrade kits or speaker skins which were developed in-house.
There will still be plenty of new reproduction products joining the existing lines though. Kevin said, “We’ll hold up the titles we’ve been known for, plus add a couple new ones every year as new artwork gets developed here. We already know what our next ten new-release playfields are going to be, across the next three years. That’s plenty to keep us busy now.“
As a result of the downsizing, CPR is running a sale of surplus stock and equipment, called variously, “Liquidation Sale”, “Mike’s Retirement Sale” or “Return to the Basement Sale”.
Kevin explained to Pinball News there is a certain tongue-in-cheek aspect to the naming. He said, “We cheekily use the meme ‘Back to the Basement’ as more of a signal of returning to our roots years ago. We no longer need the gigantic business-park commercial unit anymore. It doesn’t mean CPR is literally going back into Kevin’s basement.“
CPR launched the sale today in a public announcement on social media.
The sale is currently underway on the Classic Playfield Reproductions website.
You’ll be able to listen to Kevin as he talks to Pinball News Editor, Martin Ayub, and Pinball Magazine Editor, Jonathan Joosten about the changes at CPR and the reproductions business, in the January 2026 edition of the Pinball Industry News PINcast which will be released soon on Spotify, on YouTube, and here on Pinball News.
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