Episode 741: "Are Stern & JJP Scalping Us?"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·17m 56s·analyzed·Nov 17, 2022

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Stern/JJP pricing strategy mirrors Meta's metaverse miscalculation; expect 2023 demand collapse.

Summary

Kaneda argues that Stern and Jersey Jack Pinball have misjudged post-COVID consumer behavior by maintaining inflated pricing and increased production volume simultaneously, transforming distributors into scalpers and killing demand. He draws a parallel to Meta's $15B metaverse bet, claiming manufacturers wrongly believed COVID-era spending patterns would persist, and predicts 2023 will see a major sales slowdown as collectors reject $13,000-$16,500 games and prefer used inventory. Kaneda criticizes the three-tier pricing model, recent game quality issues, and manufacturer transparency (particularly Stern's James Bond LE launch strategy), while expressing sympathy for dealers caught between unsustainable inventory and shrinking buyer bases.

Key Claims

Toy Story Collector's Edition costs $16,500 with tax and shipping
high confidence · Kaneda directly stating pricing data from distributors
James Bond Limited Edition costs $14,500 with tax and shipping
high confidence · Kaneda directly stating pricing data
Manufacturers increased both volume AND price simultaneously, shrinking demand
high confidence · Kaneda's core thesis about scalping strategy
People can save $3,000 by buying used machines with 10 plays on Pinside vs new retail
high confidence · Kaneda citing secondary market pricing advantage
James Bond Elite lacks laser-etched armor, foil decals, and real mirrored back glass despite $2,500 premium over Godzilla
high confidence · Kaneda comparing collector-tier cosmetics
Stern is requiring James Bond LE pre-order customers to pay in full before showing them the Keith Elwin version
medium confidence · Kaneda's criticism of Stern's launch transparency policy; not independently verified in content
Spooky Pinball has quality issues including shooter rod plate gaps on TNA machines
medium confidence · Kaneda citing observable quality defects on expensive machines
Star Wars Mandalorian topper is priced at $2,000 and represents 'scalper pricing'
high confidence · Kaneda directly stating topper pricing
2022 saw unusually low interest in the Twin Pines Awards because most games were underwhelming
medium confidence · Kaneda's observation about award show turnout and game quality correlation
The three-tier (LE/Premium/Pro) model kept companies successful because collectors pre-order sight-unseen
high confidence · Kaneda explaining the collector-driven business model

Notable Quotes

“These are the scalper prices. $14,500 for a new in-box James Bond Limited Edition if you include tax and shipping. That is the scalper price.”
Kaneda @ ~07:30 — Core framing of the episode: manufacturers/distributors acting as scalpers by maintaining artificially high pricing
“They have absolutely turned every single distributor and every single dealer into a scalper.”
Kaneda @ ~07:45 — Central thesis about how pricing strategy shifts responsibility and perception of dealers
“You've increased the volume and you've super increased the price. What does that do to demand? It shrinks the demand for it because none of these games are that rare anymore.”
Kaneda @ ~08:30 — Economic logic underpinning the scalping accusation: volume + premium pricing = killed artificial scarcity
“The reason why is it's no longer special for it to be truly special there needs to be perception there needs to be demand that you perceive something special.”
Kaneda @ ~13:30 — Commentary on collector psychology and why premium tiers no longer feel justified
“I don't want to interview George Gomez I don't care to interview any of these pinball personalities over at these companies because I don't care what they have to say.”
Kaneda @ ~19:30 — Explicit rejection of manufacturer narratives; positioning himself as independent voice not interested in official perspectives
“I could save $3,000 if I go buy one with 10 plays on Pinside.”
Kaneda @ ~21:30 — Concrete example of secondary market undercutting new retail, illustrating collapsed collector demand
“Kaneda's Pinball Podcast is the only pinball podcast talking about this. I mean, look at what's going on. I turn on all the other shows and it's like nobody wants to talk about this stuff.”
Kaneda @ ~22:45 — Kaneda positioning himself as the lone critical voice in pinball media; implicit criticism of other podcasts

Entities

KanedapersonStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyGeorge Gomezperson Keith ElwinpersonJack Guarneriperson

Signals

?
business_signal: Distributor inventory risk spiking as volume increased while demand collapsed; middle-sized distributors exposed to hundreds of thousands in unsaleable inventory if demand continues softening
high · Kaneda forecasts distributors will be 'sitting on a ton of expensive inventory with no buyers' preventing future game orders
?
community_signal: Pinball media ecosystem (other podcasts/shows) notably silent on pricing criticism despite community awareness; Kaneda positioning himself as only critical voice
medium · Kaneda: 'I turn on all the other shows and it's like nobody wants to talk about this stuff. Nobody wants to bring up how painful it is'
~
sentiment_shift: Most of pinball community has rejected current pricing despite media silence; collectors choosing used inventory over new retail as primary statement of demand collapse
medium · Kaneda claims 'most of this community is smart enough to realize that' and 'most of this community has said no to buying these games'
?
competitive_signal: Spooky Pinball's premium positioning at $10,000-$11,000 appears increasingly untenable given persistent quality issues and lack of collector demand justification
medium · Kaneda states 'Good luck trying to sell Spooky Pinball machines for $10,000, $11,000 with their quality issues' given observable defects
$
market_signal: COVID-era supply shortage dynamics have completely reversed to surplus; distributors stocked with unsold inventory of expensive games
high · Kaneda predicts 2022 will show 'distributors sitting with tons and tons of Toy Story games, tons and tons of James Bond machines' without buyers

Topics

Pricing strategy and market scalpingprimaryPost-COVID consumer behavior and demand miscalculationprimaryCollector market saturation and LE premium justificationprimaryManufacturer vs distributor vs collector incentive misalignmentprimaryGame quality concerns (Spooky, Stern) and QC standardssecondarySecondary market undercutting new retailsecondaryJames Bond LE launch transparency and pre-order ethicssecondaryPinball media criticism and podcast independencementioned

Sentiment

negative(-0.85)— Kaneda is sharply critical of Stern and JJP's pricing practices, uses aggressive language ('scalping,' 'greedily'), and expresses frustration with broader community acceptance of high prices. However, he expresses sympathy for dealers and hope that the community will 'wake up.' Personal context (wife's layoff) adds emotional weight to economic criticism. Self-promotional tone at end slightly softens overall negativity but reinforces his positioning as lone critical voice.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.054

0:00

But when I'm older, I'll be so much stronger, I'll stay up for longer, leave me at our spot. Call the bike, baby are you coming for the ride? Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up. Welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, I'm your host Kaneda. We're back a few days earlier than I thought I'd be back and it's been a week now since my beautiful wife Brenda woke up to an email that Meta was laying her off along with 11,000 people. 10,000 people laid off at Amazon. Layoffs are happening all across the tech sector. And I've been doing a lot of reflecting on life in general. And I want to talk about that on this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast. And I want to talk about how there's a parallel to what happened to my wife at Meta and what I think is going on in pinball. Because when my wife got let go, I was like, you know, how did this happen, right? How did Facebook and Meta, right? They renamed the company Meta and they invested all of this money in the Metaverse, $15 billion. How did it get to a point where Mark Zuckerberg had to lay off 11,000 people in one single day? And I did a lot of research because I'm like, what was the reason behind a lot of this? And it came down to one failed business decision. And the failed business decision, the origins of it was this. They thought that consumer behavior that developed during COVID would last far longer than it actually did. When everyone started working remotely, right? People didn't want to go into the offices. Everyone's like, we're just going to use our computers and our terminals as a way to plug in and connect with coworkers. they thought that the metaverse would be the solution and the answer for all of these people that now no longer wanted to commute to work and go into all these expensive office spaces and suffer through the slings and arrows of subways and transportation. And they got it fully wrong because the vaccine came and then people are going back to the way life used to be. And if you look at pinball and what has happened in the pinball hobby over the last couple of years, think about the consumer behavior. Everyone has been spending way more money on these machines during COVID. People felt isolated. They felt claustrophobic. The price of machines was going up like 30%, sometimes 100%. People were spending $20,000 on Medieval Madness Royal Editions. People were buying Pirates of the Caribbean CE for $40,000 new in box. And so what happened in pinball is these companies saw the consumer behavior that developed during COVID. They saw how people were throwing money at these games like there was no tomorrow. But the problem is there is a tomorrow. And we've all woken up from that hangover. And now everyone is living in a post sort of COVID world in which we're getting back out there. We want money for more things. And not only that, right? When COVID first hit, remember what we all thought? We thought that we were going to slide into a recession. But the complete opposite happened. The stock market went through the roof. People were making money with crypto. And then everyone had all this excess money. And they were feeling so bullish about life. And so you didn't feel bad about spending a gazillion more dollars on a pinball machine that used to sell for half that price just a couple years ago. And so that behavior was going on. And then what happened? There was a supply shortage. So there was far more demand than supply of pinball machines. Now look at 2022. Look what's going to start happening in pinball. There is going to be a supply surplus. There are going to be distributors sitting with tons and tons of Toy Story games, tons and tons of James Bond machines, tons and tons of premiums of like Mandalorian and Rush Premium, right? All of these $9,700 premiums are going to be sitting at distributors without buyers. And if you look at these pinball companies now they have absolutely adjusted their business models to reflect the prices and the demand that was happening during COVID Now mark my words right now this is the single biggest mistake that is going to really cripple pinball sales as we head into 2023. It's not about inflations or recessions. It's about this simple move that both Jersey Jack and Stern Pinball have done, and they are the two biggest culprits. Basically, by doing what they're doing and charging this much for these brand new in-box games, they have turned every single distributor and every single dealer into a scalper. These are the scalper prices. $14,500 for a new in-box James Bond LE if you include tax and shipping. That is the scalper price. The price of a Toy Story Collector's Edition with tax and shipping is $16,500. That is the scalper price. The other thing they've done now that they've made these distros into scalpers, they've increased the volume of the machines. So if you just step back a little bit and think about it commonsensically, you've increased the volume and you've super increased the price. What does that do to demand? It shrinks the demand for it because none of these games are that rare anymore. And yet they're so expensive as if these games are already being predetermined as great masterpiece games that are worth this much money. And this is not going to work. And this is going to create the greatest slowdown in pinball demand since I've been covering this hobby. And this is the same mistake that Mark Zuckerberg made, thinking that the behavior we showcase during COVID was going to last far into the future. Look, he bet big on it. But these pinball companies are betting big that there are going to be consumers at these price points. And what is the data? What is the early data show us? It's absolutely the wrong bet. It was the wrong bet with Toy Story. But let me tell you, it doesn't matter what's in Godfather. At these prices, the sales are going to be weak. We see the James Bond hype. It's gone. It's not just because the code is not there. There are so many people out there. They don't want to spend this much money. And so here we are, all of a sudden, this hobby in which we used to be able to buy these games and just lose a few hundred bucks or maybe gain a couple thousand, you're no longer going to gain any money. They have absolutely turned the distros into the scalpers. But here's the thing is the distros don't even get to enjoy the scalper profits that the secondhand market used to enjoy. Nobody's going to win now. I mean this. Nobody is going to win if pinball prices stay where they're at. Who's going to win? Stern Pinball is going to dry up their buyer base. So is Jersey Jack. Good luck trying to sell spooky machines for $10,000, $11,000 with their quality issues. I mean, did you see that TNA? They're shipping these games out. And the shooter rod, like, come on, Spooky. There's a huge gap on that shooter rod plate, right, that sits over the shooter rod. How come nobody over there looks down at a game and says that doesn't look right? You know, for $5,000, people would, like, forgive Spooky for all of these detail mistakes. But the fact that they're making mistakes on games that are now costing $10,000, and it's a remake of a game they've already made, It just makes you shoulder shrug and be like, they are never really going to figure quality out over there. They've got to figure it out. But who's going to run towards the next spooky game if it's $11,000? James Bond LE is not even hard to get. And once we get to titles that are not dream themes, I mean this, like once you get to a game like Venom and Godfather and Foo Fighters, how the heck are they going to move this inventory? and so what's going to happen next is these distributors are going to be sitting on a ton of expensive inventory and once they're sitting on a ton of expensive inventory with no buyers they're not going to be able to order the next game's inventory because it's not the le's that are going to crush them it not because there always going to be a thousand suckers out there that just absolutely have to have like the nicest perceived version of a pinball machine even though I would argue that collecting pinball machines is absolutely now jump the shark and I'm going to explain why with James Bond LE and this Elwyn game like have you seen what Stern's doing the reason why is it's no longer special for it to be truly special there needs to be perception there needs to be demand that you got something special and that a lot more collectors out there want it. Like there needs to be a lot of collectors seeking this stuff out. But when you look at James Bond, Ellie, it doesn't feel that way. They didn't go the extra mile with the game at all. And yet they charged you $2,500 more for James Bond than Godzilla. It doesn't come with the foil decaled cabinet artwork. It doesn't have laser etched armor. They didn't do anything special. Now, Godzilla doesn't have laser-edged armor either, but you go back and people remember when I bought Star Trek LE, it had laser-edged armor. It had real mirrored back glass. They were able to do this stuff for half the price. Come on. Nobody has forgotten what it costs to make these games. And then you look at what Stern is doing right now with the collector community. Think about this for a minute. They want everyone who ordered a James Bond LE, which is for the collectors, they want all of those people to pay in full for their games before they show you the Keith Elwin version of the game. Just think about what that means. Just think about the message that sends to people out there in the pinball collecting community, which is the community that has kept all these companies going. It's not location play. The three-tiered model, which has kept all of these companies successful, has been lifted up every new game by the collectors who order these LEs like sight unseen. And now you're going to sell this expensive $13,000 machine and not even give that James Bond fanatic a chance to see the Elwynn pin before they make up their mind on which one they want to buy. Why is that an acceptable business approach? I understand why Stern is doing it, but it's benefiting nobody but Stern Pinball. Nobody, not me, not you, none of us are investors in pinball companies. When I hear these pinball apologists make excuse for these companies and the high prices, I don't understand why people in the community are actually making excuses for these high prices as if those individuals are shareholders in these companies. Why do you want to see these prices go through the roof? Who would actually justify any of it? And then you look at people saying that Toy Story has toys in it and they consider a kickback to be a toy and an LCD screen to be a toy. If you write something as inane as that, you deserve to be banned from Pinside just like Kaneda. And I'm just here to tell you this, people. We're all living through some difficult times ahead. It's going to be difficult for a lot of people. Now, look, I can afford to go buy any pinball machine on planet Earth. We are okay with our finances. Like I've always planned for the future. I'm not someone who sinks most of my money into pinball machines. I didn't chase a lot of crypto, but the crypto I did chase, I lost money on. And I've always been a person who puts one paycheck aside for my future, for my retirement, for Killian's college, for other things that are much more important in life than pinball. And if this week has taught me anything and I've reflected on pinball, I'll tell you what I come away thinking. I think these pinball companies don't want you to reflect more on what these machines mean to you. They don't want you to really think about what you could get for this much money. They don't want you to think about the fact that these companies are now scalping you. The Mandalorian topper priced at $2,000 is the scalper price of the game. Stern Pinball is scalping each and every one of you who just bought one And no I don want to interview George Gomez I don care to interview any of these pinball personalities over at these companies because I don't care what they have to say. My eyes and ears and my mind works. I can look down at Toy Story 4 and see almost nothing in it. I don't need to interview Jack Guarneri or Pat Lawler to come to the conclusion that they are greedily scalping us with the price of those machines. And guess what? Most of this community is smart enough to realize that. And that's why most of this community has said no to buying these games. I want to end this podcast by saying this. I do feel bad for the dealers and distributors. I feel bad when I get an email from Joe Newhart at Pinball Star and he's selling me on the full price of these Jersey Jack games with some line that's like, hey, we just got a few in, get them while they still last? While they still last, Joe? I could save $3,000 if I go buy one with 10 plays on pin side. And I feel bad for these dealers and distributors because they've really been the people that have built the community and created the large demand for these machines. it's been the dealers and the distributors they've been finding the customers for all of these years now look i'm going to play a little bit of devil's advocate these distributors have had it really easy for the most part over the last few years because the demand has been through the roof and they hadn't had to go convince people to buy $9,700 premiums or $2,000 toppers now they're going to have their work cut out for them because if they overbuy on a mediocre game, they're going to be sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory that they can't move. And I don't know how much they make, but I have a hard time believing that some of these middle-sized distributors are making millions of year. I don't think that's the case. And so I know that they don't want these prices to keep going up because if these prices keep going up, their buyer base is going to shrink. And all of this is happening at the same time when you look at 2022 and how little interest there is in the Twippies and the award show, because all of these games, for the most part, were underwhelming. And so it's a perfect storm for this entire pinball new in box market to really slow down. Underwhelming machines, super high prices. The dealers and the companies are now the scalpers. And we're the people who have to pay scalper prices for every single new thing that comes out. People are going to say no. People are going to start to look at their collections and be happy with what they have. People are going to realize Canada's Pinball Podcast is the only pinball podcast talking about this. I mean, look at what's going on. I turn on all the other shows and it's like nobody wants to talk about this stuff. Nobody wants to bring up how painful it is that we are now at a point where it's like 20,000 by Christmas, not 10,000. I remember what this hobby used to be. I remember why it was so fun and exciting. And I understand now why it's starting to turn a lot of people off. We're going to see the way 2023 transpires. But I'll tell you this right now. The best bang for the buck in this entire hobby is Canadian Pinball Podcast. Thank you guys for the support, the five bucks. And for you two out there, Kim Mitchell and Donald Howard, you guys gave the most generous gifts when Brenda lost her job. And I'm never going to forget it. Everybody have a great day. We'll talk to you soon.