All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 636 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Albert, and I am so stoked. That's right, I am live here on the floor. I'm in the famous cafeteria at Stern. the podcasting room was busy and to be honest I'm limited to what information I can tell you I had to sign the NDA this morning that's right Josh Sharpe was at the door and got me to sign it but you know what I can just speak to you in generalization so that's what I'm going to do here today what I can tell you is that the artist who did the artwork on it wow chef's kiss absolutely incredible and the mechs in the game you know what they're maybe they're maybe not as good as we used to see back in the 80s and 90s in the ballyho days if you will when they were rocking and rolling but i'd say they are the coolest mechs we have seen in a long long time okay i'm lying i'm not really at stern okay i'm not really here i was trying to lie make it sound funny. I wish I was there. A, I couldn't afford to go. B, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go if I had to sign an NDA. You all know me. I can't keep a secret. But I'll tell you what. We do have some things to talk about here today. And soon enough, our friends from the pinball junk drawer, Craft Roof Sally and Foghorn Leghorn will have an update live from the floor. I don't know how much they'll be able to say because of the NDAs, but I assume they'll be able to say something. So right now, as we speak many other content creators are there at stern having a great time um strangely they can't do like live streams and such i would assume or if they do they have to be very careful doing them i haven't seen any so far what's happened in the pinball world since the last time we chatted about eight days ago well for one i did start my patreon that is right so i want to thank uh mr jbs show himself jamie birchall for being my first uh very first patreon and then my second patreon over there thank you thank you thank you to drew c really appreciate that and number three coming in hot mr retro ralph i just saw yesterday retro ralph how did you even know about this did did jamie perhaps put you up to this did he tell you did he tell you about it no jamie said he might mention it to a few people i said go ahead i was just doing a very very soft launch until right now only maybe four people on planet earth have even heard that i have a patreon so far and heck three of them have joined the patreon so that's so great um what i am offering is for four dollars and twenty cents many of you know how important that number is to me four dollars and twenty cents american works out to be uh about five dollars and 88 cents um canadian you're going to get at least once a month the WTF a no holes barred there's going to be swearing in it there might be drinking and other stuff we're going to get crazy every other month my wonderful wife drop target Danielle will be co-hosting that with me and every other month I will bring in another co-host um probably possibly some people from the poor man's pinball tribe right here on the poor man's pinball network of course shout out to my tribe member friends there and uh oh I have very special shout out for one particular tribe member but first of all i'm just going to finish telling you about patreon very quickly listen i'm not going to paywall all my podcasts but i am going to do it just people always joke that i'm woke or too woke and i always joke back no i'm just woke enough i like to sleep with one eye open well i'll tell you what that's going to be different there's some podcasts that are completely paywalled there's other podcasts that are completely free. Then, of course, there's other podcasts that do a little snippet here, there, a little episode here, there that's paywalled. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Orby does things different, and today is no different. I'm going to do about half my shows. Any shows that might have swearing or might have anything where I'm possibly perhaps calling someone out in a kind but critical way, or like earlier this year, I went on a little bit of a rant against Jersey Jack and the way that, you know, Harry Potter was announced at TPF. That sort of thing, if it's a little bit like too hot for TV, and I think I'm going to get people yelling and screaming at me on Facebook, like happened with that one, I'll probably just paywall it. But I don't want to say everything too hot for TV, because if I have a really good interview, I want to have it right here on the open channel. I just want to make sure I'm giving enough content for the $4.20 a month. Now, how much is that? Let's be honest. That's one game of pinball a week. or if you're at Propeller Arcade in Halifax, that's two games of whatever's new per month, just two games of pinball per month in Canada, or four games, one game a week in the United States of America. It'd probably be about the same as Canada throughout Europe as well as Australia. So I want to give a whole bunch back. But in turn, you're not only helping me out and helping my family out. And for those who didn't listen to that last episode, it was fire. Go listen to it. Thank you for calling of the Kineticist for mentioning it. I did a whole piece where I did actually speak with and get to talk to Ryan McQuaid, the designer of Cuphead Pinball, formerly of American Pinball, and then went back and then formally again, which was something, some news that I broke, I think, on the show. and thank you so much for calling for covering that and uh you know i did i'm not going to use the term journalist quite yet but i'll say that i attempted to read the entire journalistic code said code uh from the american something ags or something american journalist ajs ags uh anyways i am attempting to do a little tiny bit of digging now and then uh in the show and of course uh this episode not so much this episode i just wanted to pretend and i was at stern because boy it would have been fun to go but at the same time if i can't make content leading up to it if i can't make content when i'm there if all the only content i can make when i come back is saying wow john borg was right it is his best star wars one ever you know like if you can't really actually give details it's going to be challenging to make content but i know these pinball content creators are creative and they're going to have to get creative this time so i'm excited to hear what happens with that who knows when the exact date when star wars is going to come out your guess is as good as mine uh i you know i'm i don't have a lot of friends at any pinball companies but i'm certainly friendly with a few people at stern but if i used up my all my friend favor points by going hey when's the exact date and time star wars is coming out they probably wouldn't respond to me ever again and so i don't think i'm going to burn my bridges with something so inconsequential in In fact, my favorite part about Christmas is getting surprised. My favorite part of new pinball day is being surprised. Oh, look at you. Watch out. Oh, sorry. I just woke up Luna Tuna, Elo and Agar from a little sleepy seeps. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Draco Franchi's gone outside for a little walk with the drop target. And I'm just here chilling. It feels like fall's finally set in. I can't just walk around with no shirt on anymore here on the homestead. I got to actually put a t-shirt on because it's starting to get a little nipply outside. Okay. Yeah. But shout out to everybody also there at Stern. Thank you for that. And, oh, I should have mentioned this. The number one thing you're going to get for doing the lowest level of my Patreon for just a buck a week American. Come on. The same as like one good game at a classy arcade. Okay. You're going to get to hear my Stern rant. And I thought, how epic, how fitting, how perfect is it that my Stern rant is coming out the same day, the same second that they're at Stern themselves. I was going to do this part of the joke where I don't want to take it too far, okay? I definitely need to get invited in the future. Thank you to everyone over there at Stern who did invite me to this one, and I did let them know I could go. um but i do really really want the invite for pokemon because if for some way and somehow i don't get my butt down to expo this year i have to go with all the pinball content creators i would be shocked if one of them loves has got such a freaking nerd on for pokemon as much as this pikachu loving altera okay wait y'all don't know who that is but it's a weird fluffy bird and it's really cute. It's really cute. I sound dorky just talking about Pokemon and that's why I'm banning myself from it. I'm actually kind of getting out of the Pokemon game. I've got three more shows this month and then I'm going to scale back to just doing online sales, just tracking my PC, maybe selling some stuff through eBay from time to time, perhaps going to shows to maybe do trades and such or do pickups. But the game has got too hard, guys. I used to be an ageist on this show. I used to do it and I felt so bad for it. You know, when they came out with Aerosmith, I said, come on, guys, Aerosmith. That was like my dad's favorite band, which it was. Well, my stepdad's. To be fair, he was five years younger than my real dad. So my real dad was probably too old for Aerosmith. Sorry, Kirk. But Ian absolutely loved Aerosmith to the point that he listened to them all the freaking time, almost every time he was drinking, which was often. So I had to listen to way too much Aerosmith. So I got sick of because I'm crying for you, baby. yeah yeah yeah yeah be it been crazy i've been crying it's it was it was bad they're all bad they're i mean he's an american he's an american he is an american but stephen tyler is an amazing singer i just don't like that type of hair rock song that much but ageist and being ageist aside speaking of ageism the papa championship was just this past weekend shout out first and foremost to Z-Mac, okay, for winning the Papa Championship. Congratulations. I think if that doesn't put him one step closer to first, I think he's like third right now. If that doesn't put him one step closer, he'll be real close. He'll be on the heels. I'm just trying to think. I should have if pop right now, but shout out to Z-Mac. Congratulations. You played incredible. I loved watching Z-Mac play. He was just doing all this neat. He was playing Kong totally different than everybody else. He would get in this weird loop of using the upper left little mini flipper, little micro flipper to shoot it up that tiny ramp there, and then it would go to his right flipper, and then he would shoot it up through the airplane thing or just above that, so it would go back to there. And so there was like periods of five minutes straight, I swear to God, depending on the mode, where the ball never even got anywhere close to his bottom two flippers. Like it's so safe when it's up there because you have so much time and energy to nudge or to react or to guess or to like you know figure out where the ball is going to go and it's just safe as hell when it's up there so i'm not going to suggest that like i could do that because i am no z mac all right uh but wow congratulations to z mac and i don't like this a couple times when the ball went down for ray day speaking of ageism uh people would say things like old mandarin now i understand old mandarin is more so talking about the type of drain you had not as opposed to if the person is old or not But can we come up with a better name Like I don know The geriatric drain. I don't know. The senior center drain-a-palooza. No. See, these are worse. This is why I shouldn't name anything. I don't know. But can we come up with like a – can we be up like a – the brain fart drain. Oops, he had a brain. Bit of a brain fart there. a little bit of a kerfuffle okay a little bit of nudge in the sludge no that does something else but old man drain i don't like that and i'm sure ray day doesn't seem like the person that gets easily offended whatsoever and i'm sure i know it's not just used with ray day but every time he kept playing it seemed like the old man drain was set in chat more so than everyone else and shout out to most of the commentators they weren't repeating it over and over again but I just wish there was a better way to say like um like basically you messed up because everybody mess up and as we get older guess what you mess up a little bit more you forget words a little bit more you walk into rooms and go WTF did I come here for a little bit more and that's okay and that's expected but the dude's like barely 30 so I don't want anyone in there can we call it a Middle-aged drain when anyone under 40 does it at least? Sure. If you want to call me an old effer, fine. I'm 45. In less than five years, less than half a decade, I'll be in my 50s. Okay. There are some places here in Canada that at 50 or 55, you get your seniors card. That's right. I'm four years away from a seniors card. Wow. That's okay. I'm having an existential crisis right now. I'll be back in a few moments. Gary? Is that you, Gary Stern? Guys, there's Gary. we're here we're here live at stern oh my god oh gary oh sure yeah i have time to oh just for a minute you don't mind me just taking a look at your office just the two of us oh wow gary when did you get that award that's so cool uh-huh really oh okay yeah no no i'm gonna catch up with everyone is there a bathroom here i could perhaps use before uh you know before uh i join the uh tour there again oh no i don't need to use your private one is there like a public bathroom near her oh there's not okay well i'll be very quick i'll be very quick yes yes no gary gary i would never do that that was a joke no i've never done an upper decker and that was a joke i can't believe you heard that gary i'm sorry all right guys did that entice you did that wet your whistle or were you confused because if you were confused about the little role play i just did that means you didn't hear my original stern rant and you should probably go listen to me talk about who wouldn't want a pool full of gold scrooge mcduck would wouldn't i want a pool full of gold i had to listen to it guys it was horrible i teared up i laughed okay i will say this after hearing other content creators make fun of me for doing it it wasn't as bad as i thought it was actually pretty funny in comparison to someone like pulling out a gun that's loaded and being mad that there's not more guns on a pinball machine just because they didn't need enough Chipotle in comparison to some of the other rants many of the other negative Nancy Debbie Downer content creators went on that same week mine was pretty freaking mellow and I'll tell you this it was the funniest you don't believe me I'll give you a full money back guarantee I will even bet you a pack of my pinball nerds podcast trading cards okay I will give you a including shipping delivery everything i will do it for you if if okay you go listen to my stern rant join the patreon you don't even have to get the eight dollar and 80 cent one per month get the four dollar and 20 cent one you can go right now and listen to my epic stern rant i think it's only had three listens since it came out seven days ago it's on the patreon i'm gonna put the link in the chat and you can decide for yourself did albert's epic stern rant take it too far or just far enough and even if you've already heard that rant there's going to be lots more i have at least just this year six episodes i'm going to be releasing minimum one episode one once a month until i run out of them i probably have 12 to 15 of them that are deleted episodes that are just a little too hot for tv or hot for the sure mic you know what i'm saying You know what I'm saying? All right, let's get back into it. If I can put on my tin hat here just for a millisecond. I've heard a lot of other content creators. I think Carrie Hardy most notably did an entire live stream or entire YouTube video about it, explaining that there's no hype for Star Wars. but do you think if you're stern it might be hard to create hype if you can't show the back glass if you can't show the artwork style if you can't show the main mech in the game if the only thing you can show is a little fat dollar store jab of the hut you think it might be challenging to market a game with only said info that would be like trying to sell a car while only having the antenna Oh, well, here's the antenna of the Mercedes. What color is your freaking Bugatti? I'll tell you what color your Bugatti is. It's translucent because you can't see it. I have to sell a Bugatti with just an antenna. Do they even put antennas on cars anymore? I don't think so. But what I do know is if you like that 30 seconds of my Just For Fun rant, you'll love my rant over on Patreon. Okay, it's only this show. I'll mention it too much. The only reason I am mentioning it so much is because I know if you don't mention something three to five times nobody will listen and no one will do it and honestly uh it's been a very tough time i even mentioned i can't even do pokemon anymore i'm still good at grading them but the problem is is 90 of the hustlers i will call them hustlers and i'm going against now they live in either halifax or monkton saint john or fredericton and they have access to a costco and they have just one friend who works at the costco who they slip a 20 bill and they get all of the boxes every other i i went from being only like three people of 40 people at the local show who had uh pokemon to now about 40 of the 50 tables there are all pokemon there's barely any sports there's hardly any comic books there's no toys left funko's there's like one dude who tries but barely breaks even on his table from what i understand and it's just not worth my time or energy because no one wants to come do trades with me and no one wants to buy from my table unless i have tons of sealed product because now everybody else has sealed product and I can't get sealed product but because by the time that the doors open at 7 a.m at the closest Costco to me I'm an hour and a half away even if they did have product and someone told me right away I couldn't get there before be all gone so what happens morning noon and night is people come in with raw cards i.e. cards they pulled from packs or graded cards from PSA or other graders and they want to trade them to get their hands on that juicy like a just like a the most montreal steak 28 days in okay not 30 28 days in to cold marination with the montreal steak spice all right now if you go to montreal and you go to the keg i'll never talk to you again because the keg is the worst possible steakhouse in a place like Montreal. But I've gone off track. Let's back it up, reel it in. We're going to go back to what we're talking about here. I honestly, sincerely think there's been a bit of a hit campaign. And I don't know if Stern is responsible for it or if the wheel just got a rolling and then it just kept spinning and a rolling rock gathers much moss or something. But I think it's the opposite of that, actually. for some reason or another everybody is just repeating there's no hype there's no hype no one's excited no one's excited i think if stern is doing this on purpose if they are feeding people these ideas it is the smartest thing could possibly stern could possibly do we've seen pinball machine after pinball machine die because it got overhyped when we heard that avatar we're going to have the greatest i believe it was jack winarian don't quote me on this in minecraft had said that like you know wait till you see it oh my god it's just going to be incredible you know he wasn't quite on like harry potter save your money start giving donations of blood today and semen and plasma and everything you can donate he wasn't quite at that level but like you know everyone was talking about how hyped it was and then we got to see it we're like yeah there's the scram but like where i see what happens when i get flustered i stutter this bad I'm a stuttering Sally and I don't even know how to edit. So I got to leave that in there. So to each and any of you thinking or considering of starting a pinball podcast, it's okay if you stutter. It's okay if you say ah or yeah. It's fine. Nobody cares about perfect podcasts anymore. Like nine of the top most listened to pinball or nine of – I would say like eight out of ten of the biggest podcasts on planet earth have absolutely no editing whatsoever. they're done live put it up you know they're video recorded so we can't be chopping in edits the whole time i.e joe rogan and honestly i think like nine out of ten or at least 8.5 pinball podcasts nowadays are not throwing in like it's almost like watching seinfeld my youngest son can't even enjoy watching seinfeld because the laugh tracks he will watch no problem larry david and curb your enthusiasm okay loves it there's no laugh tracks but then once you get back to laugh track days it's just so dated and old he can't do it and i think the same is happening with podcasts when i first got into podcasting what eight nine years ago most of the pinball podcasts had these different like pinball sound effects and perfect editing no one ever said um no one ever said yeah they would talk for an hour and a half they would edit it down to the best 20 to 30 minutes there's something to be said for that it sounds clear concise crisp it makes sense it's perfect but ain't nobody actually ever talk like that that's the issue you feel like you're in a lecture class at university and all of a sudden you're hearing like the sound effects and everything and it's like no one really does it like that anymore it's you know it's fine i know super awesome pinball show super awesome pinball show is by far what i'll call like the old school style of pinball podcast or all podcasting where you do tons of editing and you retake questions maybe and like you I don't know for sure if they did that took it that far but you certainly edit out all your silences anything that you say that sounds stupid later any jokes that don't hit and you add in from time to time you know laugh tracks or sounds or this or that or you know and super awesome pinball show did it as good as possible will never be done again that well I've said this before and I'll say it again the super awesome pinball show that Franchi edited and, you know, where he pretended to go to, you know, everybody from George Gomez house. Seek that out. If you don't have that, just ask Google super awesome pinball show Christmas episode. I think Franchi even edited it once. So you can get both the first edit and the second edit, I believe. Don't quote me on it. But what you can get is you can get Pinball Nerds Podcast now on Patreon. I said I wouldn't be that guy who mentioned it all the time. So I'm actually going to try not to mention it all the time. excuse me once we get into doing like like past this first episode but at this point right now if i don't get and i'm not going to say a certain number but if i don't make at least a good side hustle amount from my patreon fans i absolutely will have to go and get a part-time job at this point because i'm probably going to have to do that anyways it's just a matter of if i go to full-time and y'all know the two times since i've started this podcast that i went and worked full time I had to go on two to three months like I had to leave if I can bring in at least enough money so that I can you know my wife not going to come down to me hard about it But if I can at least say to her hey all these years of pinball podcasting they finally paying back I'm earning $75 a month, $85, $95 a month, which, you know, what is that Canadian like 120, 130. If I can at least say that the fact that I don't have to be taking our one car from our one car family and be gone with it multiple times a week. the fact that you know most of the minimum wage jobs around here that I would be more than apt for probably wouldn't hire me and some of the other jobs that I would really like to do are all like more than an hour to an hour and a half away so a good chunk of my pay would actually be from driving all the way there and all the way back you know $15 gas there $15 back you make 60 bucks for your day it's like 70 80 90 bucks was it worth it I don't know partially because I've mentioned this multiple times before, and I am working on a diagnosis for being a very high-functioning ADHD person who, depending on who you ask, it's a disorder. Other people would call it a superpower. I don't know if I call it a superpower, but it makes it very, very, very challenging for me to have most jobs more than, say, like a minimum wage job or something like that. Or typically it has been in the last 10 to 15 years. Before that, I worked for a bank. Before that, I worked also as a driving instructor. So I have actually had, and I was a craft beer rep until about 10 years ago. So I actually have had some jobs like that. There is certain jobs if I worked in a larger city that I could find that would allow me to have as severe of ADHD that I do suffer from and still have a regular paying job. But at this point, you can imagine even from listening to my show how often I go off topic and how intrusive my thoughts are. It is rather challenging to have a regular type job. That being said, in three weeks from now, our Saturdays of the market will end and we'll have a couple of Christmas shows. And I'm going to go through four or five months of having a lot of time. I could bring you a lot of pinball podcasts. But I need to know that there's some type of even a small amount of financial tradeoff for me bringing you guys all those shows. And that's why I'm bringing up the Patreon today. Now, let's get back into me putting on my tinfoil hat with Star Wars. I sincerely, honestly think that there is a very, very good chance. I'm going to say very good chance. Again, I'm putting on my tinfoil hat here. I have no proof that it's possible. People even within CERN are just kind of setting expectations low so that when we finally see this one, because I think it's fair to say not very many people were blown away by Kong. When you're thinking about I can't wait, we've waited years for the next Elowen, and we see Kong, I was blown away. Okay? I'm not a big King Kong fan. I don't know a lot about any of the movies. I only know the comic books, and that art looked a lot more comic book-y. I still will stand by the fact that I love the shots on it, and the shots seem really cool. I will still stand on the fact that I think the artwork is gorgeous. I've seen it in person as well, and I still think it's beautiful. Would it be cooler, I guess, if you had the Kong video clips? Sure. Maybe to people who love the movie King Kong from like 50 years ago. I'm trying not to be an ageist. I don't know. All right. We, I need to be open to us and put on my tinfoil hat here. I think there's a possibility that everybody at Stern has even been, perhaps been asked to temper everyone's expectations on Star Wars because for three or four pins in a row right now, there hasn't been much. the hype has been gone why is the hype gone the hypes you know a little bit of the the wind and the sails a little bit of the air in the balloon has been sucked out how and why the answer to that is because resale market prices are lower than they have been in probably eight nine if not ten years from a dollar value not a percentage but from a dollar value they are the lowest they've ever been like you know if you look at i know gtf is a bad example but it is you know one of the the biggest biggest and baddest or best depending on what you'd say but it's what five six seven thousand dollars now for the high-end one seven and a half thousand dollars less american that's like twelve thousand dollars yet uh less canadian or australian to get that exact same pinball machine right now sterns are obviously holding their value fairly well especially a stern pro ironically um stern le's of sought after people like i know i think jaws is doing just fine obviously if you have something older like a stern uh jurassic park le it's probably doing just fine and who cares if you lose a thousand dollars after you owned one of Keith Elwin's masterpieces for like five years really like to be honest there and i've joked around with this with my wife before but there is no other man cave toy, if you will. There's other things like a brick of gold. You could buy a brick of gold and it might go up like literally just a brick. You know, there is other things that will hold their value. But when it comes to just things for your man cave, like I'm staring right now at a whole bunch of records, most of these records other than my beaches, by the way, who doesn't love the beaches? They actually got big in the States since I went to go see them, which is last girls at the party. That's like their big one right now. but I did get that all signed by them. I got that for $50. That's selling for like $250 right now. But of all my records, of all my Beatles records, of all my other signed LPs, the only one that's actually gained money is probably that Beatles. Or the Beatles, sorry, is The Beaches. The Beaches, the Canadian female version of The Beatles. No, they're punk rock pop, so there you go. But what I'm saying is 90% of the time, everybody loses money when they go buy a record or they go buy a CD or they go do people even buy cds anymore when they go get an a-track you know what i mean a cassette when they go unless it's a scott denisi tna cassette then it's going to hold its value forever because then you make it a topper for your tna machine and that's super awesome but if you think about it a quad runner you know that's probably like a a four-wheeler a golf cart a golf membership hell a golf membership can cost you two three four or five grand and it's just gone at the end of the year you do have those cool experiences for it if the Carl Weathers cooperated and you got out there enough and your buddies went with you and stuff. But what I'm saying is that like most things, if you looked around at my man cave, 90% of those, the Funkos that I bought, the comic books that I bought, they don't hold their value. A lot of the sports cards, especially the boxes you buy in open, they don't hold their value. You know, you'd be hard-pressed to think of another hobby where you even have a shot, like even a 1 in 5 or a 1 in 10 if you want with Stern LEs where you could buy it and the value could go up three months later, six months later, nine months later. Do you know what I mean? There's very, very, very few assets that are like non-investment assets. Sure, you could do that with like a stock, probably not a bond. You could do it with a stock probably, right? You could do that with a really hot stock tip or a penny stock or you could do that if you got right on the right wave of some big hot tech company as they're going like Uber 10 years ago, right? Here's the thing. If we stop thinking about these collectible items as pure investments, it's got to be part of your your mindset and you just play before you pay buy used when you need to if it's not like a dream theme for you or you're not a look i think if you're a location you almost have to get almost every new stern pro basically that comes out that you don't hate the theme if you think it would do even moderately okay and you're a big location you've got to get almost every new stern pro i get that but outside of that we're in like this is a buyer's paradise people sometimes get upset But if you own 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 pinball machines, sure, you're upset that you can't move off those pinball machines into new ones the same way you used to and make money every single time. But this is a buyer's market. Us as pinball buyers should want this. Me as someone who's about to sell the house hopefully in 2027 or 2028, when I sell the farm, I'm hoping it is a seller's market and the sales are through the roof. And that's why I'm not selling my homestead right now because when I sell, I hope it's still a buyer's market for pinball because then I can get – spend maybe 50K on pinball and get seven to five really good machines depending on how many EMs and solid states and how many new sternaments I get, right? So I know it's easy to be negative and think like, oh, man, these prices aren't holding as well if you buy new. Yeah, but if you're buying used, they'll probably hold those prices if not forever. most people agree that for for the most part most prices have basically bottomed out as low as they could go i don't know whenever that stern uh what was it the teenage mutant ninja turtles pro sold for like 4,500 or someone had for 4,500 with hardly any plays home use only it's like come on like i think we're we're if we're not at the bottom we're real real real close like we're within three to six months of the absolute bottom if we're not and it's it's going to change it all up. That's why you should go check out Doc Finley's pinballprices.com. There you go. I finally remembered to shout out for Doc. I'm sorry, Doc. He is a member of the Poor Men's Pinball Tribe as well, and he deserves his flowers. So there you go. Check that out. Scott from Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, or sorry, not Scott. Scott did do something really cool as well. But Josh from Loser Kid Pinball Podcast is doing like this monthly, like what's going on with the prices. The numbers don't lie. He's using all the actual numbers. And I think some of the numbers he's using is actually from pinballprices.com there as well. So go see pinballprices.com, give Doc Finley a quick beer as a thank you, as a tip to the hat so you're not overspending when you buy pinball machines. And if you do actually stick to what I've always said, play before you pay, this is the way. You'll never be disappointed and buy a pinball machine and get 10, 15, 20 plays on it and lose thousands of dollars on it. In fact, if you play before you pay, there's a better chance there's going to be used ones on the market by the time you have the chance to get somewhere on location that doesn't play it. First of all, so you have less chance of getting sucked up for FOMO. And a good distro will want you to go to their showroom and play it first. A good distro wants you to come back and buy more pins from them. They don't want you to go buy a Galactic Tank Force and go, this thing's a turd nugget. This freaking machine's a fart in the wind. What does GTF stand for? Go to F yourself? Wow, I just came up with that. That wasn't bad. Go to F Yourself American Pinball. And hey, guys, you better be giving me a free pinball machine for calling your guy Orby. Come on, Orbit Pinball with that cute little Orby there. We all know I already have the rights to OrbitPinball.com. Y'all better be – I don't want a galactic tank force or a barbecue. I want a Houdini, okay? Maybe I can hear the golden voice of pinball, Jeff Teolos there. I don't mind love. Some people don't like love, okay? That's also known as Legends of Valhalla. I would love a Lov. I would prefer a Houdini. I don't want a Hot Wheels if I don't got a loop. That's just where we are on that thing. It doesn't have the car wash. It doesn't have the loop. It doesn't have color-changing balls. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Hot Wheels was too big in my life. That was actually the first thing I collected long before I collected Michael Jordan rookie cards. No, I'm just kidding. Baseball rookie cards. I did collect quite a few of those, to be honest, and graded some of them when he played for the old White Sox there, or the farm team at least but i've gone off topic shout out to absolutely everybody at stern i wish i could have gone thank you for the invitation stern i do sincerely appreciate it don't worry the upper deck thing it was a joke even though some people don't know jokes um you guys right now if you wish you had a little more orby head over there and listen i'm gonna do so right now you could go there not only would you hear the stern rant but you would hear me do a 20 minute intro and explanation explaining it all if you don't want to hear the explanation and you got to hear that rant right now go over there and get on that lowest level that four dollars and twenty cents that a buck a week guys a buck a week what are you going to get for 99 cents a week Okay that not even like that not even one decent coffee a month not even one cup And you've probably listened to me hundreds of episodes. And this is your chance to support me, to support my family. I've already said on the last show, half of all the money given will be for groceries, for food for the family, for bills, for all that kind of stuff, for the time and energy I take away from my family to do this. and then the other half of the money will be all put in a separate account that I want to be going on trips with and that could be hopefully if not expo this year because it might be a bit late to get in that amount of money but who knows maybe a whole bunch of people join I get really excited now I know what you're saying Orby you only have a pro level for 420 no I have a premium level what's included in the premium level I'm going to fire you out either Pimlner's podcast trading cards collectibles coffee okay this is an excuse for me to fire you off some really cool stuff and it's only eight dollars and 80 cents american that works out to around a little less than 12 dollars per week or per week 12 dollars per month canadian and it just gives me an excuse to fire you guys off stuff now i will say this we did get something in the mail after i already made up these levels now jamie had already been kind enough to order that level who wouldn't want some awesome collectibles sent to them who wouldn't want some pinball nerds podcast trading cards who wouldn't want you know i have lots of ideas i talked before about doing pinball nerds podcast um you know postcards i talked about doing a zine i have lots of ideas i just every couple months i want to send out everybody at that premium level some stuff some really cool stuff i don't have an le level so that means my most expensive tier and you're going to get you know it might only be a sample bag of coffee i can't afford to send you a 30 bag of coffee when it's only eight dollars a month it will be a sample bag i think our sample bags we have two different sizes it'll depend what can fit through the mail slot but basically i'll have to grind it in advance so to any of you who actually drink from like a cure egg you can just put it go to a dollar store if you don't have one already and buy like a one dollar reusable cure egg thing if you drink from a percolator like me most of the time or an espresso maker it doesn't matter because it's already ground down um and if you yourself don't love coffee or tea or whatever i sent you that month, give it as a gift. It looks so cool. It's going to be packaged well. It's fun. It's interesting. It's going to be exciting. I will say this. If the costs of shipping are far more than I anticipated, I would eventually have to raise that medium level price. So honestly, everybody who gets in early at that medium level price in less than two months from now, because I want to send it out by the first, if not the second of every month. So everybody who's even joined for the last 20 days of this month plus next month. That means on September, October, November 1st, Halloween, I'll just say right here, on Halloween, you're going to get shipped out to start either coffee or hopefully Pinball Nerds podcast trading cards, maybe both, depending on if the cards are done by then or at least the first promo packs. But thank everybody for listening today. I'm sorry there wasn't a lot of news. There just wasn't a lot of news. There hasn't been a lot of news. I've been waiting for news. The only other mini rant I wanted to go on that I didn't get time to, so maybe I'll just do a 30 seconder as I would say to Franchi you're dismissed, everything important has been talked about, make sure you go hit that link for the Patreon, it would fill my heart I would really appreciate it, it would be super rad, you're going to get good pinball luck for life just by doing it I don't know, I don't know, I'm trying to sell you guys on it, I don't know what I'm doing hopefully okay, I guess we'll find out I can tell you this, the more people that join my Patreon, the more content you're going to get out here on the on the Poor Men's Pinball Network and the more content you're going to get behind the paywall. And if you just want more, if you're like me and you're a hardcore pinball nerd and you just run out of all the podcasts and there's nothing to listen to, well, right now you can spend four bucks and you can go listen to my stern rant, another 20-minute podcast intro to that. Like, let's be honest, a lot of pinball podcasters' whole podcast is 20 minutes, so you're going to get that intro. And then on top of that, I'm going to be doing another show sometime in the next week. But I want to end by saying, can we stop with Rasa already? Please. Enough time, energy, and money has been wasted on Rasa already. If the worst part about Rasa remaining is how bad the code is, and the code is the thing that's got worked on the most outside of the design since it was originally designed, then what are we doing? Especially if you can't even implement the pin bar? Well, where's the innovation in it? It's got one ramp that even Travis Murry couldn't get to the top. Like, if memory serves, Travis, if not, I'm sorry. But, like, I am not stoked for Raza. I'm not stoked for J-Pop. What was J-Pop's, like, best? Either Circus Voltaire, which the only really cool, the geography of that game, geography. The shots on that game aren't that good. The layout's not that good. The only good thing is the Circus Master, the coolest mech ever that comes up and smashes his head on the roof and has a magnet. Like, yeah, that one mech is really cool. But J-Pop's not an engineer. He didn't make that mech, even if he thought of it, which who knows if he even did that after he's done all this other crooked stuff, right? So enough with the J-Pops. I don't want to cover J-Pop. I don't want to talk about J-Pop. It's sickening and disgusting me to even have to talk about Alice whatever. I can't believe that some people got hoodwinked. The two content – no, the three content creators that were really pushing Alice, it was like, guys, you know it's a subpar theme. You know it's a subpar game. You know it's priced too high. The artwork looks really tacky, bad AI, over-sexualized, young female. It was very weird, very strange. It doesn't look fun. The outlane saves literally do the opposite. They should be called outlane drains because they purposely make the ball go down the drain if you hit those magnets, apparently. I'm not excited for any future J-Pops. I'm not excited for Raza. I will say one cool thing about Raza is it does have Jeff Teola's call-outs. Again, probably the best part about the whole game, or it did before. Jeff was like the voice that was talking in like one of the animation scenes or something for it. So many years ago, and I promise, guys, this will be the last story. I'll let you go. But many years ago, I got to be interviewed on Pinball Profile with Jeff Teolis. And I would say probably 95, maybe 98% of his interviews are either done one of two places, at a pinball tournament or expo or hotel room there, or they're done through the telephone, through Zoom or whatever, Skype or what have you. I got to go into his sister's station. I believe he worked at, I think he's known as Big Red or something on like the classic station in Kitchener-Waterloo where he used to be. I have no clue what he does now. Probably the same. Not sure though. And I got to go into an actual radio studio and I had to go in through the front door and like Jeff wasn't there. So I had to say, hello, I'm here to see Jeff Teolis. And like there's all these people in suits and everything and I'm just there and I just finished ripping a vape outside. And Jeff brings me in and he goes, hey, do you want to hear something kind of cool, Albert, before we go do the interview? I said, sure, yeah. What is it? He goes, how would you like to hear and see some of the first – I don't want to get Jeff in trouble. This happened in Minecraft. Come on. Is Robert Mueller even out there? Robert Mueller, man. Come on, guy. The Deep Root guy. He's in jail right now giving people new geese. Or they're giving them to him but not in the head. Okay. Okay, so hopefully, we can all hope, right? Robert Mueller was a bad freaking dude, but he also was very litigious and sued people, so I just want to be a little bit careful. But Jeff Keolis may or may not have let me listen to some of the call-outs from Raza before they were officially either A, in the game or had been released to the public. For all I freaking know, I got to hear them before Steven Bowden and everyone else who worked there. I don't know. I have no clue. But that was really cool that you let me do that, Jeff. And that was one secret that I was able to keep, and I don't think I shared that with absolutely anybody until right now. But I have those secrets and many more other cool kind of fun little stories like that, which I'm honestly more comfortable sharing over there behind the paywall, right? Like my Cliff Albert episode, I'm going to be releasing that I think next month. That was one of my best episodes ever and it only got maybe 400 or 500 listens because after about a month, I took it down because I was going to be traveling to the States. and Cliff Albert and I, as you might imagine, talked about many – we talked about lots of stuff that if you're crossing the border, you don't want to have just publicly available for anyone to just go listen to and use AI to scrub which words or products or legal products you may or may not have been talking about. So I have lots of cool, fun stuff like that. I'm excited to slowly release over there and then just, like I said, our monthly WTFs. And I promise on the next episode I'll be back. I promise I'll try on the next episode I'm back to just talk about Star Wars and not the Patreon. Maybe only just mention it at the end. I humbly apologize. I love you. If you could do it, it really would just – I don't know if three people are going to sign up today or like 10 people or like – I doubt 15. But my mind would be blown somehow, 15. And if you are another content creator listening to this and you think it would be cool if I had a little bit more support on the show. and it'd be nice if after eight years of providing content and 635 free shows and continuing to do free shows, if you could maybe just share this with any of your, like mention it maybe on your podcast or YouTube channel or possibly social media, I would super appreciate it. Besides that, thanks to my boy Retro Ralph not only for this microphone but for joining. Thank you to Jamie Burchill. Thank you to Drew C. And the last shout I absolutely need to give, I precluded to it earlier in the show, rachel risto herself round of applause congratulations rachel risto won out of the 280 some odd people 279 people she won at papa the cactus canyon that's right like a new in box cactus canyon and i couldn't think and i said this before and i'm sure there is more deserving people out there i'm sure there is there's some saint in zimbabwe i don't know about but as far as I'm concerned, Rachel Risto is a pinball saint. At the very least, she's a pinball angel, okay? And she volunteers so much of her time, and she's done so many free podcasts where she never got Patreon or sold a t-shirt or made a single solitary penny from it, and she's joined in on the microphone with Tom of Fox Cities Pinball. Shout out to Tom of Fox Cities Pinball and all the commentators. Did a great job at Papa this weekend. That was so awesome. Ray Day did go on to get fourth. I think I mentioned that. Shout out to Rachel Risto, who won. I can't think of someone more deserving to win so that's just so cool that a fellow tribe member especially like i i don't want to be again i don't want to be rude here or anything but like if someone with like 50 pinball machines won they'd be like wow that's so great they'd still be excited but like someone that has either one or no pinball machines currently at home for them to win maybe she has two okay i'm sorry if i'm wrong rach but yeah for someone like that to win this new inbox pinball machine she said it it's life-changing like she was still i think happy crying days later or i think her joke was she would still probably be happy crying days later and rachel risto you absolutely deserve it so from my bottom bottom my heart congratulations to you and uh shout out and may you enjoy that cactus canyon for years to come i know i certainly enjoy it i know my wife enjoys it and the last thing i will say is this saturday so three days from right now on the 13th don't worry it's normally not it's friday the 13th normally isn't lucky don't worry it's not Saturday okay but on on Saturday the 13th we will be playing in a pinball tournament in Fredericton Hayden will be coming with me and maybe Owen we're not 100% sure but I'm very very excited to be going and playing that and uh yeah just it's going to be a fun time so if you're in the if you're in the area and you're considering going you should go and if you're listening from Ontario right now take a look at a flight on a flare thing and I'll pick you up Friday you can stay at my homestead we'll play in the tournament Saturday and you can like fly home Sunday wouldn't that be rad it's like 80 or 90 bucks maybe slightly more i don't know because the whole air can occur about kerfuffle but anyways pinball nerds thanks so much for listening don't forget to go over there the patreon that i've left in the link you can be listening to that stern rant about me not getting too invited to the media day well the media day is going on for star wars rate meow until next time pinball nerds remember to eat sleep and breathe star wars pinball