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Even Jersey Jack Pinball Left New Jersey

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·1h 24m·analyzed·Apr 15, 2025
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TL;DR

Jersey Jack Pinball's Jack Guarnari built a 30-year industry network that enabled the 2011 startup that revitalized modern pinball.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles Episode 44 traces Jersey Jack Pinball's origins through founder Jack Guarnari's career arc: from 1970s pinball repair in Brooklyn, through building a profitable location route at Manhattan landmarks like the Waldorf Astoria and World Trade Center, to launching Pinball Sales online in 1999 and eventually founding Jersey Jack Pinball in 2011 as a response to Stern's creative stagnation. The episode features Brett Abbas recounting how his family became Jersey Jack's earliest stakeholders, purchasing special Neiman Marcus editions and later investing in the company's crowdfunded launch.

Key Claims

  • Jersey Jack Pinball is the first pinball company to last more than three years since Data East in the early 1990s

    high confidence · David Dennis, episode host, stated as historical fact about industry landscape

  • Jack Guarnari's territory included the Waldorf Astoria and the World Trade Center's Skydive restaurant in the 1980s

    high confidence · David Dennis narrative of Guarnari's history

  • Pinball Sales at its peak sold approximately 1,000 pinball machines annually to home consumers in the late 1990s/early 2000s

    medium confidence · David Dennis states 'apparently pinball sales.com sold a thousand pinball machines annually'

  • By 2010, Pinball Sales was selling only 50 machines annually, including just nine Stern Avatar machines

    medium confidence · David Dennis cites Jack's statement about 2010 sales decline

  • Jack Guarnari created special limited edition Stern machines to boost sales, pioneering the LE model that became industry standard

    high confidence · Ron Hallett: 'his business keeps kind of changing... jack was the one who heavily lobbied for these le units like the stern spider-man black'

  • The Wizard of Oz was a watershed moment that caused Stern to raise pinball pricing permanently across the industry

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'stern looked at that and said people will pay that much and the pricing has never been the same'

  • Jersey Jack Pinball used crowdfunding via customer and distributor deposits to finance The Wizard of Oz's development

    high confidence · Brett Abbas quote: 'Jack did the Wizard of Oz by basically crowdfunding the company with customer and distributor deposits'

  • Gary Stern publicly stated that 'pinball cannot survive with more than one manufacturer'

    medium confidence · David Dennis references Stern quote as contrast to Roger Sharp's view that industry needs at least two manufacturers

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't care what industry it is, you need at least two manufacturers.”

    Roger Sharp @ mid-episode — Foundational critique of monopoly that set stage for Jersey Jack's entry; directly contradicts Gary Stern's position

  • “Jack assured us that there was only one left, and it was ours... We ended up buying more games after that every Father's Day or another birthday.”

    Brett Abbas @ mid-episode — Origin story of Abbas family relationship with Jack Guarnari; illustrates Guarnari's sales technique and long-term customer loyalty building

  • “Jack did something really incredible. He started the first new pinball company in over a decade. Stern was a monopoly and hadn't innovated in years. Jack saw an opportunity and he took it.”

    Brett Abbas @ mid-episode — Summarizes market conditions that enabled Jersey Jack's founding and Stern's creative failure

  • “The main focus of me starting the company in the beginning certainly was not to lose money, but it was not to make money. It was to make great games. And I knew if we accomplished our mission, the money would come later on.”

    Jack Guarnari @ late episode — Guarnari articulates Jersey Jack's founding philosophy contrasting with purely commercial approach

  • “Even Jersey Jack Pinball Left New Jersey”

    David Dennis (episode title) @ episode title — Witty title reference to the fact that Jersey Jack Pinball moved manufacturing operations out of New Jersey

Entities

Jack GuarnaripersonBrett AbbaspersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyPinball SalescompanyStern PinballcompanyThe Wizard of OzgameDavid DennispersonRon HallettpersonNeiman Marcus

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Crowdfunding via customer/distributor deposits becomes normalized financing model for pinball startups after Jersey Jack's success

    high · David Dennis notes this 'has become in some ways a very negative way that the industry has evolved over the last 10 years, where this becomes kind of a common thing'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Roger Sharp vs Gary Stern quotes reveal ideological divide on market structure: Sharp advocated for healthy duopoly; Stern insisted monopoly was necessary

    medium · David Dennis: 'Gary Stern had a quote that pinball could not survive with two manufacturers' contrasted with 'Roger Sharp says, I don't care what industry it is, you need at least two manufacturers'

  • $

    market_signal: Jack Guarnari as strategic industry architect: spent 30 years building relationships across manufacturers, distributors, and operators specifically to enable Jersey Jack's credibility at launch

    high · David Dennis: 'jack had spent 30 years 20 years building relationships with manufacturers... he spent all of his time at Coin-op expos, Chicago Expo, building those relationships. So people knew that Jack was a legitimate person'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Pinball industry from 2008-2010 characterized by creative exhaustion: only Stern producing, no innovation, customers defecting or ceasing play

    high · David Dennis: 'by 2010 right... There's only one pinball manufacturer at this time, right? Stern Pinball. That's it.' and 'The magic was gone.'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern Pinball's monopoly pricing power: immediate price increases across industry after Wizard of Oz success validated premium positioning

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.258

0:00
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0:57
The Pinball Network is online. launching silver ball chronicles oh yeah we have to announce the death of pinball network yeah i can't say pinball network anymore no this will be our last episode on the pinball network oh do we have a new do we have a new feed so there's one that says silver ball chronicles brackets tpn and then the new one says silver ball chronicles a pinball history podcast 🎵 Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles and with me is Ron Coffees for Closers Hallett. How you doing my friend? Okay, what was that? Coffees for Closers? Coffees for Closers. You don't get coffee unless you close. I don't drink coffee, so that's fine. Didn't you see, did you see Glenn Gary Glenn Ross? I don't know what that is. It's a film from like 92 or something like that. Oh, 90s, yeah. It's got Jack Lemmon in it. Alec Baldwin. I know who he is. I know who he is, too. Yeah. Ed Harris. Yeah, I know him. So what's up, fella? How was TPF? TPF, the Texas Pinball Festival? All of the shenanigans that partake in the rumors. It was good. Yeah. Any breaking news that we should be aware of coming from a very credible source recorded online?
company
Data Eastcompany
Gary Sternperson
Roger Sharpperson
Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization
Pinball Networkorganization

high · David Dennis: 'stern looked at that and said people will pay that much and the pricing has never been the same'

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern's 2000s-era games criticized as stripped-down versions: removed service rails, replaced with pegs, seen as quality degradation by long-term customers

    medium · Ron Hallett: 'They took the service rails out of the bottom, those metal service rails, and they replaced them with pegs. The pegs of doom. That's how things were getting.'

    • 2:50
    Well, it would kind of relate to our upcoming episode. But Jack Winery confirmed that Harry Potter is coming up next. Okay, so don't buy any of the current JJP games and wait for the next one. Don't buy anything, which is weird because this was in a seminar for Avatar. So I was going to buy an Avatar, but you know, Jack said don't buy anything. Don't spend a dime. Because of that anticipation, I wanted to bump this episode up. Because of that breaking news, I wanted to get this episode underway. in anticipation of one of the largest licenses from the pinball hobby. Have you seen the Harry Potter movies? Yes, I have, and I've started reading the books with my daughter. Guess who hasn't seen the movies or read the books? I'm going to probably say you. Yes. Yeah. You haven't seen a movie since 1998. That's not true. I see movies all the time. I just don't go to the theater. ah do you see movies made after 1998 uh yes actually i just saw a movie in a movie theater at tpf whoa because we get there way too early before the show starts and there's the looney tunes movie the day the earth blew up no there's that was super good mall across the street they have imax and stuff but we saw it wasn't in imax but we saw a black bag oh i heard that's good that was good only an hour and a half that's that's even better i like that yo michael fastbender Where's our Michael Fassbender pinball machine? As opposed to last year when we saw Dune, which was good, but like three hours. Oh, it's so long. Yeah, especially when you're like over 50 and you've got to pee all the time. Okay. So everybody, we just wanted to point out that this is our last episode on the Pinball Network. Oh. So you did still hear the stinger at the beginning of this episode. We are not leaving because there's a kerfluffle or we all hate each other or we're all mad at each other. We're leaving because of the incorrect use of the word stinger.
    4:52
    That's correct. The stinger will be the thing at the end of the show. Isn't it? What's the thing at the beginning? The bloopers at the end of the show you put in. That's like the stinger. Well, what's the thing at the beginning? I don't know. The preamble? Yeah, there you go. I only get stinger from Mystery Science Theater because that's what they call the thing at the end. All right. I love correcting you. It's great. But anyway, it's just easier for us to upload our own episodes. And if there's an error in the sound or the editing, I can correct it very quickly. I can review our stats to see why everybody still only downloads our Steve Ritchie episodes and none of the other ones. So that's the reason why. And most of us on the Pinball Network hate Joel Engelberth, the second worst person in pinball. So we've all just decided to leave. But other than that, we all like each other. And you're leaving your other podcast, the Slam Tilt podcast. No, I'm not leaving it. Oh, so you're still dealing with Bruce then? Yeah, I still deal with Bruce. My other podcast, the Slamtail Podcast, you can check us out. We were never on the Pinball Network. We're independent. Okay, well, we have also sold out on Patreon, as everybody knows. You can swing on over to patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. Stop in for a month or two. Say hi. Drop us a $3 a month to become a pro crony. At $6 a month, you get early ad-free access to the show on the Patreon rather than the individual feeds. And after three months, you get a free sticker. I love stickers. Top-tier cronies. They are our elitist cronies. After three months, they get a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirts. I want to say a big welcome to our new Patreon members this month. Darby and Paul, they have joined us. And I also want to make an announcement that our three-month LE cronies, your teas have just been shipped, so they should arrive shortly. Are they powder-coated? They are not powder-coated. I don't want them to chape the nips. Yes. Of course, you can swing on over to Facebook.com slash Silverball Chronicles. That's where you can find all of the latest links to the new feed for Silverball Chronicles. Now, you'll notice there's two feeds. If you search Silver Ball Chronicles in your podcatcher, one will say Silver Ball Chronicles, and then in brackets, TPN. The new feed will say Silver Ball Chronicles, a pinball history podcast. Make sure you get the correct one, and if you don't know the correct one, swing on over to Facebook.com slash Silver Ball Chronicles. It is pinned at the top, and you can choose the link to your favorite podcatcher. Ron, you have already subscribed to the new feed? Actually, yes, I have. That's right. I'm excited that so many people have jumped on already. I can see those stats now. If you just want a t-shirt, Ron, sometimes you just want a t-shirt. I love t-shirts. You don't want to deal with the shenanigans. Swing on over to silverballswag.com. Pick up that shirt. There's also hoodies, mugs, and stickers. If you got that weird thing for stickers like Ron has.
    8:02
    We've got corrections. Corrections were never wrong. Come on. Silverballchronicles at gmail.com if you want to get a hold of us. We had a lot of back and forth in the last month or so with a few of the cronies over at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Some of those, I think, are better kept private because, you know, quite frankly, they were a little bit chit-chatty. A little chit-chatty. However, I have pulled out a few of my favorite comments. One of them from David Lee, who dropped us an email about roller games because people only listen to our Steve Ritchie episodes for some reason. Rock, rock, rock and roller games. Rock, rock, rock and roller games. So we only get emails about past episodes, about Steve Ritchie episodes, and oddly enough, our Down Under series, where people are listening to the stuff from Down Under, Australia. That's pretty cool, but thank you, Dave, for dropping us an email. We also have Chris Davis. What does Chris Davis say? Hello, guys. Love the show. Sir Didymus didn't ride a horse. He rode a dog named Ambrosius. Ambrosius? Ambrosius. Keep the shows coming. Who's Sir Didymus? What's that from? He's the guy in Labyrinth. Labyrinth? Oh, okay. He's a knight, but he rides. I said incorrectly he rode a horse, which he does not. Oh. He rides like a sheepdog, which is really funny. It's got to be a big dog. Yeah, it is. It's a big sort of big, puffy, hairy dog, and then you've got this puppet sitting up on it. And it's a real dog, which makes it even funnier because then there's a puppet sitting on top of a real dog. They're not puppets. Come on. They're real. Yeah, they're Muppets, actually. Muppets. Yeah, say it right. But I don't want to get another correction. A correction to my correction. And then we've got Corey Hughes. What does Corey Hughes say? I don't know, but Corey Hulse, he says, So I've written a long email that has nothing to do with pinball or pinball history. Thanks for all the work on the podcast. I personally thought the bingo one was great. Hey, somebody liked it. I know your focus is generally on machines, manufacturers, but I think a history of the pinball competition side would be fascinating. Oh, you think the bingo episode had low ratings. Ooh, we did competition. Oh, and you could probably get Stu McVicker to comment on his 1978 Playboy launch party championship. Corey, he wrote a huge email about how cricket works because he spent some time, I believe it was in Europe. He wrote us all the rules of cricket. Cricket's a little more like baseball than you'd imagine, actually, which I thought was really fascinating. I really enjoyed reading it. Well, have a bat. Yeah, it's got a bat, but the bat is flat like the one you smack people on the ass for if you're in a college – A paddle, yes. What do they call those? A pledge or something? Thank you, sir. Can I have another? So thank you, Corey, for that email and the chat back and forth. That brings us to today's topic. Are you sitting down? I'm sitting down. He talks quickly and his salesmanship is even faster. Jack Guarnari grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and quickly became a master of salesmanship and relationship.
    11:24
    He knew how to grow his business. He knew how to build a business. And eventually, he wanted to change pinball. This month, we're talking about Jersey Jack Pinball and the creation of a new pinball company. This is the first pinball company that's lasted more than three years since Data East in the early 90s. This episode, episode 44, can you believe it, Ron? 44 episodes. We've done this 44 times.
    11:59
    It's called Even Jersey Jack Pinball Left New Jersey. oh so mean that's a good one isn't it you know you can call him guanari i'll call him guanari that way one of us will be right let's start in the beginning okay can you give me one of those like movie theater voices um in the beginning there was new york city brooklyn the dodgers leave for LA. I'll tell you what, Brooklyn back in the day was not the Brooklyn that it was once that it is today. It wasn't quite as gentrified and fancy and cool. Brooklyn was kind of rough. It wasn't Manhattan. I don't know. I don't go to New York City. Growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn was Jack Winari. Jack graduated high school in the mid-1970s, and right around that time pinball was being legalized in new york city and you remember that from our previous episodes the token roger sharp series now jack looking for a job in the mid 70s he would become a coin op and pinball repair person i'm going to open up a picture here from 1976 yeah before you even do that i know what it is yep what let's describe what is going on in this photo uh the 70s is what's going on basically yes so what color are these pants uh they're like baby blue yep and then the shirt the super flowery colorful shirt of the of the 70s with the 70s collar we're thinking it's like it's like silk probably white belt jack probably weighs 120 pounds in this picture yes pants are very they're very they're very wide pants that look to be wider as they get further away from the crotch.
    13:50
    In the background, we have a very loud looking sheet, window covering perhaps, and a serious mustache. Classic 70s mustache, yep. Very thick, very full. As a person who can't grow facial hair, and especially at what is he probably in this photo, 18? 20? Yeah, it's early 20s. To this day, I'm 40. I can't grow facial hair. Yet, here he is. My family, obviously, well-shaven um british uh aristocrats did not have the the italian uh yes uh heritage yes i'm like half italian so my mustache is growing as we're recording right now that's right i can hear it you can literally hear it through the microphone yes what what pinball machine do we have here this is the beginning of somebody who is going to change pinball is it not it is somebody who is going to really make a big difference in our hobby and quite frankly somebody who deserves an episode of silver ball chronicles i mean if bingo can get an episode surely jack winari can get his own huh so jack would eventually with his mustache spread out into operating in the downturn of the mid-1980s so he worked as a repair person in the late 70s and as things started to kind of downturn into the 80s jack was able to sort of take advantage of that he quickly moved into video games like pac-man asteroids and defender because when pinball was falling off a cliff it was video that was still treading water well video was one of the things that made pinball off the cliff he had a territory and a territory is like your area right like as people are falling off in that time period or selling off their pins. They don't want to deal with the headache of whatever has become the 1980s pinball market.
    15:49
    He developed his territory. Now, do you know the Waldorf Astoria? I've heard of it. That is the famous hotel down by Central Park in Manhattan. That's the one in Home Alone 2. I've never seen Home Alone 2. Oh, my God. I've seen Home Alone. Come on. I've seen that. I didn't see Home Alone 2. What happens? They leave him at home again? No. Oh. He gets on the airplane this time in the airport, and he ends up on an airplane that goes to New York, and his family goes to Florida. Is John Candy in it? No. Oh, that's a fail then. Yeah. Anyway, he also had the World Trade Center's Skydive restaurant. That was also in his territory. Oh. So we're not talking, like, sketchy bars out somewhere. We're talking very busy, high traffic, like highest in probably the world area, something like the World Trade Center's Skydive restaurant and the Waldorf Astoria. Pretty exciting stuff. Jack's business was so profitable, or Jack says his business was so profitable, that he had a hard time making the rounds to empty the coin boxes before they were full again. Can you imagine getting in there and there's so many quarters in those things that you can't lift it out of the pinball machine? That would be awesome. It would be pretty great. Pinball goes through bust, growth and bust. And what happened in the 1990s? Boom at the beginning and bust by the end of the 90s. Yeah, Jack saw the writing on the wall when it came to arcades and location play. and he began selling pinball machines and video games online in 1999.
    17:37
    So here's the thing. Jack is obviously able to look at the market very well, and then he's able to sort of slightly move around, change direction, and change his business.
    17:52
    And I think somebody who had the foresight to go online in 1999 and 2000 definitely had some forward thinking right wouldn't you say did anybody buy anything online in like 2000 2000 yeah that was like when ebay was first started kind of thing right like buying things online in around 1999 or 2000 was crazy talk so the thing is i'm so old i was around when you know ebay wasn't owned by when they were actually separate companies i was around when YouTube, all the videos were 10 minutes or less. They had to be 10 minutes or less. Having a website alone in 1999 was a big deal. In the 90s, Jack, he had all of this territory that he had collected in the 1980s. He had all these amazing games from the early 90s that came out, right? Your T2s and Jurassic Park and all those amazing games. but then by the end of the 90s that was dead and he had enough foresight to say well i need to sell these machines i'm going to go direct to consumer and i'm going to focus on in-home entertainment i'm sure in the late 90s or well really all the time i bet you people like jack got phone calls all the time asking if they could buy a machine for their home there just wasn't a market to actually buy those machines direct to the consumer being you and i now the industry ron is direct consumer mostly it's bars it's some location but it's mostly selling it into a home well who did jack partner with to make it a little easier to sell it direct to the consumer well before that do you know what the name of this company is no i have no idea i've never heard of this company you No, I mean Jack's Company. Oh, yes, but go ahead and tell the folks. Pinball Sales. It's Pinball Sales. That's like the best name ever. Yes, and they still are on the Internet. I actually went there to see what's there now because this used to be his main site, and they are still doing what we're saying. They're selling all kinds of equipment. You've got pinballs. You've got video games. You've got jukeboxes.
    20:11
    PinballSales.com. unfortunately the website still looks like it was made in 1999 yes it does like like come on get a get a template for the love of god go over to silverballchronicles.com and just check out our easy to use template that we literally drag and drop i mean like ah these websites but i mean it's probably working well for him so there's no need to redo it yeah if it ain't broke don't fix jack would partner with a fancy pants retailer in new york city called neiman marcus yeah so this i don't know can you explain this to to me uh i don't know i've heard of neiman marcus in a way that i know they're expensive you know like a fancy thing and i know it's a new york city thing other than that i i don't really know what they do is it like sax is that like a sax fifth avenue kind of thing. See, I don't know what that is either. See, in Canada, we had Sears, of course, that went bust back in the day, and that's where we would get a catalog, and you'd look through the catalog, and then you'd order, and then it would show up at a Sears location. This by the way for the younger folk I not particularly old by any means but I kind of still remember the catalogs and things like that Basically what happened was Amazon became these retailers and destroyed those retailers like Sears and Hudson's Bay here in Canada is another one. Those companies used to ship directly to you and you would pick them up at like a location. That's basically what Amazon does now, and those old companies were too dumb to do it before Amazon because they just decided to give up. It was terrible. Anywho, enough of that rant. Now, they would often advertise a special edition or a limited production pinball or arcade machine that was sold by Jack and Pinball Sales.
    22:14
    What's an example of one of those special editions that was in the Neiman Marcus? Well, a special edition would be something like Monopoly Platinum Edition could be a special edition. I don't know if they made that specifically for Jack. Who has one of those? Bruce Spruce Nightingale has one of those. Oh, Bruce Nightingale from your other podcast, the Slam Tilt podcast. They did make a special LE for Jack. Jack was the main, but we'll get into that maybe at some point. So we're laying the seeds here. Folks, follow us along on the narrative that is the Jersey Jack episode. Now, this was where Jack would make one of his most important friendships.
    23:01
    So that brings us to the time that Jack made his most important friendship and built a strong and lasting relationship. Brett Abbas says, I think it was 1998. We purchased the X-Files. We got it from the Neiman Marcus catalog, and they said there were only 10 units available. So we contacted them to see if we could get one of these special edition Neiman Marcus games. And we met Jack. Jack assured us that there was only one left, and it was ours. It had this cheesy, shiny, cardboard Neiman Marcus copper on it. So we thought it was so awesome. And that's how we met Jack. We ended up buying more games after that every Father's Day or another birthday. Yeah, so Jack sort of was like obviously the safe. Oh, boy, this is the last X-Files machine we've got. I like how the LE, Neiman Marcus, basically put a topper on it. Yeah, that's it. The topper, and there was probably like a certificate of authenticity. I don't even think they went that far. They probably just put a topper on it. So Brent's mother would buy a game for a birthday or a father's day, and they just built this amazing relationship between the two because jack is an awesome guy but you can sell i love this quote because you can see that jack is like this like used car salesman we only have one left but but it's yours we only have one left here but you better get coming in because oh oh i got mrs janice she's calling me too i gotta fly all the way down to new mexico to bring it to her but this baby's yours it's the last one i like when you do your accent that i don't know what it's supposed to be and then and then and then he goes and he goes like this that's this baby's built like a cadillac right it's just i can see it happening before my eyes and damn well i know there was more than 10 units you know what i mean well there's probably 10 limited edition neiman marcus units available so there's 10 of them with the topper yeah bs i guarantee that there would be 45 if he could sell 45 of them how do you actually know there's only 10 but anyway i wonder if he has a pile of neiman marcus topper somewhere he probably has them like you just put on the game even marcus limited edition unit like in his basement he just has it down in his basement like a box of them well i mean pinball really started to die around this sort of x files time oh yeah late 90s sega becomes sega becomes stern william exits williams exits completely and that's of course where pinball sales.com really starts to sort of take off because now people who want to play pinball kind of only have one way to get there and that is to purchase their own machine and then you know being nerdy enough you might be able to search on the internet this is like pre-google days you got to find the website well at its peak apparently pinball sales.com sold a thousand pinball machines annually And that was mostly to home consumers. Now, that didn't last forever. Yes, by 2010, Jack said he only sold 50 units for the year, saying that there were no product left to sell. He said he only sold nine Stern avatar machines. I believe that. That's how bad it was getting by 2010, right? So this is what's happening, right? Jack kind of comes in as a repair person in the late 70s. He sort of builds his chops. He knows how to fix machines. He knows how to collect the money. at it you know that's kind of your first step is like i got a pinball machine how do i solder how do i fix something how do i diagnose a problem and then go ahead yeah and the other thing to remember in this era jack was the one who heavily lobbied for these le units like the stern spider-man black and if you've got one of those like it has a pinball sales plaque on it because i have one actually sitting in the other room and it has the pinball sales plaque on it and and the um lord of the rings limited edition that was all jack just pushing stern to do an le run because he knew they would sell absolutely absolutely and see the thing is his business keeps kind of changing so he goes from that late 70s kind of he's he pulls into actually operating. Then he expands and consolidates his territory by the 90s. Then he's got to change, because the industry has changed, into home sales. He's doing really well at 1,000 units, I would say, at a time when pinball was dead. But then by 2010, the industry has changed again. There's no more units. So this is where you're getting to. He's got to change again. And another quote from Brett Abbas. We ended up buying more games for Father's Day or a birthday. We ended up having a little collection. We had Doctor Who, Scorpion, Lord of the Rings, and one of our favorites, The Simpsons. Scorpion, how did that one get in there? One of these does not belong. We bought more and more Stern games over the years, and we eventually just kind of stopped buying. They just got old, and we stopped playing as much as we used to. So this is the problem. Now one of these really big deals, one of your tip-top clients, is really starting to struggle. You're going from Lord of the Rings and The Simpsons to Iron Man, Tron, like these stripped-down games. Wasn't that the problem? That was what people were complaining about around that time? Maybe Iron Man, but not Tron. Tron, they had in L.E. Okay, yeah, that's true. Yes, I'm thinking more like NBA, Big Buck Hunter, Avatar, Iron Man, stripped-down games. And they even said they were stripped-down. Yeah, they took the service rails out of the bottom, those metal service rails, and they replaced them with pegs. The pegs of doom. That's how things were getting. So these people who were buying these late 90s, early 2000s games that were still, let's call them Williams-esque, they can see that the quality and things are changing and that's turning them off well stern but stern would have always been considered a step down from williams yeah but the but by by you know 2008 2009 the the spark in pinball was kind of gone by 2010 right uh yeah i think 24 was the last full feature game then after that came all of the aforementioned NBA, Big Buck Hunter, Iron Man, Avatar. Yeah. The magic was gone. Because there's only one pinball manufacturer at this time, right? Stern Pinball. That's it. Well, what does Roger Sharp say about that? One of my favorite quotes from Roger Sharp. Oh, I'm letting you say it. Oh, thank you. So Roger Sharp says, I don't care what industry it is, you need at least two manufacturers. which is hilarious because Gary Stern had a quote that pinball could not survive with two manufacturers, meaning only him. Like if anyone else came in, they would just muddy everything up and it would just take it down. Yeah, pinball's done. Yes. He had a quote like pinball cannot survive with more than one manufacturer. It's like the exact opposite. Wow. If he had a time machine. In the beginning, let's talk January 2011. This is the watershed moment where Jack, let's say over the previous 12 months, had realized something's got to change here or I'm not going to have a business. Well, Brett Abbott says, I'll sum it up by saying Jack did something really incredible. He started the first new pinball company in over a decade. Stern was a monopoly and hadn't innovated in years. Jack saw an opportunity and he took it. But this requires, of course, funding. You know what I mean? Like the easiest way to earn a million dollars is to start with two million. Here's the thing. You need somebody to help fund that endeavor. And with Jersey Jack, ever the salesperson, this is our last opportunity, this is the last one, and it's yours, that guy, he strives, I think, on the challenge. He strives on the hunt. And basically that hunt became what we would eventually call crowdfunding, getting deposits from consumers and distributors, which has become in some ways a very negative way that the industry has evolved over the last 10 years, where this becomes kind of a common thing. What does Brett say about that? Brett says Jack did the Wizard of Oz by basically crowdfunding the company with customer and distributor deposits. Even vendors were in on the action. Jack built a huge following. The company had stakeholders across the industry who believed in him and his vision. It took him a few years to deliver The Wizard of Oz, and suddenly the industry was reborn. There is a lot of hyperbole. There is a lot of this, like, you know, The Wizard of Oz saved pinball. Well, you know, the momentum was there already, but The Wizard of Oz was, in fact, a watershed moment for pinball. 100%. It actually was. was because stern looked at that and said people will pay that much and the pricing has never been the same the industry was in fact reborn around that time and and jack did have that but jack had spent 30 years 20 years building relationships with manufacturers and people in the industry and other distributors the playfield manufacturer person because he spent all of his time at you Coin-op expos, Chicago Expo, building those relationships. So people knew that Jack was a legitimate person who actually cared and could actually pull this off. What did Jack say about the beginnings of Jersey Jack Pinball?
    33:10
    Okay. All right. Where do I start? The top here? Yes. Okay. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks. and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what a Discord is? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority on our episodes? Jump on. Wait a minute, this is on twice. Idiot. Oh, boy. You get what you pay for, I guess. All right, hold on. Jump on. It's $6 a month. Premium crony. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an L.E. Litas crony. Wow. Can I have my money now?
    33:54
    He said, the main focus of me starting the company in the beginning certainly was not to lose money, but it was not to make money. It was to make great games. And I knew if we accomplished our mission, the money would come later on. I mean, a lot of people know is when you start a business, you operate in the quote unquote the red for a little while. And then you want to get that turned around. Jersey Jack, or what would become Jersey Jack Pinball, started using licensing to help them manufacture their pinball machines. So they went to Planetary Pinball Supply, who we know that we spoke about in our previous episodes, and they licensed the Williams Flipper Assemblies. They got a New Jersey company to build their wiring assemblies. They worked with a Massachusetts-based Pinnovators to build these sound boards. There was a woodworking firm in Illinois who made cabinets and play fields for them, and they actually sent those unfinished product to another company who had them add the artwork and ship it to New Jersey for assembly. This is kind of turning pinball on its head because the way Stern works is most of that stuff is in-house, right? Well, the cabinets were out. I think the cabinets were made outside. The assemblies are made by them or designed. I mean, CERN has all the vendors they usually use, so they already have all these relationships. The people who make their playfields, make their cabinets, etc. What Jersey Jack did, so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel, most of their basic mechs are all Williams mechs. For someone who has two of them, if you lift up playfield and you look underneath, they're Williams flipper mechs, Williams pop-upper mechs, even things like on dialed in, the trapdoor mech is literally the exact same trapdoor mech that's used on Funhaus.
    35:45
    It's the same mech. You literally can use some of the same parts to repair it. Which is a pretty smart way to do it. That is very smart. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. And if you're going to take other companies' mechs, who do you take it from? You take it from Williams. Yeah, and I think Jersey Jack, of course, being a person who worked on games for years and years and years, understands the fact that it would be pretty great to just have the exact same coil that the previous companies worked with as opposed to trying to invent your own, which is basically kind of what Data East did, right? They kind of had to create all their own stuff. Well, they ripped off Williams System 11, so that's what they do. So take a look at our previous Data East episode, Fake It Till You Make It. But the thing is that they took all the mechs and they really went down the path of all the Williams terminology, especially when they eventually hired Pat Lawler and all their games. They call the pop-upers jets, which is what Williams called them. The cabinet design, when they stopped doing the Y-bodies, it's just very similar. Well, actually, even the wide bodies, it's the same dimensions relatively than the Williams one. Like the Williams super pins, if you have like the glass for that, it's the same exact size that fits in a Jersey Jack. So they really used Williams as their guide because he knew everyone loves the Williams stuff. So if you just say, and to this day, if you just say, you know, it's like that old 90s Williams feel. Everybody just like, where's my money? I mean, sorry, I said that wrong. What was the quote I'm trying to go for? Oh, so if you tell everyone it looks like Williams, it's Williams, they're like, take my money.
    37:32
    Yeah, they know right away. This was turning pinball on its head because not only were they just going and grabbing all those bits and pieces and parts from the Williams thing, they were also saying, what can we put into this pinball machine? The narrative at the time was that Stern almost was like, how much can we take out before people notice? That's not a narrative. That's the truth.
    38:01
    I'm going to say it's the narrative. You're going to say it's the truth. It was like, how much could we take out? It's because if you look, even if you look at a game like, I'll just take Tron, and you put it next to, I don't know, Getaway, like a Williams game, and you tell somebody, like, okay, which game is newer?
    38:21
    Especially if it's a pro without the EL wire on the non-LE. They're going to say, well, it looks like they were made in the same era to me, and they're how many years apart? Like almost 20 years apart, and they still have the D&D. they still look relatively the same.
    38:36
    Here's the thing. Put a Simpsons, a Simpsons pinball party next to a Big Buck Hunter and say, which one of these costs more?
    38:47
    Well, yeah. And they actually ended up costing the same, or Big Buck Hunter was slightly more. I honestly forget how much stuff was in some of the earlier Stern games when you look at them. They'd have the little extra little mini display, just tons of crap on the play field compared to what they did later they started stripping out everything it sort of became we need the one mech what is the one mech right because if you didn't have any mechs people would like be like what's going on here right where before you'd have two or three you'd have like the big one and then like two minor ones buy stuff from walmart and put it in the game yeah like there'd be action figures that became quickly became like uh you know like a flat plastic or nothing at all and iron man it's just a toy that they cut i think they cut the feet off or whatever and they mount it but literally that's all it is that's completely flipped where jack is sitting around with his designer and his and his and his programmer and a few people that he starts cobbling together and he starts thinking like what can i do here what can I add? What else can we put here? Like on the flipper bats, they put ruby red slipper stickers on top of them or whatever. They're not stickers. It's like a, like a, what is that like material? It's actually, it's like a rubbery. It's actually like a piece and they always fall off. It's like a silicone-y kind of thing, right? So they stick that on top of there. Now Stern is going to go, well, that's like two cents or five cents a pin. And if we're selling, you know, a thousand pins, like that's money that we could put in the pocket and save this company. Where But Jack is like, no, no, no, we're putting these things on the flippers. We're talking about Wizard of Oz, by the way. I don't think we said that. Yes, that's right, in Wizard of Oz. Well, Joe Balser, the designer, he says, pretty much everything we did, I spent time trying to talk Jack down. Do we really need to have a game with an upper play field as our first game? No, we want a game with two upper play fields. We want to go to display. How big is the biggest one we could fit? What about RGB LED lighting? Yeah, let's put that in there. How about RGB LEDGI? There were no limits. Jack says, when you look into the crystal ball and see a moving image, you say, holy shit, how much more could you put into this game? So here's the thing. That little crystal ball that I mentioned a second ago, nobody else sees the image in that crystal ball but the player. Most players that step up to that pinball machine will probably never even notice that crystal ball has an image in it that changes because there's an LCD screen under it. Why would you put something in that nobody else would notice when they're seeing it? And most players don't even notice either. But that's what Jack did. He said, let's do it. Would pinball have died if Jersey Jack didn't exist? That's a question, right? So if Jersey Jack just gave up, he went on from pinball sales.com and he just started selling used Volvos in Brooklyn somewhere. Would pinball have died? I don't think so. It would have been cheaper, and Stern wouldn't have been pushed to actually do something different. Do you think somebody else would have filled that void if it wasn't Jersey Jack?
    42:00
    There's been a lot of failures out there, especially in recent years, so I'm not going to say yes on that one. But you know what Gary Stern says? I would love to know what Gary Stern says. He says, we are the only pinball manufacturer in the world. That will sound arrogant, but pinball will survive if Stern Pinball continues to make pinball machines in a meaningful volume. There you go. So Gary Stern says it doesn't matter. Yeah. But, I mean, clearly they are the biggest competition to Jersey Jack. Well. And then when Jersey Jack appears. Jack says, Stern is not our competitor. Any other game that goes into an amusement center is our competitor. Two companies are better than one. I hope Stern sells a million games and we sell 10 million games. But there's some serious hurt feelings here between, even still to today, between Gary Stern and Jack Winnari. Is that right? They do not get along. Do you think that Gary Stern would slash Jack Winnari's title?
    42:52
    Gary Stern he feels Jack turned on him because Jack was their number one distributor And he goes from their number one distributor to now he their competitor And I think he still feels like he got turned on for whatever reason Yeah, he stabbed him in the back. And even like there's a lot of times today where you can see with Joe Kamenkow, who's like best friends with Gary Stern. Oh, yeah. Right. Every now and then he'll pipe up somewhere to sort of knife Jack. Now, does Jack deserve that knife? Probably. But at the same time, he did change pinball for the better. Yes, they will also, yes. And Jack is not above making little jabs at Stern and the back and forth they go. It's pretty funny, actually. So what does Brent Abbas say? He says, Gary Stern once told me, we're not competitors. You sell the home and we sell on the street. There you go. So they're in different markets. So the way Gary Stern, of course, then he starts out with, there's only us. There should be nobody else. We can survive with only one company. And then it's like we do operators and we do operators and you do the home. So we can still coexist together. But we're bigger and better. However, starting with ACDC, that kind of goes out the window. That's right. So what what is what is this we're talking about here? This this change around kind of 2010, 2011. The deal with it was always Stern is for operators. When Jersey Jack comes around with Wizard of Oz, like this is for the home market because no operator is going to buy this 6,500. We haven't talked about the pricing yet, although I have seen them at locations.
    44:29
    But Stern started to experiment on some of their games. They had Tron where they did the LE version with EL wire on the ramps and stuff. Yeah, they added some drop targets where there were standout targets. And then they had Transformers where they did three different LEs. Remember they did the Decepticon, the Autobot, and then the hybrid Decepticon and half Decepticon, half Autobot. Yeah, and then they also tried the pin models. Do you remember the pins? Oh, God, the pins.
    45:01
    So there was like an Avengers one. Yes. Not the Avengers and not Elwynn's Avengers, but the pin Avengers. Avengers, yes. Which was sold in like Costco or something. Yeah, and they didn't sell well.
    45:14
    Because it was like a one-quarter or three-quarter size pinball machine. And then what was the other one? Was there a Transformers one too?
    45:22
    Yes. Yes, there was a Transformers to pin. There was also an Iron Man Costco version too. Think about that. Because that's pretty stripped down as it is. It basically is a flipper and a ball and that's it. Whether Gary will admit it or not, when Wizard of Oz came out, the whole game changed. So starting with ACDC, now Stern would have the Pro model.
    45:48
    Then they would have the LE. but then they offered the premium, which is basically the LE but without some of the bling. Yeah, kind of the ownership had changed at Stern Pinball, and they were trying to find ways to move into different markets and things like that. And that's because really, I would say in November of 2010, that's when Jack told Gary Stern about his plans for Jersey Jack Pinball. And it was, they say, at the IAAPA trade show, the IAAPA trade show, when Jack kind of took Gary off to the side and said, hey, this is what we're doing. And Gary wished him the best in his endeavor. And then I'm sure went to pee in Jack's cornflakes. Gary has often said that if another pinball company came to start up, one of two things would happen. Either they will lose a lot of money really quickly and close the door, or they'll end up taking down Stern Pinball. So it's a very catastrophic thing that Gary Stern says, right? It's like, you're going to destroy us or you're going to destroy yourself. Both of us can't coexist, which I think is proven wrong. Oh, yeah. Well, Jack says, how can we really design and manufacture great games? And that was the focus of what I wanted to do. People believed in me and the vision. They joined the company, and as a team, we went forward and we created our first game. He tells Gary, hey, we're building this company. And there's been rumblings, I'm sure. You can't keep anything secret in an industry as small as pinball. Surely the planetary pinball had mentioned something to somebody who mentioned something to somebody. You can't keep it quiet in such a small industry. Well, there was an expo where Jack is walking around, and he's with all these different pinball people. who weren't currently with pinball companies. And somebody was like, was he starting his own company? Well, guess what? He was. And he's bringing around a fellow named Joe Balser, the King of Clunk. You remember Joe Balser? Who did the aforementioned Simpsons Pinball Party. Yes, probably one of the better sterns of all time. I owned a Simpsons Pinball Party. Oh, then it's got to be great. It was good. After 2,000 plays, you're done.
    48:10
    But it's great. You know what Joe says? Joe says, Jack had been in touch with me, and I was one of the first hires to come over and start Jersey Jack Pinball with him. When we went to dinner one night, Jack and myself and a couple others had been with a company at that time. Jack said he had a surprise for me. We're sitting there, and just before dinner, I turn around, and there's Keith Johnson. Jack was putting together what he thought was the best team. Jack knew the success of the Simpsons. There were some hugs, and here we were again going to do something great. that's that i mean that's a pretty good team yeah basically it's a simpsons pinball party team together yeah like you're putting together a team a guy that knows mechs he he knows how to build a pinball machine he knows how to manufacture a machine joe balser knows what's up now joe balser might struggle with other things particularly side ramps but but he knows that if he teams him up with somebody like a Keith Johnson, who at Stern through the 2000s made a lot of really great coded games, even games that were terrible. Keith pulled them out of the fire. If you had to design a whole new system and control a whole thing, you need a ball search and you need a menu system and you need how does the trough work? You need somebody to actually program that. I'd say Keith Johnson is the guy. And quite frankly, he was the guy that made all of that. He had the most work to do of anybody. This poor guy had so much work to do. Like he had to make every, he had to make an operating system. He had to make a one to four player game. Yeah. They didn't take, it wasn't like, it wasn't like a lot of the newer companies that took existing architectures like the P-Rock or the fast boards or all that. They didn't do that. They came up with the entire system from scratch. Man, that must have been expensive. Couldn't have been that fun. What happens when the ball drains? You need to have programming for that. So the best part about Keith Johnson was that he was still kind of working in coin op. He was working at Play Mechanics after he left Stern. He still kind of was in the industry, right? He didn't leave and disappear for 10 years, which was really helpful. So Keith says, Jack came knocking. The risk-reward for going to Jersey Jack versus staying at Play Mechanics was essentially infinite. It's all kinds of work that has to be done to make a pinball system. That's not glamorous and not fun. But without Keith, Jersey Jack would have failed. They wouldn't have existed. They wouldn't have existed because you had a guy who worked so hard to make sure that this operating system was successful. And quite frankly, it's pretty impressive. I've never been into the menu system of a Jersey Jack pinball machine. I've never kind of gone through the audits and things like that. But I'll tell you, it's pretty archaic when you're working through even today's modern Stern in comparison to what Jersey Jack's menu system looks like, isn't it? It's a lot fancier. Well, it's more gooey. I mean, you have a much bigger screen to look at all the stuff in. Stern is using the same menu system for like 20 years. It's probably longer than that, right? Let's see. Yeah, it's still in, yeah, going back to Sega almost. Like, White Star had a similar system. I'll give it to at least Sam. So we'll say from World Poker Tour on, it's pretty much the same menu system. Which, in its own right, has been kind of the same since Williams' DMD era. You kind of got the three or four buttons, and one's forward and one's back. Stern and White Star had, like, the three buttons, and then they went to four when they went to Sam. with World Poker Tour. So it became more like the Williams system from the 90s. And that's where I think something silly like the pin bar came from. Remember the pin bar? Oh, did we do that episode yet? No. Oh, yes, the Deep Root episode. I'm sure that'll be a great one. Nowadays, everything is touchy, right? You got your phone and a screen and a whatever. So it's really weird to have three or four buttons in a coin door going through almost like a DMD display on an LCD screen. So, of course, they came up with the pin bar, which was an LCD screen in the lockdown bar, the dumbest thing I've ever seen, to be able to swipe and move around in your menus. How did Jack leverage his relationships to announce Jersey Jack Pinball to the world? Well, Jack went on the Spooky Pinball podcast. They had a podcast? They had a podcast. Originally, it was a podcast long before they created their company. So they were like an operator or something. I can't remember what Charlie actually did, but he worked for some company that made amusement-based products, I think. We'll find out on our spooky episode, whenever that happens. It was January 1st, 2011. He went on the Spooky Pinball Podcast and he announced Jersey Jack Pinball. So it's a few months after he told Gary Stern and slashed Stern's tires. So how does Jack position himself? How did he announce it? Well, Jack says it was a big surprise to Charlie, Charlie Emery, a spooky pinball podcast, because he didn't know it was coming. Charlie just kind of lost it. He was very, very excited, as was I. And the reaction was amazing. Yeah, the name was Jersey Jack. And this came from the original pen name that Jack Winari had in Replay Magazine. So this is kind of an industry coin-op magazine. And any time Jack Winari would write a letter to the editor or write an article, the pen name would be Jersey Jack. This was suggested by a person who's become known as Jersey Jen. And who's Jersey Jen? Jersey Jen is Jack's daughter. Behind every great pinball man is a strong pinball woman making all the actual hard decisions and making the company actually work. Isn't that right? Well, Gary Stern had Shelly Sachs. Joe Cam and Cal, he would say in all of our previous episodes about Daddy East and that stuff, that without Shelly Sachs, the late Shelly Sachs, that there would be no Stern Pinball as we know it today because she made all of the critical and crucial decisions while Gary and Joe did all the salesman-y stuff. What does Jack say about Jersey Jen? Jack says Jen really should be wearing the badge of co-founder of the company because she was there when I had the idea. All I got from her was encouragement and support, and she was my left arm through the process. She just stepped up and she rose way above the occasion on so many different levels of what we needed done in the company. It was not just the details. It was the building the relationships and paying salaries and making the orders and, like, doing that Jack of all trades like this Shelly Sachs. Jersey Jen still at Jersey Jack Pinball today, which is pretty great. So I wanted to give her a tip of the hat. Yes, she was at Expo, saw her there. Super important part of Jersey Jack Pinball. January of 2011, there's a Pinball News article, which I have included in our show notes. And this is where Jack announces the company, Wizard of Oz, as the license. And Jack was working with a New Jersey-based company that made assorted coin-op grabbing and pushing novelty games. They were going to be doing the manufacturing. Jack said that they currently make more complicated products than pinball machines. So manufacturing pinball machines should be no problem at all. Wait, what are you laughing at? Everyone always says that. Jack also said that he was looking beyond their first game already. So he's announced their first game, and he's already talking about game two and game three, and he was even considering bringing back non-licensed themes. Everybody knows that that is how you grow a pinball machine company.
    56:03
    And saying the second game probably wouldn't be licensed, but game three might be. Ended up being the opposite. The second one wasn't, the third one wasn't. So we talked about, you had mentioned price a couple of times. Yeah. So Astern was selling at this time for what, like $4,000? Um, yeah, that might have been the manufacturer's suggested retail price, but you could get them for under that. So like Iron Man's were like $3,500 or something? Maybe not that cheap, but yeah.
    56:33
    Somewhere in that range. High $3,000. Yes. Yep. Plus shipping. What's the Wizard of Oz going to sell for? $6,500. God, I would love to pay $6,500. Yeah, but then when that came out, it's like, oh my God, it's like $2,500 more. What the hell? So there better be a lot of crap in that pinball machine to justify that, right? You better wow me to say that you're going to have to pay $2,000 more than a Stern. But that price is only valid for pre-orders made before March 1, 2011. So there's the catch. That's the cheap price. And there was a $250 non-refundable deposit. And then when the pre-order deadline is reached, an additional $1,500 deposit is required to continue with the pre-order. Otherwise, the pre-order lapses and the deposit is returned. oh that's that's not okay so you put 250 down then on march the 1st which is like three months later you got to put another 1500 down and if you don't put your 1500 down you lose your 250 well no it says no it says the deposit is returned ah okay right okay so yes you get your 250 back so if you forgot about it you're just going to get 250 back and like what was this like oh yeah you get your 250 back but somebody gets your spot yeah what if you bought the game outside of the pre-order release window then it was 7500 holy crap that's expensive so 7500 when stern was selling them for like four grand and you know who got a pre-order my podcast mate on the slantel podcast oh he was he yep he was in the original batch he was in the original bet and that is uh bruce nightingale from the slantel podcast yes your other podcast and he was the reason that i got to go on the factory tour when they were building them. That's so cool. In New Jersey. In New Jersey, they had a thing where all your people had deposits down, could come to the factory and get a private tour of everything. So you could see that they were actually a real company. Oh, yeah. So when you go to the Stern manufacturing facility in New Jersey, you get to- Well, Stern doesn't have a manufacturing facility in New Jersey. When you get to the Jersey Jack manufacturing facility in New Jersey, right? So you show up to the factory. It looks like every industrial park you'd ever see before. That's kind of what the image is. Fairly large, I would say, at least the size of what Stern had at the time. So you walk in, you get like a hard hat, some glasses, you get a leather jacket and a white shirt because you have to dress like you're from New Jersey. A lot of it was space, frankly. They just had like one line. There was a lot of unused space. They had to fill out a bit. Then Dennis Nordman jumps aboard. So somewhere along the line, Dennis Nordman, the Nordman himself, he joins JJP to help sort of, what, put some spit polish on Woz? And the rumor was that he was doing game number two. Ah, well, Dennis says, Words can't describe how thrilled I am to be given the opportunity to design pin games again. Jack is a great leader and motivator, and I know we will build an exciting product. He also revealed how Whizbang Pinball, which was a collaboration between him and Greg Ferreres, who is the artist who would eventually end up being the art director of Stern. They were creating the playfield artwork for Wizard of Oz and Dennis's own game at Jersey Jack. And what was Dennis Nordman's Jersey Jack game? He didn't have one. Yeah, that's right. So what happens is Dennis Nordman swings in. He has a cup of coffee. He helps you out a little bit in some manufacturing stuff. He talks up your company, and then he leaves.
    60:15
    That's kind of his thing, right? Dead silence. The test units of Wizard of Oz, right? So back in the day, you had test units. Now, that doesn't happen nowadays. Now the pinball machine just shows up, and you have to buy it really quickly. Yes, now you are the testers. And we see that that causes problems. Yes, it can cause problems. I mean, it still happened, but they made all of these test units in April of 2013. So we announced in 2011, we collected all those deposits kind of in the beginning of 2011, and then people waited like two years to get those machines. Now, we don't know how many units were actually made. The design was Joe Balser. The art was Greg Freris and Matt Reisner. rise to ner yeah and jerry vander selt stelt yes i think i was at the factory and it was it was probably spring of 2012 and they were on the line the original wizard of oz's were just insane the cabinets alone it must have been pretty wild to see that there were silkscreen cabinets with like clear coat on them basically like the equivalent of what spooky calls the butter cabinet and they were just gorgeous now they brought another individual chris granner back to do sound and music with Bob, with Rob Berry, Williams veteran, Brian Hanson, Dennis Norman did the mechanics. So they're the, they're the ones that are doing the actual like mechs and stuff underneath. Ballster is basically doing just the kinetics or the design of the play field. And a new individual did animation. So they have this LCD screen that you had mentioned earlier, that how big does this LCD screen have to be? 27 inches. So we're going to replace the back glass and the DMD with a 27-inch LCD screen. We need graphics for that, and we're bringing on an individual named Jean-Paul DeWin. Yeah, who works remotely from the Netherlands. Yes, not the nether regions. The Netherlands. Very, very good. Yeah, so Keith Johnson on the software with Ted Estes, Alex Levy, Joe Katz, and J.T. Harkey. They did the software, so they had a pretty good team there. Yeah, Ted Estes, other Williams veteran. Joe Katz has been there since the beginning. Exactly. And what does Brent say? Brett. What does Brett Abbas say about this crazy machine? When I laid my fingers on the machine, I couldn't believe it. It was honestly the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I was enamored by the LED light show, the screen, the wide body, two upper play fields, the art package, higher quality everything, and the shiny armor. It was really everything we had always wanted in a machine. The reason we stopped buying was the lack of innovation. and here it was sitting in front of me in my basement. One of these early adopters, these lapsed pinball purchasers. Yes, did we mention it was a wide body too? Because on top of everything else, of course it had to be a wide body. You had to cram as much stuff in there. Now, if you want to learn a little bit more about this, kind of more in depth, go listen to our Joel Balzer King of Clunk episode in the archives. you can search that up in the podcast feed as well as you can check it out on silverballchronicles.com in the archive as well dennis nordman he did that uh upper play field with the original house model and the concept as well as he did the pop bumper mech thing on the bottom left yeah that was his idea supposedly yeah well remember the pop bumper was the um the balloon oh yeah yeah yeah where the The whole theming in the game was like the pop bumpers or on top of them they have the trees with the apples holding the apples. I love those things. So good. It's pretty cool. Now, I have played Wizard of Oz a few times, and I've always played it on location. I haven't had a lot of sound, so I haven't been able to get the full experience. And it is a little clunky with its shooting as per the Joe Balser design. However, it's pretty unique and different and fun. And I would love to actually have this in a home environment to really, I think, get the deep feels for this pin. What about you? Have you had it in that situation? I was never too crazy about Wizard of Oz You were more impressed by it I was impressed by yes what was in it but actually how it shot i like the upper play fields the best actually especially the the house trying to get that to get the uh the loops going and the house just starts turning i thought that was super cool the monkey mech is pretty cool where it kind of comes down and picks the ball up with a magnet and puts it up on the upper play field you get tired of that pop-up because you keep draining and you're so god you're trying to hit all the targets with it yeah you just want it to hurry up Yes. It's pretty cool. Now, Keith Johnson was known, especially for Lord of the Rings, The Simpsons Pinball Party, Wheel of Fortune, like a lot of really complex codes. That's the other thing we should mention. The Stern at this point, they were getting simpler. Well, they were simpler with the code. They would get more complicated later. But in their stripped-down era of games like NBA, Big Buck Hunter, etc., etc., with Wizard of Oz, they went the opposite direction. We want the deepest game possible, a game that you can just play for hours on end and not see the end of it. You've got the modes with the crystal ball thing, I think, right? And then you've got the horses of a color. Horses of a different color. Yeah, so that I don't know or get, but I know that there's something where you've got to collect the horses or the colors and all the different shots. I know somewhere over the rainbow is the final wizard mode or whatever that I'll never, ever see. Yeah. So Jack would say, I just said, I want you guys to do the best you can. The danger in that is that it almost never ends and that you don't know what it's going to cost. Oh, yeah. So he just kept pushing them. Do more. Add more. Keep going. But it just kept adding to the cost of the company. And then Woz had some struggles. The Wizard of Oz had some struggles, didn't it? They had light board issues. So what was the light board? It was like the light boards were these boards underneath the inserts, the colors. Because everything's LED, so all the lights are on light boards underneath the play field. And they had issues with them to the point where they actually had to redesign them, and then they had to replace them. Was it for free? I don't remember. I remember there was a fellow in Halifax that I knew. He had a ruby red edition, and they replaced them for free. Nice. So he has the best edition. So if you have the early Wizard of Oz with the super, like, butter cab, and you get your light boards replaced, you have, like, the perfect Wizard of Oz. Yeah, and the ruby red edition one is just gorgeous because it's got that red candy apple red. Don't forget Flying Monkeys. And the Flying Monkey mech, right, which they removed in the yellow edition. But then put it back in some other edition. Yeah, yeah, and they're like, oh. Actually, in the game, I believe it's called, like, Winged Monkey. Yes. Because that's the official name or something, even though everyone calls it Flying Monkeys, that's not actually their official name? That's right. I remember that. I remember that detail. It's like, what? Winged Monkey? Not only did they have struggles with that, that created a lot of financial trouble. Oh, yeah. Because I don't know if you know this or not, Ron, pinball is hard. And really expensive. What is the first sign of trouble within your company? Dennis Nordman leaves it. If you've got Dennis Nordman at your company and Dennis Nordman leaves, it's not going well. He's always the canary in the coal mine. He was developing game number two. He had a long slog, and then he was out of there. How does Jack, the ever-so-awesome sales guy, how does he spin his financial troubles? Well, Jack says, in early 2015, financial people were looking to advise me to recapitalize the company so that we didn't have to rely on customer deposits and things like that. Jen was the person that told me to get in touch with the Abbas family. Jane Abbas, who is Leonard's wife and Brett's mom, had become really a friend. I reached out not knowing that they might be interested. So there was no NDAs, no fancy agreements. Jack just wanted to have a chat with Jane and her husband Leonard about the company. And this is kind of what started the ball rolling with a significant change in the ownership of Pinball. And this is while they were working on Hobbit, their next game. That's right. So they're running out of money. They're running out of money. They brought it to Expo in October. Everyone hated the art, so they end up redoing the art for the game. They're kind of in trouble, let's just put it that way. I don't know how terrible that trouble was, but enough that they had to use the dreaded word recapitalize. Oh, you never want to hear that word. And who was the last company that used the term recapitalize? Haggis. Haggis Pinball, who nobody remembers now. They were unable to recapitalize. They could not find an Abbess family to help them out. Now, we have mentioned quite a few times somebody by the name of Brett Abbess, and he is a very important figure in the Jersey Jack Pinball sphere at this moment. But before we get into who Brett Abbas is, let's talk about the ownership change. Andrew Paul, he is the general counsel, who's a lawyer, basically, and managing director of Tudor Investment Corporation. So he is one of the investors that came aboard. They call these angel investors or old white guys with money. Scott Flanders. Now, he became the CEO of Playboy Enterprises in 2009. And he is the former CEO of a company called Macmillan Publishing. And he was also the CEO of Columbia House Company. You remember Columbia House? Columbia House, yes. Everybody loves Columbia House. So then there was Leonard Abbas. And he is the chairman and executive officer for ThinkLab Ventures. And Brett's dad. Yeah. So Leonard Abbas is, you know, so ThinkLab Ventures is basically a investment, you know, company. So a family office. So this is where Leonard is investing money, his money, other people's money in specific.
    70:38
    Some people call it venture capitalism, I guess. Right. That's the kind of thing with that is. So what does what does Jersey Jack say about the relationship? Well, he says with this capital infusion, we can now take our company to the next level. Our goal is to consistently deliver the finest games in the industry and the best game experience for our players. This vote of confidence in me, in our team, and in our products leaves no doubt that Jersey Jack Pinball will have the resources to develop and manufacture many more great games for our expanding worldwide player base for many years to come. Okay, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. What does Leonard Abbas, the lead investor, say? Well, he says, I have been a pinball fan my entire life. In Jersey Jack Pinball, I saw a company that has both the creative vision and the technical abilities to renew and reinvigorate this industry. I have known Jack Guarneri for many years and delighted in watching him develop the ultimate pinball game to date, The Wizard of Oz. What about Andrew Paul, the co-investor? Is this the Playboy guy? Yeah. Ah, that's funny. I am pleased to be associated with Jersey Jack Pinball. I have been a pinball fan since my teens, and with Wizard of Oz, Jersey Jack is delivering an absolutely state-of-the-art product. I'm excited to be part of Jersey Jack Pinballs. They develop the industry's most significant innovations and exciting games. Whoa, that was a heck of a press release, I think. I wonder if he played the Playboy pinball machine as a kid. Who are the Abbas's?
    72:04
    Well, Leonard Abbas Sr. began a bank in Miami in 1947, and later led by his son, Leonard Abbas Jr. sold the bank firm in 2008 for $927 million. Okay, that's pretty wild. Leonard Abbas Jr. was voted Reader Digest's America's Top Boss after using $60 million of the proceeds from that sale to give bonuses to all 399 of his bank staff. And this was during the 2008 financial crisis. President Barack Obama spoke about Leonard Jr. in his 2009 State of the Union address as an example of what positive CEOs can do for America. Wow, name dropped by the president. And as we know, Ron, that example has been upheld by all American CEOs since that day. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. After selling the bank, Leonard Jr. started ThinkLab Ventures, which is an Abbess family investment office. Now, a family office usually invests in real estate, mergers and acquisitions. Now, who is Brett Abbess, and why has Brett Abbess been coming up with all of these quotes throughout this episode? I don't know. Why? Well, he is the grandson of Leonard Sr. and the son of Leonard Jr. And Brett is listed as being the owner of City National Bank of Florida since August of 1990. Hey, Pinheads. When I'm not doing this podcast, I'm Dave the Financial Advice Guy. In a recent survey, we found that 70% of those polled were concerned about their retirement strategy. Canadians have a number of concerns when looking out over the next 15 years. Professional financial advice is key to helping you through a variety of challenges, ranging from inflation, market volatility, and determining how to maximize your retirement income in the safest, most effective, and tax-efficient way. Today's economy requires an experienced hand and a personalized plan. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Nordman. I am the Nordman, and I approve of Dennis Financial's investment and insurance advice. Their opinions on vacuum-flung grants are great, too. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book. Or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis on Angel Inc. Canadian residents only.
    74:59
    Wait a minute. How is that possible? So, and the reason I say that is because I saw Brett at the Jersey Jack factory just like this past summer, and he looks like he's 25 years old. Okay, so if you look up Brett's LinkedIn page, you'll see all of his accomplishments. there. Fairly accomplished individual, as one would say, because he was the owner of a bank in Florida in August of 1990, when I think he was like two. That's impressive. So that's how successful Brett is. In 2010, he also helped co-found Orion Jet Center, which is a private jet company that It was sold seven years later in 2017 to Atlantic Aviation. And this was when Brett was like 18. This guy must know what he's doing. Brett is currently a volunteer and young leader on the executive board and an executive board member of the United Way in Miami-Dade County. So he's an avid volunteer to help sort of get down and out kind of youth or younger youth up and running with the United Way, which is awesome. Good for him. So here's the thing, right?
    76:22
    Brett is 34 years old or 35. It looks younger. And he is the owner of Jersey Jack Pinball. Now, he doesn't have a title like president or CEO or COO. Leonard Jr. is above Brett in the company hierarchy, and Brett is left to run the day-to-day of Jersey Jack. And what does he say about being involved with Jersey Jack? Well, he says, we're going to continue to push boundaries. We want to grow our customer base. There's a lot of pinheads and stern fanboys that have yet to own a Jersey Jack pinball machine and really experience it in a home environment. We want to convert those people. Are you going to ask me if I've been converted? Have you been converted? Not really. But, I mean, it is like a Jersey Jack machine. It is so much heavier than a Sturm machine. There's so much more stuff in it. It's insane. So it's unique. It's a different kind of experience. When you lift up the play field of a Jersey Jack, it's more like, oh, my God, what have I gotten myself into? So Brett is the owner and has been an owner of a lot of big companies along the way. He's not hurting. He's not hurting for a sandwich.
    77:40
    But it's still not easy being the kid of a billionaire. And, like, let's face it. Everybody loves his father. His father is very charitable. His father was very successful and made a lot of money. That's a lot of pressure. The other thing is everyone thinks you've kind of been given everything. I'm assuming there's a lot of people that think, oh, here's a 35-year-old kid who's running a company, and it was just sort of given to him by his father. That's a lot of pressure. Brett in 2020 did an interview with Ken Cromwell on the Jersey Jack Pinball Podcast. I think it's a great listen. He comes out as a fighter. He presents himself as though he's got something to prove. He also makes a few mistakes, which hopefully he has learned from a PR perspective. But I think all in all, he comes across as a great dude. He really is, I think, very smart. I think he's really got the passion for the company, and I think he's a lot of fun. Of course, this is five years ago from the date of this recording.
    78:44
    And Brett, he compares himself to Tesla. And this was something that a lot of people did like ten years ago, five years ago. They always compared themselves to Tesla, and I always hated that, right? Because it's this startup mentality, right? Like starting a manufacturing company from nothing. So what does Brett say? Yeah, I forgot about that. You're right. He did do the Tesla thing. I like to compare us to Tesla. Most people don't realize that Tesla was founded in 2003. I've been following them for many years. I've been to the factory. I drive one, and I'm a proud shareholder. Today, this morning, the stock hit a milestone of 1,000 per share, and I think they'll eventually overtake Toyota as the biggest car company in the world. Yeah, that did not age well. Oh, yeah, Tesla shares are now at 240. Or at 240. And I don't have to tell anybody who's tuning in the controversy around Tesla. The idea is, okay, we've got the startup. We're going to go. We've got these great sort of vision that we want to do. It's not easy being Leonard Abbas's son. It's not easy running a company. But I think the changes we have seen in Jersey Jack as they started to prepare for game number two and then they moved into game number three and where they are today, I think, has been a big, big deal. And we'll get into that in our Jersey Jack episode number two. Yeah. Where does that leave Jack in all this?
    80:12
    Jersey Jack, the pinball manufacturer itself, is in a different market than Stern. and it appears as though it has taken them six years to come with terms with that, right? Like they're not really the same company they were when Jack started them, right? Not just from an ownership standpoint, but also from a manufacturing standpoint. What do you think? I think they've gone back and forth. They started out as, you know, we're making machines for the home. You know, these are super packed machines with super deep rule sets for the home. Then they had a stage where they actually made some more stripped down versions of the machines for operators to try to get them in locations,
    80:51
    and then they kind of just gave up on that. And then they've kind of come back. Come back full circle to the original. We're going to make the best. We are the Cadillac of pinball manufacturers. We're going to make the most feature-filled, packed games possible.
    81:04
    And the thing is that they're selling more complex games, but they're selling fewer units of those games than they might expect that they want to. but they are starting to release them in faster succession are they not no than they used to yeah it's where they've really started to kind of ramp up yeah the amount that they're doing now they might be selling 2 000 or 1 000 or 500 games or whatever but they're in rapid succession replacing uh moving them along on the line and when they were selling the more like some stripped down versions of their games they did not sell at all they did not sell well at all that's why i think they abandoned that well those are truly the limited edition i don't think they told us that when I was there. That's why they stopped doing that. And so, what does Brett say about working with Jack? He says, I'm super proud to be Jack's partner. I love working with him. His guidance and decades of experience. What he did to build this company is an amazing story on its own. The pinball community coming together to support an amazing man on his dream. And I feel really lucky to be his partner and to have him by my side. Not in my wildest dreams did I think that I would own the coolest gaming company on Earth. I mean, to be able to work with these guys, these legends, to create such an amazing product. I think what we do is so special. My dad always told me that it's not about being the biggest, it's about being the best at what you do. We're here to deliver the best games that money can buy.
    82:32
    As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to steveablecriticals at gmail.com We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Seriously, we can't just, like, record a version of this that you just play at the end every time. Why do I have to keep re-recording? Whatever. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcatcher. Make sure us, not TPN, but us, turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review, that way more people can find us. Join us on Patreon to support the show. Becoming a pro-crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Join the Discord chat by jumping on at $6 a month as a premium crony. Want all the other perks in a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an Elilitis crony. Maybe you just want a t-shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silverball Chronicles t-shirt.
    83:40
    I made goat curry. Did you see that? I don't know what that is. Goat curry? You don't know what goat curry is? No. I know what a goat is. Yeah, so I ate a goat. You ate a goat? I made curry goat. It was amazing. What did the poor goat do to you? It was really cute. You know cute animals are the best flavored animals.
    84:19
    A lot of the newer... I'm okay. I didn't fall over. Wait, wait, wait. I don't get that. Columbia House, I thought, was the thing where you bought music or whatever. Or books or whatever the hell it was. Oh, yeah, that's right. I thought it was the coffee place. I don't think so. I think you're right. All right, I'll cut that out. Columbia. Let me look that up right now. Columbia House. Oh, yeah, there's Columbia Coffee.
    84:46
    Yeah, but I think Columbia House is the publishing company. Yeah, record company. They're a record company. Yeah, you could buy records via mail order. It was all mail order. That's what I remember. Yeah, because commercials used to be on. You would get them, and then you send your payment back or something. Or they hunt you down.
    85:05
    Okay, not the coffee company. All right, there we go. And I love my Elton John. And my dialed in. My buddy just got a dialed in. Dialed in's great. Yeah, he was really impressed. I'm like, what do you mean you're really impressed? How do you not know? It's a great guy. I have the ultimate limited edition because that is their weakest seller.
    85:27
    Dialed in. The name to know when the drains don't flow. John Sewer, we get the job done. John Sewer takes clogged drains seriously. Their team of technicians is trained to solve any clog or issue in our area's old, complex drain systems. Equipped to respond to your emergency fast. John Sewer and Drain Cleaning. Since 1976. Serving Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Northern Connecticut. Visit johnsewer.com to learn more. John Sewer. We get the job done.