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, miffed 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 going to get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 406 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Lobber, and on today's episode, very excited to be talking about the truth about the Twippies. We're going to be twippy-truthin'. That's right. Also, we're going to be talking a little bit about Thanksgiving and giving thanks. Because as of, I believe, yesterday, the Americans, which make up most of my listeners here on the show, of course, just celebrated Thanksgiving. So I wanted to give thanks to a couple of awesome pinball listeners, pinball companies, and even people of pinball. That's right. And we're going to wrap this whole thing up by talking about a tournament that I was most recently in. Yes, that's right. I did well. We'll just say I did well in my most recent tournament that I played in. But I'm going to save that for the end. So let's start by talking about my last show. On the last show, I was very excited to have the one, the only, Rorden on the show. Tribe member also here on the Poor Men's Pinball Network, of course. Mr. Rorden himself, and it was great to talk to him. I do want to apologize to everybody. I was exhausted for that episode. I think I had worked like 40 hours in the three days leading up to that. Also, Rorden, I don't believe he had a mic there. I know it was also like 6 a.m. where he was, so he was kind of trying to be respectful and a bit quieter. I did try my best to compress all the sound to make it sound a bit better, but just unfortunately, because of the method we were using to record, It didn't sound great, so I'm honestly, I'm probably going to take some time off of recording interviews for a while. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I much, much, much prefer to do interviews face-to-face, eye-to-eye. It makes it a lot easier. I know when I'm interrupting someone or I should jump in at the right time or not. All of those things that are lost in translation when you can't see each other. And I don't have good enough internet, of course, to be using Zoom while I'm trying to record and use the software. But those are all excuses. I still think the meat and the potatoes. I think Rorden did great in the interview. Of course, I wish he was a bit louder. And that's 100% on me. That's not on him. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I had a great time. It was still a really good interview. But just two days after the interview was done, I had Nova Scotia Power here to get my final approval on our solar system, which has been a year and a half nightmare, to be honest. And I don't want to say anything negative about solar because I know in a lot of cases it runs a lot smoother than this if you're not in a 100-year-old farmhouse that needs renovations and such. But anyways, when the Nova Scotia Power people came here, they said the solar panel was all good to go. However, we need to get a new breaker box installed because the old fuse system that's down there is really old. And they basically said we had to get that fixed before they would allow the solar to be running through it. So our solar system, although the solar system is installed great, you know, we can't actually, I'm not actually collecting, I'm not making the big bucks from the solar yet. So we are still attempting to get an electrician, come up with the extra three grand that we're going to need or two and a half, whatever it is. We were already on a slim budget, of course, with the holidays coming up and then still dealing with the financial effects. I felt like we had kind of just got past all the financial effects of Hurricane Fiona. And, of course, that put us out a little bit. But anyways, when that happened, I honestly went into a little bit. I don't even want to use the term depression. I was just I was annoyed. I was more angry and annoyed than depressed. And I didn't feel like recording for some period of time, which, you know, usually I only come up with a show every two weeks. And I know it's been almost three and a half now. So I do apologize. guys. I did plan on doing an episode much earlier than this, but I also just wanted to make sure I was in a better place mentally, physically, financially. That being said, I have gone out and got a job. Part of the reason why I didn't record last week is because I actually put in 40 hours, if you can believe it or not, training at a new job. It is not a full-time job, although the training was full-time, but I'm going to be working security at the two local hospitals. I'm kind of halfway between them. And so I used to work security for years all the way through college, since before college, all the way through college. And I think two years after college, I worked security. And that's actually where I met Drop Target Danielle. That's right. I was a security guard at the call center where she worked. And that's where we met. And we've been together ever since. And I always told her, I said, someday I would maybe go back to doing security. and I've been looking for a job which I thought would be a little bit maybe, you know, I don't want to go to customer service and be doing, you know, working fast food or, you know, a grocery store or anything like that. I would prefer not to do something like that, even though it's not horrible. Physically, my body's probably not up to working like a super vigorous, like factory-type job or warehouse job that I used to work in. And even back in the day, a lot of you know that I tell stories about working for Nestle Ice Cream and I used to be able to palletize, like, you know, 20-liter pails of Laura C. Cord chocolate, like, all day long, and my back would be fine. Well, I'm 42 now, so, you know, I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I can't handle a job that's just physical like that all day long. Of course, doing security at a hospital, especially with the emergency room from time to time, hopefully not. You know, knocking on wood over here. I just made Elowen sit up off my lap and look over. Don't worry. It's just me. It's just me, Luna. It's okay. You know, hopefully I don't ever have to put hands on people and get physical. That being said, we had some good training this week to serve that. And honestly, I'm just excited to be able to go and serve my community and help out wherever it's needed. And at the same time, obviously make some income to bring in for my family, which is just going to be great. Danielle and I have had five now, I believe, of our nine Christmas shows. So we've got four left. We can barely keep up on the demand for our coffee right now, which is so, like, I'm just so excited about that. And I just want to thank everybody in the past who's ordered, because I've got a long list, and I'm actually going to name everybody name by name on my next show, just to thank them all for doing that. I really, really, really appreciate the support. And to anyone who's tried to order recently, I do apologize that we have been lower stock. Thank God we just got coffee in yesterday and updated the website. But I will talk more about that at the end. Let's get into basically the show for today where we're going to be talking about, to start, being thankful. And I really wanted to get this show out this weekend. Unfortunately, a close friend of mine, family member of mine, hurt themselves and had to go to the Emerge Saturday night. And I was kind of dealing with that. And then Sunday, all day Sunday, dealing with that. So I really did mean for this to go up. you know what, you don't need a silly holiday like Thanksgiving to give thanks. You can give thanks at any time. And first of all, I want to start by thanking my tournament director, Tom, from the Fundy Flippers. He does a great job, is always there, always on time, always gives very fair decisions or at least tries his very best. And I want you, the next time you see your tournament director, if you're a tournament player like me, to thank them. because sometimes it is a thankless job. And just that, you know, maybe buy them that one extra beer or whatever, pop, drink, whatever it may be, maybe offer just, you know, to stay around and help them clean up, if that's part of the thing afterwards, offer to come early and, you know, test play the machines. You know, maybe just leave them an extra credit on a machine when they're going over to play it. Just something nice because Terminate Directors, I think we're really quick to thank other, like especially podcasters are quick to thank other podcasters and live streamers and thank companies, but sometimes we forget about not just the tournament directors, but all the other volunteers it takes to make a tournament run smoothly. So thank your local tournament director. Thank your local operator, all these operators, like Patrick in Moncton here that has his machines in zeros, and also at Spin It Records, as well as the bowling alley over in Riverview. So thank you, Patrick. And to you guys, whoever it is that takes the time, the energy, the risk, I know Mike Speedy of Speed City Records, of course, had all his pins at Call the Office in London, Ontario. And not once but twice people broke in to Call the Office and just did horrible things like poured beers on top of the pinball machine for no reason, broke open the coin door to look for change and just wrecked like a $200 coin mech just to look for some quarters, which, of course, they take the money out each night, so that was completely pointless. They poured liquor everywhere. It was just silly. It was like, so by all these operators, by leaving their pins out in the wild, that's kind of scary for them. These are their babies too, even if they don't have them at their house. And you should thank your local operator, and you should thank whoever, not only that, but like up in Moncton there, I have Brandon Baxter. Thank you, Brandon. He's the gentleman who fixes all the machines. Now, quite often the person who operates also fixes, but not always. And in this particular case, I think Patrick does some of the fixing, but I think Brandon does most of it. So thank you, Brandon, for fixing all the machines. And thank you to Greg Hatt down in Halifax. Every person on the East Coast pretty much already knows Greg, but if you need any work done on your pinball machines, Greg is probably the best guy that I've heard from everybody, been recommended from everybody down here. So thank you. I also want to thank all the live streamers, and I'm specifically talking about the live streamers who live stream all the tournaments. Because although I don't tune in that often and just watch people live streaming on Twitch, like Monday to Friday, just like playing a machine, I don't do that as much anymore. I still love watching the tournaments, and I will get really wrapped up into it, and I'll commit like 24 hours in a weekend like I did at Freeplay Florida. and I know Tom obviously from Triple Drain Pinball Podcast as well as Fox Cities Pinball streaming on Twitch he seems to go to so many of these tournaments and live stream so many of them so Tom thank you so much for doing that you've made so many more weekends interesting by allowing us to watch the tournament happen and he does a great job of doing it he has awesome people he gets on the mic doing commentating And, of course, I don't want to forget about Carl D'Python Anghelo. If I am going to be watching, it's either probably Jack Danger. Jack Danger, thanks for all you do. Or Carl D'Python Anghelo. They're kind of my two favorite live streamers to watch who aren't showing a tournament. I should mention, while I'm talking about tournaments, I should mention Backhand Pinball. They've been streaming a lot of tournaments recently. And each and every one of you live streamers streaming pinball tournaments, it sometimes is thankless. Sometimes you do get, you know, people in chat, oh, thank you so much. And you will get some bits and you will get some subs. But then other days it could go, you know, hours and hours and hours, and you're not necessarily getting thanked by anyone. And it's a very long job. You have to get there like an hour before everybody else and usually stay an hour after tearing down all the equipment. So go thank your local streamer, whether it be or just your favorite streamer on Twitch, of course. Carl D'Python Anghelo's got a new challenge coming up. He was just, of course, part of the Triple Dream podcast over on the Pinball Network, and he was talking about a new challenge coming up. Go listen to that if you haven't. You can hear about that. Thank you, Triple Drain, for all that you do. Triple Drain is certainly up there with one of the pinball podcasts that I find myself listening to pretty much every episode when it comes out. Of course, there is many awesome shows over there on our competition, the Poor Man's Pinball Network, our competition over there on TPN. I don call them competition I totally just kidding but I know Ron and Dave David Dennis there they just put out a brand new Silver Ball Chronicles talking all about the history of pinball I haven got the opportunity to listen to that Of course, my friends over there at the Super Awesome Pinball Show, they just had George Gomez come on, and of course, again, due to my new job and the fact that we're doing about two shows per week right now, I have not had time to listen, but that Super Awesome Pinball Show is next on my pod list to listen up to. I also wanted to send out a huge shout-out to Slam Tilt. Bruce and Ron are totally underestimated. And I wanted to give you guys a little tidbit. I hardly ever have news to give you, but this Saturday I was actually watching Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, and Chris, thanks for doing all your live streams. I have chosen not to listen to the podcast through the paywall because I believe I can get the gist of usually what's happening in Kaneda's head through his live streams, although I'm sure he does have very entertaining podcasts as well. And if there's a possibility in the future, I might pay to listen to catch up to some of them behind the paywall. But for right now, I'm happy to just be part of the live streams. But Todd Tuckey was actually on there, and Todd Tuckey announced to the world that he was going to be hosting the Twippies. Now, this will shortly get into our Twippy talk, But I do want to continue to thank a couple of the other pinball podcasters while we're here. I'm very excited, though. You know, I think Todd Tuckey will do a good job. Of course, I don't know. I don't think he's going to do. I love Emoto. I love Todd Tuckey. I hope that they have good chemistry together. I just don't think they're going to have as good of chemistry, say, as Zach and Greg from Straight Down the Middle. And I want to thank them very much for that. I will say in the last straight down the middle video I watched was the Halloween review which I personally didn't really agree with because there's a ton of things about Halloween I don't love but I will tell you this Greg dressed up as Mike Myers or whatever, like the Halloween guy that's scary as shit man, holy frick I was watching that and I was like this dude's scaring me, it's very obvious he is an actor because he's got some good acting chops there. You're scaring the crap out of me on that one. And although I do love the artwork, and there is some other things I love about that pin, you know, I've talked about it exhaustively. There are many things I don't particularly love about Halloween, especially those lifters. I'm not a big fan of that, I can tell you that for sure. But I've gone off track. What else would you expect? Come on. Yeah, Todd Tuckey popped into Kaneda's briefly, and he was saying that. Now, before that, I was really hoping it would be Bruce and Ron. I had heard that Bruce and Ron from Slam Tilt, and I thought they would be great to do it. But of course, on their most recent podcast, they said that, well, especially Ron said that he did not want to do it. So I don't think they're going to be doing it. I think it is confirmed. You know, unless Todd Tuckey was jumping the gun, and maybe he was just in consideration, it sounds like it's going to be Todd Tuckey. And I do actually think Todd is a good, you know, a very good option, because everybody in pinball knows and loves Todd Tuckey. They love his videos. Of course, when you're going to go buy a new pinball machine, usually that's one of the first videos you go and watch, especially if it's not one of the top like 50 machines. There's usually not many videos, and you can almost find Todd Tuckey in a video for any pin you ever want, right over there on TNT. So thank you, TNT. Thank you also to Kerry Hardy on YouTube. I want to make sure I got that in there. I also wanted to thank, of course, The Pinball Show and Final Round on TPN. Silverball Chronicles, we already mentioned them there is tons more live streamers out there that I don't get to watch too often, especially people who are way out there on the west coast but I know I used to watch a lot of Colorado Pinball I also used to watch a lot of Game Time television I don't really know if they stream as much anymore but I am going to make a point to try to get back on Twitch a little bit more during the week and check out some more of that content. One of my favorite things I do like watching is the TPN After Dark, which is usually hosted, I know Joel's always there from Triple Drain, and then a few, you know, a couple other people. I also, while I was thinking about it, I wanted to thank so much Glenn, Glenn the Skateboarder, who obviously helped with Dr. John. Well, he did most of it, but Dr. John was also there in my theme song at the very start, of course. And I wanted to thank, of course, everybody else on the Poor Man's Pinball Network, of course. Most of you have probably already heard, but Mr. Raymond Davidson himself, number one pinball player in the world, or I guess former now because Escher's number one. Oh, by the way, congratulations to Ray Day on winning Free Play Florida. I got to watch most of that tournament, and wow, the play was spectacular. I think at some point, like, Ray Day was, like, the underdog to, like, Escher Lefkoff and at least one or two other people there. And I think any time Raymond Davidson is the underdog in a tournament, like he's not the, you know, 90% to win or more, you know, they've got some great competition. I honestly thought either Jason Zoller or Escher would probably walk away with it, but Ray Day got it. So Ray Day's just edging. Now, because Escher finished that close, I know that Ray Day's not going to take over Escher in the number one spot on the IFPA chart. But, you know, scratching a little closer, getting a little closer, right? So Mr. Raymond Davidson himself and our own Rachel Risto from Tribe Multiball on Poor Man's Pebble Network, they just released episode two not too long ago, of course, of the Ray Ray Show. Love that name. And, wow, Glenn, you killed it on that theme song. Sometimes I have it in my head and drop target Danielle's like, Albert, can you shut the frick up? Because it's just so catchy. It's an earworm, as they say. It gets deep in there and penetrates your brain and your soul. What else do we have? I will say this as well. Drew, congratulations for a very long time. And, of course, Neil from Coast to Coast Pinball was my absolute favorite solo pinball podcaster. Then for a while there, it was Chris from Canada's Pinball Podcast. And then, believe it or not, somewhere when I wasn't really enjoying listening to Chris as much anymore, it became Marv Loco, also known as Travis Murray, who doesn't really do his solo podcasting anymore. and believe it or not, I would say even Joel there especially, he did just another pinball podcast. He kind of flirted with my top favorite for a while and then for a while there, I haven't really had like a, you know, a favorite solo pinball podcaster and it's now officially Drew. He just came out with yet another pinball podcast by himself, which was kind of a Thanksgiving week special and that's it, Drew. Congratulations, you took over as number one. And I think that Drew is doing a great job. His first few times having to go solo there, I'm sure it was all new to him, and maybe they weren't the best episodes on the planet. But now I am absolutely loving everything that comes out. Of course, you guys probably already know this, but shortly before that episode, there was Tribe Multiball with Rachel and Tim. and that episode came out on November 20th starring Steve Moonpie Johnson. You'll have to go listen to that one because Tim the Lion Man Lee does a Sean Connery impression that is just, it'll knock your socks off. I'm not going to say if it's in a good way or a bad way. You've probably already heard it. It'll knock your socks off. Okay, that was horrible. That was worse than even Tim. but wow thank you so much to everybody on the Poor Man's Pinball Network and just thank you to all the pinball podcasters all the I'm sure I missed out on lots of creators there's tons of YouTube content that I don't watch that I should and there's tons of people who are kind of new to it especially since the pandemic that are doing it and there is lots of people on Twitch that I haven't even mentioned also Buffalo Pinball I do make sure I watch I think it's only bi-monthly or is it monthly now? They actually do the Brody Even podcast, right? Like once a month. I love watching that. I did just see today on YouTube, Buffalo Pinball, Kevin Manny there was hosting Drained, the new P3 multimorphic pin. Okay, I like the sound. The sound is meant to sound kind of like Castlevania. I like the sound. This is just a really quick first impressions. I only watched about five minutes of the video this morning. I thought that the visuals looked really cool like the whole screen and everything looked pretty cool I felt like there wasn't tons of shots there's the four shots and then the gobble hole in the very center the four stand-ups there's all those stand-ups back there but then even the drop-downs at the back kind of feel like they're in a waste of space because there's no way to actually really aim at them you kind of just fling the ball up there excuse me and uh oh coffee burp and sometimes the ball will you know hit a couple more stand-ups and come back almost like doing an orbit but I just felt like there I don't know there's just not enough for me to shoot out there I feel like there's just I don't know I love ems and all that stuff I guess here's where I'm at if I already had the p3 multimorphic and I had like every single other system that was out for P3 and every other game, and I was a completionist, yes, I would go ahead and get it. Because I don't necessarily think it's the worst one, and I haven't got to play it yet. This is just watching five minutes of a livestream. I'm just not that sold that it's I don't think that I I love EM, so I should be the market for them. But, I don't know. I wasn't sold on it by watching the gameplay, bear in mind everyone other than the three people I was watching, other than Kevin had never, ever played it before. But anyways, let's start with the pinball companies. P3 Multimorphic, thanks for everything you do. Thanks for bringing high tech, really, to pinball and making that whole screen, having one of the best mechs we've ever seen in heist. Weird Al, I can't wait to play Weird Al. I know it's coming to all you East Coast listeners. It is coming, I believe two to three weeks from now. It should be actually at Spin It Records, which makes sense. It's a record store. They've got that whole line there of rock and roll pinball machines. Pretty much every one ever created. Of course, you've got to add Weird Al to it. I'm very excited to play Weird Al. Ironically, I'm going to play Weird Al before I've played Godzilla, Stranger Things, and everything other than I haven't played Rush. I'm going to end up playing Weird Al before I play tons of these other ones, right? So listen up in the future. I'm going to do a little review on how Weird Al is at playing Weird Al, and it should be fun. So yeah, thank you P3 for all that you do. I also wanted to thank Spooky Pinball very much, although there has been some issues with Halloween and Ultraman as far as quality goes. As far as I had heard before that, they were typically very, very very good some of the best playfields in the business they can stand up to everything right i know other people that have had total nuclear annihilation for years and never had to do anything other than a quick adjustment or two and never had anything any major issues with them so they are built like a tank for the most part i'm sorry american pinball it's spooky's pins that are built like a tank right am i right i've never owned one i don't know but from what i understand And maybe, let's hope if Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you, comes out from spooky, it's better quality. Okay, should have practiced that ahead of time, not going to lie. But I love Scooby-Dooby-Doo. Zoinks! Scooby! And I love Scooby Snacks, okay? So that is a really cool theme. I obviously financially am not in it. I couldn't even afford an American Girl pen probably right now. But when I am going to get, you know, hopefully in the future, now that I've got a little part-time job kicking, I should be able to get some funds going and fill up Orbeez Arcade slowly again. And hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, if the shots, maybe the shots look a little more fun than maybe Halloween and Ultraman, and the code is further along and the animations are better, like, come on, you've got to nail the animations for Scooby-Dooby. now to be fair the animations for Scooby Dooby should be a lot easier more like Rick and Morty hopefully if they got all the assets because I said several times Rick and Morty has the best animations in pinball but how could it not Because it Justin Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon original creation and those original scenes, right? And it definitely, Rick and Morty arguably has the best callouts in all pinball. Again, I haven't got the chance to play it yet, but, you know, To me, I think that Halloween and Ultraman was a bit of a step back from Rick and Morty. But this is not where I complain. This is to thank them for what they do. So thank you, Spooky, for everything you do. More competition in pinball is better for all of us pinball nerds. So keep doing your thing. Maybe make the animations, codes, and shots a little bit better next time. But keep it up. Keep on doing it. Keep on keeping on. So over to American Pinball. Galactic Tank Force. I don't know what the hell the Triple Drain guys are smoking, but they must have some real good Canadian chronic, because they are stoked. They are stoked. Stoked, bro. For the theme Galactic Tank Force. How could you even be, how, in what world, I guess they're not in this world, I guess they're out to frickin' lunch in outer space, out in orbit, out among the stars, because, holy frick, to me that sounds like, I really couldn't think of a sillier theme. Like, I suppose I could, but I feel like it's the silliest theme that, I don't know. I don't know. I love Franchi, and if Franchi Artworks are, that will go a long way. And if it's really campy and really cheesy and really over the top, just kind of like Attack from Mars, like making fun of itself, okay, maybe. like, Galactic Tanks in Outer Space Collide! I don't know. I don't know. If it has really cool mechs, really cool shots, and I will say the Built Like a Tank does more so go with American Pinball because that's one of the companies I hear the least complaints about. Of course, the one ramp shot on Beer Fest, Oktoberfest, whatever it is. I always call it Beer Fest, Oktoberfest. Really hard to hit, but again, I want to stay thankful here. I really appreciate American Pinball everything that you do I did make a joke that the topper for Galactic Tank Force would literally just be David Fix's hat and although I think that's funny, obviously I don't think it's true but if I ever get to meet David Fix in real life I would like to do just a short interview with him I think he's such a character and although we haven't seen that much since he's joined American Pinball American Pinball kind of seemed like a ship without a captain before Mr. Dave Fix was there. And although Dave hasn't fixed it all yet, I do think, and he did go a little overboard by saying, you know, you have to be five years in before you have an opinion on this. And some other things he said were a little bit out there. I do think overall, I'm hoping, I'm hoping he's steering the ship in the correct direction. He at least seems excited about it. He's genuine about pinball. He's been around pinball for a long time. He's helped with the Chicago Pinball Expo for a long time. He certainly knows pinball inside and out. I don't know how well he knows marketing and advertising and social media and that sort of thing. But he knows hats, and that's a damn good hat. And it's an even better mustache. And if Dave Fix even comes through with half the stuff he says wasn't BS, I'm really excited to see everything else coming out from American Pinball. So let's move on to Haggis. Okay, everybody says a Fathom is beautiful, Fathom is gorgeous, it's awesome, and I would agree. A lot of people also say they like how there's the two different code on it, and I think that's incredible. The other thing, I mean, some people complain that they did take a long time, but it seems like every pinball company is taking a long time at this point, so it's like, what's new? I'm excited to see what they do next. Again, more competition, the better. of course with it coming from Australia it's going to be priced out for many of us here in North America but I think there's ways to get in on it and have that lowered and of course if you're an operator or someone who loves rare and unique things just the fact that it's made in Australia makes it more rare and unique because it's going to be harder to get over here so I really really really hope that they are doing was it Centaur? I believe that was supposed to be possibly next up I know it hasn't been confirmed by them. Something strange, too. Stern confirmed. Thank you, Haggis, for everything. I really sincerely appreciate it. I'm just glad there's – it's nice to see there's more companies doing well. I don't want to go – I'm probably missing a lot of companies. Home Pin, what's the Canadian one, Pinball Adventures or something. I'm thankful for all of them, even though, you know, don't take investors' money unless you're going to be able to get them their product. but Dutch Pinball, the Pinball Brothers, I've probably missed somebody there but I'm thankful for all of them. I really am thankful for all of them because as we know there was only one pinball company just like 20 years ago. We were down to one and now we're up to what like 7, 8, 9, 10? So this is great. This is overall really, really, really good for us the consumer who wants to have more price points. I will say this, I will say this, that many of these companies who jacked up their prices in the last few years are going to have to drop them down because we are almost a full year past the pinnacle of where I would say the bubble burst, even though people don't like that term. We could say the market corrected. We could say market softening. I think it was like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pro, and this was on pinballprices.com. Doc Finley, go over there, buy him a beer unofficially, not sponsored but sponsored because he's also a tribe member, go over there and buy this man a beer, but I was looking on pinballprices.com and I noticed that to me, the peak of pinball pricing, obviously you've got Jersey Jacks, Pirates of the Caribbean, that sold at like $40,000 that's probably the pinnacle of like the start of like the mountain like, you know, getting near the top But I actually think the complete bubble bursting, if you had to call that, if you had to pinpoint one sale, was like just after Christmas of last year. So almost, you know, 11 months ago now, a Jurassic Park sold for, I forget how much it was, Jurassic Park Pro sold for like almost seven grand. And I think that, you know, now everything is kind of coming back down. You're seeing a lot of softening. the market softening although not great for people who like to buy three or four of every le and flip it is actually overall good for the general consumer for the average poor dude like me who wants to be able to buy an em again for like five six seven hundred dollars and i'd have to pay twelve thirteen fourteen hundred dollars just for like you know a non-museum style um pen for a guy who wants to be able to grab a Lethal Weapon 3 for like $2,500, $3,000, not like $5,000 like it was up to, right? So especially for people who are new to pinball or just getting into pinball or people who have been waiting for the prices to kind of start to come down to earth, it's actually overall better for those people. And I know that as a distributor or as a manufacturer, you might look at this as being a bad thing, but it happened with all collectibles. It happened with sports cards. It happened with comics. It happened with exotic cars. It happened with shoes. We saw the shoe market do the same thing. Like Jordan 1s went through the freaking roof, right? They went crazy, and then now they've all kind of come back down. So it's not just, it happened with toys. It happened with Funkos. It happened with figurines. It happened with models. It happened with like, you know, it wasn't just pinball that went crazy. It was used cars, new cars, everything. You're finally able to start getting cars at MRSP, like manufacturers retail suggested pricing, outside of like, you know, maybe New York City and LA, you can actually get cars at like the, you know, what they're supposed to be sold at now. And we're starting to see this with distributors having to put, you know, especially their used pins on sale to be able to make those sales. And so this is overall a good thing. It allows people who before there was a barrier to entry. And we all know that as much as you love playing pinball on location, because God knows I do but I didn't really fall hard like fall full in love like you know french kiss get there really give it some tongue I didn't really fall hard into pinball until after I could have one at my house and just the joy of having even one or two pins at my house like I think at one point I only had solar ride and meteor at my house and just having some friends over and shooting the shit on a Friday or Saturday night and having a couple beers and just maybe even having playing a loony game or a tuning game here in Canada or throwing five bucks on the glass, you know, if you're down there in the States. They have $1 bills. Is there $2 bills in the States? I have no clue. I think there is. I'm not sure. But, you know, just that's when you really start to fall in love with pinball. And for some people, it's getting that first pinball machine home and actually working on it themselves. Not me. But for a lot of people, that's another part of the reason why they fall in love with pinball. So I think we've thanked all the companies. Stern, thanks for sticking around there. Also, thank you, Stern, for making that, you know, like Jack Danger's. I know they're just finishing up on the line right now, but Jack Danger's Jurassic Park, of course. That was nice to have that entry-level good buddy of mine, Dylan, who lives in Fredericton. He was working at like a youth type of, like, I don't know if it was, basically a place where youth congregate, right? And teenagers. And, you know, they had X amount of money. They wanted to get something that wasn't going to break down often, but they also didn't want to charge any of the kids money, so they didn't care about a coin mech. And they also wanted something with an easy, simple rule set. And they ended up getting, I believe, these... did they get this? I think they got the Star Wars one. Yeah, the Star Wars home version. He helped them choose that, and it worked great for them. They had it there for a year without hardly any issues and all the kids there could really get into it you know it has easier rule set just that extra you know it being you know 1500 to two grand less I get if you're a hardcore pinball nerd that extra 1500 you're going to go well I'd rather the coin mech in case I ever want to put it on location yada yada yada but for a lot of places that extra 1500 or 2000 could put it out of reach you know to being in their budget and I like to think about all the thousands of people that were introduced to pinball by getting you know a lesser expensive pin and with those pins both slowly going the way of the Buffalo. I guess they're both on their last run. They even have the comic version of the Star Wars, the pen or the home pin or whatever it is, right? So anyways, I want to thank Stern for being the company that is getting the best licenses, let's be honest, typically. They're also the company that is, you know, they have the pro at the lowest price, even though we're seeing the prices go up quite a bit, especially on the alleys. I think even Stern's realizing they're hitting the ceiling there probably on the alleys or damn close. And Jersey Jack, I almost forgot about Jersey Jack. Thank you to Jersey Jack and everyone over there. Of course, Pat Lawler has stepped away. And I did make a comment about this before, but I'll say it again. If Toy Story 4 was, of course, yes, if it was Toy Story 1, 2, 3, like a lot of people wanted, they would have sold more. But if Toy Story 4, just the way it is today, if they had the standard edition that was in and around the same price as... Oh my god. I knew that would happen. If they had... Sorry. Everybody. If they had... That is Drop Target Danielle. Let me know. They're on their way back from good old Moncton. and I told her I was podcasting and not to call that's how much she loves me sorry about that everybody so what I was saying is thank you very much to Jersey Jack I have not got to try Eric Meunier's new pin of course new in brackets, Guns N' Roses I don't think there's any on the east coast if you're listening to this and you live on the east coast and you know where there's a Guns N' Roses just tell me where it is and invite me to come over and try it because I don't think there's any in the wild. I don't think there's any in arcades, and I would love to get to try to play it. Oh, I was talking about, of course, Toy Story 4. If Toy Story had came out and it was in and around the same price as a Stern Pro, I swear to God it would be the best-selling pen of the year. It would be. We all know that. It's a great pen to have on location. The theme itself draws especially younger people in, and I really really really am excited to play it but of course the pricing is what threw everybody off Tim the Lion Man Lee said that and pretty much everyone I talked to they said well it kind of a fun game to play and your friends your neighbors especially people with kids will love playing it but the price is just a little bit, you know, they found the ceiling. They really did. Jersey Jack, if nothing else, thank you for finding the ceiling. You found it. At some point, they may need to keep the line running, and on their next pin, And they're going to, I'm assuming, have to lower the prices a little bit if they would like to sell more, especially of their whatever, the CE, the collector's edition, their highest model, right? All right. So I think that's really, I thanked all the companies. There's probably other people I'm missing. And I know there's other pinball companies, you know, like Marco Pinball and a lot of other pinball companies that do a lot of repairs and do awesome stuff for pinball. But I think I've hit most of the people there. The other thing I want to tell you guys about was this pinball tournament that I had the pleasure of doing a couple weeks ago. And I went to it with my family. There was only 12 of us there. It was in Moncton. Drop Target Danielle came. Hurry Up Hayden, Little Orby Jr. And Hayden and I played very, very well. We ended up meeting each other. well in the second to last round before finals the second last round of finals Hayden had to play against Jeremy from Fundy Flippers and he knows all those machines he lives in Moncton he's a really really really good player I think he's ranked number two in the province yeah he is I'm pretty sure and I'm very very very nervous to play him in the finals because our provincials in January are going to be at Zero's Arcade where we were there, and that's his home turf. And somehow, someway, Hayden took him out in the best three of five match. So I was like, what? And I somehow beat Brandon Baxter, who's the guy who works on all those machines and has the record on most of those machines and knows them much better than me. So I somehow beat him in the second last round, and I had to go against my own son, Mr. Hayden Agar himself, Hayden Riley Agar, in finals. And I wasn't nervous at all because I knew exactly which pins Hayden liked and which ones he didn't like. And I knew which ones I thought I could beat him on. And I picked the really old Star Wars pin and I absolutely destroyed him on it. I knew he didn't like that game and he hadn't played it much. And I kind of felt bad as a dad because I was like, but I don't want to beat him in straight matches, like, you know, straight through, like best two out of three. I think it was best two out of three, not best two out of five. But I didn't want to beat him in straight matches, but also as a pinball nerd, I couldn't not try in finals. And I was like, okay, put yourself in Escher's dad's. No, I'm just kidding. Because Escher and Escher's dad, of course, are very, very, very well-known pinball players who get to lots of finals together. So I was trying to put myself in his position. I thought he wouldn't let up on Escher, so I'm not going to let up on Hayden, even though neither of us are near their caliber of players. and now his first name I can't remember it I apologize, sorry Esherdad anyways for me to be able to get first place for my first time out here on the east coast and I wasn't that surprised that sounds cocky to say I don't know if it was intuition I don't know if it was just I feel like I was due I just don't know if just kind of like I was so mad at our solar not being able to get connected finally that I was just like in a place where I was like, F it, I don't care. I know one thing that I did very differently that I'm going to do in future tournaments is I did not partake in a lot of the devil's lettuce. That may have helped, even though I maybe had a little before the tournament. I didn't really have much during. And I also didn't drink much alcohol. I think I slowly sipped on three tall cans of beer during it, but I didn't drink one or two quick beers before the tournament started and then have three or four during the tournament so that by the time I got to finals I was still completely had my wits about me or so to speak right I decided to just be really smart about it and I knew I had a good a good ranking because of course in provincials like first place 16th in the first round and then second place 15th and third place and I was eighth so I somehow won the tournament got first that boosted me all the way up to fourth in the province from eighth and now it looks like I'm going to have to play Mr. Dave Dennis of Silver Ball Chronicles, of course, because I believe he finished 12th, which means that in the first round, if no one else above him taps out or isn't able to make it, which could happen, but right now if everything stays as it sits because there's no tournaments left between now and January, 4th would be playing 12th, right, because he's four away from 16th. So I would have to play David Dennis. and David Dennis and I had of course a bet which you all know about from listening to my interview with him not too long ago about a month and a half maybe two months ago now Mr. David Dennis and I had a bet and I could have tried to say oh I beat him because I did beat him in the tournament 12 but I only beat him because he wasn't able to go so really our next tournament we're going to be playing is in January and we're going to have to push the bet until then so what else can I tell you guys didn't want the show to be too long today. I am a little exhausted still, and I apologize from that. I have a bit of the case of the continued Monday, even though it's Tuesdays. Yesterday was Cyber Monday. That being said, we've never, ever, ever done a coupon code on Angry Alpaca, but through our Squarespace store, we've actually done a Cyber Monday week, I guess. I set it up for one week starting today, the 28th. Cyber Week sale because today is no longer Monday, of course. It's Tuesday now. But this will run all the way until November 5th. So if you're hearing this before November 5th, I'm not going to extend it. We're very low on quantity right now. Thankfully, we only have one show coming up this weekend. And I am down to two sample bags of our newest coffee called The Force. The Force is a blend of our light roast and our dark roast. So just like the Force in Star Wars, of course, is a combination of light and dark. It's a really good medium roast on the dark side, if you get that. And it's got a really cool picture of Grogu on it. We now have sample packs that I believe are only $7 or $8. They are on the website. Tim Lee let me know that one of his favorite things to do Saturday mornings, he has the regular coffee, probably just the Nabob or the Nacaf or something like that Monday to Friday. But on Saturday mornings, he sits down with his wife, and they enjoy some angry alpaca coffee. And he's been doing this for the last, you know, I don't know, two months or three months since he bought it, and he absolutely loves it. And thank you for the glowing review, Tim Lee. I know that you said that, you know, that's part of your Saturday routine now is to sit down, have a nice really high-end, maybe a little more expensive, but also higher quality. Chef's kiss, right? yummy, delicioso coffee. What I'm going to do is everybody who uses the code Tim Lee Sucks at Pinball, so that's Tim, T-I-M, Lee, L-E-E, Sucks at Pinball. I'm sure you can spell that. It's not the at symbol. It's A-T, all lowercase. You don't have to put a capital T, a capital L, a capital P, just Tim Lee Sucks at Pinball, all lowercase. You're going to get 10% off, which is pretty crazy because we've never ever done this before. And between Hummingbird Homestead and Angry Alpaca, we have about 4,000 Facebook fans. I'm not going to tell any of them about this. The couple hundred of you listening to this over the next five days will be the only people that will get the opportunity to actually go purchase this at 10% off. We've never done this before. So 10% off means normally you'd buy a bag of coffee for 22 Canadian. I think that's like, It's like 18 American or 17 American. Anyways, you would get approximately 70 cups. So the amount in it is enough to make six, basically to make six pots of 12 cups each. So 72 cups, we'll say. So 10% of that, you're getting, what, seven and a half cups for free. So yeah, go ahead, go and order. If you haven't ordered from us before, it's really, really simple. All you do is go into Angry Alpaca on Facebook. click the shop now button that will bring you to our squarespace store which we use because it charges us a much lower percentage than like say an etsy store or our own uh you know our own website to do it that way it also tracks all of our inventory for us which is very important and if you've been waiting for a time or a chance to try it i would do it now not only are we fully stocked in our small little guys but we're also fully stocked uh in our large bags for right now anyways until at least probably this Saturday when we have a show. So if you're wanting to get some and you've been thinking about it, use the code TimLeeSucksAtPinball. You just type that in at the checkout. It will show you that it's playing a 10% discount. And boom, Bob's your uncle and you can get yourself some awesome organic eco-roasted coffee. Help myself out. And also, you know, just do something cool and fun for yourself to boot just because it is cyber monday sale the very first two people to order are going to get a free seven dollar value the force with cute little grogo grogu on it our medium roast on the dark side a sampler size enough to brew 12 full cups so the first two people to order are not just going to get the 10 off if they use code tim lee sucks at pinball give themselves seven cups free but they'll also get an extra 12 cups free that's 19 friggin free cups so basically you're paying for 70 and you're getting 99 cups of coffee for free okay that's 20 cups on orby that's a lot of saturdays of sitting down with a friend or family member and having a couple beautiful wonderful delicioso cups of coffee so we also are pretty stocked up on tea right now we just got a new tea order in so whether you're looking for tea or coffee head over there help me out help yourself out could you think of a better stocking stuffer for a friend or family member than like a little like cool 12-pack of, you know, or sorry, a three-pack of, you know, coffee or tea that you're helping out a local company and you're getting an organic, delicious product. So anyways, that's enough of my Win Schilling for today. I love you pinball nerds. I miss you pinball nerds because I don't plan on doing, I do plan on doing interviews again, but I'm either going to do them in person or I'm going to use Zencastr or something besides Audacity because I found that I need to use something else better to help me compress everything so it sounds better. And so I am going to try to do that. But for now, you might just hear me do some solar episodes. I also want to give a big shout out to Joe Chervino of Pinball Degenerates. If you guys haven't seen these rad pictures, if you're not part of Pinball Degenerates, what's going on? Get over there and like that Facebook group. But you probably are a part of it. You've seen these. He's calling them the degenerate portraits, I believe. He's degenerating yourself. So he's taking yourself and he's making it look kind of like 80s or early 90s kind of like, just go look at it, but you end up getting pop bumpers stuck in your head and blood coming out everywhere. Sort of kind of looks a little bit like Garbage Pail Kids mixed with, I don't know, sort of that direction, but not exactly. Go check it out. But I have just confirmed with Joe today I'm going to be getting one of those. So excited for that. If you're the next, like in the next five or ten people, I think, that get degenerated, you'll be part of the poster. They're going to do a large poster, and, of course, you'll get that portrait for yourself. Drop Target Danielle has kindly offered to give me that for Christmas, so very excited to get that done. I think I'm also going to use that. I have confirmed with Joe that once you've ordered it, you can do whatever you want with the picture, right? It's yours at that point. so I would like to use that for the Pinball Nerds podcast trading cards and somehow incorporate that picture make it its own card as an insert that I would have in the pack as well so that should be all exciting other than that, thank you so much Pinball Nerds for listening I love you, I miss you I'm going to come back more often I'm sorry it took me a while there I just wasn't really in a good place mentally to record and I promised myself when I came back to doing Pinball Podcasting 16 episodes ago that if I just didn't feel like recording, I wasn't going to force myself to do it because no one wants to hear a grumpy Orby. You don't want to hear a Debbie Downer or a negative Nancy. You want to hear me come out here and try my best to be positive, but also tell you the truth. And that's what I try to be each and every episode for you, my listener. Until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe the Poor Men's Pinball Network.