80:53industry um I Know Travis to talk about this long time Jo this is what he this is what he thinks about all day it's it's I think it comes down to how much do I want to say publicly give away all the song and so so that's why I just throw it out I mean this is obviously Travis's like day job like this is this is our hobby it's Travis's day job too but you can we can all have a a gut feel about how the market has changed in the last year and and I we can talk freely about it but I'll I'll take I'll take the first lead on this it surprises me at how quickly it changed it didn't uh it seemed like over about six months we went from gotta get a game got to get a game to you know what hold you can wait and maybe if you hold off you can get it so this makes me concerned about the overall state of the industry because if if buyers who used to be historically have been Le and and premium buyers which I would argue that Tom and I have been in that category Tom actually see I see a lot of L's behind him that got yeah if if we man humble brag um if if I have started shrinking back and saying you know what I used to be an Le I'm probably more of a premium buyer and maybe I'm a premium used buyer now you are eroding the people who are willing to buy a game this is the car market right you're you're eroding the people who are willing to buy a car take the hit because that's how the industry works you shouldn't be able to sell um Ed things for more than new in boox things because that tells me a margin is left on the table um but if you if there is a segment of the population who are eroding and I know I'm a small segment but is that enough to concern the industry because it is a supply and demand market and if the Supply is way outstripping what demand is then does that have a ripple effect back toward manufacturers back toward their ability to they built these huge manufacturing facilities and do they have to pump the brakes on what their facilities are because they're putting out too much they still have overhead they still have standard St they still have to pay the electrical bill every every month you still have to pay the rent every month and what does that do for the next one two years of the market because I'm concerned I'm concerned that we are going to see some companies and probably some dealerships that are going to be in crisis and are not going to be able to meet their overhead and may have to close doors I would say that that's pretty much spoton I mean I've been telling you guys I know in our triple Jin chat I've been saying it since what summer of 2022 can it and that justes from looking at the analytics what people are searching see what the consumer habits are you could see it coming at some point because obviously raw materials and everything catches up I think what's going on with pinball is that there is something that's foundationally broken on the the for the end consumer like it's it's obvious it's there and there's a lot of variables that are going into that that's both on the m ufacturers it's on the dealers and it's on consumers I think it's very much it's it's like a whole Vin diagram of everything happening at once and I think it's a cumulative thing it's not just like one single thing that why it's happening it had to build a lot over time and I think it it just goes back to like you're talking about Le Scott right and I know Tom you've discussed Le's too so it's kind of like I think what pinball has really kind of lost out on recently is that their core offer which always should be the Le in general to help push all of products I think they've kind of lost it with that they've kind of lost the narrative with that being their core their core offer such as understanding how to increase demand like it's not just supply and demand you have to know how to increase the demand for your product and that goes with just like why why is it valuable to somebody right you have to have a perceived value and when you look at it when it comes to Le you got three different types of people right you got the ones that are going to be all in on every Le you got those that are going to be on the fence about an Le you got those that are completely out right so number three doesn't even matter but how do you get number two back in how do you get people to stop filtering from number one to number two they were always buying every Le and now they're just on the fence that's what's happened so your core offer always has to come down to increasing demand and then controlling Supply that's what you have to do so I think obviously if we go back down to 500 I think things kind of ride it ship a little bit but we're very much dealing with an industry that is entirely built around price sensitivity it's all about finding the lowest possible price for a premium product find the free shipping find it tax free and you keep doing that for a premium product over and over and over again guess what happens when you have to hike up the price M you get push back and those people are out if they're buying a product if their whole entire value prop for a product is pricing you're going to lose long term that's just what's going to happen it's just like the pros and premiums they didn't even keep up with inflation from what the prices were in 2015 2016 and the industry has no idea that that even happened they still look at the premiums and they think it's too much it's actually premium should be closer to $10,000 God's honest truth Pros should be closer to $7,800 and people don't realize that that's where the material is at so it's like how do you come back from that and I don't know I don't know if it's possible because you have to sell out the L's right to make your pros and premiums even more desirable for people right the people that are on the fence about it that weren't going to get the Le anyways what happens psychologically if you see that those the Le sold out day one like it's a frenzy right everybody starts talking about that's and we're not seeing that right so it we have no way to extend out the lifetime of these products anymore without that we we sely need that I would I no that's all really well said what I um yeah what I will say is from a distributor standpoint or not a distributor from a from a manufacturer standpoint you obviously need to push the value of what you're doing um not once again to shill Ching um Elton John what what I am seeing here is like this has everything it has rad Cals it has art blades it has a Topper it's all installed it's all there it's all ready to go so I understand $112,000 is a lot of money but at least I feel like it's there and that's something that when you barrels of fun did this really well for that game to be fully loaded speaker lights everything it's like okay I'm getting value or feel like I'm getting value spooky does it too so we've talked before it would be awesome if Stern stepped up the Le a little bit made it not only do less of them but also put more in it make it a little more something um but then the price goes up right yeah hopefully they can dance around I don't know but then Distributors what can a distributor do that's where it sucks when you're talking about trickling up you know previously Stern they were selling all their games to all the Distributors they didn't care all Distributors give me give me gim me go go go well now all of a sudden there is push back from Distributors like I can't I can't take it I cannot take anymore that's where we're at now so how do we help out the Distributors I see how Stern would do the clearance sales or allow there to be clearance sales to help Distributors I don't know that answer hopefully they can find out a way to appease but the reality is there's a ton of Distributors out there some of them this was a hobby this was a way that they could enjoy it make a little money on the side not so much anymore so unfortunately they might not they might not be around not only that if you take that into it yeah that's where you end up in a situation to where a lot of people are flipping games and it's not flipping games for above MSRP it's not like if you go on any Marketplace and you see the serial number blacked out or not available that's a game that's most likely getting flipped and I mean I know that kind of got out on some of the groups to where somebody was saying like Stern made them stop and stuff like that and yeah it's if somebody is reselling games over and over and over again it hurts the ecosystem of that area not only that it drives down pricing like crazy it's not healthy for an industry how crazy is it because you pointed this out to us the other day today what was it like a week or two ago some guy had openly admitted on a on comment section in Stern pinb Stern's Facebook on their Facebook saying he's like yeah I pretty much i' I resell and flip from Distributors and I had to cancel so many orders because I can't flip them now or something like that and it's like you have a guy admitting he's not he's breaking that up you know what I'm saying yeah I don't know yeah we've talked about that too when you see somebody post like oh I bought I bought this game for a friend and and now they don't want it and it's like here's the Box not opened you know crossed out like I get I mean that's that happens it's Distributors buying games reselling them at prices they shouldn't to somebody else so that they can legally resell because it's their game now however it's just it's just it is what it is so um but it's it's kind of I don't know I I would say as a pinball fan what can we do not talking to Travis this is a job but what can we do we can buy the games we want to buy we can buy the games we want to buy um it is interesting you know when I got into the hobby Turtles shortly after that came out and to me I was like why would you ever buy a new unbox game when you can get them cheaper used but the reality was a dream theme came out I wanted it and I wanted it as soon as possible so I actually splurged and bought it new in box and at the time I knew I could always resell it and and lose a little bit of money we're kind of back at that point unfortunately some games you're losing a lot more money than you want but the luckily you can trade stuff like I know Tom you just recently traded away your godfather you know stuff like that my godfather yep and it's crazy you got James Pond a game you had sold previously but like that game has come along so much bond has I got the premium version yeah actually I have two friends who they both that we have pretty big Collections and we're all within each other uh within a few miles of each other and both of them bought one of them bought Bon 60 didn't like like it sold it bought Bond Le didn't like it sold it for Foo Fighters then sold Foo Fighters to get the bondle back yeah yeah code man and and because the code has really come along and uh that does make it okay a reality check how much is a night out with your family your friends how how much is that typically okay when you when you factor in food travel all that kind of stuff I'm guessing you're probably looking at 50 to 100 bucks oh more than that fast food is like 75 now it's insane okay but maybe Soul if I'm just you know hanging out with my Budd what I'm bringing to the table okay maybe 50 you know once you and I'm talking like a a decent okay it takes my family 60 bucks if we even go through McDonald's drive-thru okay yeah and so for us to say well okay a night out with friends to a location we're looking at food if you're drinking you're looking at drink you're looking at uh all that kind of stuff you're looking at easily dropping 50 to 100 bucks and if you can't get into your mind hey if I buy a game and have it in my home and even take a $500 loss from what I paid for it down there that's still roughly five to 10 uh evenings out with a friend and if you get the same sort of level of enjoyment then that's that's actually money ahead in my bank account so I lost a lot more than 500 on Godfather I'm saying okay now now are you okay that was a Ferrari as we know okay so but how do you Tom how do you feel about that like you so you lost you lost a decent chunk of money on Godfather are you like there's a lot of other games where I'm way ahead Joel yeah so exactly so you're not like at least at this point in time but do you have any like ill will towards jjp or like reservation to buy another game like yeah maybe some I mean maybe a little bit I mean I don't I don't want to keep buying games and take a $4,000 loss yeah I think it I think it really comes down to how yeah no how quickly with the with the atmosphere just like we talked about when you train the majority of consumers to be price sensitive it's damn near impossible to have an expensive premium product last a long time in those conditions you know I I understand the games are going to you know you buy a new inbox game you're going to lose some value um like Scott was saying 500 1,000 bucks maybe even 1,500 but if you're talking like three to $4,000 that's that's a bigger deal that's a bigger deal that that's like a pretty damn good belly Williams game uh maybe a b title MH you know that's F4 right there yeah you know something exactly so you know you're talking about a whole pinball machine well you uh you know if you want to do the uh I can afford that loss yeah okay but four grand I don't know if everybody in pinball well Tom Tom's hit the nail on the head right here because think about it guys if we get back to what a core offer is for a product right to increase the demand for it so if you don't have an extreme amount a demand for a game that's already expensive what's going to happen to that price very quickly yep it's going to bottom out fast and if that keeps happening to people that are always in at the beginning and they start to get tension and friction and they're not wanting to keep losing that much money what are they going to do they're gonna stop buying new embx the whole thing comes to a screeching Hal yeah like you're saying Travis maybe the numbers of Lees need to be dramatically yeah you have to change something and a lot of it is too is who who are selling these games are you trying to sell just on Facebook a 12 to $5,000 product yeah like are you marketing it to as many people as possible that are searching you on Yahoo Google YouTube wherever you could you use Yahoo as a search yeah Okay Google yeah how about how about your AOL keyword what's that yeah okay so if you have if you okay here's just quick business 101 right right if you are not readily accessible on a Google search result in the top 10 when random guy girl hops in types in pinball sales or buy pinball machine if you're not top 10 then you have a very niche market and you are you are definitely in the moment pop This Small Potatoes category and if you are wholly relying on a single uh Avenue to Market or sell your product then you should be very concerned uh the okay a quick analogy right now there's been a lot of stories about Disney kicking out people who are thirdparty hosts so people want to go to Disney World they don't want to spend the $500 an hour that Disney charges to have one of their hosts take them around and so there have been these third- party hosts that have kind of in that gray Market the the blacked out serial number Market where I should have thought of that yeah where they get hired out and they go for like 150 bucks an hour or or something like that and it there's been a big news story lately that they have gone and they've tried to badge in their annual pass and they get you know blue circled which means hey there's something wrong and they basically flagged him for trespassing and kicked him out of the park wow yeah and and so this has been a this has been a big news story because a lot of people all of their eggs are in that basket that is all they do that Disney is their life and they want to just go and host and hey if they can make $1,000 $1,500 in a day go Gathering people around fine but once Disney looked at that and said yeah we're not letting you do that anymore what are they going to do they can't just say hey we're going to do the same thing for Nots Berry Farm for for Six Flags you know it's just not going to happen so if this is my long way of saying if the only way you're selling a premium product is on Facebook you should be very concerned about your business yeah I was um that's a really good point I that's crazy about Disney 2 I that's crazy but um just because all I'm talking about is Elton John um uh what I think is interesting is this game's not selling right now but is this is it because people think jjp you buy it you're going to immediately the moment you buy a jjp game you're out two grand like people have that idea like is this going to be the hottest used pinball machine like as soon as people go to selda like are there people that are like I'm in when I get a used one for two grand less possibly but look look at look at I mean yeah maybe you're doing like the pirate scenario where okay you know these things are 20 Grand or whatever yeah but look at Godfather I mean Godfather didn't sell that great to my knowledge and Toy Story it's yeah toy jjp the number one thing is Price It's the perception of exactly it's basically if you're comparing their version and I know they have bells and whistles and they probably have a little bit more build of material than maybe a Stern however for the end user the perceived value you for a an an Le or Prem or platinum or whatever it's going to be let's just say the Platinum version of a jjp game the equivalency is the premium version of a Stern and so people are going to equate those prices and unless there's something that takes you beyond the premium version and whether or not that's fun quality whatever then people are going to generally go to the lowest uh price point and you have to say the best option right now with JJ with jjp is probably El John it's probably El John that's probably their best game right now and you add okay should I get that or should I get a Godzilla which is the best offer with Stern yeah so the price difference add something to that okay go ahead SC you know just it also availability of getting the game sure yeah be because jjp I mean they're they're good at getting games out the door but they don't do it like Stern I mean Stern gets them out quick yeah so so that's another thing well to tag onto that I have a buddy here locally that he has been on he's been in on uh Scooby-Doo since day one but he didn't get the blood sucker Edition he got the standard edition so he's at the one five he's at the end of the line and he here he is he hasn't like what I I I feel so bad for him because he anytime over the last probably six plus months he could have gotten a used Scooby-Doo blood suckers Edition for cheaper than what he is prepared to pay for for his standard edition right but he's trying to be like a loyal person like I I said I was gonna buy it I'm gonna buy it but when you have games like this it's just what do you don't do it like I I will tell anybody out there as somebody that sells games don't be loyal to something that cost you money in that way you know what I mean because we're we're all here to make a profit like yeah I love pinball and all that but we have to sell right to stay in business or I'm GNA love pinball while being unemployed so it just doesn't work like that so I would always recommend to everybody out there like don't fill a sense of loyalty to anything other than your family like do what's right for you don't feel forced to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars if it ain't right it ain't right don't be afraid to walk away that's the main thing like and I say this as somebody that sells these things like I don't want anybody to ever feel pressured that just because they do have a non-refundable deposit that there's just no way out you know and they got to buy this pen or like I've heard of people taking on a bunch of pens like in debt with credit cards that are 15 20% interest it's like you know it's like let's let's keep this under control you don't have to be forced to do anything don't put yourself in the poor house right exactly well Joel you do touch base though on what gets dangerous for these things and that's where you know it's tough for spooky that it's obvious that they want everybody to funnel up to the CE right you can look on their website and you get that feeling when you see what the cabinets look like for both you know TCM and for Looney Tunes it doesn't look anywhere near what the CE is for the blood sucker and for the standard and plus you're all the way on the back of the end of the line yeah right so they're obviously wanting to funnel everybody up there so that's just it's interesting to see the different types of companies how they go about getting people to buy their topthe line product and buy a lot of it yeah you know because I think I think we just see vast differences from how jjp does it how spooky does it and how Stern does it like they're three incredibly different companies spooky probably should have mixed that up a little bit that's why Stern does a little bit of a get the pros out there get them quickly get them out then do L but they've started mixing them up and doing like a little bit of Pros little bit of L's a little bit of premiums and so they are catering to all the market because it's one thing having the the product available that versus uh okay you can get the awesome thing two years down the line it it basically is unavailable let's make that unavailable so but we're also trying to compare strategies between you know stiring a mass manufacturer pinball versus spooky who's literally a boutique pinball company that's in the name Boutique so you can't call Spooky a boutique anymore I'm sorry I mean they're they're putting out as many games as jjp is I I would think they're putting out a lot put a lot of games they're doing well I mean they're yeah but but I mean I'm just saying compareed to stern it's hard to say of course well you could say the same thing about American or JJ cgc cgc cgc probably makes the least of all those Stern's the giant man I mean well they do it right releasing their Pros when they do because you see all the launch parties that's very like strategic marketing to get it on location advertise it get as many people playing the game and talking about it badges yeah well I think I would go ahead Josh you're I was just going to say I think to wrap it all up with what you guys are saying is like it's going to be an interesting going interesting year going into 2024 because of because of everything that we've talked about like we're we're a premium luxury item yet we have you know basement bargain buyers trying to drive down the price as much as they can so they can get it on clearance and it's a really weird dynamic and it seems like the manufacturers are feeding into that with closeout deals and stuff like that and just not positioning themselves right going into a few like and it's really weird to me too because like Stern has been doing this for 30 plus years now like they've been through the ups and the Downs of all this I mean 2000's almost closed their door but like we're kind of back to that point of like what is 2024 going to bring market-wise when we have so many that are refusing to buy now because you know they're just ripping us off versus uh you know that's I'm just sorry I'm saying that as I'm not saying that as loser kid I'm saying that as like that's the comments I read on you're projecting you're projecting what the what the buyer saying their mind correct and so uh it's it's just a really we've created a really weird environment going forward for pinball and it's going to be interesting to see who sustains and and and who ends up having to close door not not only Distributors and dealers but if manufacturers can even weather this and I already see that some of them really can't I I'm not gonna start pointing fingers we don't have time for that so sure I mean I will say 2023 it's been a fun year it's been a good year there's been a lot of pinball a lot of pinball that's been putting out in 2023 um I do think all the companies are kind of pushing each other to be the best that they can um are all these companies still going to be around in 2024 at the end of 2024 I don't know but are all the Distributors still going to be around I don't know but as a as somebody who's who's really into pinball and loves pinball luckily there's a lot of games out there that you can buy you got a lot of different options you can buy them new you can buy them used um it's still there where would you buy those games at Joel uh who's who's paying me is I don't is where