Going back to what I was saying, I think that Jersey Jack has, without a doubt, the number one rad. And I know some people aren't going to like this, but the number one rad is, for the first time ever, Jersey Jack is firing on all freaking cylinders. Eric Minier is doing a project he loves that he's passionate about for the first time ever since he's worked there. so to compile upon that he is a i remember talking harry potter with him in his live streams while talking about craft beer and and pinball and other stuff but i remember talking about how good harry and again this is like seven years ago maybe eight years ago i don't even think it was after i moved to the coast so it'd have to be closer to about six years ago when he was streaming all the time from his house and and i he would be having like a sierra nevada ipa and i would try to have an ipa for my fridge. It closely matched what Eric was having. And I would sit there and basically, like, I don't know why, but there would only be sometimes four or five, maybe ten people, fifteen people at max on a Friday night like in there chatting with him. I guess he had only created one pinball machine by then and far less people use Twitch, but that would be cool if he still livestreamed. I don't think that occurs. Someone send me a link if he does. If he secretly still livestreams, that would be really cool. Strangely enough, I would always hop in the livestream with Escher Lefkoff, who for many years, and is still one of the easily, like probably if he lived in North America, could be or would be right in there with the top two or three but I think he's down to fourth or fifth now or something but uh incredible player and I would go in his steve-o pub twitch channel and quite often it'd be like me and escher or me and like two other viewers but they wouldn't be talking and um much like escher much like jack danger much like ray day when ray day is another person when he's streaming it's it's so fun to go in there and even though he's an incredible coder an incredible player. Top five, top ten player in his right. In fact, for us, I'm not going to use the term older guys because Ray is significantly younger than me, but I mean, he's older than, I don't, I'm not sure how old you are, Ray, because it's kind of hard to tell, but I would guess that Ray's got to be older than, you know, the 20-year-olds that are winning all the time, or at least the 22, 23, 24, 25. I think Ray is around 30 to 35. I have no clue, but that's what I would guess. So, hopefully I didn't offend you. I don't want to ever offend anyone ever again on the show. Jeez Louise. I am in this to praise pinball and how much I love pinball. And yes, from time to time, be mildly critical on other content creators that are extremely rude or belligerent or delusional. But at the same time, I don't want that to be the main focus of the show. The main focus of the show is not like how to play better with Steve Ritchie. Of course, I'll give you little tips or tidbits from time to time. The main focus of the show is to make you laugh, is to maybe give someone who's somewhat newer to pinball a little bit of insight into what's happening in the whole thing. I'm pretty much the only pinball podcast that really talks inside baseball about what's happening between all the companies, between all the content creators, between all the podcasters, the Twitch channels, the tournaments. I love it all. The only thing you don't hear about on my show is fixing pinball machines. Because frankly, when I try to fix them, if one thing's broken, by the time I try to fix that, two things are broken. I literally have done that before. But I think what Jersey Jack did here best, the most rad thing is that they're firing on all cylinders. Sometimes, like in Avatar, the artwork was great, but there wasn't many mechs or toys. Or a lot of the mechs and toys that are there, they may interact with the pinball machine a little, but they're all just cake toppers you can order from China for a toonie. So it's like two bucks. Sorry, if you live somewhere outside of Canada and you don't know much about our terms, $2. dollars okay you got a lot of those cake toppers we've seen in the past on a couple jersey jack machines you could get for a buck or two and we're not seeing that here we're not the opposite of that i would be absolutely shocked if someone else made that uh staircase mac obviously they didn't that is custom made in the house it looks very high quality it looks beautiful it looks cool it looks fun i like i like the max the max aren't my favorite part but i like them i think they did I'll give the staircase toy an A++. Everything else, like B. I'm not going to say, oh, the cauldron is an A. Obviously, it doesn't go down in through the cauldron. The cauldron's a little above it and it goes below it. But you know what I mean? Even the Whomping Willow, I'll give that a B+. Because at least a Whomping Willow is actually going up and down on the thing that you touch. So it is interacting with the ball directly in that particular case, as opposed to hitting a drop shot target and over a couple inches there happens to be a toy moving, squiggling around a little. And I was glad to see there was no scramps. Because if they started it by, Jersey Jack Pinball brings you Scrap 2.0. It's a scamp on top of a scamp underneath a scamp. And in the lower play field, you don't hit any buttons. You just scamp to the left, scamp to the right. Scamp all day till you're gonna go fight. Yeah, scamp, I like the scamp lamp. I don't even think that's a real song. I just made that up. Pretty bad, wasn't it? Yes. Okay. All right. I've started singing. This means I must end the show, but I will tell you I've never, ever in almost a decade of covering every pinball release out there other than Pinball Adventures, who would even bother talking to them or covering any of their BS because they're the worst pinball company on planet Earth, which sucks because they're Canadian. But, well, wait, Deep Root was the worst because they ripped off tons of people, but Pinball Adventures, close second. Well, wait, no, wait, no, wait. Deep Root and Haggis are the worst, and Pinball Adventures is the third worst. Well, what about Home Pin? Oh, my God, I'm going to do a whole episode on the worst pinball machine, the worst pinball companies of all time, and why. But then I'm being negative, and I want to be positive, so let's just get into being positive again and say this. The animations look great, and they look custom. The artwork looks great, and it's very custom on the CE, perhaps too custom for some people who like, I don't know, a square peg in a round hole. You know what I mean? Like people who are normcore. Like people who love Insane Clown Posse. No, I'm just kidding. That was a little under the belt. That's not fair. People who are just very like, just normal. And they just, they're very like, you know. And I get that. That's okay. If you've only seen the movies and you're just too busy. You have time to travel around the whole world all the time, but you couldn't possibly read the Harry Potter books. The thing is like, you probably did have time to read the Harry Potter books because you're stuck in airports all the time. But that's not the point. The point is the books are better than the movies. If you've only seen the movies, go back and read the books. When you get a chance, you don't have to read like a thousand pages a day, even if you're a super slow reader. You can read a couple pages here, a couple pages there. Well, you're taking a poop, okay? Well, you're on the way to work if you're not the one driving, okay? Well, you're going to bed at night. Well, you're listening to my pinball podcast. Now I go off topic so much it's hard to even pay attention to which direction I'm going in the first place. but that is to say jersey jack has never made such a complete package as this beautiful machine and i know people will call me a jersey jack show for this and i know there's flaws i know there is flaws in the machine obviously we're going to hear if there's no synced up clips and we don't know about that yet um i think there is i could see some people complaining about maybe the valdemore thing. I definitely could see. I've not been on Pinside. I did read like two comments on Facebook Jersey Jack before. Actually, I was the first person to comment on there, but I read two others after I hit the enter button. And I do like getting to be first to come up with my ideas for this. I think that the one bad thing, and I've said this before and I'll say it again, thankfully there is a $9,999 one. If you're getting that to put that on location, I almost guarantee you you're getting a money printing machine. If you've ever considered getting into putting machines out there and you don't have to go get a high interest payday loan and you don't have to use a high interest credit card, if you have a very low interest home equity line of credit or a HELOC or a second mortgage or you thankfully have a pinball machine you can sell to get one of these, I would sell it and put it on location. If you ever wanted to see if putting a pinball machine on location in your area could work this is jersey jack's like here you go make money i'd be shocked even in a crappy laundromat or you know like a not too busy bar if you couldn't break even on your ten thousand dollars or at least break even on the loss of your pin in just a couple months if not a year now i'm not going to say like oh in three months you're going to get ten thousand plays which equals ten thousand dollars of course not but let's say in three to six months from now, Jersey Jack, and I don't know this to be true, I actually think they're going to hold their value the best, the $9,999 ones. But within two to three months of them coming out, let's say they are down to eight grand. I don't think they will be, but let's say six months after they come out and there's lots on the market, the market's flooded with the arcade version, the $9,900, right? Let's just say it was, and it was down to eight grand. In those six months that you would have owned it, there's no way that you wouldn't have got $2,000 plays. So I think that if you're a big arcade, you're probably going to get an arcade version. You're going to get a wizard version, put them on opposite sides of your arcade. If you own two arcades, you're getting one of each, maybe one of each for each arcade. And like I said, even if you're a small time operator and you only have two to four pins, this is probably what you're going to get. I know even Cause, shout out to Cause, a fellow tribe member here on the Poor Man's Pinball Network. He said for River City he's going and getting one. And I think you have to. If you're a family entertainment center, like these will do everywhere, these will do well everywhere except for maybe perhaps a gay bar. Understandably so, if you have the author of the, you know, the books is particularly, you know, going after them, then I can understand them not wanting to do that, right? So I don't fault them for that. I'm just suggesting everywhere but a gay bar and let's be honest gay bars are not like I don't know maybe they're like one percent of locations for pinball machines I think like 50 to 60 percent are in a family arcade or what do they call them fex family entertainment centers and or barcades right and then all the other ones it's like maybe five percent a laundromat five percent in a little small like back of a gas station or like a highway stop or something you know what I mean but like a good 50 to 60 percent are going to be going to barcades, every barcade. I can't imagine, even if it was a Stranger Things themed bar, I still think Harry Potter would get more plays than Stranger Things will get. So this is a win-win-win. Jersey Jack, are you listening? No. Let me switch that and reverse it. Jersey Jack, thank you for listening. Because I have been saying, and tons of other content creators have been shouting from the rooftops, you need a lower end version for arcades so it's even though their jersey jack may make will make the least money on the arcade versions even if they only broke even on them which i highly doubt but even if they only broke even on them it's smart to get those out first it's smart to have a lower end version because 99 of the people who are going to bump into or see or find a jersey Jack Harry Potter machine will do it out in the wild. They're not going to do it at a friend or family member's house. That's maybe one or two percent. It's just it's not going to be someone just like going across YouTube and they just see a pinball video and they go oh yeah I'm going to watch a pinball video. This is going to be someone at a concert, someone at a birthday, someone at a graduation, someone out for an anniversary, someone out you know for a Friday night with their buds for drinks and they're going to see Harry Potter and they're going to be a big fan and go well geez, I didn't even know they still made pinball machines. And honestly, I'm not going over there to play that Hot Wheels. I'm not going over there to play that John Wick, but Harry Potter? Yeah, I don't even know how to start this machine. I'm going to go ask the bartender. I'm going to go get money. I'm going to ask someone else playing. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to watch the quick video on the stern right beside me. You know, they will figure it out and they'll jump through hoops and they'll do it. And I think this is a turning point. This is a TSN turning point this is a unicorn event not just in pinball podcasting and youtubing and twitching and content creation this is a unicorn event for each and every pinball nerd listening to me where when you see a newbie or a newer player i don't even want to use newbie i don't know whatever i'm over not offending people i'm using the term newbie i'm sure if it offends you let me know and i'll try not to say it for you okay but like i'm saying it in a nice term if you're newer to pinball you noob no I'm just kidding see if you say it like that it's a little bit rude but if you say newbie depending on the context I think it's fine okay let's not let's everybody's getting offended a little bit too easily right now take it easy can we joke around a little bit so if you're a newbie to pinball be welcoming be kind don't speak poorly about leagues and tournaments and tell them to never go to one and that it's horrible you know what I mean tell them oh by the way there's this league that's very open and welcoming. 90% of players will be more likely, probably 95% of players would be more likely to go to a welcoming league and go check out a whole bunch of pinball machines and be introduced to the scene as opposed to just going, yep, I'll spend $27,000 Canadian or $30,000 equivalent European or even $18,000, $15,000 American and buy a pinball. Of course they wouldn't. They're going to want to go meet the scene. They're going to want to go talk to people, they're going to want to talk to other people who said, oh, you waited six months to buy a Jersey Jack and you saved four or five grand. Well, yeah, maybe if I wanted to buy an arcade edition, I'll wait five or six months. And other people go, well, yeah, but with this particular Jersey Jack, it's doing so well that the chances of it actually dropping in value is pretty low. And then, you know, that's how you get into the scene. Usually that's how I came into the scene going to like a Youth Opportunities Unlimited. I was trying to support a local charity that two of my friends ran. Well, it was my good friend's mom, actually, Megan. But I was trying to support them, and it turns out that Jay Eats, who's actually neighbors with Mike Dimas from Pinball Shenanigans, said, hey, we could raise some money for Youth Opportunities Unlimited by having this pinball thing. And I said, oh my God, I loved pinball my whole life, but I can hardly ever find it anywhere anymore, and I only get to play it a couple times a year when I'm out of town, out of London, because there's hardly anywhere to play. Sure, I'd love to come to this. And believe it or not, this is really dating me guys. This is how long I've been in the game. I went to a ACDC, no KISS. It was a KISS launch party that also had ACDC at it. Whichever one is the most newest, I think it is KISS. So I went to the launch party for KISS. Think how many pinball machines have came up since then. And that was my introduction to pinball people. So I know I hear other content creators say oh I hate tournaments and leagues are the worst and I can stand groups of people getting together and having fun and celebrating the hobby we all love and it like when people are battering down on leagues and tournaments that are content creators they don't understand that a large portion of the people who are purchasing pinball machines are people who got involved coming in through leagues that's how they even found out about people are what are you more likely to do would you like to come to a pinball night where you get to learn about pinball machines for five bucks and be introduced to the community and all the different pinball machines? Or would you like to spend $15,000 on, of course, you're not going to spend 15K. You're going to come out to leagues for a while. You're going to come out to some tournaments. You're going to go see some private collections. You're going to have friends in the industry long before you commit to spending $15,000. So to Kaneda specifically, who's the one who does it the most. Sorry, Chris, I'm calling you out, even though, you know, we're getting along better, which is nice. We're still frenemies, but we're getting along better, which is really nice. No, I have not subscribed back to him, okay? I choose not to do that for right now, but I will say that if I do subscribe to Chris, I'm being objective, and I'm allowed to do that. I do find him very entertaining, at the very least, even though he does contradict himself a fair amount of times, as do I. I am neither nor perfect, nor am I a good penball podcaster. I've admitted that many times. You're supposed to think of this like a blog, okay? You're supposed to think of this as just, I'm just a regular dude, because that's all I am. I didn't go to podcasting school. I've never been in news journalism. I don't know. I've done like acting roles. I acted in a craft beer television show. I didn't have like opinions. I wasn't a critic or a reviewer. I don't have any professional radio training, okay? I worked in Nestle Ice Cream Factory making drumsticks and Haagen-Dazs, okay? I made Smarties. I made Coffee Crisp. So wait, oh no, people outside of Canada won't know what Coffee Crisp is. Oh no, I have to over-explain everything so someone doesn't go on a 40-minute rant about something I said because they don't understand my language. Jeez. Okay, for everyone listening, Coffee Crisp. It has no coffee in it. It's just a chocolate bar made by Nestle. I don't know why they only make it here in Canada. Not sure. But it's a chocolate bar. No one get mad. It isn't anything like Colombian white coffee. No, it's nothing bad. Okay? This is a joke show. We're all having fun here. How do you like your coffee? Crisp. All right. there's a joke only the Canadians got. So I think that Jersey Jack has a winner on their hands. The biggest issue is how long will they limit it for? And this is where we come into the one bad. The resale market on the CEs has been so poor, I believe, yeah, I can't prove this has sold, but I believe there is people attempting to sell Godfathers now for four to five grand less. Maybe, I saw someone report six. I don't know if that's true. Six grand less than they were. So if they were 15, they're now like nine. So nobody wants to buy a $15,000 Harry Potter and sell it for nine. If they promised there was only 1,000 CEs, I would say, guys, take out your savings bonds. Take your money out. No, don't take your retirement money out, but cash in all your goodwill, sell all your other pinball machines, and buy as many CEs as you can, because this would be a ticket to the moon. This would be bigger than Bitcoin 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Okay, but because they're not limiting it for a certain amount of time, I actually truly believe that it is possible that the version that holds its value the absolute best will be the $9,999 one. Now, I wouldn't be shocked if both lower end ones do well with holding their value. And when I say well, let's put a number on this. I don't like it when people are vague about this. I don't like it when people aren't descriptive. okay I want to see it stay within 10% within a year of coming out so if I buy a stern machine for six thousand dollars I want it to be worth five thousand four hundred a year later I think 10% is a reasonable amount to lose so if I buy a fifteen thousand dollar jersey jack machine I would like it to be worth approximately if I haven't put it on location if it doesn't have ten thousand plays if I haven't overdone it with rainbow puke mods or something stupid that look junky and tacky like you made it in a stupid 3D printer to try to increase the value of it, but it really just makes it look hokey, okay? If you've been tasteful, if you haven't put too many stupid mods on it and put too much money into it, if you haven't overplayed it too much and if you've kept it in good condition, it should be reasonably within about 10%. So 10% of 15k would obviously be $13,500. And I think that's a reasonable expectation if they don't make these for too long, I will say Jersey Jack. Now, Ken, you're not there anymore. Whoever is in marketing at Jersey Jack, wherever is listening, are you listening, Jersey Jack? Please keep this at less than 90 days. I think 30 days would be the sweet spot. If you say you can order these right till Christmas, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. That's too long. You'll get more sales, but it will tank your values. And the last thing is you want is your future purchases. Everyone in the market saying, oh, well, now the last five Jersey Jacks have all lost money. Do you want them to say that, or do you want them to say, wow? Well, even though a couple of, you know, even though Toy Story 4 and Godfather have dramatically dropped, in fact, a listener was just writing to me that he got a Toy Story 4, I believe it was a CE, like the high end, I think, for 9K. So, like, he saved himself a buttload of money and got a really cool Pat Lawler, which I think is really cool, no one else likes, but I haven't played it, so I don't know, I could be wrong. but the one bad thing is if you love that CE art as much as me your fear is that they're going to print this to the moon and they're going to go all the way to January 1st and they're going to turn it into a from a collectible to a common and we don't want it to be a common the last thing you want is your most expensive version to be the one that's printed the most that is not how it works it's a pyramid scheme guys it's supposed to look like a pyramid like at the top it's thin and narrow and it's rare no i'm just kidding uh but seriously if first of all they've all got to be numbered and you have to be open and honest if it's a collector's edition you've got to tell us how many but i think the thing you're for i think you're getting dollar signs in your eyes going oh how much can we make by making it unlimited and all you need to say is even if you limited it at and i would hate for you to do this because i think they limited one of the gnr editions at 5k that's just too much but even if you limited it at the ce version at two and a half and you said but i'm sorry the arcade is unlimited that those two and you would actually drive just as many sales to jersey jack yes you'd make a lower margin on the lower ones because some people when you i think you would sell out of all 2500 ces i don't know if you'll sell out of 2500 if you don't limit it but if you limit it to 25 i can see them not limiting it and only selling like 1,800 or 2,300. And I could be way off, but don't limit it to 5,000. That's just too many. I think the perfect number would be between 1,500 to 2,500. If they came out today and said, that's it, we're ending it at 1,500, you'd see FOMO go through the roof. If they said they're ending it at 2,000, you'd see FOMO be probably 50% higher than it would have been if not for the next two weeks. If they said they're limited at 2,500, now they say they're limited at 5,000, that's not going to move the needle much. It's just not. We already know they did 5,000 of a GNR. Okay, and Harry Potter is arguably a much bigger title, although not in that demographic necessarily of, you know, 45 to 65 year old men is a primary buyer. However, overall in the world by far, by like by multitudes, Harry Potter is a much bigger brand. It's much in the public's eye. We still talk about it. We still joke about it. We still use sayings from it. here in my house I'm looking over and I can see all the books sitting on my bookshelf like I read through them every summer I try to watch the movies every winter um it's just it's ingrained in her my wife's name my wife was on roller derby okay and I'll tell you this do not piss her off I have seen her elbow and lay out people she was even playing in a Toronto wild card tournament and she laid out a girl so bad they gave her a double red card Eric Stone can't even get a double yellow card man uh but anyways I don't know why I brought that up she's just very good at roller derby and she's also like like she's strong like she's athletic and strong and uh don't piss her off that's all I'll say because she's got an elbow like you've never seen but her roller derby name was Hermione Danger okay so obviously like do you know do you know what I mean? Like, like obviously our family's ingrained in it. Our dog's name is Luna Tuna Elowen Agar. The first name being Luna, like Luna love God. Okay. And then we have Draco Franchi, Draco Franchi, like Draco, like Draco Malfoy, who's often misunderstood in the book. And it turns out in the end he was good, or at least kind of. So both of my dogs are named after Harry Potter. Okay. And although I wasn't invited, I don't know if some of you guys, I did not get an invite to check my email this morning. Although I was not invited to go to Harry Potter. I don't think anyone else was. I wasn't going to make a big deal. If everyone else was and I wasn't, it's totally fine. Because if you're going to be open and honest, like I am, sometimes you're going to get arrows shot at you. It's just going to happen. When you say things that pinball companies don't like, yeah, maybe you don't get as many invites and maybe you'll get what I got. I got quite a bit of money sent to me yesterday. Shockingly, someone wants me to get a new microphone. But they said, please, please, please don't share my name. They didn't say I couldn't share the message. They said they love my show, but they'd want to hear me get a new mic, which is fair enough. And they gave me a substantial donation. I got multiple donations yesterday. So thank you to everyone who donated. That was very generous. You didn't have to do that. I didn't ask for donations. I don't even think I've dropped my PayPal in for like two months. So I don't even know how people found my PayPal. But if you're listening right now and you think whatever the hell happened to me this week was really not rad, like multiple people who wrote me, feel free to fire me off of PayPal and I'll share it with my family. And it was a rough week. If someone grabbed me a 2-4 beer, that would be rad. I think they're like 34 bucks for like a 12 pack of like decent craft beer here or like I don't even know if there's two fours of craft beer but basically someone wanted to PayPal me some money you can go ahead and do so it's angryalpacatea at gmail.com I went through a hell of a hard time and my wife's argument was you should probably put your PayPal out there because after people realize how poorly you were treated and I had multiple I think at least three content creators reached out to me and one of them, one of them, you made my day. I'm not going to say who you are. You made my day. You sent me a long message. You basically, I'm not going to say who it was, but they called, um, they called one of the content creators that were making fun of me, specifically the one saying I had schizophrenia. They called that person a doofus and said they had stopped listening to their content a long time ago. and most other people in the industry just don't listen to them. Okay, so look, it doesn't matter who's right or wrong. I mean, it does, but it doesn't in that I don't care. I'm just not going to mention those people anymore. I'm not going to talk to them anymore. I want nothing to do with either of them. And if either of them come into live chats where I'm hanging out, whether it be on YouTube or on Twitch or on Facebook, and either of them are degrading me or being mean or rude to me, I'm just going to try to avoid them. I'm going to try to continue to do what, when I get congratulated by multiple people, several people said, well, the one person in particular said, I cannot believe how calm you were yesterday. If someone had treated me or said to me and, and ridiculed me like how you were, I would not have been able to stay that calm. And this person is known for being far, far more calm, level-headed and reasonable than I am. So I thank you to everyone who thanked me and applauded to me. I also played it for both my sons, just a little, like five minutes, so they could get a taste and a flavor. My wife, I played, I made her listen to a bit more. She was like, oh, God. She's like, this is your most boring episode. But you're being reasonable, but it's boring, Albert. I'm like, I know it's boring, but I want to show people I can be boring and reasonable. Yes, I can also be boring and reasonable, just like many other boring and reasonable podcasts. That's not my shtick, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's a place for that. Let everyone listen to whatever they want to listen to. If you want to listen to a pinball podcast that goes off topic and talks a little bit about tournaments, let them go off topic and talk about that. But I wanted to keep today 99% positive, and I think I have. I had a great time. I love you. I'm in love with you. I'm here for the long run, okay? I love pinball more than I love anyone on planet Earth other than my wife and my children and perhaps a couple of my besties. and my dad fine I'll throw my dad in there I used to barely like him but he's slightly better now my my poor dad has to listen to me talk about pinball and he's just like oh son please and then I go you know what that's what the pinball podcast for is for me to go off topic and talk about how much I love pinball this is no matter how much just forget about the fact that you don't like the c-art work I know those people that just can't stand it they're like oh it's too it's too different it's too unique i need normal pinball art it needs to be normal uh the one is almost too normal and the other one is almost too eccentric i like them both i the ce is just incredible they that's their best decision artistically if you remember with elton john they put the nicest artwork on the middle one with francie's one and then they put the nicest switch that in reverse she was very confusing and then they put the really cool topper on the other one and then but everyone wanted francie's art with the one with the cool topper and then it It was a whole shtick. But they nailed it. They did it right this time.