All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 537 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show, I couldn't be more excited to be telling you that the proof is in the pudding. The pinball bubble has burst. I've got the proof, and I've got the pudding. And it's made with maple syrup. Mmm, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Man, I missed you guys. I'm not going to lie. It's been a while. I'm looking back here. My last episode wasn't back, all the way back there since, oh, no, okay. It wasn't as, I thought for some reason it was like really, really, really long time ago. But it's okay. It's been about three and a half weeks. It's not quite been a month, three and a half weeks. So not as bad as I thought. For some reason in my head, I felt like a month had gone by. I have been missing you listeners, believe it or not. I love telling you about my life and what's going on. I'm not going to lie, I was a little bit burnt out for my Ontario trip. I was a little bit burnt out. but more importantly there hasn't been much pinball news and I'm also a little bit again burnt out is probably the best term just from doing you guys know me I'm pretty lazy I don't work that much and I don't you know when I do work I do work hard but I don't like to work that often I'm not a 40 hours a week guy or 50 60 70 hours a week kind of not my thing I've done it before it's not really for me I kind of like to work 25 to 35 hours a week that's sort of my range, and I would not include my pinball podcast as work, even though it is, you know, a decent percentage of my income that I bring in for our little homesteadia here. But let's get into it. Let's talk about what we've got to talk about. I have seven to eight topics today. I've written them all out for you. I will say this. I'm going to try to get through this as fast as possible. I want to keep this at 45 minutes or less. and as a treat to myself and to you the listener just for getting through my many topics uh i am going to tell you about that one time i asked out a celebrity on a date and uh he or she i don't want to give it away but he or she uh blatantly turned me down and um they're a big star they're a big movie star they've been in lots of movies uh their grandparents lived in my hometown of Shedden, Ontario, and that will not give it away. It's un-Google-able. You're going to have to listen to hear about it. But this particular movie star is still in movies to this day. And she's a hottie patottie. I mean, they are very good looking. They're very good looking. And, you know, when I tell you who it is, you're going to realize, yeah, that person was not going to go on a date with Orby. Anyways, that's kind of my little tease, my little tease for later on in the episode, but let's start by updating guys about the Sanctum. So as you all know, I would really, really, really like to get to go to Expo this year. It'd be great to meet everybody, including, of course, our fearless leader, Drew, here from the Poor Men's Pinball Network. But over and above, just Drew and maybe, hopefully, possibly also meeting Ian if he's going. It would just be really great to meet so many of the American listeners that I've never got to meet here, and even the Canadians that I haven't really seen for four or five years, because most of the Canadians that I was visiting when I was visiting Ontario, they were gone to Yagpin, so I didn't even get to catch up with that many of my pinball nerd buds either. So there's a lot of people I'd really like to see at Expo. However, I only have money in the budget in the old piggy bank for one more trip this year. And I am currently sitting at one, sorry, I'm currently sitting at 18th on the Sanctum, the 24-hour Sanctum, the event that is coming up with tons of really well-known pinball tournament players. And so I'll say some celebrities as well. I'm looking at this list. There's quite a few people on here that you guys would recognize and know. and this is coming up on November 4th and 5th and there's just no way that just returning from Expo I would have the time, energy, or finances to go back on the road and do the Sanctum. So it looks like I would say every day there's a better chance I am going to be doing the Sanctum and not that I would ever be sad about doing the Sanctum because I've wanted to do it for years and years and years but of course I would be a little bit sad that I wouldn't get to go to Expo because Expo is more so about the party, seeing everybody. Yeah, you play a little bit of pinball, but it's more so about the people. Whereas the Sanctum, yes, of course, you're going to see the people and chat with the people. From what I understand, you really get used to the same people because it's Swiss pairing the whole time. So obviously, like 24 hours in, I'll just say this to be honest. I looked at the people on the list. I'd be happy to get 90th of the 100 players if I actually do get in. And I know Ron from Slam Tilt is four ahead of me, so he would be 14th, and they've already mentioned several times on the show that they're pretty sure Ron's going to get into it. Now, I have not listened to their newest episode. I have started it, but I haven't got far enough through it to see if they actually do mention if they think Ron's going to go. They would know better than me. I've never done the Sanctum before, but looking at it, seeing as how we've got, what, another, all September, October, we've got two months and nine days, so more than likely 14 people will either cancel or not be able to go or something will come up or they'll pull out and I know I saw like October 20th is the final date that you can pull out and even get half your money back or any of your money back so most likely by September 20th I will know either way who knows though it's possible maybe our company Angry Alpaca has like I don't know maybe we get into a big local store out here I know we'd love to be in Sobeys and if we end up getting a large order and we may or have you know for some reason get I don't know who knows maybe the pinball nerds would love to see me be at expo as well as see me be at the sanctum so who knows maybe maybe maybe I can talk to drop target Danielle my ever patient wife and ask her if there's some way shape or form I could possibly do both because honestly I don't think expo would cost me that much outside of a hotel room or like you know buying someone some beers to get to sleep on their couch, their love seat. I can sleep on a futon. I can sleep just about anywhere. If you've given me enough beers, I could probably sleep standing. I could probably sleep hunched over on a pinball machine. You could probably pull the glass off of an old EM and just stick me in there with that old cigarette smell, and I would be absolutely fine. But who knows? Let's move on to the next topic. Let's talk about, and this is just a little side topic I found interesting. Of course, while I'm cutting the lawn here, part of my seven acres, while I'm out there chopping down all the grass, I get to catch up on my pinball podcast. And yesterday I was listening to the new pinball party with Jason. And I was shocked to hear that pinball party is leaving TPN. And I know that Jason at the end said, oh, yeah, there's no beef. There's nothing to it. Like, I'm just leaving TPN. It's not a big deal. I just want to be on my own and spread my wings and fly. but I almost went and do a sugar race on there. So I don't know why Jason's leaving. I don't know if there's some behind the, you know, there's some other beef going on. I know that he does have Rachel and Kale on all the time and I think their primary distributor is not Zach from Flipping Out. So I don't know if there's something to that. I don't know what's going on, but I'm a nosy Nancy and I'm just curious. You know, I just, I wonder what's going on. And I've always thought it'd be neat to have Jason on the show, but now that he's leaving TPN, maybe I'll wait until after he does his last episode, and I have no clue if Jason listens to me here on the good old Poor Man's Pinball Network. Not really sure if he's an Orby fan or not, but I think he'd be interesting to have on the show, especially after he's gone to hear maybe... I doubt he'll give me much of the hot gauze of what's going on behind the scenes, but anytime someone leaves TPN, just like myself, I like to hear why, how, when, where, that sort of thing. And, you know, I'm curious, right? I'm curious. So I do know this. I do know this, that over about six months to a year of me listening to Pinball Party, they've risen up in the ranks. And I would say right there, probably tied in my third favorite show on TPN, And I know I've tried to, you know, it probably switches depending on which show you've listened to, but either The Final Round or Silver Ball Chronicles are my favorite. I can't, don't make me choose between David Dennis, Ron Howlett, Marty Robbins, and Jeff Teolas. I can't do it. Those are my two favorite shows. If ever a Final Round and a Silver Ball Chronicles came out on the same day, it would be very hard for me to choose which one to go listen to. to. And then, of course, Triple Drain. Triple Drain's probably next on there. Love listening to those guys. And, of course, the Pinball Show with Dennis and Zach. For the most part, there's some parts of that show like Market Trends, which I do not love, and I kind of fast-forward through because it feels like it's sort of just like a 20-minute infomercial. But, that being said, there's other parts of the show like Craig Bobby, my favorite part of the TPS show, the pinball show, Mr. Craig Bobby there, my Canadian brother from a totally different moose, um, he also is a maple syrup chugging, uh, Canuck there, and, uh, you know, but pinball party has risen in the ranks, and I think Rachel and Kale are, like, my favorite part of that, because you really get a kind of behind the scenes about what it's like to kind of run a location, and I'm not going to lie, like, if I won the lottery tomorrow, I honestly think I would start a pinball barcade with what I know about craft beer, uh, you know, being a former craft beer rep for Southwestern Ontario for flying monkeys, uh, and having, you know, over a hundred accounts under me. I know quite a bit about running it and I've also bartendered, uh, you know, and, and, and worked bar and believe it or not, I've even done some servings. Um, like I've done some servings. I've been a server at Toboggan Brewery in London. So, you know, I've, I've done that as well collective arts brewing i've done probably their biggest show of the year which is the kitchener waterloo rib fest which i think has like something crazy like a hundred thousand people go to that show i know our lineup on average had like 50 people in line and like my boss told us albert you can't go for your lunch break until like now he's tentatively joking it was my buddy tyler but uh tentatively said something like you're not i'm not gonna let you go for lunch till we have less than 50 people in line and like every single one of my fingers was bleeding from reaching down into ice cold water and like cracking open a beer like once your index finger on your right hand gone you slowly go through all your hands and then eventually I looked like a dork but I had to I really actually had to go to the point of uh using a bottle opener basically to pry open the tabs on the 500 milliliter tall cans to hand out to people because we just were like bang bang bang bang I think there was three or four of us working in the same little booth and we just got slammed but I've gone off topic what else would you expect here Jason great job pinball party I don't necessarily love all the meh stuff I'm not a fan of the like 900 swear words in a row even though go figure I freaking swear on this show now from time to time but that's a whole different level of like swearing that like you know if I'm listening to another pinball podcaster and I hear the odd s word or f word or whatever it happens to be, you know, no one in, if I'm listening to it in the car with the kids or whatever, it's nothing they haven't heard in a rap song, especially being 14 and 18 before, but when meth starts going like, you know, like 100 F-words in a row, then everyone starts giving me like strange looks like what the hell are you listening to, dad? Anyways, the point is Jason's show used to have like the most F's per show of any pinball podcast, and now it's actually pretty clean. But it would be interesting, you know, Jason's also into punk rock like myself, so it'd be neat to talk to him. I am working on speaking with another person that's very well known in the industry. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to have a time to meet up yet, but I'm sure that's coming soon. And honestly, I wanted to shake the rust off and just do a little solo episode here. What else do we got on tap for today? I did want to speak for a second about just missing Drew and Ian, of course. Many of you guys have noticed that the poor men did a bit of a comeback and we got to hear from them a couple months ago but it's been a while since we've heard from them again. I don't know if that was their goal when they came back. I know I am here on the Poor Men's Pinball Network but I don't have like you know, I don't have a crystal ball. I have no clue why, when, where and how we're going to hear from Ian Drew again. I know if we haven't heard a new show from the OG Poor Men coming up to Expo, I'd love to have Drew on to talk about that and I'd love to have Ian on anytime. I would love to get to chat with him and I would actually like to have them on the show separately just to pick their brains kind of separately and I think when both Drew and Ian get together they're more likely to just kind of shoot the shots and be funny guys and I kind of want to get a little more you know I don't want to go too deep I don't want to go too deep but I do want to kind of know the ins and outs about maybe you know why they took a year off and I think a lot of my listeners especially because a huge amount of you listening right now are tribe members you know you're curious to know maybe why they had some time off and where they've been and what we're going to see from them in the future and those are the kinds of questions I'd love to ask both Druni and if I was able to get them on the show here of course now what I was surprised about I was considering releasing a show like two days ago and of course I don't like to release a show like the exact same day that another show comes out here in the poor man's pinball network if at all possible just because to let that show have a couple days and give it some air to breathe right and right as I was about to do that Rachel and Raymond Raymond and Rachel the Ray Ray show is back shout out great so great to hear from one of the world's top pinball players who also happens to do code and rules for uh Stern so Raymond Davidson of course was on there with our own Rachel Risto it was so good I hadn't heard Rachel on the airwaves uh since we got here Dan the man and his partner Rachel actually on Tribe Multiball. So it had been so long since I'd heard from them. And I did see there Glenn the Skateboarder was of course kind enough to do the intro song there which is great. But go back and listen to that episode. It's kind of all about the Beast and what Rachel's been up to recently. I guess from what I understand from listening to that and the small amount I have heard on Slam Tilt so far. It sounds like the Beast and Buffalo ran great. It's been a couple years. since Buffalo's had like a big pinball tournament like that. So that is really cool. Let me just, I'm going to take a little drink skis here from my Je J'Aurel. No, I'm not drinking angry alpaca for once. I already had a couple. I already had my quota of coffees this morning, if you can't tell from my overexerted hyperness. But if you can just give me a second here, I can have a little. Thank you. Okay, that feels better. That feels much better. but congratulations to all the TDs to all of the techs and especially I know to Jeff Teolis who was able to get tons of great sponsors and everything else so it sounds like the Beast is going to be on my radar next year for being one of those events I'd really like to make it to I know airfare wise I can get to southwestern Ontario and therefore easily drive to Buffalo a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than I can get to Yagpin unfortunately Getting flights to Toronto is pretty easy, or Hamilton, or even once in a while I see Detroit and Buffalo also come up are pretty cheap. So I would really like to try to do the Beast next year. That sounds like a fun thing going there. And I do apologize if you hear a little bit of clinking and clang going on in the background. No, I am not at work. We're not at the Collectibles Cafe in Tadamagush, which I will say tomorrow is going to be our last day in Tadamagush, the Collectibles Market. Many of you know that I am a sports card as well as non-sports card, so we're talking Marvel and Pokemon card collector as well as investor as well as a dealer. And I've got not one, not two, but three different card and collectibles as well as the Moncton Toy Show coming up in September. So I'm going to be a busy little beaver. Busy as a beaver. I'm going to be as busy as a beaver. That was my version of a chopping sound. But Owen is out there doing some dishes for us, getting his load done, so that him and I can go play the new Fortnite season, which just came out this morning when I'm done the podcast. So shout out to Owen for getting those dishes done. But if you guys do hear some background sound, hopefully the snowball mic is getting rid of most of that. But if you do hear some background sounds, that's what it is. now going back to what I was saying about getting to well Tim there did the editing for the Ray Ray show of course thanks Tim for doing that and I did get to speak to Glenn the skateboarder just a couple months ago about TPF I mean it's longer than that now but I would really really really like to speak with Tim so Tim is also Tim is also up there Tim and Jason are kind of the two people I'm thinking I would like to interview next if you do know someone that you think I should interview or you think would be an interesting conversation, feel free to email me at pinballnerds at gmail.com and there's about a 50-50% chance that I will actually, you know, try to get that person on the show, depending on if I think it's Obtainium or not. So I did want to give a shout out to probably, I think the person who's been on the show the most, a friend of the show here, Ian Hairwer, he was actually he tied for fourth place. I think this is one of his first tournament out since, yeah, I know during COVID he didn't go out to a lot of tournaments, but he was actually out in full motion. It was really nice to see him. I saw him on part of the background stream, as well as part of the live stream that was done by the Pinballers. Just type Pinballers into Twitch and you can go watch the Beast live stream. Shout out to Mike and all the Castlemans there who helped run the stream and everyone who worked in the booth. But Ian Hareward got fourth in the three strikes tournament, which I thought was kind of surprising because Ian has not played in several years and just to go out of there and you know knock it out of the park and get fourth place congrats to Ian um yeah I know Ray Day did very well I think at in the classics for that one I think he won that one and then Jason Zoller I believe won the regular but go over there go to ifpapinball.com and take a look at all the results for the beast and if you live especially in the chicagoland area the buffalo area the new york state connecticut uh even honestly anywhere that's drivable to buffalo or even a cheap you know a hop skip and a jump on a plane consider going to the beast next year because i am going to try very very very hard to get out there to the beast wow pull out my the beast the beast uh okay yeah so what were we going to talk about next i did want to give a quick shout out to uh tony and dennis from the eclectic gamers pinball or the eclectic gamers podcast um they did do 200 episodes so cheers to them for that i also wanted to call them out a little bit dennis called that episode the end so i'm not gonna lie like i'm listening to it and and sometimes I do kind of skip the video game part or the part at the end maybe. I always make sure to listen to all the news, the pinball type stuff, but if it's near the end sometimes, I don't always listen to the whole thing. But this particular time, I listen to every single solitary second, and a lot of times, they call what, 100 episodes the kiss of death, but also a lot of pinball, not pinball podcasts, but a lot of just podcasts make it to episode 200 and decide to call it quits, and that's kind of the end of the show, and I thought, oh, jeez, I can't see them quitting. These guys are so reliable. Maybe Dennis was just going to go off and only do the pinball show now and not be part of Eclectic Gamers but alas it was just a clickbait I hath been clickbaited by I don think Dennis has ever clickbaited before so it was called The End And it was called The End for a different reason, which it probably was, knowing how Dennis names the shows, and I just missed it. That's probably just because I'm a stoner dude and I was half-listening while I was either cutting the lawn or running from the one bazillion mosquitoes. is we got so many mosquitoes here in the old River Hibberts, it's pretty, but man, do you gotta, you gotta put on, you gotta go for a shower and bug spray before you can go out there, and when you come in, you have to run around the house three times minimum to try to get the maximum off you before you come in, or else, uh, drop target Danielle, uh, will be very upset with me, because, like, honestly, when I'm coming in, if I just go do the chickens or something quick outside, I can sometimes have 25 to 30 mosquitoes like just on me and with me as I'm coming back and through the door if I don't run around for a bit so um anyways I've gone off topic no one gives a shats about mosquitoes let's go talk about uh let's let's move upwards and onwards and congratulations though by the way a little bit clickbaity but eclectic gamers podcast go listen to that one if you haven't I'm sure you guys mostly have here but uh they did a great job congratulations is getting to 200. I did like listening to all their updates about going on walking and running and I thought by now maybe they'd really be into like running like 10k's or half marathons but it seems like they're not doing that as often anymore. It'd be really cool if they kind of whatever like you know life happens. Even myself I don't run and do that sort of thing as much as I used to even though I'm slowly getting back into it. I am prioritizing health. I am working out quite a bit. I didn't really explain where I've been over the last month, but basically, we ended up getting so busy that quite often we were doing shows on either a market on a Thursday and then trying to rush all day Friday, making product, making baked goods, getting everything ready for the next day. I know the one, like in one Saturday, like that I got slammed, Onan and I got slammed. He made, he ended up making like 50 grilled cheeses, which doesn't sound like that much, I guess, but our market's only open from 830 to 1230, really, like, I guess it's kind of open till one, even though we don't really do food past 1230, but, like, in four hours, my guy was, like, plus it was, like, 35 degrees, which is, I don't know what that is, like, probably, I don't know, 100 or 105 Fahrenheit, it was hot as hell, that's all you got to know, and he's standing above a grill with, like, no wind, because we're inside a tiny little booth, even though we're outside and it's, you know, the sun's beating down. But, um, we, that day, Owen and I alone, we ended up doing like $1,200, not profit, but we ended up doing like $1,200 in sales in one day. And it's not even a full, like a 12 hour day or an eight hour day. It's like a four hour day. And so I'm just trying to think like 50 times the average grill cheese is probably seven bucks, depending on if you're getting, what you're getting put on it and stuff like that. But, and if you're getting a combo, but let's say even 50 times 7, so, you know, 300 bucks, I probably did about $800 or $900 worth of iced coffee, lemonade, iced tea, hot coffee, Arnold Palmer's, and then, of course, we sold some large bags of coffee, tons of small bags to the old tourists. They love to do the 3 for 20 deal where you, you know, you get maybe two coffee, sample sizes of coffee and a tea and um anyways it was basically by the time that you know sunday monday rolls around you're reordering all your new product to try to fulfill the next one and you're just you're exhausted or i am anyways i I love you. Oh my god, it wasn't recording. What the hell happened there? I am so sorry. Okay, so for any of you still there, I am so sorry. I have no clue why my laptop automatically turned off there. But I'm not going over and re-recording all of it. I'm sorry. That's not going to happen. I apologize. Alright, so let's move onward and upward here. Let's do some deep thoughts about Jurassic Park 30th. Okay, so I normally do a 5 rad and 1 bad. I think that all of you guys listening to this know what the 1 bad is. So let's just get out there and say it. It's the price. It is the price. No one's going to complain about the code of Jurassic Park. And now that the art's been updated, I don't think anyone's going to complain about the artwork. So let's do the five rad and then we'll do some deep thoughts and we'll talk a little bit more about the one bad. And what the one bad really does mean for even the largest pinball company in the world like Stern. So number one, I liked the original Johnny Crap artwork. I've always liked it. I don't love it. It's not my favorite. It's not Venom level artwork. Uh, it's not even Franchi level. It's not Zombie Eddie level artwork. It's not Franchi level artwork. It's not as beautiful as this Guardians of the Galaxy Pro I'm sitting here staring at, which, man, can I just say this? I have loved, loved, loved having, um, I have absolutely loved having pinball back in my house. my sons and I are playing it way more often just this morning I got 873 million after getting to Cherry Bomb it took me like two weeks I think to get to Cherry Bomb for those of you haven't played much Guardians basically if you complete four modes not just get to four modes but complete four modes and that's a very important distinction because you could easily just time out four modes which what I love in this Guardians game is that Cherry Bomb is worth I mean like in a bad Cherry bomb you're probably going to do like 50 to 100 million and a good cherry bomb 150 to 250 million so getting to cherry bomb is very very very well worth it and thankfully because of course you know there is many pins that came out that you know timing out the mode's important I'm not going to do that at home while playing with myself maybe in an important tournament like if I was in the sanctum and I was playing I don't know bow and karens in the finale which that's the only time I'd be playing Bo and Karen's would be in the very first round because with Swiss pairing I'm not going to end up playing with him. Anyways, the point is I don't like games that cause you to time out modes. The modes are so freaking valuable in Guardians. It's the opposite. You're not timing out modes. I'm actually thinking about not cradling up and I'm thinking about even sometimes not dead bouncing and shooting on the fly which is very unlike me. I like to play a slow, controlled, skilled game. But I'm shooting way more on the fly. It's actually making me a better player, thinking about how to change the natural trajectory of the ball when it's coming out, say, of the scoop on the right. I'm thinking about how to, instead of dead bouncing and getting a safe cradle and doing a safe shot, I'm really thinking about how to change the trajectory of the ball, the angle of the ball, when it's coming out of anywhere, coming out down out of an orbit or even a missed shot like on those ramps. That right ramp once in a while can be a bit... It's not that hard. I don't know why I can have issues with it sometimes. The hardest shot for me, the most annoying shot for me, though, is the scoop. I don't like it. I don't mind the scoop being an important shot in the game, but I don't like it being the most important. I would much rather be the mode start be... pretty honestly any other shot maybe other than the the rocket shot I find the rocket shot it's not everyone thinks it's the speed of which it shoots back at your flippers yes that sucks but for some reason that rocket shot and maybe it's because you don't have to shoot it often so you don't get good at it but that rocket shot I find very very hard I never pick the rocket mode I never ever pick the rocket mode when I'm playing guardians but I've gone off topic um I still don't have the GC on there. I do think, you know, not having pinball in my house for, I don't know, was it six, eight, nine months, however long it was, and not having modern pinball in my house for like, I don't know, like since I sold Roller Coaster Tycoon. So not having, that was probably more than two years ago now, I believe. It would have been about two years ago this summer. So not having modern pinball in my house for two years, oh my god, like, like, honestly, that's why my IFPA rankings gone down, at least partially, at least partially. A couple of the times there, I probably got a little too drunk or partied a little too hard at like a pinball tournament, and that can negatively affect it. But imagine going to play a pinball tournament, and usually nine times out of 10, when I'm going to play this pinball tournament, I have not played a modern game in one or two weeks, maybe even three weeks. And so just like, you know, your first four or five rounds, you're kind of just getting back into the hole. And even if I show up there an hour early. I'm such a social dude that I end up talking more than playing any practice, and I end up being a chatty Cathy, and not, you know, like, I end up maybe getting one or two practice games in, and it's not really, you know, anything to write home about. So, but let's go back to our Jurassic Park 30th year for the deep thoughts for a second. The artwork, I would say, is better. I think it is better. The back glass is definitely better. The play field obviously stays the same. So the artwork is better. That's the one rad thing for sure. Number two, the art blades. The art blades, I think they do add. They're not like my favorite art blades I've ever seen, but they definitely add to it. Number three, they updated the code. Now, I know what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the code's updated for all the other Jurassic parks, so it's not exclusive to it, so that shouldn't be. yeah, but here's the thing. Think about it. Would Stern have been in any hurry to update Jurassic Park code and continue to work on it if it wasn't part of a cash grab, so to speak? Of course not. What would they have, like, what would the benefit of them working on it be? The next thing is, and this is going to sound a little silly, and this is going to apply, you know, to number four and number five. It's a great shooter. It's a Keith Elwin. If you're going to remake a game, of course you're going to do a great shooter. No one complains about the shots in there. And then, of course, even possibly better than the shots in the game is how incredible the rules and the code are, and how fun it is for newbies, intermediate, and pro. I can't think of a better game on the planet. Jurassic Park is the game. It is the game that doesn't matter. Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for instance, not a good game for noobs. I'll watch new players go over there or someone who doesn't play often who even can blow up Jurassic Park a little and they'll go play a game and it's it's three left outlanes and done on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in about three minutes and they'll never put another loonie in that machine again they'll never put another token a quarter a dollar bill if you're down there in America they'll never do it again they just won't do it and so that one is just even for intermediate players like I would consider myself an intermediate player I'm certainly not in the top 1000 in the world nor have I ever been, even though I got close to the edge. I think I was, my top ranking was like 1200th or 1300th when I was back in Ontario and playing a lot. But, and who knows if I did move to like Chicago or I don't know, New York city or whatever, like, like Portland or like somewhere where like pinball is huge. Yes. I could probably barely squeak into the top 1000, but I'm never going to be a top 500 player no matter what I do. And that's okay. I'm completely okay with that. I love, I'm okay with being an intermediate, like, better than average player, and even for me, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles plays way, way, way too fast. But here's the thing about Jurassic Park, not only is it an incredible earner on location, it has what, you know, I think in Stern they call it being, you know, the multiball, being close to the flippers, or like some type of mode being close to the flippers, which they're not, they're saying metaphorically close in that, like, it's easy to start. Well, what could be easier than shooting this big giant T-Rex that you see in front of you a couple times? And Chaos Multiball is certainly not easy to start, but I would say for an intermediate like me, usually nine times out of ten, if I really concentrate on Chaos, I can usually start it by the second or the third ball at the very least. like even on a bad game I can usually start it by the third uh the third ball right so I would say that and then even if you're an expert player even if you're a top 500 even if you're an Escher Lefkoff uh you know Raymond Davidson you can still find things like getting to the visitor center or doing the wizard mode or doing getting it there the hard way because you can always I know there's the easy path and the hard path so and I do even know some some top players who you know still enjoy playing it even if they have got to the end so there's just so much there in Jurassic Park that obviously from a code and a shot standpoint it's rad but you already knew that let's talk about the bad because the bad is what's actually a little bit more interesting to me here and the bad of course is you know the bad is the price let's be honest the bad is how freaking expensive this machine is. From what I understand, like $4,000 more than a current LE is going for. So that's the first thing that everybody's going to talk about is the price. And I haven't even looked it up because it's not even within my price range. So if I'm off there, I apologize. But here's the thing. If I currently owned a Jurassic Park LE, would I be somewhat disappointed that there is $500 more out there? Of course. does it devalue my current pen at least slightly of course it's muddying the waters of course it devalues it slightly i understand it's got different art but if you are someone who is a massive massive jurassic park fan i'm thinking like um um like greg level from straight down the middle if you're a greg bone level like and you want to have like the ultimate pinnacle the Ellie of Ellie's. The Ellie, you know, Stern just made their Ellie's Premium. Like, their last Ellie's are no longer the most limited edition. Their last Ellie's are no longer the peak, Le Creme de Le Creme, the Chef's Kiss, okay? The maple syrup frickin' pudding. It's just not anymore. Now the best one, with the Art Blades, you know, with Insider Connected, with arguably better powder coating, and arguably, I guess, better art, even though I think it's substantially better. And certainly it's more unique. And it's certainly more of a limited edition because all of that artwork is only now on the new 500 LEs. It's not on the other three. So it is certainly arguable that these new LEs are the new LEs. They're the new limited edition because they're limited to 500 with that art. So they're certainly more limited than one that just has a slightly different powder coat or different art blades or different mirror blades or what have you, whatever the old LE had different, am I right? So the problem is you've now, you've kind of, I'm not going to say you've like, I'm not going to say that you've like completely just, I'm not going to say, I was about to use the R word there, but I'm not going to say that you've completely screwed over every other Stern buyer and every other LE buyer. but think about think about the confidence level let's say you were an 85 out of 100 being a stern buyer of an le that when they say hey this is a limited edition that they're not going to release more let's say you were an 85 out of 100 because a couple times they have gone and kind of changed their idea of what an le was and they've added more a couple times if you were an 85 out of 100 confident about buying an le of the next one you're a little less confident i don't know if it's been knock down to 75 for you that's a very personal thing for me even though I'm not an le buyer and I never would be an le buyer I think even if I won the lottery I would probably just get a whole bunch of pros and throw them on location um and have like a kick-ass rad craft beer selection and make like the best burgers in town hopefully but yes can you tell I've thought this out a little of course but i think that for every other le buyer out there or every potential le buyer on the market that hears about this and there's a good chunk of them believe me if you're an le buyer you were getting the emails from the distros they wanted this sucker to sell out faster than flapjacks on a tuesday in canada okay they wanted this to be sold like quick and so everyone was getting email bombed and everything else and of course everyone hears about it being sold through but why did it sell through and why did it sell through so quickly it's partially because it's elo and it's partially because it's awesome code it's partially because a lot of people with le's it's been about that time that they wanted to upgrade anyways if you're an le buyer of jurassic park and you've played the crap out of that machine like a lot of people with jurassic park have because it's it's such an incredible game like let's be honest if you've got like the limited edition version of Halloween, it probably isn't getting that many plays. I don't know, maybe if you're in like a whorehouse around Halloween, but like, you know, it's just not going to, it's not going to get like nearly as many plays as any Jurassic Park, never mind an Ellie of it's getting. So your, your Jurassic Park Ellie might be a bit beaten up and maybe you could sell it and you can work your way into a much newer pin that has the same code that you love, the same shots that you love, and slightly upgraded artwork, and if you can do that and not pay too too much, I guess it's an okay deal. Like, I'm trying. I'm trying really hard how to not be disappointed with Stern because of this, and it's hard. It's hard not to be, because you've taken this consumer confidence level. You have, like, consumer confidence is something that's really, really hard to buy, and any profit that you've now just taken, that you've eked out from this straight up cash grab. Any profit that Stern's got from this is now probably going to be a loss of profit in the future because every single person, anyone that was a coin flip, anyone that was on the edge, anyone that was like, yeah, I might buy a future LE of a title I love. Now they've got to think, but yeah, I could get this LE. And then all of a sudden, a year later, they could say, no, now I need to upgrade and get this LE. Or two years later, they could do it in another run with a different art package and so you really you're causing your future customers to second you know have a second thought of like well wow and then just not even your le buyers even dudes like me who buy pros you know we now i'm thinking well stern come on that was kind of not cool like you know you said you were only going to have this many and i get it's a different art package but how often are we going to do this and how many times you can do are Are you going to do this to every single solitary pinball machine and dilute the market of the LEs even further? And therefore, it causes, you know, it basically causes the LEs to become premiums and the premiums basically become pros. And what do the pros become? Home editions? What do the home editions become? Freaking zizzles? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't really know how it works through the masses. But I think that whether you're a bar owner or you're just a pro buyer or you're someone like me that really doesn't even buy new in box. I bought several Sterns, but I've never bought a new unboxed Stern, because I save a couple grand by just buying it, you know, a year or two later. Like, for instance, even with this Guardians of the Galaxy that I bought, it's probably the most expensive Pro that's ever sold. It was $9,500 Canadian, which is probably, like, I don't know, like, $75,000 to $8,000. And I do remember looking on Pinside, and it was probably, like, from what I could see, it was, like, even with the historical sales, It was right up there with the most expensive Guardians of the Galaxy Pro that's ever been bought. But it's got the Upground graded sound package. I really get sick of songs quickly. I've lost track. I've tried to count a couple times. It's got 15, 16 different songs on it. It's got all the different video clips from the movie. It's got extra call-outs, I believe, that go in line with the video clips. It's got an upgraded sound system. It's got an upgraded subwoofer. It basically, I know that one of the gentlemen who had it, it only had two previous owners. It only had slightly over 2,000 plays on it. Someone had done some work on the magnet to get the magnet to work really well, and the magnet works great. I don't remember for sure if it was Tim or Glenn who I was chatting with trying to get some advice about buying my first more modern pin in a long time, and they were saying you want to make sure the magnet works really well. that adds a lot to the kind of randomness of the game and the multi-balls when you're playing. And of course, when it's coming out of Orb, it does that and several other times during the game. And the magnet works great. Gruit works great. It had like a protector down in the shooter lane and a couple other places right from the start. So I'm very, very, very happy with the purchase. But of course, me trying to get every single solitary penny out of this game is going to be near impossible. But that's okay. I don't need to get I don't need to I make enough money through other hobbies I always said I don want pinball to be now pinball podcasting is a little bit different because I do put a lot of work into it And certainly not this summer I only done like three shows in the past But let be honest There's hardly been any news. Oh, my gosh. I'm getting close to 45 minutes. You guys want to hear about the proof in the pudding. I'm not going to spend any more time talking about Jurassic Park. But here's what I have to say. Are you listening, Stern? Drew, is it okay if I steal that from you since you're not on the airwaves? Are you listening, Stern? Are you listening? every single time that you tell us you're only going to do 500 of one and then you do 500 more you say it's only going to be 800 ends up being a thousand or there was another time when they said it was going to be 500 I think it ended up being 800 every time that you kind of go back on your word I'm not going to call you a liar Stern I'm not going to call you a liar but every time you kind of like change it up and you kind of do something like that and it lowers confidence of It doesn't just lower confidence for consumer confidence in the future. I have an honors degree in marketing. Okay, I only got honors first semester. But I do have a degree in marketing from Fanshawe College. And I'm telling you right now, you cannot buy for no price of, there's no price on goodwill. Once you've lost it, you've lost it. Like, for instance, I just watched the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard thing on Netflix. It was pretty interesting seeing it from both sides at the same time. if you at all like me were just captivated freaking captivated by that uh that whole thing that happened there go watch that on netflix it's really interesting seeing that he said she said go back and forth for the first time as opposed to listening to them like weeks apart but amber amber heard there's no amount of money she could pay like there's no amount of money she could pay to get her good name back for her to be for her to become like prime beef you know like for her to become like a level celebrita again in hollywood it just ain't gonna happen i mean maybe maybe maybe who knows over the next five to ten years she proves me wrong and slowly climbs her way back up yeah that's possible it's unlikely but it's possible she's just lost so much goodwill and obviously of course you know nothing stern's done is quite that bad but it's just all these little tiny things that they do when they change their mind on something like this. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for, you know, I'm all for them making money. I want Stern to make money, but I want them to make money from kind of, you know, like what I would say not being shady cash grabs. And the two I can think of are the Bond 60th and then the now, of course, this Jurassic Park 30th. and the bond 60th was a straight up cash grab but it wasn't a pure replica of a game we've already seen so in that particular case i was slightly more i mean it was way overpriced at like 20k so that cash grab was worse in a way that you're charging like twice as three times as much as a pro james bond but it wasn't the exact same pin this is the exact same pin if stern had like leftover ramps, leftover playfields, leftover targets, leftover sculpts, leftover T-Rexes, whatever they had left over from Jurassic Park. They're just throwing it in here. This came off their books years and years and years ago, and yet they're charging us. So even though for them, it's literally just getting rid of some amortized goods in there. Now, obviously, they probably had to order, I'm assuming, some new parts. But what I'm saying is like, this didn't cost them maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, percentage-wise, 3% to 5% more than what the old LEs cost. And I could be slightly wrong on that, but it didn't cost that that much more because you don't have to do any R&D. The machine already exists. You don't have to write any code. Of course, you don't have to change the playfield. The playfield is what's the most expensive by far. It's not the cab. It's not the back glass. It's not even the art or the code. it's the playfield. It's everything you see on the playfield. It's the engineering that goes into the playfield. It's paying the designer to design it. The time, the hundreds, if not thousands of hours that go into designing that playfield, and none of that was redone. And so even if they released the Jurassic Park LE at the exact same price as all the other LEs, if it wasn't even cash grabbed, it'd still be a cash grab at that regular price. Because maybe they don't exclusively put it in the contract that when you're buying an LE, like, okay, we'll never make LEs of this ever again. But that's kind of like, let's be honest, that's the good faith. That's the good faith thing that you're telling your customers, you know, like you're buying the premium, the most limited edition of Jurassic Park. Like when we watched the dead flip stream with, uh, Zach Sharp dressed up in the, the, uh, the T-Rex, right. Or wait, was that, was that, I don't, I don't remember. Was that Jack from Deadflip? I don't remember. Someone was dressed up in a T-Rex, and it was highly entertaining, and it was really fun to watch, but when they told you they're only making X number of LEs, and you're a huge Jurassic Park fan, your thought is, okay, I want to get the highest end, the best, the best of the best, the creme de la creme, okay, the cream in your jeans, I want to get like the best version of Jurassic Park for myself, because I love that theme, and I love Keith Elwin and I love the whole team that Keith Elwin works with over there at Stern and I want the best version of this for my arcade. I need this. I don't want this. I need this. But the next time an I need this theme comes out, you're all going to think twice about getting it, especially in the LE version. If you know that, well, just a year or two later, if this machine actually does turn out to be very valuable and holding its value well and people are really, it's doing well in the secondary market then what stern's going to do is just find the excuse oh it's the 17th anniversary of uh aerosmith uh going on tour of uh dude looks like a lady dude dude you know like they're going to come up with an excuse oh mrs doubtfire's uh 25th anniversary there's always going to be a reason to make another version of the pin but the only real reason to do it is so that they can get some extra money and I want Stern to do well and I want them to succeed but I don't want it to be off the coattails of lowering their brand awareness of basically taking what we you know every single time in the future you're gonna have to listen to every other pinball podcast or every other pinball youtuber every other content creator for the rest of Stern's you know I don't know the next five to ten years every time they say oh we're limiting it to 500 you're gonna say yeah and what, two years later, if the machine sells well, you're going to do 500 more, and what, then you're going to do 20 super LEs later after that, and then what, you know, so we're taking the consumer confidence, which is already low on the LE side, and you're flushing it down the drain, and yes, maybe you made a bit more money now from selling those 500 JPs, but the question is, over the next, is it just short-sighted on Stern's behalf, because over the next two, three, four, five years, are they going to see a dip in sales, and they're always going to wonder when, when alleys don't sell out in the future, they're always going to wonder, Hmm. Now, if I had just, uh, you know, if I had just, I would think if you're someone who sits in the stern marketing department, or if you're someone sitting around that table, you're going to go, maybe we should cut it out with these, you know, two or three cash grabs a year because the profit we're making from the cash grabs is not worth the ill will is not worth like think about it from them selling 500 if that is that now going to cause them to have at least 500 if not probably a thousand and maybe more like lost sales in the future well what's worth more the small amount of of money you would make from this one jurassic park sale or losing one le buyer who used to buy every single le and they don't buy the next 5 10 15 or 20 LEs from you because they're so sick and tired of your bullshit where you say we're only going to do a certain number and then you renege on that, right? You basically become an Indian giver. Like you're saying, here I'm giving you, or sorry, I want to state this properly, so I guess a native giver, is that the right term? Maybe we just don't use that term anymore, so I apologize. I hope I didn't offend anybody. But what I'm saying is that if Stern's just going to give it right back every time after they say, no, no, this is the best model you could buy of this one, and then all of a sudden there's always going to be a better one, there's always going to be a better, it's always going to have better art plates, it's always going to have better code, oh, it's going to have Insider Connected, it's going to have more features, you know, it's going to have a different topper, whatever it is they use to get you to buy the new LE, you can be sure as shats that future sales that they've lost from consumer confidence on all levels, not just the LE level, but on all levels. And buying direct from Stern, they're just, people are more so just going to say, I'm going to wait till later because I don't want to buy this LE, then lose two or three grand selling it two years later to try to get the new LE. I'm going to wait two or three years to see if they're actually going to, and then you'd save another two or three grand that way. So you could be saving four or five grand by just not buying the LE for the first year or two, which I get it. If you're an LE buyer, you want it as soon as possible. You want it to get there you want it to be real you want it to be spectacular and you want to be limited or else you wouldn't buy the limited edition so stern are you listening get with it now I promised you guys that the proof was in the pudding and we're going to talk about it I didn't I didn't stay under 45 minutes but I think I could still keep this under an hour and uh tell you about the girl that broke my heart okay she didn't break my heart I had a little crush on her when I was younger. And yeah, we're going to talk about that in a sec. But first, let's talk about the proof being in the pudding. I've known for years that the pinball market, and it was, it was, I know a lot of people will tell you, oh, there was no pinball market bubble, so the bubble can't burst. They're wrong. I have studied collectibles markets more than them. I'm here to tell you, the pinball bubble hasn't just burst baby it's imploded it's falling off a tank not only have we seen six to seven months worth of prices prices dropping if not uh flattening out we've seen the flattening of the curve baby oh yeah the top of the c the c curve the bell curve whatever you want to call it it's starting to drop uh the left shoe has dropped uh the canary in the coal mine is here I don't, you know, the pig in the python, whatever expression you want to use, it's happening. And we all see it. I don't give a shit if someone is calling it like, oh, the slowing of the market, we see the slowing of the, no, it is a bubble. It was an artificial bubble. The artificial bubble was caused by COVID. What COVID did, the pandemic did, is it made it harder to get all pinball parts. It also caused people to be stuck in their houses and in their basements. And it caused those people to look for a way, some type of home entertainment, something to do with their money, because they couldn't go on trips anymore, they couldn't go to casinos anymore, they couldn't go out for dinner anymore, they couldn't go do all the things they did to spend their money. So there was an artificial pinball bubble, and what happened during the artificial pinball bubble is a shit ton of people went out and bought pinball machines and wouldn't normally buy them, and all those people buying pinball machines caused, you know, it to be even harder to buy pinball machine and it was an artificial bubble and now all the like i call them the sneaker kids the quick flippers the people who want to come in and buy le's and boxes and sell them for three to five grand those people are long gone see you later buds don't let the door hit you on the way out now we're still left with people who actually genuinely love pinball does that mean that i think we're going to see the numbers of if players drop off a map anytime soon of course not does that mean that i actually believe in my heart that pinball is not as rad as it was a year or two ago because we're seeing prices drop and we're seeing you know uh dealers and distributors finally have inventory no i think pinball is just as rad if not more rad than it was during covid and here's what makes it better is the fact that you can actually go out there as someone who eats sleeps and breathes pinball you can actually go out there and find any pinball machine you want new any pinball machine you want used for significantly less and at this point like Remember during COVID, there was a time where, like, if you even offered someone a couple hundred dollars less, I heard some sick and disgusting, you know, like, people would have their pros listed at, like, you know, 7,900 firm. And someone would be like, okay, like, I'll offer you 7,800. They'd be like, nope, it's 7,900 firm. People would be like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, that pin, like, new in box doesn't even work that much. Right? But of course, at that time, it took so long to get a new inbox pin. So I think that companies like Stern are going to have to be really careful. I don't think they're in jeopardy of losing their crown anytime soon. Now, all the other companies like the boutique companies, they have to be more than careful. They're going to have to be on their game. The proof is in the pudding is not the slowdown in sales. It's not the flattening of the curve of the prices. it's not the fact that if you include inflation most pinball prices have dramatically dropped within the last now year to year and a half when you're looking at inflation being between three to seven percent per year most pinball most almost all pinball machines cost less than they did two years ago 90 of pinball machines cost less than they did even a year and a half ago never mind a year ago, never mind six months ago. And so now, now, are we going to see like pros go down to like four grand or something? No, we're not going to see drastic, drastic drops because, you know, you have to remember inflation's happening between four to 7% each year. So over three years, if a pinball machine goes up, if the price of a pinball machine goes up 20% in three years, it's still gone up less than inflation. That pinball company is still making less money potentially than they did three years before that because with 7% times three is 21%. So I mean, I guess where I'm going with this is for pinball companies to make money anymore, for pinball companies to sell out day one, for pinball companies to continue to ask these crazy high prices that they're asking nowadays, for them to do well and not just to survive. I don't care about talking about, oh, how can I make a pinball company survive? Do you want to just survive in life or do you want to thrive of course you want to thrive you want to sell out day one you want to you want to have good reviews you want your you want your pinball machine to be ranked in the top 25 if not 10 on pin side you want there to be lots of excitement about your next pin you want there to be lots of goodwill about your company but i'm telling you right now the canary in the coal mine is the fact that venom sales have been so low think about it Venom has incredible shots. It has insane flow. Everybody agrees. Everybody who's played it says the flow is just incredible. Everyone who plays it says it's the fastest, if not one of the fastest pins I've ever played. Everyone who's played it says they love the code. They like the rules. They find it interesting. It's unique. It's different, and in a good way. And almost universally, everybody agrees that Zombie Eddie's one of the best, if not the best pinball artist on the planet, as well as they love the artwork on Venom. So if you release a pinball machine that has incredible artwork, and it also has incredible artwork, it has great code and new and unique code, it has four different characters. So if you don't like the sound setting on one of the four different characters, you just don't play that character that often. It's got literally four different soundtracks in it. It's got four different groupings of callouts, from what I can tell, or at least certainly different callouts for different modes, at least a little bit different, right, with the four different characters. And it's got the ability to pause it and replay it later. And I know Venom, a lot of people are saying it's not an A-grade theme, but I want you to be honest with yourselves. And I'm sorry, AP, I don't want to throw you under the bus here. But has American Pinball ever had a theme as good? is Houdini really in the zeitgeist? If I ask both of my sons, a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, and they've got their ear to the ground, they're on social media, they know what's going on. If I were to ask them about Houdini, I think maybe the 18-year-old would say, well, isn't that that pinball machine we played? And the 14-year-old, Owen, little Orby Jr., wasn't even with me in Charlottetown and playing Houdini. He may have heard of the pin, but neither of them know that this is a magician that's a real person from like a hundred years ago they they don't know any of that they've never heard of that okay and they're both fans of like modern magic they just they don't i might have mentioned them in passing but they both know who the hell venom is if you were to pull a hundred people i will say under 50 and you were to say like you know do you think the theme of venom would be better for pinball or about cows in tanks. Like, they're going to tell you that they're going to want Venom. You're going to ask them, oh, would you like it to be Hot Wheels cars, or do you want it to be Venom? They're going to say Venom. I mean, okay, Hot Wheels is the only one that you could even argue that maybe more men over 50 would enjoy. I think when you get to, like, men over 30, it probably is going to swing to the Venom side for sure, but maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know. I'm only 43, maybe people seven years to 12 years older than me, Venom isn't their superhero. They're more into Hulk or Spider-Man or Superman, okay? And that makes sense as well, and that's fine. I'm not even a huge Venom fan. I love the artwork, but like, I'm not, I'm more of a Spider-Gwen fan than I am a Venom fan. I was kind of almost getting out of comic books by that mid-90s when Venom kind of took over, and then, you know, me sort of getting back into Venom, or sort of getting back into comic books, Venom isn't just, it's not really in the zeitgeist nowadays. People are more likely to read like Loki or like, you know, Mandalorian comics or Ahsoka. Ahsoka, just the new show came out. I'm about halfway through the first episode, enjoying it. Hopefully you guys are checking it out. But what I was saying is I've known for quite some time that when Stern, you know the biggest pinball company in the world when they come out with a pinball machine as rad as venom and they're not able to sell it out and and not only not sell it out but we hear from several people including numerous distributors that it's not selling that well when you have a pin that comes out by a known and and a known and very well-loved designer like brandon um or sorry brian Brandon. There was a guy in my hometown called Brandon Eadie, and I always confuse him with Brian. They're not the same at all. The one guy ran like punk rock bingo and was like a music producer from my hometown. But anyways, so I encourage everyone to go out there and play Venom. I was, I got to hear Dwight, of course, Blinded by Dwight. I got to hear him over there on the free play pinball podcast um with bill and amanda and it was really interesting hearing them talk about the rules and the code if you haven't listened to that podcast go listen to it i think that maybe some people are hesitant to get it and it's not just because the pinball bubble is bursting but i do think that that is the true canary in the coal mine think about it if venom came out four years ago would have sold out the ellies would have sold out day one three years ago ellies would a solo day one two years ago ellies might have taken like a week or two to sell out but still the sales would have been very strong even think about it this way six or seven months ago like before we had pulp fiction before we had uh galactic tank force before we had uh the total um shoot the new scott denisi one for from p3 and before before we had all of that a total Resurrection? Final Resurrection? Final Resurrection? I think it's something like that. Before we had all these new pins came out, I don't think it would have sold out day one, but I think the sales would have been a lot stronger than they were now. So now we're not only seeing fatigue from the hardcore pinball nerds near the top, but then we're seeing everybody else that owns, like all the people who own locations, they're seeing the values come back to earth of all their pins, which is making it harder for them to go out and buy new pins because they're seeing, oh yeah, I could have sold, I don't know, say like Twilight Zone for like 14k, like two years ago, three years ago, and now it's only worth like eight or nine, like it was pre-pandemic. We're seeing the prices get back to, or if not close to, especially including inflation, what they would have been three, four, five years ago, and that's just happening. But the proof is in the pudding that I think we're about to see a massive fall. So I'm not suggesting like, you know, you don't have to be chicken little and think the world is ending, you don't have to go out there and like start buying gold and silver and making like a doomsday fortress in your basement and buying those like big Costco crates that have like three years worth of freeze-dried food in them. No, you don't have to go that crazy. You don't have to sell your whole pinball collection because the prices are dropping. Orby says the prices are dropping. Sell them now. I would definitely hold off on buying any new in-box pinball machines because I think there is a very, very good chance that we going to see some price reductions in the next year or two Most economists including my favorite boy over there Alpha Investments he mostly talks about Magic the Gathering and Pokemon cards and he talks a little bit about the stock market. He does talk a little bit about some other, well, he kind of makes fun of Funkos. He's been talking about the Funko bubble popping for quite some time and of course, everybody in the Funko game knows prices now are worse than they were even five to eight years ago. And when you look at, again, even say 5% inflation over eight years, they should be worth minimum. Even if they were just being a good hold of money, they would be worth 40% more. And they're just not. So the collectibles market itself is already unsteady and in issues. But Rudy is telling us who I, and it's not just Rudy, but it's a lot of other economists that, you know, that I'm lucky enough to listen to. I know Stephen's channel is one of the biggest investment channels out there. Everybody is saying we are going to see, you know, not necessarily economic collapse, thank God. I don't even want to use the R word, okay, recession, but we're definitely going to see a mad, mad, mad cooling off of, you know, everything from basically everything that you could have made money on during the pandemic. It's kind of everything is slowly floating down to earth, And I do think we are going to see a little bit of bloodshed. Not so much in the EM pinball machines. Those prices never got super high. But everything I'd say 1990 and newer, if you've been waiting a couple years to kind of sell some of those pins, I'd probably sell them now. If you're thinking you might need money between now and 2026, if you're going to need a little bit of extra money in your toy box to play with to buy some of these pins when they're at the bottom, I think my best guess would be the bottom will probably be summer of 2025. I think we've got about two years of bloodshed. I think we're going to see anywhere from three to maybe even 10% drop in pinball prices per year, year over year for the next two summers. Like, I think we will. It doesn't mean that, you know, a certain Keith Elwin machine's not going to come out and sell day one. Sure, it could. Or sell through. Jersey Jack could come out with a you know a really good theme and it could sell out day one sure but are we going to see these like people hoarding new in box pinball machines to try to make extra money I don't think we're going to see that for a long time if ever again and I'm actually happy about that and that was part of the good thing that did come out of pinball companies raising the prices for a while there but now I think that even Stern's realizing to keep their line going probably past the post-Christmas rush, like January, February, March of next year, I wouldn't be shocked. I would be shocked if we see any price increases over the next two or three years, which means that we're really seeing a price decrease. Are we going to actually see price reductions? I know Pinball Brothers dropped Alien by a little bit. So yes, we've already started to see them happen. I've gone off topic. I've talked about this for way too long. Proof is in the pudding. When a machine is incredibly awesome, as Venom can come out and we don't see the LEs sell through and we don't hear about the pinball sales being very good. That, I think, is telling you everything you need to know. New in-box sales are going to be significantly less until probably Christmas of 2025, if not maybe the spring slash even the fall of 2026. Prices of everything 1990, possibly even 1980 forward, they're going to go down 3% to 10% per year, even beloved games. even games that everyone loves like Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars. If you're a company like CGC or your Spooky Pinball, man, you're going to have to really consider lowering your prices, or if you're not going to lower your prices, you're going to really have to consider lowering the number of pins that you put out in your line. Instead of doing, say, 1,000 of one, you're going to have to do 500. If you're Stern, instead of doing even 500 of an LE, you might even consider doing 400. or keeping the prices the same or increasing it or giving people a discount on a topper. We're going to see new, creative, interesting things happen. And I am excited to see it because I don't have, like if I had 50 pinball machines in Orbeez Arcade right now and I'm looking at, once you get past about four or five pins, you better damn well be tracking how much they are worth. I know it's not the funnest thing on the planet to do, but if you're not tracking how much those pins are worth, to at least see how much money you have to play with in your sandbox of collectibles for the pinball machines, there's something wrong with you. Like, most likely, most dudes who are going to have, or women, like anyone who's going to have a collection of 10 or more pinball machines, they're probably at least relatively aware of how much they're worth. And if you don't need to pull that money out until 2026 or 2027, cool, just keep your collection and keep enjoying them and don't even worry about it. but if you suspect that you'd like to purchase a lot of more pinball machines or that you might need money for some other purpose because i think anyone right now who starts saving money for the summer of 2024 to the summer of 2025 you've got about a year to a year and a half to you're going to see pinball prices really hit rock bottom and that's this is just me all looking into my crystal ball and me guessing uh knowing what i know from what's happened with sports cards which have what's happened with Pokemon's going through a little bit of a bloodbath right now, which we didn't think we'd ever see pour. Pikachu and Bulbasaur just start, you know, getting their arms cut off and the market fall out of that. But everything that's caught up from the pandemic, it took pinball significantly longer because it's much easier to make a little square piece of paper into a comic book or into a Pokemon or into a sports card than it is to make a pinball machine. There's just more parts. There's more moving parts. There's more parts that you need to wait on for more factories. It took longer for the pig and the python to get through, but it's finally came through. I'm at an hour and 11 minutes. That's when I should probably end the show. Let me tell you very quickly about a situation that happened to me when I was younger. There was this very beautiful girl with dark brown hair who went to the same church as me. Her grandparents lived across the road. It was United Church in good old Sheddon, Ontario. Sheddon is known as the Rosy Rhubarb capital of Canada. Who cares about rhubarb? Who cares about rosiness? Who cares about church and God? I certainly don't. What I do care about was that this really, really hot girl, she wasn't in my Sunday school group, but we would go to the front of the church during Sunday school, and the priest or the pastor or whoever he was would talk to you a little bit, and then he'd send you all downstairs. She was in the much older group, I think two groups ahead of me. Anyways, really cute brunette girl, and she was brand new to town. So I said, oh, where are you from or where are you visiting from? She said, oh, my grandparents live across the street here and stuff. And I said, oh, that's cool. Just to let you know, every night, like, not just kids my age, because I was much younger than her. I said, not just kids my age, but like kids of all ages. They go over to the park and they all play Manhunt. And I wasn't, of course, inviting her on a date per se, even though I thought she was really cute and she seemed fun. And she was kind of quiet, though. and she was kind of kept to herself, probably not what you'd expect from someone who went on to be a big actress. But she ended up coming that night, but she didn't come over and play. I don't know if she wasn't comfortable with us because we're all kind of like, I'm not going to lie, we're a little bit hillbilly. We lived out in the middle of the country. We weren't necessarily all like inbreds or something, but I lived in the middle. I lived in the sticks. I was an hour away from a large town. There wasn't much to do, so we played a lot of army tag on the playground, and we played a lot of baseball, we played a lot of hockey, we had fun. Yes, we did run through the field and do cow tipping and have forts and all that kind of stuff. So it wasn't that bad. It wasn't all horrible. No, I didn't get to be a mall rat and hang out at the mall in the big city as often as I wanted to. Thankfully, my best friend Pete or my mom would go to town almost every Friday so we'd get to go to an actual mall and go do big city kid stuff as well. But anyways, you don't care about any of that. that night this cute girl came over to the the playground and she kind of just sat on the swing and slowly went back and forth a little but she wasn't really like you know like full swinging and she I came went over to her and said oh hey thanks for coming like yeah it's so cool that you came we all play army tag and what happens is we start with like one older kid and one younger kid will start on the team together and they have to count to 100 and then they you know you get three steps on the ground when you're not you know there's all these stupid rules that we had and she's like, yeah, I don't really think I want to play. I was like, oh, no, okay. And then I started talking to her for a while. And she said, oh, yeah, you know, I'm from upper New York State. My grandparents live here in Canada. And so you'll probably see me up here every summer. And, you know, we're only here for a week. But, you know, and then I knew where she lived because she was right across from our church. And I talked to her for, I don't know, in my head, it was like half an hour, probably five minutes, you know, when you're a young boy, and you're kind of smitten with an older teenage girl, you're kind of like, wow, I can't even believe she's talking to me. And obviously she's not thinking of me romantically because I'm so much younger than her. But I'm thinking like, wow, who knows, five years, ten years down the road, I get older and more handsome and taller and who knows, maybe, you know. So in the back of my head is, yeah, you're a teenager, your hormones are all over the place. You try not to think some older girl who's like some babysitter or someone could ever be into you. But, you know, in your head you're like, oh, maybe, there's always a chance. There's a chance, right? So in my head I'm like, oh, yeah, there's a chance. Oh, can you guys hear that? That's Elwynn's tail. She's having a dream. Elwynn, are you winning in the dream? Look at her go. Sorry about that thumping. Tuna. It's okay. All right, sorry. Hopefully I didn't wake her up in her dream there. So anyways, it turns out that the next year this girl came back and she was in church again. I said, oh my gosh, yeah, we didn't end up seeing you that much last year. and then this year she was out of her shell more and she hung out with us quite a bit and uh i i do remember she had like hopscotch or some crap like that set up in front of her house and like i stayed there and talked to her for a while and um her and this other girl in the street were even doing skipping and they wanted me to help with double dutch and i was like not really a big skipper but there's two cute girls that are letting me hang out with them so okay fine i'll stay and chat and then the following year she didn't come back but the year after that she came back again but then she was like a teenager like she was like older she was like 18 or 19 then and she kind of didn't think I was that cool anymore she did remember me and she talked to me briefly but she actually brought a friend with her from uh not New York City but like New York State somewhere where she lived and they were kind of didn't really talk to us much and everything else and I don't know I think really I was too young and she didn't want to seem uncool around her friend but on the very very last day that her and her friend was there we ran into them at the park and that time she was like yeah sorry I didn't hang out with you much this time you know like just you know whatever she was kind of like a little bit nicer to me so we kind of made up and then I didn't see her again for two years and the next time I saw her she came back and I was like this girl's like I'm freaking movie star or something so my friend who worked at the variety store who was the town crier well their their older daughter was the town crier she said Albert don't you know who that girl is? And I was like, no, who's that girl? And she was like, that's that girl that you were always like trying to get to hang out with us and stuff like that, but she never wanted to. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, I know that. But what do you mean? Who is she? And they said, that's the girl who was the star in the movie Labyrinth. And I was like, the movie Labyrinth? And I was like, I remember that movie that Oh, my God, it does look like her. and anyways as it turns out I did get made fun of for the next two or three years because the same way probably some of you listening are going to laugh and say there's no way this story is true that's what many of my buddies like all the way through high school I got made fun of they're like oh yeah Albert went on a date with her was trying to go out with Jennifer Connelly so anyways it's Jennifer Lynn Connelly that's you know I just knew her as Jen I didn't call her Jennifer I don't really remember her last name being Connelly is it possible that like it's not the same Jennifer I did look up pictures of her and when I first started hanging out with her which would have been around 1990 and she looked identical to the Jennifer that I hung out with I did read that this Jennifer Connelly is from upper New York State apparently she did have grandparents and had ties to Canada so I think it was her I don't know if it was her many of you probably know Jennifer Connelly not just from like more recently you would know her from Top Gun Maverick let me just say Jennifer Connelly in case you're listening you still got it you're still hot I think my wife would agree with me and be okay with me saying that she's still gorgeous she's still beautiful she was also in Requiem Requiem for a Dream A Beautiful Mind she was also in well there's more movies here like she was in the Hulk movie that did not do very well of course really cool 80's movie called Career Opportunities, or I guess 90s movie, because it came out in 1991. But if you look at her in 1986, I would have started hanging out with her a little bit after that. And did she mention that, yes, she was in movies? Yes. Did she mention she was like an actress or some shit? Yeah. I thought she was in like her local like Sears magazine or like Walmart flyer or something. I didn't know she was like an actress actress. She was very humble. She didn't brag about it. She wasn't like, I'm the girl, and she never told me that. She never said, I'm the girl. It's not like we were good friends. We weren't pen pals. We didn't talk on the phone. We didn't actually go on a date. I was just this kid that was like eight or nine years younger than her that was like always trying to get her to come out and go to stuff from her church, and you know, she didn't end up really hanging out with people my age, of course, mostly like people closer to her age. Anyways, was it Jennifer Connelly? I don't know. I'll probably never know. I would be excited to go back to my hometown of Shedden and just ask around and see if it's not just like in my head. I actually want to talk to my good buddy Pete, who I grew up with, and show him pictures and see if he thinks it's the same girl that I thought it was all those years ago. Age-wise, it seems like it would have been close, but maybe not quite, because I thought she was only six or seven years older than me when I was talking to her when I was like 10, 11, 12, but I could be wrong. Anyways, that was the story about Jennifer Connelly. Sorry today's show went on so long. I did get through like seven topics. So if you think about it, this was basically seven mini old Orbital Albert Pimmel Nerds podcast shows kind of all strung together. So there you go. Hopefully that was enough for now. I don't want to lie to you guys. We are getting the remnants of, well, we were supposed to get the remnants of what is post-tropical storm Franklin, good old Frankie. but now they're saying that it's turning into a hurricane while it's over the Atlantic Ocean. And it looks like the eye of the storm is directly going to hit Nova Scotia. So there is, and we already lost, we've already lost, we lost power last Sunday for several hours because of bad Carl Weathers and so on. So then we lost, we've lost power twice in the last week. So there's actually a very good chance that you might not hear from me for another couple weeks, but if something in pinball happens, if there's some news or some new pin, if something happens, I will definitely, you know, I will be here on the mic. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I do tend, I do tend to do way less pinball podcasts when I'm super busy in the summer, actually working 30, 40, sometimes even 50 hours in a week between my kind of my side hustles and this, but now it's, things are going to calm down. I'm going to go back to being a collectibles dealer, also as a pinball podcaster. This is also about the same time of year that Danielle, as much as she's patient and she loves me, she starts saying like, oh, hey, now that you're done, you know, we don't need you for Saturdays as much anymore. Now that we're down to just doing one market and soon it will be no markets. Are you going to start looking for a part-time job? And boy, wouldn't it be great if I could tell her, wow, sales are doing so well through the pinball podcast that I don't need to go work a part-time job. Or maybe I can just get a part-time job that's like 12 to 20 hours a week, not like a 25 to 35 hours a week where I barely have time for the podcast, as happened when I was working for the town the last time I got a full-time job. Many of you know that for four months I didn't release a single podcast, even though I was ready to come back and start podcasting again, because I got this full-time job. And like many of you, I'm just a regular pinball dude. I don't really work on pinball machines. I play the odd pinball tournament. Mostly I just love going on location and playing pinball and playing pinball at my house when I can have one at my house. So part of what I do, obviously, is running this little company called Angry Alpaca. If you'd like to support the show and help, you know, if you even remotely enjoyed the show today and you'd like to support the show, please go onto Facebook and type Angry Alpaca. You'll know you're on the right, if you're at a sign company, you've gone to the wrong Facebook page. We have a lot more likes than them, so we should be at the very top, the cream of the crop. so to speak, and click on us, then just click the shop now button. We have very, very reasonable shipping to the United States. We also, partially because we've had rain the last two Saturdays, actually, and we're supposed to have the end of a hurricane come in this weekend, we actually do our very, very well stocked up on our online store. And now that I'm not so busy with the Collectibles Cafe ending, it's much easier to get out your orders in a timely manner. I do want to say thank you. I've only had two orders this summer. The one was from Dan the Man on the week of my birthday. Thank you so much for that, Dan the Man. I sent out him and Rachel all their lovely tea and his free t-shirt. And then Don from Don's Pinball Podcast actually put in an order mostly for tea. He ordered himself and his wife and his family three or four teas. And I did throw him a free t-shirt as well from Cabin Fever. This week I'm not going to add any. There's no, you know, there's no toy in the cereal box. I'm not going to add in any extra t-shirts. I'm not going to add in any extra prizes, comic books, sports cards. I might throw in some Pimblenerd's podcast trading cards that I got kicking around. I am still working on that. Believe it or not, it's been a much longer process than I thought. But I will throw in some of our promo cards for anyone. I always do this. It's not just for you if you order here now today, but anyone that orders, I always make sure to throw in a little something, something extra, because that's how I take care of you. But I've only had two orders in probably the past two and a half, three months, So it'd be really neat to get another order come in. It would just, you know, kind of every time I see an order come in, not only does it kind of justify to my wife, oh, why am I spending more time and energy watching Twitch pinball tournaments or why am I listening to more podcasts? It kind of, you know, gives validity to the fact that I said I would only come back and do pinball podcasting after my break if I was able to get some sales. So it would be super rad if y'all took a minute to go over there and buy yourself some awesome, organic, tasty coffee or tea. I'd really appreciate it. It would mean the world to me. Other than that, just thank you so much for listening. Have yourselves a wonderful day. And remember, the proof is in the pudding. The pinball market bubble has officially burst. I'll be the first one to say it here. That being said, it doesn't make playing pinball any less fun. Maybe buying pinball machines for a perfect store of money, which means that you never lose a penny on any single pinball machine, even including buying Noombox. those days they are long over baby they're gone she gone but the good news is pinball is just as fun to play and soon pinball is going to be even cheaper and that means for new pinball players in the future who haven't bought their very first new unbox pin or even haven't bought their first used pin they're going to be able to get into the hobby for a little cheaper or about the same as we could pre-pandemic, which is overall good news for pinball people. It's good news for pinball tournaments, and it's also good news for the future sales of all pinball companies. So let's take this and put a positive spin on it. Yes, the pinball bubble may have burst, but other than people who have like 40 or 50 games or sitting on trying to just say it's sell, like unless you're a distro, this is good news for you. This means pinball machines will be in your hot little hands much quicker than they were. It won't take years or even nine months or six months. Many pinball companies are getting caught up, so it might take significantly less time, especially with Stern. And then also they're going to be less expensive on the used market. They're even maybe going to be less expensive. Or as we know, year after year after year, Stern has raised their prices in January. I wouldn't be shocked if we saw them not raise their prices this one January, or at least see less of a price increase than we normally say. I don't think we're going to see a price reduction from Stern anytime soon, but remember, when they keep the prices the same, it's equivalent to a price reduction because of the fact that inflation is so high right now. So anyways, Pimble Nerds, I absolutely love you. I'm sorry it went long. What else did you expect? I don't know. This show wasn't very good. It usually isn't, but who knows? Maybe the next show will be better. go back and listen to the Ray Ray show if you haven't and thank you so much to all the listeners who took the time and energy to listen and even if you don't buy some coffee and tea I'm just happy you made it to the end so give yourself a little pat on the back and go play some pinball until next time remember to eat, sleep, and breathe Maple Puddin'