John Youssi, I want money, lots and lots of money. I want the pie in the sky. I want money, lots and lots of money. So don't be asking me why. I want to be rich. Oh, I want to be rich. Oh, happy Friday, everybody. The debate rages on scalping pinball machines. Is it something that is ruining the hobby? Project Pinball is making a lot of money. I posted that photo between the revenue and the expenses. I just asked them to comment. I'm not sure. We'll see what happens with their response. But it's a lot of money happening over there in these pinball raffles. I mean, you take six Beetlejuice machines and you're raffling each one for $24,000. Now, look, we asked on my live yesterday, should I do one raffle for charity with the five Beetlejuice machines? I'm just here to clarify we will not be doing that. It seemed like that made a lot of people upset. there are going to be five machines that will be transferred to five Canada Club members for MSRP. There won't be any shenanigans. There won't be anyone who's not a club member that gets a machine. So here's the thing, though. Once the person who wins the opportunity, if you will, to buy one of these Canada Five games, they can do whatever they want with it. If they want to take possession of it and play it, that's on them. If they want to sell their spot because they feel like selling it, I don't know if I'm going to be able to stop them. I might be able to, but should I? I mean, that is the question. There seems to be this philosophical question around who determines when someone should be allowed to sell something they purchased. Now, look, I don't think anyone has a problem if someone buys one spot for a game, only one spot, and then wants to sort of sell it. I don't think anyone's really questioning that person. It's more the people that have multiple spots with the intention of scalping. And should that be allowed? Should we publicly announce a list? So think about it like this. If Spooky Pinball were to sort of create a list of 999 people that they have allocated a spot for Beetlejuice, and some of those names can come from distributors, some of them are coming direct, but at least then you would know that so-and-so doesn't have like five spots with five different dealers. Because it is easy. It is easy. It's not hard, ladies and gentlemen. I think that's the other side of the coin is it isn't difficult to email every distributor who carries spooky pinball and get on their list for a Beetlejuice and pay the deposit. And maybe you personally take one game and then you've got three, four other spots to find people to buy the games. And now that we know, unlike some other games where if you did that, you would have lost money. If you had put down four spots for Toy Story CE that were non-refundable, you would have lost a lot of money. You would have lost a lot of money if you did it with Ultraman. You would have lost a lot of money maybe if you did it with these Stern LEs because nobody really wants the recent Stern LE offerings. But there is something to be said for this constant debate. And I've seen the threads happening on Pinside. And I'm somewhere in the middle on this. Personally, witnessing this in so many other collectible hobbies, I don't think there's really a way to police it. I really don't. If the manufacturers really, really cared about preventing this, they could. But they don't want to get involved. They really don't. It's the reason why Spooky didn't sell this game even direct, because they could have sold all 999 direct. and they could have made sure that they're not sending multiple games to multiple people. But even if they did that, like even if they did that, I guess you would have to make the spots non-transferable and you could refund people if they want it out, but they couldn't transfer their spot to another person. You could do it that way, but you're still just gonna get people walk down the street and have every one of their neighbors order a game. And then, yeah, you might have to take delivery, but you're still going to be able to flip the game for a lot of money. And now that this game is getting easily on the table, $5,000 over, it's going to keep going up. I keep saying this. If Evil Dead, and they're almost done with the Evil Dead production, if Evil Dead is getting $5,000 on the table, I think Beetlejuice is going to get a lot more than that on the table I don think most people are scalpers though And this whole like notion that it ruining pinball I don agree with that I don think this is like happening all over the place There's over a thousand games. How many Beetlejuice spots have changed hands in the last week? Not even five, maybe 10 at the most. Maybe there's some deals happening behind the scenes, but that's nothing. It's nothing. For the most part, the majority of people that ordered Beetlejuice are going to take possession. The majority of people who want this game, who are paying attention to content creators, who are on Pinside, the majority of people who wanted a Beetlejuice bad enough got one. I don't think most people who really wanted this game got locked out. Now, there were those people that wanted to wait to see the trailer and then tried to get through on Spooky's phone line and on their website. And to those people, I don't know what to tell you. You knew that was going to be a problem. They told me they had 30,000 people on their website trying to load the page when the game went up for sale. 30,000! And there's only 1,000 games available to the buying public. It's a really exciting time for Spooky. They're doing great stuff over there. Luke said in a live chat with our fan base here that they are going to raise the price. I think the next game is going to probably be 11-5. And you know what? They're going to get it. They're going to get it. You know, people are sort of seeing these games and the value and the excitement. They're going to get it. Now, what they need to be careful is they need to have a ceiling by which they're not going to keep going up and up and up. But I also, you know, let's stop for a minute and say, why couldn't spooky pinball find the right balance? See, the thing is this, though, if you keep raising your prices the way Stern did, you go from 10.5 Godzilla. Here's the issue. If you're going to raise your prices, you need to make sure that the product is in line with raising those prices. So, you know, I think that's the problem for Stern lately is they went from 10.5 and everybody that bought a Godzilla LE got some great value. The games were selling for over 10.5 and, you know, there was a thousand of them and there's premiums and now there's like anniversary additions. But if you got an LE, you didn't lose money. There hasn't been a single Stern LE since then that has even held at 13. Jaws LEs are starting to sell below that because everyone now realizes the 50th anniversary is the better game. It just is. It looks better. It has a better play field. It has better mechs in it. It's the better game to have. And they might make less than 1,000 Jaws 50th by the end of this year, which would make it really the LE to have. And so now you've got four years of Sternell E's at 13, all losing a lot of value. So spooky pinball, if I'm them, you know, they're not going to get greedy. Luke is smart. They're smart. They understand. Don is over there. These smart people over there, you know, they're not going to get too greedy. What they simply could do, and everybody knows this. I mean, the answer is staring them in the face. They don't need to raise their prices significantly if they want to make more money. they just need to sell more games direct the margins aren't amazing on spooky games i hear i think distros might be making a thousand per game on a stern ali they're making i think 2500 but the problem with the stern ali now is if you're a dealer or a distro you've got to commit to buying a bulk of premiums and pros and what happens when the game is not a hit so all that unsold inventory on the pro and premium games you had to buy eats away at your LE profit. And then you've got games like The Walking Dead where the LE didn't even sell out. They couldn't even move 500 units. But to get back to the question about should we or should we not come down harder on pinball scalping? You know how I feel about this. Just let the free market do what it will do. Just let the free market be the free market. Who would complain other than people that missed out. And that's my thing. If you missed out, you just didn't work hard enough. You just didn't. And I know the problem now, and this is why I said Spooky could create a new fan club that gives people options to get their next games and they could charge way more than 50 bucks to get into that fan club. Why is that so unfair? How many of you out there belong to a country club. I don't, but I have friends that do. So you pay a membership fee to go to that club and use its resources and enjoy its service. It's golf course, it's restaurant. That's why you pay the membership every year. You get to go. Everyone else doesn't get to go when they want to go. You could come as a guest but you are not a member So why is it like make people so upset if Spooky just like I don know like we just trying to find a way to allow people who have the resources to get access to the products It all class warfare It like those with money will have an advantage. So you could raise your kids in a way where you don't think money gives people an advantage. It absolutely does. If you go to a restaurant a lot and spend money there a lot, guess what? You become a regular and they're gonna treat you differently than someone who walks in for the first time. Is that unfair? If there's a table over there that doesn't have any reservation attached to it and someone walks in at the same time as a regular and that person is in front of the regular, who do you think they're gonna give that table to? Now, I know we're living in a new world now where like being a socialist is now becoming the trendy thing for Gen Z kids. But ultimately, I think the only way to do it is let the market be free. And yeah, there's going to be those people that have four or five spots and they're going to scalp them. And hey, look, here's the thing. There's enough internet sleuths going on on Pinside and Facebook. Just out those people. If you want to shame them, maybe just out them and say, hey, look, you know, Jim Bob over there in like, I don't know, Ohio, he keeps selling these games. Like if you're a distributor and a dealer or spooky, you could always cut him off if John Youssi what he's doing. But I think all of this is a good problem. We would not be having this conversation if it was just Stern LEs. We're talking about the other thing when we talk about Stern, how much money the games are losing. Nobody's scalping a Stern machine, nobody. And Stern machines used to be the games that everybody ran to to do this kind of behavior. And I can't wait for the next Stern machine I get to scalp. I mean that because that means they hit it out of the park. It means they made a great game. We should be rooting for some of this behavior to be happening. If we witness this level of scalping, all it means is something good is happening in pinball. It's good. There's more demand than ever before. It's going to wake people up to be more diligent to get the next game from Spooky. If it's Goonies, all bets are off. And that's why people are banging down the door now to get on that list. I bet right now, and I'm just going to say this, and they're not going to do this, but if Spooky Pinball said, hey, if you give us $3,000, you get the next three games from Spooky Pinball, it doesn't even go towards the games. Guess what would happen? If they did that, they would sell every single one. you know this, but they're not going to do it. They're not going to do it. The bigger problem in pinball is not the scalping. It's the overpriced nature of the other manufacturers games. Now, speaking of other manufacturers games, here's another interesting storyline that's going to happen. We're getting more and more streams of Winchester's Mystery House and I'm in the thread and I'm just witnessing. I have not played this game enough. I need to play this game more. But in watching the streams, it is pretty apparent that it is a difficult game. And I think that's going to be appealing to certain people. And I think it's going to be a turnoff to certain people. I do think the gameplay is going to be a bit polarizing. They didn't play it safe. And that's what people also like about this game. But when you watch streams, it does get a little concerning for some to see the amount of shots that are bricking and hard to hit. And some people are saying, is this more like a modern day Houdini than the next Keith Elwin game? A lot of us have been spoiled with some unique non-fan layout games that shoot so good. Spooky Pinball played it safe with Beetlejuice's layout. It's a lot more of a fan layout. The shots don't look too tight. and it's probably a lot of fun to shoot because of that. Like fan layouts, when they don't break back and forth, you know, if you look at Star Wars, the new one, it's a fan layout for the most part, but some of those shots are really tight. Like that Death Star shot keeps rejecting. And so like, yeah, some of them are buttery smooth, but some of them are really frustrating. In the end, in the end, it's not gonna matter with Winchester. Now, we do speculate a lot on whether or not Winchesters are gonna go up in value or not. I don't know. the market on it, it's hard to tell. I will say this. There's more people scalping Beetlejuice machines right now than Winchester. Brian Savage said that people are not allowed to scalp their Winchesters, that they are going to refund your money and things are non-transferable. You just can't police it, gang. You just can't. People will just take delivery of the game and then ship it to the new buyer. It's one extra step. It is a little bit of a headache, but it is what it is. But I'm just here to tell you right now, I am very excited about what's about to happen in pinball in 2026 We are going to see a lot of really great pinball next year We got Beetlejuice we got Sonic the Hedgehog and we got Back to the Future Coming If you think about just those three games alone how excited are you for 2026? Very excited, right? Add into that Winchester's Mystery House and the next game from Barrels of Fun. Even without mentioning Stern Pinball once, you are so excited for what's coming in 2026. That's amazing. Now add into the mix all of the games that Stern's gonna put into the world. And unfortunately, I hope this rumor is not true. The remastered game next year is going to be ACDC. What? They made about 10,000 ACDC games back in the day. We don't need more. Talk about two games where you don't need more. Also, why remaster a game where you've got 10,000 people that own one and you're going to burn every single owner? Stern, remake the games that are hard to get. How about a Batman Anniversary Edition? How about Tron? Or how about Lord of the Rings? If you want to sell 10,000 new remastered games, make a remastered Lord of the Rings. Get the movie clips that coincide with the code. It is maybe the greatest Stern machine of all time, with the worst art package of all time, but you know it's got the magic and I understand it might be tricky with the license but get it done everything can get done they got Michael J Fox to give his likeness for Back to the Future everything is possible and so you know look this Walking Dead remastered I don't know we're still waiting to see if there's going to be clips that are like animated over the show clips I don't even know what that means. Stern Pinball never should have launched this game until they had all of the assets approved. Think about it. They are taking customer money and they're not able to even show you what you are going to get. We saw way more on Beetlejuice on day one than we did of even The Walking Dead. Stern is too far into this hobby to be doing this this late in their company like history. They know better. They just know better. And it feels like the reason they rushed it out is that they need to keep the line going. Star Wars did not sell that well, nor did King Kong. I don't believe that these new games have been selling very well, hence the reason why they rushed this game out. It had to be rushed out. Why would a licensor want you to reveal it until they've approved everything? Why? No, Stern needs to get the orders. They need to keep the line going. They need to get the money in. So again, it just keeps feeling like they're scrambling. So I hope in 2026, Stern gets its act together a little bit better. I hope next year they have a few bangers. You guys want it. I want it. Everybody wants great options. Why would we root for any of these companies not to deliver great options in pinball? So to put a pin in it, we'll see what Project Pinball says about all this money. I don't know, man. How much maintenance does it take to maintain a game in a hospital? Like these kids are not banging on it like it's a tournament. And I think a lot of those people are volunteering their time. So there's a lot of money being generated with these raffles. The moment I said the word raffle, people went crazy. You know, you guys sound very Irish, like the people that complain, like Irish people. They're really like haters on anyone who's like trying to make a buck. They're like they want you to be successful. They'll say stuff like the notions on him, the notions on him to sell a Beetlejuice spot for five thousand dollars. Who does he think he is? And I would respond. I'm a capitalist. I am an American. And it's not being greedy. It's just being opportunistic. I mean, we don't even want to talk about all the people who have their money in crypto. They're not having a good week or month, people. Go look at what's happening over there. Total meltdown. Beetlejuice was where you should have put your money, not Bitcoin. Kaneda out. Happy Friday. I wanna be rich Be rich