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Martin Ayub fireside chat with Jack Guarnieri

Pintastic New England·video·1h 9m·analyzed·Nov 27, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Jack Guarnieri recounts JJP's founding, early crowdfunding, and strategic pivot to home market.

Summary

Jack Guarnieri, founder of Jersey Jack Pinball, discusses his journey from operating Pinball Sales (1999) as an early online pinball retailer through founding JJP in 2011 with The Wizard of Oz. He covers key decisions including taking pre-orders before manufacturing existed, expanding design staff with top talent, choosing investor partnership in 2015 to enable scale, and positioning JJP for home collector market growth rather than commercial operators.

Key Claims

  • Jack Guarnieri started Pinball Sales around September 1999 with the idea to sell arcade games to homes, which was not common at the time

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri speaking directly about company origins in fireside chat

  • Pinball Sales became the number one Stern Pinball distributor in the world within about three years, selling thousands of machines annually

    medium confidence · Jack Guarnieri's account of Pinball Sales growth trajectory

  • Over 1,000 people pre-ordered The Wizard of Oz in January-February 2011 before the factory existed or the company had built a pinball machine

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri describing early JJP pre-order success

  • Three Stooges licensing was rejected by multiple parties/estate holders before pivoting to The Wizard of Oz

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri explaining first game selection process with licensing person Drew Maniscalco

  • Guns N' Roses sold 5,000-6,000 units, creating extended production timeline

    medium confidence · Jack Guarnieri comparing sales volume between games to explain production backlog

  • JJP moved manufacturing to Elk Grove Village, Illinois during pandemic transition

    high confidence · Discussion of facility relocation timing and remote work adaptation

  • Jack Guarnieri brought in investor partnership around January 2015 to move away from hand-to-mouth customer-funded model

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri explaining capital requirements and investor decision

  • JJP's next game after current production is 'done, ready to go' but not announced

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri discussing production pipeline and announcement strategy

Notable Quotes

  • “I just wanted to make really great games for everybody because I knew the market was there.”

    Jack Guarnieri@ 12:53 — Core philosophy driving JJP founding despite inexperience with manufacturing

  • “The number one lesson I learned... everything's going to cost more and take longer.”

    Jack Guarnieri@ 19:51 — Key business lesson from Wizard of Oz development

  • “When you're an entrepreneur and you create a company, that's probably the closest you can get... to giving birth.”

    Jack Guarnieri@ 22:59 — Explains emotional investment in company and rationale for accepting investors

  • “I knew this... I didn't do this with the intention of everything going to crap.”

    Jack Guarnieri@ 29:30 — Affirms early confidence in home pinball market viability against industry skepticism

  • “Stern Pinball who laughed at me and said that nobody at home wants to buy a pinball machine and I'd be out of business in a couple of months.”

    Jack Guarnieri@ 8:11 — Documents industry skepticism about home market that he proved wrong

Entities

Jack GuarnieripersonJersey Jack PinballcompanySteven Martin AyubpersonKnapp ArcadecompanyPintastic New EnglandeventPinball SalescompanyStern PinballcompanyThe Wizard of OzgameGuns N' Rosesgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball not attending IAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) indicates deprioritization of operator/location market segment

    high · Jack stated: 'Operators do buy our games. They make money. They work. But... I didn't feel that it was worth my time personally or the company's time to be at IAPA this week'

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball production heavily backlogged; next game title finished and ready but not announced

    high · Jack stated: 'our next game is done, ready to go' and explained strategy of not announcing until production can be managed

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball transitioned from customer-funded to investor-backed model in January 2015 to address capital requirements for scaling manufacturing

    high · Jack stated: 'around January 2015 I kind of was tired of living hand-to-mouth having customers fund the company... I got in touch with one of those people and they wanted to get involved with the company'

  • ?

    community_signal: First-time attendee engagement at Pintastic New England show indicates growing community participation

    medium · Moderator asked 'How many first-time attenders here?' and received strong response

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Warner Brothers provided substantial licensed IP options to Jersey Jack Pinball during early licensing discussions

    high · Jack stated licensing person 'talked to the people at Warner Brothers. A big list came back' and Wizard of Oz was selected as priority

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.208

0:00
Another one of our manufacturers updates and the last one for 2021. And remember next year we're back to June dates so we won't have all this confusion with IAAPA. It would be so much easier to get representatives of the factories next year. But here we go with moderator Martin Ayoub of Pinball News. And our special guest, Jack Guarneri, founder of Jersey Jack Pinball. Good evening, everyone. Hope you're all enjoying the pizza. Curse of Jack.
0:47
Jack, a round of applause for the pizza. Wow. It wasn't so long ago that we didn't think we'd ever see each other again, right? I mean, it might be a good thing for certain people. but to me I really love seeing all of you and it's so great of you to turn out I want to thank Gabe first and foremost and Dave is amazing and all the audio people everybody that put the show on all the volunteers all the semi-paid people that do everything it's just great, it's great to be back and next week is Thanksgiving usually I'm here and it's right around July 4th it's kind of weird You know, people didn't know if this show would be good this year because it's not in July, right? It's like, who's going to show up in November for a show, a pinball show? And maybe nobody shows up or there's Thanksgiving or there's some kind of thing with masks and everything. So thanks, everybody, for showing up and making it be normal again and having fun and being with each other. And all I've been doing this whole time is laughing. Right, twins? All I've been doing is laughing the whole time, so that's great. So I'm here with my good friend Martin, and he wants to ask me some questions. So I guess I'll answer.
2:08
Before I do that, can I just get a nice round of applause for everyone in our AV team over there, and James, and Julian, and Derek. It's been absolutely fantastic. And basically it's been – I've done this before. I know what it's like. You spend the entire show sat in front of a computer monitor. So thank you, guys. You don't usually do that. No, that's right. This year I was spared it from Expo. So thanks for them. Yeah, Jack and I have known each other for a good many years now. We've been in some odd situations in various countries. We've been in Poland where we've been in the JJP Flipper Club. We were dying. Martin and I were dying for a hamburger. and trying to leave the pinball club in Baitum in Poland. The great thing about Poland is you go outside, you can't even escape to go somewhere because all the signs are written. It says CZYXZYZVY. And I went back in the building and I said, Martin, there's no shot that we're leaving this place. That's right. We're sitting there and you're watching a tropical storm blowing through your father's place, I think. We're all watching CNN and keeping track of that. And we've been in France. We've been sitting in a back room of a show with stacks of chairs and tables all around us, sitting there with Jonathan, Jonathan Jewson, who I do a podcast with, and we have Jack on as a regular guest. And we were sitting there drinking champagne, eating French chocolates, and having a fantastic time thanks to the organizer of that show, Frank.
John Borg
person
Steve Richieperson
Eric Meunierperson
Pat Thomas Lawperson
Mark Seatonperson
Drew Maniscalcoperson
Gary Sternperson
Elk Grove Villagelocation
IAAPAevent
Pinball Expoevent
Warner Brotherscompany
Mondale Distributingcompany
  • $

    market_signal: Home pinball market projected to grow 50% over next 10 years according to JJP founder

    medium · Jack stated: 'The next 10 years, I could see things going up about 50% worth of people coming into the hobby'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball has four game designers on staff: Mark Seaton, Eric Meunier, Pat Thomas Law, and Steve Richie

    high · Jack stated: 'you have Mark Seaton, you have Eric Meunier you have Pat Thomas Law and you have Steve Ritchie all designing the games'

  • $

    market_signal: Historical context: Monopoly Platinum special edition game sold for $6,000 on eBay in 2001, donated to charity

    high · Jack described rare Monopoly Platinum signed Boardwalk selling 'for the whopping sum of $6,000' before modern pricing era

    • 3:43
    How about London? Yeah, London as well. How about London at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant? Yeah, Thames. That's right. Freezing cold. Yeah, we seem to be sitting out in the sort of veranda area. Beef Wellington made to order. Well, you are.
    3:58
    I've got one question. How many first-time attenders here? Ooh, what a lot. Well done, everyone. I put my hand up for that as well because it's my first time at this show too. Anyway, getting back to actual questions. Yes, I was going to ask, sort of kind of do this semi-chronologically, but we can bounce around all over the timeline as and when.
    4:22
    I first knew Jack back when he was doing Pinball Sales, which is a company which basically lives up to its name. It sells pinballs, but lots of other products as well, but that was the start. And I think I knew you before, but then it was a Stern factory tour, and you were there handing out T-shirts for Pinball Sales,
    4:43
    which I've still got. I was going to wear it as a sort of joke, but I thought maybe not. So tell us a bit about Pinball Sales, how that began, at what point did you go from being an avid repairer, operator, to actually selling machines?
    5:01
    Well, pinballsales.com, I had this idea around September of 1999 to sell games to the home. and really nobody was doing that at the time. Game operators, which I call game operators because I was an operator, a person that takes amusement games, puts it in bars, restaurants, a place like that, and revenue shares. Typically they put a machine in, we get 50%, the location gets 50%, and everybody is happy most of the time. So this kind of business model I thought about would be selling commercial arcade games to the home. and I had a friend that owned Mondale Distributing in New York.
    5:45
    And he went to Europe for me and bought up hundreds of pinball machines from Germany, from France, from all these countries. So I was bringing into the United States games like Creature from the Black Lagoon, $200. Rocky and Bullwinkle, $100. Addams Family, $300.
    6:09
    To get one Addams Family, I had to take eight Popeyes, though. So it wasn't all wine and roses with those games. There was one point where I had so many creatures from the Black Lagoon, customers would come in and say, you know, the head on that one and the body on that one would look really good. Okay, we can do that. So we would put some money into them and turn them around and sell them. We'd put them up on eBay, and we would also advertise locally. There really wasn't a big Facebook thing. There wasn't a big social media thing. It was kind of a website and it was the first days of selling games online.
    6:50
    And after that, having done that and being very successful at it and being a very major seller of games, at what point did you decide that, you know what, I think I can actually transition now into making my own games. There must have been a moment where you thought, you know what, I can do this. So there was a part in there, and I'll just add for everybody that doesn't know, you know, I was kind of running out of games from Europe. I kind of cleaned out of Europe of all the games, except for the ones that took a bath before I got them. There were people interested in selling me, unscrupulous people, believe it or not, interested in selling me container loads of games that might not exist or games that were all wet and dried off and things like that, and I avoided those pitfalls.
    7:37
    So I had a relationship with Ford Motor Company, had a premium catalog that they put out for their salespeople, and I put a pinball machine in the premium catalog. I put a Sharky Shootout game in there, which is the game that was being built kind of at that time, and they wanted 35 games. so they were paying me for 35 games. So I went to a show, which conveniently was happening. It was probably Amusement Expo, and I got to meet the people at Stern Pinball who laughed at me and said that nobody at home wants to buy a pinball machine and I'd be out of business in a couple of months. And the Internet crap would never amount to anything, I think was the other comment that was told to me. So I gave them a check. I became a Stern Pinball distributor, a little guy in New Jersey. And after, I guess after about three years, we became the number one distributor in the world. We were selling thousands of Stern Pinball machines. I was dedicated to selling Stern Pinball machines. That was really our major product. We created Austin Powers gold games. We made gold trim on games that was never done before and had Gary Stern sign them. And then I came up with the idea to make 40 Monopoly Platinum games, take the Monopoly board, cut it up into 40 pieces, make a plaque, have John Yowsey, Pat Lawler, Gary Stern, and myself sign all the back glasses and put them up on eBay. We donated one game that, believe it or not, and so right around this time of the year, right before Thanksgiving 2001, it sold on eBay for the whopping sum of $6,000. It was Boardwalk. and we donated that money to charity and it was signed by the CEO of Hasbro, Alan Hasenfeld. And it was a big thing because nobody had any marketing money, so we kind of did the marketing through what we did in social media, which was eBay at the time. And eventually we'll take that all the way through. I did a lot of other special edition games with Stern. It was my idea to take Family Guy and turn it into Shrek, do all these different colors on games and make collectible kind of games so I don't know if that's a credit to me or I should be blamed for a lot of things today sorry and every time we did something like that I got an argument about why are we doing this why do we have to put green on Shrek I got a big email from somebody at Stern that told me that Toyota only used black and brown and now if you go to green, there's a lot of problems. And I just said, shut the heck up and just make the game green. So that happened.
    10:29
    We got later into like 2007 was a really great year. A lot of great games came out. 2008, we hit a road bump. Halfway through the year, it was called the Great Recession.
    10:44
    Into 2009 and 2010, Stern had one really great designer that carried the whole company at the time. They were building games like Buck Hunter and NBA and Iron Man. And the guy sitting right there, John Borg. So give him props.
    11:06
    Yeah, it was bad times financially, and John carried the entire company on his back and kept the company going. You know, somewhere in there, probably by 2010, you know, I went from selling about 1,500 Stern pinball machines a year to less than 50.
    11:25
    And I really wondered if it was the economy or people wanted games that had more in them. And I took about seven or eight months to decide what I was going to do if I was going to start a pinball company. because, look, I started fixing electromechanical pinball machines in 1975. I learned everything about repairing all kinds of games, video games, everything.
    11:53
    I ran a big distributorship in New Jersey. I was a distributor. I was familiar with the manufacturing process, certainly at Stern Pinball.
    12:05
    Some nights when I was there with Gary, we'd be picking up screws and nuts from the floor and putting them back in bins.
    12:11
    You know, so I knew what it took. So I thought. All the bad part of what I know, I put out of my mind. I put blinders on and these rose-colored glasses, and I went like this, and I said, I'm going to start a pinball company.
    12:28
    And I enlisted the best people I could find to believe in the dream, and we started. And, you know, my thought was in the beginning, I just wanted to make great games. I wasn't thinking about anything else but that. I mean, it was really crazy to say. I wasn't thinking about how many parts go in the game. I wasn't thinking about how much money it costs. I wasn't thinking about anything except that I just wanted to make really great games for everybody because I knew the market was there. So at that point, were you able to completely fund the startup of the company yourself or did you bring in some investors at that point? Yeah. How many people were investors at the beginning when they bought a Wizard of Oz game? Anybody here? There you go, game. Thank you.
    13:18
    So, you know, before crowdfunding and before GoFundMe and before any of that, somebody gave me the wacky idea, which I don't know why. I don't do drugs and I really don't drink, so somehow I thought it was a good idea. Why don't you take deposit money from people who want to buy a pinball machine?
    13:35
    Yeah, that's good. What could go wrong with that? That's a great idea. Let me do that. So before long, believe it or not, in pretty quick order in January and February of 2011, we had more than 1,000 people that had ordered Wizard of Oz, a game that nobody ever saw from a factory that didn't exist from a company that never built a pinball machine.
    14:03
    So wonderful people believed in me, and they believed in our team, and they believed in pinball and the future of pinball.
    14:12
    And, you know, thinking about it now, I haven't gotten a chance to sit in the rocking chair and think about it, but it's kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy. It is, with all the things that have gone down since as far as pre-orders go. But, okay, so talk us through the process of deciding on The Wizard of Oz as your first title. I know you had involvement with the pusher from that. from working with it out and that's a whole back story there. We probably don't have time to go into it. Yeah, that's another show. Yeah. So the first game I wanted to make was The Three Stooges. And I said, gee, The Three Stooges would make a good game. I grew up with The Three Stooges, kind of funny and all that kind of stuff. And I had a licensing person, a good friend of mine, Drew Maniscalco, for me at the time, and he reached out to the people that owned it. There were a couple of different parties and an estate, and they wouldn't give us the time of day. So a few weeks went on, and we didn't get anywhere, and I'm not one to give up, but I gave up. So I said, what else you got? He says, well, I could get in touch with Warner Brothers and see what they have. So he did that. He talked to the people at Warner Brothers. A big list came back. And the pizza's still coming in, folks. The pizza's still coming in. This just in, pizza. So I looked down this whole list and the first thing I said is, get me the Wizard of Oz. And Drew was so excited, he said, really?
    15:52
    So what was your thinking then? Obviously, it's an iconic American story. But were you thinking mainly about domestic sales or international sales as well? Because the Wizard of Oz is not that well known in some countries. Yeah, I didn't know that and I wasn't thinking of that.
    16:11
    I was not in the thought process. What was in the thought process was, I remember my daughter, Jen, watched that movie 10 million times as a kid. She would act out every scene in the movie with the basket and Toto and everything. I remember it was a very special movie to us because it only came on once a year.
    16:30
    and the whole family was gathered around. I wanted to do a theme that was iconic in a way where women especially would react to it and it would be multi-generational and I thought it had a really good worldwide appeal. So I said, let's do Wizard of Oz. And to me, pinball is a good versus evil story and a story of a lot of developed characters, so I thought we could tell the story pretty well. Okay. Now when you were developing that game, you were really heavily relying on social media in order to spread the word and the pinball press as well. There were numerous sort of updates saying, here a little corner of the playing field here a bit of this mech here a little bit of the artwork This went on throughout the process with some of it changing along the way as well Do you think that Well, you haven't done anything like that since. After that, it's been a very much more closed development process. Do you think that was important to getting everybody on board with the new company and the first title?
    17:40
    Well, so Gabe was the guy that on Monday he would start pestering us and say, where's my update for Friday?
    17:49
    So, you know, we would have to come up with things. And really, Martin, you're right, you know, I couldn't develop the game in a vacuum because I took everybody's money in good faith. So I wanted everybody to go along the ride with me. And, you know, we coined a famous Steve Jobs saying, which, you know, got overplayed, which is the journey is the reward. So, you know, but the journey got really long for some people, and it wasn't a reward. it was a beat down punishment after a few years of waiting for the game. So we had to develop the game in a way I thought more open, transparent and public. There was a time where
    18:28
    I owed people a thousand games, there about. So if you do the math, it's roughly six or seven million bucks. And people are looking for their game, they're waiting a long time, and they're ringing the phone, and they're ringing on the doorbell, and they're sending me emails. And at no time did Jack do this.
    18:50
    At no time. I answered the phone. I answered the doorbell. Some people got refunds. Some people came back into it. Some people got a refund again. Some people came back into it. You know, we got there. It was a journey, kind of like the movie, really. But you haven't done anything like that since, and you probably would. So right now everything's a big secret.
    19:13
    So everybody wants to keep a wall up about what they're working on and what they're doing because they don't want other people to know what they're doing. And unfortunately, in our industry, which is very tiny, you hear things, you hear rumors, people talk, vendors talk, licensing people talk. So I've got a good idea what everybody's working on. I'll tell you the truth. Sure. what would you say then is like the number one lesson you learned from from bringing that very first game into production oh i thought the number one lesson i learned the number one lesson i'd learn well everything's going to cost more and take longer right eric not that eric takes longer and costs more but that's the nature of it you know because look folks, people that are very creative, there's no time limit on creativity, but there is a time limit on how much money you have in your pocket, and you want to get things to market. So depending on how much stuff you want to jam in the game, it's going to take longer to develop it. If you put less stuff in the game or you do the same thing over and over again, it's going to take a lot shorter to develop a game. But you have less of a game in my opinion. So let's move forward quite a bit and it became a point where you had to involve some or chose to involve some investors in the company. I'm not talking about people who are buying games and putting deposits down but actually needed to financially support.
    20:49
    Why did that get into that situation? You seem to have a very good product and it seems to be selling very well why was the need for further investment so around January 2015 I kind of was tired of living hand-to-mouth having customers fund the company you know building pinball machines very capital intensive kind of business I guess you could ask the people in Texas that just tried building pinball machines how much capital you could actually use to build the pinball machine and or not build one right martin so yeah so um you know the best people that know about pinball are relationships that we already had people that were customers of mine for many years and i got in touch with one of those people and um they wanted to get involved with the company and and happy to say that partner's in the company now so um you know like when forrest Gus Gump got that letter with the Apple logo on it, and he says, well, one last thing I've got to worry about, money. So, you know, there's plenty of stuff to concentrate on, but money is an important thing. You know, if you're going to build pinball machines and you build a material, let's say, that's $7,000, and you're going to build 1,000 games, you better go get $7 million, give or take, for just what's coming in for 1,000 games. So was that on a personal level? Was that a bit like, you know, seeing your only child or your oldest child leave home and go and go and live somewhere else or move in with someone? And, you know, you're basically you're not waving goodbye, but it's a sea change in the way that the relationship existed between you and the company.
    22:41
    So I don't know how many of you, you know, for women it's natural to give birth and have a child. You know, you carry this child in you and then you give birth and you have a different relationship with the child than any father, pretty much, because it was part of your body, right? So when you're an entrepreneur and you create a company, that's probably the closest you can get, anyway, for me, to giving birth. I never felt unfulfilled that I didn't create something like that, but I didn't give it a lot of thought either when I was creating this. Again, I wasn't thinking about everything on purpose, actually, because if you think of the negative, you're going to fail. So I always focused on the positive, and I didn't fail because I didn't give up. So I guess I could have taken a couple of options, right? I guess I could have just said, well, you know what, we don't have the right funding, and we've got to tell everybody to give us more money. Well, I'm not going to do that. We don't have the right funding, and we owe the circuit board vendor $300,000, then we owe the glass guy $80,000, then we owe this guy and that guy. Let me just put the company out of business and say, oh, well, we're screwed up. We tried. Can't do that. So many vendors, so many people, they would have lost their homes. They would have lost everything. They would have lost the businesses.
    24:05
    Customers. Let's say a customer gave me $7,000 and his wife every holiday, hey, honey, where's that Wizard of Oz game that you bought? You know, you took that $7,000 out of the bank. Hey, where's that? Oh, Jack's going to come through. He's going to get the game. I believe in him. It's been three years already. We didn't get the game, you know. Come on. The kids are older now. They don't even like Wizard of Oz anymore. You know, get out of here. Those guys, most of them were guys, if I did that to them, they wouldn't be able to go to the store to buy a gallon of milk, okay? Their wife wouldn't trust them with anything.
    24:44
    So really, for me, it was an easy decision. I could be partners with a friend who I knew 20 years, that loved pinball, that was dedicated to the company.
    24:57
    Everybody could get paid. We could build games. We could go on. And guess what? There's a whole bunch of stuff I don't have to worry about anymore. What's wrong with that? I'm Jersey Jack. I'm not leaving the company. I'm not retiring. I'm not going anywhere. So what's wrong with that? On one side of it, if you were a narcissistic, crazy control freak and had to own a majority of the company, you'd say you wouldn't do that. But look, in today's world, a lot of CEOs do different things with their companies. Let's face it, Steve Jobs actually got fired from Apple years ago, a company he founded. I never got fired, and I don't think I'm going to get fired, as long as I don't say anything stupid, probably, which I'm probably not going to do. I love it. I'm going to do this forever until I fall down in a cabinet somewhere and somebody throws me in the ocean, and you guys, at one of the shows, you'll say, remember Jack, he bought all the pizza.
    25:54
    Rest in peace. So, yeah, I don't know if that's the answer you wanted, but it was a little long and professorial. Sorry. No, that's absolutely fine. That's what we're here for. It's a fireside chat after all. You know, I never got it. Where the heck is the fire?
    26:10
    We're working on it. Can we break up a couple of those old games out there? Yeah. Actually, I'm in the presidential suite. I have two fireplaces in my room. There's two of them in there. You know, we should all jump in there. Yeah.
    26:26
    Okay. So ultimately, anyway, this led to the factory. relocating to Elk Grove Village, an area well known for pimple production. And normally you would say, well, that's going to mean things are very difficult for you living in Lakewood.
    26:47
    But in these days of the pandemic and also before that, with remote working and teleconferencing and Zoom meetings and everything we're doing now, that kind of thing is almost standard for many companies to work across disparate locations.
    27:02
    I mean, you were doing that before when you had the place in... Harvard. Yeah, there, with the development team up there. So what did the move of the actual manufacturing up to Elk Grove Village mean for the company and for you? I mean, you couldn't literally walk out of your office onto the factory floor and say, oh, that's not right. So the interesting thing with timing and plans is that you can have all the best timing intentions and all the plans and then something like the pandemic comes along. So the idea was to move to one central place, either New Jersey or Chicagoland area, have everybody under one roof, right? So we made this move. We did everything like that. The pandemic came and nobody could be under one roof. Everybody was under their own roof, and everybody was scattered for a long while, longer than we really wanted to be. And for me personally, it was fine living in New Jersey because there are days, like Steve Ritchie, I pretty much talk to him every day. I talk to him a lot. People that want me or something's going on, it's real easy. FaceTime, Zoom, you know, all the technology today, it's real easy to be right next to somebody. It's easier than hopping on a plane and going somewhere for hours and all that whole thing. So it's a lot easier. Plus, I kind of like how things developed in a personally selfish way. You know, I get to do everything I want to do, and I get to be where I want to be doing it. So I think at this stage, for me, it's pretty good. Yeah, when I saw Jack the other day, I said, oh, have you been in Nauru? looking very suntanned and your response was I just go sit out on my deck outside my office and I get the Sun well I think that's that's a pretty good result now you are I think widely recognized as having really kick-started the home pinball sales phenomenon which has come to dominate sales and machines these days compared to know what how it was back in what 2000 and the early years of that decade. Could you ever imagine that home sales would be such a significant part of the pinball industry, not just for your company, but for every company that's making games? Yes.
    29:28
    Really? Yeah, really. I mean, otherwise I wouldn't have done this. I certainly didn't do this with the intention of everything going to crap. You know, I don't want to say I knew this, but I knew this. I did know this. You weren't thinking about operators as being the key market that you need to break into. Because, you know, we were down at IAPA earlier this week, and there was no Jersey Jack pinball representation down there, except for one distributor who had one machine on their stand, whereas all the other companies were there because they were selling to operators. But I know you already have a full order book, so you don't really need to generate any more orders from operators. But it kind of seemed like an indication that you don't see operators as your key market and you're marketing much more to the home. I see a few operator friends in the room, so I love them. However, being a former operator, operators are different today. They're different type of companies. They're structured differently. They're buying different type of equipment.
    30:29
    Pinball is part of it. Certainly, me not being at IAPA, spending all week there, everybody knows Jersey Jack Pinball. I don't want to be kind of snooty about that, but if they want a game, they definitely know where to get a game from. So I didn't feel that it was worth my time personally or the company's money to be at IAPA this week.
    30:54
    Operators do buy our games. They make money. They work. But the whole idea stemmed out of pinballsales.com, which was a home sale company. so when I was told at home sales nobody at home would want to buy a pinball machine I was certainly out to prove otherwise so I think with all the new people discovering pinball for the first time some of them because of the pandemic some of them just because of you know natural organic type of growth and things that you find we're just we're just at the beginning of another curve. To me, the first 10 years to me, if I started in 2001, which was the second year pinballsales.com was in business, that 10 years went from 2001 to 2011 when I started Jersey Jack Pinball. The next 10 years takes me to about now. The next 10 years, I could see things going up about 50% right worth of people coming into the hobby and games and all that well you're in a good situation to deal with that or the company is I should say because fast forward to now you have what four pinball designers you've got Mark Seaton, you've got Eric Meunier you've got Pat Law and you've got Steve Ritchie all designing games okay but you don't bring out games very frequently So it almost seems like there's a backlog of designs waiting to go into production. And you've got games which are designed and ready to go. So you've got to, in order to do that, you've got to speed up the churn, effectively, of a new product. But you get such big orders through that all your production is taken up for the next year already. Right. I'm glad you picked up on that. When you come out with a game and maybe you sold 800 or 1,000 games and you're able to build them in whatever kind of time frame, you really need to move to the next game, right? You come out with a game like Guns N' Roses and you sell probably more than 5,000 or 6,000 games, it's going to take you a little bit to build that game. So really, our next game is done, ready to go. Would I just announce it at Pinball Expo or just put it up online and say, here's this game, why would you do that? So we didn't do that. Just tell us. Yeah.
    33:23
    So, you know, the good thing is that for us, we're on a different track than a lot of other companies. We're not forced to do things that don't make sense for our customers. You know, our players, you all in this room, and so many other thousands that we've been fortunate to have believe in our product, we want to give you the best. And the best doesn't get rushed. It's okay. Somebody that develops products for a really big company waited three years for his Wizard of Oz game, and I apologized to him how long it took to get his game. And he said to me, Jack, it's okay to wait for great things, and you built a great thing. So, you know, it's a hard thing. I think next year, I said it a couple of years ago, and I was wrong, and I'm sorry I said it, but I think next year you'll see two different games from us next year. So that's what we're looking at. So you could announce one of them next June at our show.
    34:33
    I could, but I won't on purpose. Yes If you ask you don get See Martin knows that Yeah So I mean something you mentioned just now and I was going to look forward to the future and the growth of the collector market but, and pinball, pinball sales with lowercase in general,
    34:53
    where do you think all these new buyers are coming from? Because if you say it's going to be like 50% growth in number of machines sold, where, you know, us old guys are getting older, and eventually some of us won't be here anymore. And are new people rushing in to buy new pinball machines? Where is all this growth in the market happening? Because in 2000, there was one company, and it was barely struggling to survive. Now we've got numerous companies, and they're all selling virtually everything they can produce and more. So where's the sudden rush of sales? Yeah, I mean, you could announce a box of rocks today, and you'd probably sell out.
    35:32
    You know, it's just, I guess it's good. for the people that are buying the boxes of rocks. It's okay.
    35:42
    So let's go back. Let's go back to 2001. So in 2001, let's say we were selling games, and they were going to the home, and the kids were, you know, 10 years old or so, and they're playing the games.
    35:54
    Today they're in their 30s, and they're in their 40s, and they have disposable income. They have jobs, and they actually grew up grassroots, playing pinball in their parents' homes. which if you find an article that I talked about in Replay Magazine in 2001, I said what happened. I said we're growing the next crop of pinball enthusiasts right now. They're all young people, and they don't have to go to an arcade somewhere and search out pinball machines. Their parents are buying pinball machines because what happened in 2001 was 9-11. And people in that time frame started cocooning at home. They decided not to take vacations. They decided to take staycations. They decided to buy hot tubs, and they decided to refinance their homes and buy all kinds of toys, home theaters and games, arcade games and driving games and pinball machines. And there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them in people's basements right now. So that's a good place where a lot of those people are coming from And they're not 60-year-old white people necessarily They're all ethnicities They're very mobile, very able to pay money I noticed a number of other collectors of other things coming into pinball Recently a friend of a friend of mine has a huge car collection antique cars where he buys and sells cars that are like several hundred thousand dollars a car. He's like, he sees pinball machines. He says, pinball, 15 grand? I don't know. Give me 12 of those things.
    37:43
    And I want this one. I want that one. Mike at Automated just sold somebody 50 pinball machines, one customer. He's not going to tell you that. I told you that. I probably shouldn't have told you that. Okay? You sold one customer 50 games. People want instant collection. They go online, they say, I need this game, I need this game, I need this game, I need this game. You know why? Life is short. Unfortunately, the pandemic has taught us this. Live for today, yes, plan for tomorrow. I don't want to get into doom and gloom kind of scenarios. I'm not that kind of person. But guess what?
    38:22
    I don't want to wait 10 years to make a pinball collection. It might not be around 10 or 20 years. Let me get my pinball collection now.
    38:29
    And, you know, if my kids don't like it, it's okay, because the Pirates of the Caribbean game that I didn't want to buy because it didn't have three spinning discs, well, if I had that CE game right now, I could put a down payment on a house right now. So all the people that bitched and complained about the triple spinning discs and you didn't buy the game, you know who you are.
    38:51
    If you see something you want, buy it, if you can buy it. So that's what's going on right now. Okay, well, on that point, something Dave and I were talking about earlier when we were talking about the pimple manufacturing process now is going back and remaking older titles. And that's obviously something, if you've got this guy or girl, I don't know who it was, who's going to buy 50 machines, they probably want one of each of your Jersey Jack machines. They do. Okay, so your distributor has to have all those in stock, or you need to have rerun them. What's your attitude or the company's attitude towards going back and remaking games?
    39:33
    Would you... I mean, you said before that there would be no more Hobbits, but if the demand was there, would you go back and renegotiate the license and bring some more out, assuming it needs renegotiating? You know, it depends, and I never say never, right? So we have so many really great games coming. that it's hard for us to stop in our tracks and go back and do something we did before. Would I like to build more Wizard of Oz games? Would I like to build more of this or that? Maybe. Maybe it'll happen. Maybe it won't happen.
    40:10
    We're trying to go forward right now. But you have more than one line, don't you? Yeah, more than one line is great, as long as you have all the people that come to work every single day and you have all the parts that you need every single day, which is not a secret. Everybody in the world is having trouble with employees and parts. So that's not the case only for us. You never know. We might. We might. Now, I said you were widely credited with the almost like the invention, but certainly the massive growth in home sales. You're also credited or should I say blamed, blamed or damned for the massive increase in price of games as well by putting so much more into them and producing CE versions at never-seen-before prices before the banning auction.
    41:02
    Do you think that's unfair? Do you think the value for the game is there in the price, and therefore it's perfectly reasonable to charge $12,000, $13,000, $14,000 for a game?
    41:16
    Well, there's something called perceived value. I gave a lesson on it earlier today to little Joey DeRusso about, you know, things that have a perception of value and what people, different people perceive as a good value. You know, certainly to some of my friends, $1,000 on a pinball machine would be a waste of money. All right? To certain other of my friends, you know, they want to throw money at me for the next 10 CE games that we're about to build, you know, into the next millennium. So it all depends on who you're talking to. Perception and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And the price fluctuation of things is probably an act of economics where you have supply and demand. Let's face it, you have a lot more demand for pinball machines today than supply. And let's face it, the white water that I sold you years ago for three grand, you know, now is worth eight grand. so all the stock and all the games that are in your basements and your homes actually went up. So you can poke your wife and say, see, honey, I didn't waste all of that money. Look at me. I invested for our future.
    42:25
    So now you have no more room and you want Eric's Guns N' Roses game that happens to be, let's call it, 11 grand.
    42:34
    So you take your whitewater and your fishtails and you sell them to a buddy that's just getting into pinball. And guess what? You got your 11 grand, plus you probably got 3 grand left over to buy that topper that you were looking at. So pinball money has gotten inflated. All the price of things have gotten inflated, and it's worth a lot more money. Now, let's face it. This is pinball money, and this is the rest of the other money you have. The money that's here is never crossing the line to over here again.
    43:07
    Pinball money is going to stay with pinball machines. So all this wealth effect, and that's what it is, that's been created in the valuation of all these games going up, it's going back into pinball. It's going back into mods and ball shooters for $300 and toppers for $2,000 and everything else. That's where it's going. And we're having fun with it at the same time. And frankly, we don't want to be questioned about the price of these things. We just want to have fun.
    43:37
    Well, I want to have fun as well, but I can't afford to buy one. Good question, though. It's a great question. Now, in just a moment, I'll ask you if anybody here has any questions they'd like to ask Jack, in which case feel free to walk up to the microphone over there and ask them. But just before that, I want to ask you about, well, we talked about The Wizard of Oz and why that was a good license. Now, after that, you did The Hobbit and you've done... Dialed In. which is obviously an unlicensed theme but that's fine and Pirates and Wonka now all those you would say up to that point were kind of of the same genre as Wizard of Oz, family friendly themes then you come to Guns and Roses which is kind of it's the one which breaks the mould shall we say and And some people will know what the next title is supposed to be, and that goes back to the more family-friendly theme. Maybe. Yeah. Is that something you're going to stick with, or are you going to sort of occasionally break out and go a bit wild and do something a little more... Variety is the spice of life. So, you know, if you make a game that has a mode where it's an adult mode, everybody can understand that there are things in the game that may not be appropriate for little Johnny to see your view. Now, depending on your household, you may use that colorful language regularly, so it might be okay to leave the adult mode on all the time until your parish priest comes over for dinner on Friday night. Now, that's up to you, and what happens behind closed doors is up to pinball people and their pinball machine and how they set their games. So what was the question? I'm going to have a variety of questions. We'll continue to have a variety. We'll have something for everybody. That's what we'll have. Okay. Right. I can see Dave Marston's champing at the bit over there to get his first question in. Just to set an example of how questions should be asked from this microphone. Dave, you're such a goody two-shoes.
    45:50
    One thing, I had an ancient memory re-triggered. We saw some new exclusive previews of the Arcade Dreams documentary, and they showed games on location, including a Wizard of Oz pinball with redemption set up. All right. Have you given up on that, or is that still something that, I mean, you talked a few years ago in this room about that seemed like a new opportunity. Where do we stand with that now? It's called Pindemption.
    46:27
    We actually have a patent for pinball redemption. So in theory, or in operation, maybe in the future time, are games being Wi-Fi connected? You can walk up to a game, the game knows who you are, you play the game, you receive easily achievable objectives in the game, you get basically tickets into your account, then you're able to take your account and redeem the tickets that you collect from the game that you played for skill in a redemption center in the cloud and get prizes. So, will we do that one day? Perhaps. You know, it's something I thought of more than ten years ago and I thought enough of it to patent the whole methodology of it. So, you got ten more years on that patent? We can renew it too. Okay. Yeah, we might do the 100th anniversary Wizard of Oz game as well. Come on up here to ask questions. Never know. He wants you to go up there. This is on the historic record.
    47:32
    Okay, hi. My name is Mike. We have a collection of pinball machines, and we have a Wizard of Oz.
    47:40
    You got a problem with the game? Well, a little bit. But we love the game. But with the COVID and this and that and everything went crazy, and you guys are making all these new games. and putting all your stuff forward, do you have a separate people that work on, like we're waiting for a whole light board, not just a little, like a whole redo of the game. Where do you live? We live in Berlin. Okay. And we've had Gabe's been out of the house several times, but it's to the point where it's... Do you have a technician that comes over? We just don't know what to do, but because you said the story about the guy who's getting the milk. Right. That's in my living room. You know what I mean? and it's been shut off for a year. I'll be over tonight. Well, I just don't know what to do. Well, we have light board kits being made as we speak. They're being put together. So we should have kits hopefully either by the end of the year or the beginning of next.
    48:41
    And we're making them available to people to put in their games. Because we'll never give up that game. No, and I can't blame you. It's still my favorite game. We feel so lucky that we have it. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. That won't happen. That's not what I'm saying. I apologize for that. I'm just looking for an answer and I'm sitting right here and I'm like, that's the guy who's going to get it.
    49:02
    I didn't mean to put you on the spot. What's your phone number? It's 508. You know what, do me a favor. Just dial your phone number and put your name in there and I'll make sure I follow up with you.
    49:20
    At the end of this, I'll have my people call your people. And then if you don't like the answer, we'll take care of you. Okay, thank you. We'll have somebody visit you. From Jersey.
    49:36
    The next question, unless it's somebody who's got a Wizard of Oz that's got a light board problem. Hey, Jack, how are you? I had a quick question for you about the whole chip shortage and the ports being backed up and everything. with your business, where do you see things going with pricing and availability for the next year or two? Kind of a loaded question, I know. Well, not being, you know, my degree is not in economics. However, my degree in common sense tells me that things are going to probably get worse before they get better. And the sad state of affairs in the world right now with people working, showing up, not showing up. All these ships have the marine aware app so I can go count how many freighters there are all over the world and how many oil tankers. It's a disaster. And it's going to be a long time to get all that unraveled because the whole world had the light switch shut off and the whole supply chain emptied completely out like you empty out a bathtub. And then 12 people got in the bathtub and they want to fill it up with water and it's dripping in like a little drop at a time. So it's going to take time. It didn't take time to get screwed up and it's going to take time for it to get unscrewed up. For us, we're in fairly good shape because we've ordered a lot of parts that, you know, I think we made a mistake and we ordered too much. So it might have worked out to our advantage with some things. But does anybody know the same dopey question I ask at every one of these? Anybody know the most important part in our games? Anybody know what that is? Which one? Wood. The last one. Well, he's the costler, so it's the part we don't have, obviously, right, that prevents us from building the game. So we have a really talented team of professionals that manage all our vendors, and they manage the receivables of parts and the inspection and everything. And it's quite a feat to make anything in the world today. So, you know, we're doing the best we can do and a little bit better than that. So, you know, I think it's going to be a little bit longer. You know, I didn't see any empty store shelves with no turkeys or no cranberry sauce or anything like that. So I think the United States of America is probably in a lot better shape than a lot of countries in the world. We just used to turn in a flip and a switch and the power comes on turn in the water and it hot water We just you know I don want to say we spoiled but we very lucky and very blessed to be in this country to do that because a lot of places in the world I travel England included it's not that way it's pretty screwed up in other places so God bless America and be thankful that we're here really that's how I feel thank you on that point I think people when they think about you and your synonymous with the company and kind of assume that you do everything. But obviously you can't do everything, and you have a big staff of people to do everything. Could you just tell us what your kind of day-to-day work schedule is for working for Jersey Jack Pinball? What do you do at the company from first thing in the morning to last thing at night and overnight when you're dreaming about it? All right. So around 3 a.m. I'll be awakened by Christoph Lienhardt, our distributor in Luxembourg. who will be calling me frantically wondering when he's getting his games next.
    53:05
    That phone call may last anywhere from a split second to about a half hour. Then I'm going to roll over and go back to sleep until probably an hour or so later when my distributor in the U.K. is going to call me and wonder when he's getting his games.
    53:21
    And then I'm going to roll over and go back to sleep, and then I'm going to get a call from my distributor in the Netherlands wondering when he's going to get his games. And then I'm going to say, you know what, I can't go back to sleep. These bunch of woke me up, and I'm awake now.
    53:39
    I'll usually have at least two Zoom calls scheduled during the day with licensed people, different studios, different music companies that I'm working on different licenses with.
    53:51
    And I'll take calls from different distributors. I'll take calls from customers asking me questions. I'll take calls from customers who will say, you know, Barry's a great guy, and I called him six times, and he helped me with this thing, but I'm trying to put this connector onto this plug, and it doesn't fit. Can you help me? And I'll say, okay, I can help you open it up, and I'll go to one of my games, and I'll open up the game, and I'll look at what's going on, and I'll hopefully help the guy fix the game.
    54:20
    And before you know it, I turn around, and it's like 6 o'clock at night, and Joanne's calling me for dinner. so that's pretty much a lot of my days and it's good, it's fine it certainly does seem that you're available virtually any time of the day I don't want to say people should call you at any time of the day but I'm saying that I get calls from you what's it seem like ridiculous like 6 o'clock in the morning or something like that your time speaking of which is there somebody you should be calling perhaps I should explain myself and the editor of Pinball magazine Jonathan Deuston We do this podcast, the Pincast, and we constantly try to get pinball historian Gary Flower on, and he never quite makes it. And those who listen will know that a myriad of things occur that stop him actually ever appearing on it. Good evening. Gary! We finally got him on, and we got him here exclusively. Right. Is this the right number for the Pinball News and Pinball Magazine podcast? It is Gary, and I'm so glad we can finally get you on with Jack as well. At last. Yeah. At last. Gary, there's about 400 people in the room, and they've all eaten a sufficient slice of pizza that there's pizza left over. So, you want to say hi to everybody? Oh, say the pizza for me, please. Yeah, would you like to say a little? Well, I'm disappointed that I can't be with you all.
    55:55
    I'm sure it's a great show. I spoke to Kevin O'Connor earlier today, and he's having a great time there. I know you've got Eric Meunier there, and John Borg, and Todd Tappi. Lots of great people. You just woke Todd up. Everybody else is nodding in approval, wishing you were here, Gary.
    56:20
    Yeah, okay, well, it's a selfish episode. Although I hear the weather's quite cold there, but I guess that's the normal part of the world. Yeah, it's winter, my friend, it's winter. Yeah, we didn't call you up to get a weather forecast, but thank you. We had noticed it was a little on the chilly side. Gary, I have a question for you. I'm going to take Martin's part here. What do you think about the current state of pinball and the pricing of games? What do you think things are heading for the near-term future, for the hobby market and all of that? And I'll give you 30 seconds.
    57:00
    That's a question that demands a lengthy answer. But I think right now it's a very exciting time for pinball. We seem to have more companies than ever making pinball machines. Lots of exciting stuff going on. I think it's good that every company seems to have its own flavour and is doing things slightly differently. So, for example, if I were to start off with JJP, when you started off that company with Wizard of Oz, I think you certainly raised the bar when it comes to pinball design.
    57:43
    And I think also it shows what a difference the management make because, you know, you started off that company with some established people like you had Joe Balser there and Greg Frares and Dennis Nordman who had all got long histories in pinball and yet put them together under your management and they came up with something very different, a game that I'm guessing you can still make today if people want it. And then you've got... And in fact, Steve Ritchie said something interesting along those lines that since he joined JJP, He said the culture there reminds him very much of the days when he was back at Williams. So I think it's not just all about the creative people that deliver the games to us, but it's also the environment created for them to work in, which is down to the management team, I guess. Good. Thank you, Gary. I'm going to let you go to sleep now. Gary! Where are you, Gary? Are you there? I can't hear you anymore. Oh, he's breaking up. He's breaking up. Oh, dear. There we go.
    59:11
    Wait a minute. Hang on. If anybody wants to talk to Gary Flower and tuck him in, Borgie, do you want to talk to him?
    59:18
    Hang on. Gary? John Borg wants to talk to you. He's been texting you apparently. And David Fix too. Okay, wonderful. I definitely need to disinfect my phone after this.
    59:38
    We have to put that in a... Oh, Gary's not that bad. He'd be fine. No, not because of Gary. Okay. So let's move on to some more questions, please. So I know you've been adding a lot of new online features to the tables, some existing tables. I know the upgrades are over the air and things like that. Do you ever picture a future where you could have remote competition on the same table? So one person at one location playing a game and the scores appear on both at the same time. I know no tables are alike, but is that something you'd want to do? I don't know. It's kind of interesting. You can do that with video games and different things like that. I mean, how do I know that you didn't take the glass off the game? Right. You look like a guy that would take the glass off the game when you're playing.
    60:31
    But you do have the cameras, and they've been in the game for a while. Yeah, I don't know. You might be, like, doing a Mission Impossible trick with a picture of you standing there, and you might have your hand in the game.
    60:43
    I don't know. It's just a social game, right? It's a social game. We should play together, right? like why do I want to play somebody around the world I can't see really well maybe I can see them I mean I did want a camera in the game for one of the reasons was that so I could see who I was playing so you never know I just contradicted myself I think well one of the great things about the current games and and something you're retrofitting to the older game as well it's a score bit system right for those of you don't know it's a kind of an online tracking system of your scores and achievements and do leaderboards and that kind of thing and challenges. And remarkably, it's actually entirely free if you have a Jersey Jack game, whereas for everybody else who buys the hardware, you have to pay a monthly subscription or annual subscription. Yeah, I'm not a big subscription person. No, I don't know. I think if you bought the game, you're entitled to what you paid for and you got your whole software and you have a real game and you bought it. I don't want to really, I don't see a model where I'm going to be in your pocket at this point in time. No, it just seems like a great added value to the games. And, you know, you're going back and adding more features to every game that you've produced so far. You haven't given up on any of those games. No, no.
    62:01
    Good. Which is a great testament to our software team. We just never stop. They're amazing. Did you have a second question? Yeah. So last time. You look like the guy that was just asking me a question.
    62:14
    Very similar. So I remember last year kind of got you to talk about, like, you might be interested in an NFL license or maybe a baseball license. Me? Oh, yeah. You said it wouldn't be a bad idea to have, you know, like a Giants pinball or, you know, you could put your team's logo on there, whatever your team is. Or maybe, you know, you could have a Giants. You even mentioned a Giants suck pinball. I was wondering if that was still something you were pursuing.
    62:45
    They're representatives from other companies. You can be careful what you say. Sometimes I say things that other manufacturers build them.
    62:55
    So maybe that was one of those instances where somebody ran out and got an NFL license or something like that.
    63:01
    Yeah. You never know. The Giants are okay. They're not that bad. One thing you have to bear in mind for all that, though, is that you have huge international sales with your company as well. and to be honest, NFL doesn't really go down in any other country. Yeah, I mean on the licenses you need multi-generational, multi-national things that are popular and known all over the world. So you're going to build a Manchester United machine? You also want ones that don't alienate. A man do. Cute for all of your potential customers. He's going to start singing Blue Moon in a second.
    63:38
    Yes, do you have another question? we're almost done folks it seems like you know it costs money to get the licenses for like the characters have you ever thought to like make like a character like the Jersey Jack character so that way you don't have to spend all the money on all these licenses like make up your own like Sonic make up your own like guy do you know what I mean well you can make you look like a cool guy like you you know what I mean and then people would wait for a different edition of that game. You make up your own thing. Oh, I think I'm getting hit on, actually. No, I didn't know you had to spend that much money. Is that your wife? That is my wife. What's your name? Tanya. He's a great guy, isn't he? She has your phone number now.
    64:31
    I know. So after Christophe calls me at 3 in the morning, Tanya's going to call me at 3.30, right? I don't know. I think Gabe's got a question. Something to think about. This is a question for both of you guys. Do you think that the growth of pinball shows in the last five, six years has pushed the growth of pinball in both Jersey Jack and other companies?
    64:55
    You go first. No, you go first. I'm too much of a gentleman. Couldn't dive in. This is your seminar. Yes. All right. Good answer. Yes, Gabe. And the best show in the world is Twins-tastic.
    65:10
    Where are the twins? Where are they? Come on, twins, get up. Where are your glasses? I've got a question for you. Yes, Gabe, they have. So if you do another barstool, are you picking that picture again?
    65:24
    No. Next question. Where are your glasses, you guys? What happened? Put the glasses on. Let's see the whole effect. anybody you know these are the pinball twins what's what's the shout out what's your uh site twins arcade go look them up they're hysterical those guys those guys are great pinball people great and martin you all you all gave an answer i think uh yes um no i wouldn't do that um yeah undoubtedly um i think the growth of shows and the growth of the quality of shows is just an indication of the demand for people to socialise, particularly after these couple of difficult years. Obviously, people are a little bit reticent to go out and socialise too closely. We have to wear masks inside, we have to sanitise our hands all the time. But that will gradually go, and everybody... I've been to so many places, I've seen people are just desperate to get together in a social environment and to enjoy what they used to enjoy, to get back to having fun, playing pinball together. Dave and I have been playing pinball in the games rooms over there, head-to-head games, and haven't done that for years. Well, a couple of years anyway. So it's so nice, and everybody I see says, oh, it's so great to be back. Well, come on back.
    66:53
    I can't say it's definitely entirely safe, but I think we take sensible measures, as everybody does now, then let's get back to having some fun, playing some pinball. Absolutely.
    67:12
    So, anyone have any more questions? Last one? No? Okay. In that case, I will say thank you very much to tonight's fireside chat guest, Mr. Jack Guarnieri. I can never say it properly and I think you should all give him a big round of applause for his honesty and great answers and pizza I just want to thank everybody again and it's so great to see everybody and it's nice to be nice to each other and pinball people really I know it's a little gooey to say this but But it's really a great community that a lot of people just look out for each other and take care of each other and call on each other. And it's great to be a small part of it. And have a happy Thanksgiving, everybody. And you know what? We're going to go see the Guns N' Roses cover band, right, Gabe? Yeah. What's going on? 9 o'clock. I'm going to get on stage with the Slash guy. And Eric's going to send the video to Slash so he can see what the hell is going on. I was going to say where are they, but I guess we will hear where they are in a few minutes. But if people want to head over there and get a good position, where is the band? Where are they, Gabe? Where's Gabe? Over by the registration desk and a little beyond is the lobby area just shy of the pool, this side of the pool. Oh, they're all the way back there? In the pavilions area. How's the acoustics back there? What do you think? We have no idea how the acoustics are. If anybody has an adjacent room, they're not going to be sleeping until 2 in the morning, right?
    68:58
    I'm going to be glad my room is right down the far end. Is there a pool party scheduled with this cable line?
    69:04
    Pool's open until midnight, everybody. Okay. Well, I think that wraps up the seminar session for this fantastic 2021. Yes. So thank you all for coming. Have a fantastic rest of the show. We'll see you all in a few months. Yeah. And we'll see you over at the Guns N' Roses. John Borg is still on the phone with Gary.