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The Pinball Show Ep 149.5: D&D

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 32m·analyzed·Mar 25, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Pinball Show revisits pandemic predictions with Silver Ball Chronicles co-host David Dennis.

Summary

In a 149.5 episode of The Pinball Show, host Dennis welcomes David Dennis from Silver Ball Chronicles to discuss pinball's history during the COVID-19 pandemic. They revisit predictions from their April 2, 2020 midweek episode, examining how manufacturers like Stern, American Pinball, Jersey Jack, Spooky, and Multimorphic responded to shutdowns, government stimulus, and the eventual economic recovery that led to unprecedented demand for pinball machines.

Key Claims

  • Stern reduced operations and shut down their factory in April 2020, installing sneeze guards between employees

    high confidence · Dennis discusses Stern's pandemic response alongside other manufacturers

  • American Pinball and Chicago Gaming Company completely stopped production (not just reduced) because they only manufactured 100 games per year

    high confidence · David Dennis explains AP and CGC's decision to shut down entirely

  • Jersey Jack was in the middle of moving from New Jersey to Chicago during the pandemic shutdown

    high confidence · Host notes the poor timing of JJP's relocation during COVID-19 lockdowns

  • Spooky Pinball shut down completely due to Wisconsin state mandate

    high confidence · Dennis confirms Spooky's closure was mandated by Wisconsin state order

  • Multimorphic projected next steps and communicated plans to build modules at home during prolonged stay-at-home orders

    high confidence · David Dennis praises Multimorphic's pivot strategy as a smaller, more nimble company

  • Deep Root Pinball was planning to reveal seven games at Texas Pinball Festival 2020 before the pandemic caused postponement

    high confidence · Dennis and David discuss Deep Root's cancelled reveal, later noting company eventually failed

  • No pinball manufacturer actually failed during the pandemic shutdown, except Deep Root (which had unrelated financial issues)

    high confidence · David Dennis states manufacturers survived through government stimulus and ARPA loans

  • Economic recovery was so rapid that pinball machines became extremely valuable on secondary markets; WWE LE copies appreciated significantly above retail price

    high confidence · Dennis notes WWE became 'more valuable than its sale price' and references Raymond Davidson's stored inventory

  • At the start of 2023 in the US, 20% of Americans had never had COVID-19

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't know why people do cruises, but apparently they're very, very popular. But speaking of popularity, I have something even more popular than a cruise from Disney or any other named brand, and that is the famed David Dennis from Silver Ball Chronicles.”

    Dennis (The Pinball Show host) @ Opening segment — Humorous introduction comparing David Dennis's popularity to cruise vacations, sets tone for episode

  • “I'm able to pay homage to this fun hobby that we have, do all of that stuff, and generally stay out of all of the commentary and stuff that ends up getting you in trouble. And everybody just remembers me as being an amazing person.”

    David Dennis @ Early discussion — Dennis reflects on Silver Ball Chronicles' approach to staying out of community drama while maintaining credibility

  • “Multimorphic did communicate about next steps. They were telling people that they would still be able to build the modules, not the full machines, but they would be able to build the modules at home if the stay-at-home orders were in a prolonged format. That's pretty good. That's pretty – what do they call that? Pivot, right?”

    Host @ Pandemic response discussion — Highlights Multimorphic's operational flexibility as smaller manufacturer during crisis

  • “It was – the manufacturers and their reduced production capabilities and supply chain issues couldn't keep up. And, you know, everything got expensive, every like bad game, like WWE became more valuable than its sale price was.”

    Dennis @ Post-pandemic recovery segment — Demonstrates extreme secondary market appreciation and supply constraints post-COVID

  • “When you think of the equity markets, particularly stock markets, it dropped so quickly. Then all this government stimulus comes into the market to sort of stabilize it and then it jumps right back up in like a month, maybe a half a month, month and a half depending on the type of market. That's what we call a v-shape recovery.”

    David Dennis @ Economic analysis segment — Technical explanation of 2020 market recovery pattern relevant to pinball industry

  • “No manufacturer failed. Well, except for Deep Root. But that's right. But that wasn't the pandemic. So, yeah, they turned out to have a lot of other deep-seated financial issues not related to COVID.”

Entities

David DennispersonDennispersonSilver Ball ChroniclesmediaStern PinballcompanyAmerican PinballcompanyChicago Gaming CompanycompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyMultimorphiccompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball manufacturers survived pandemic shutdown through government stimulus (CERB in Canada, ARPA loans in US), demonstrating industry resilience and capital structure sufficiency despite supply chain disruption

    high · David Dennis confirms 'government supports' enabled survival; no manufacturer bankruptcies except Deep Root (unrelated issues); PPP/ARPA loans extended to companies

  • ?

    community_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles established itself as history-focused pinball podcast distinguishing itself from entertainment/news focus; gained significant international audience (particularly Australia) through quality historical content

    medium · David Dennis notes they are 'a big deal in Australia' and 'sell a lot of t-shirts' to Australia; positioning as 'most famed pinball podcast focused on history'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Retrospective analysis reveals pandemic predictions were largely inaccurate; hosts acknowledge failure to anticipate rapid V-shaped economic recovery and surge in pinball demand

    medium · Dennis states 'we couldn't have been more wrong' when comparing April 2020 predictions to actual outcomes; expected prolonged financial crisis instead got recovery within 1-2 months

  • ?

    business_signal: Deep Root Pinball had 'deep-seated financial issues' independent of pandemic; company received government PPP loans but ultimately failed due to internal money movement problems (SEC involvement)

    high · David Dennis explicitly states Deep Root's failure was not pandemic-related; SEC is now involved; Turner Pinball controls remaining IP assets

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.277

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:11
The Pinball Network is online. Launching The Pinball Show. Welcome everybody to The Pinball Show. This is episode 149.5. I'm sorry, we couldn't let you have 150 without Zach. Zach is out on vacation, off on a cruise, probably contracting some sort of foodborne illness, because that's what I know cruises for. I don't know why people do cruises, but apparently they're very, very popular. But speaking of popularity, I have something even more popular than a cruise from Disney or any other named brand, and that is the famed David Dennis from Silver Ball Chronicles. David, welcome to the Pinball Show. I'm so glad that I'm being compared to Norwalk. that's that's what i'm doing is what do they call it norovirus yeah the norovirus yeah so i'm that's what i'm being compared to here and i'll tell you what i'll take it i'll take it yeah yeah you i mean that you it's a it's a positivity so anyway you've been you've been a host for a while now you've been podcasting for years you're you've passed your day fix five years mark i think yeah this see here's the thing here's the thing i don't know if if everybody is aware of this but uh i'm co-host of silver ball chronicles with ron halla jr also here on tpn um but we're a big deal in australia are you yes yeah we're a big deal in australia we sell a lot of t-shirts to the folk down under wow well that's really exciting well you are the most famed pinball podcast focused on history that's yeah and and the best part i think about that is that i'm able to pay homage to this fun hobby that we have, do all of that stuff, and generally stay out of all of the commentary and stuff that ends up getting you in trouble. And everybody just remembers me as being an amazing person. So what is the, you and your co-host, Ron Hallett Jr., what is your goal with Silver Ball Chronicles? Is it to basically displace TopCast and be known as the historical podcast? There's part of that. I think there's like 60 episodes of TopCast, which is one of our primary sources, right? So we go back, we listen to, I go back, we listen to a lot of those old podcasts, old interviews, documentation, things like that. And I'll kind of piece it all together and try to drive a narrative around an episode. And if I could get to 60 episodes with Ron, that would be a big deal. But I'm sure most people have noticed, and some of our, even our patrons probably have noticed that the release schedule has slowed a little bit. And a lot of that just has to do with just I'm so much more busy now than I was during the pandemic. And it pains me to be a little slower. But I think the quality of the episodes has improved. I'm starting to pull more than just, you know, a couple of old podcasts and then regurgitating that I have to do a lot more digging now. And I think the quality is a little better. well i greatly enjoy the show and i greatly enjoy that you agree to fill in and be the zach plus one why do i get only half an episode here's the thing i would not have if it was up to me by myself we would be episode 150 however zach was like dennis do you really think that you should do like should it be 150 without me and i'm like yeah and he's like well but like i'm kind of like the face of the pinball show and you're kind of like the not face of it i was like okay we can do 149.5 because i mean when when i i've been on you know the pinball show a couple of times like when you were on vacation or something like that and you know somebody else fell through and they're like who the hell's gonna do it and they're like i don't know guess we'll ask dave and i did it with zach that was a full numbered episode it's it's only because it was going to be 150. It's like a quasi-milestone number. I don't know that we have any plans for 150 that are special, though. That's why I was kind of like, I'm not sure it's a big deal. It's not like 200. I'm not even sure we're making 200. Okay, well, but we've got Craig Bobby, though, even though it's half an episode, right? No, we do not. If Craig did top stories, he sent them to Zach, and Zach's on a cruise, so I don't have them, so they ain't going in. Has there really been news? There hasn't. In fact, this is going to be a weird episode. Not weird like in a Twilight Zone-esque way, but rather this is not going to be so news-focused as it normally is. Nor is it truly, totally historical-focused, but that's really going to be because you're the co-host today. That's sort of the bend we're going to take with this. So a lot of listeners are probably going to hate this episode, but you know what? That's why it's a .5. I guess so. So I guess so. Yes. But I want to thank you for being on. And while I'm thanking people, I want to have you hold that thought because I want to thank the Screaming Goat Club members. I got to thank the people that support us on Patreon, especially those that support us at the highest tier level, patreon.com slash the pinball show. So thank you, Rodney, the bobcat. Oh, shoot that fucker. Oh, hey, we don't have bobcats here. You don't? No, we have a thing called a Lynx on the east coast of Canada. Okay. I've heard of the Lynx. L-Y-N-X. We're at the Google. Much cooler than a bobcat. They don't attack ladies in front of their house. Hmm. Well, that's nice to know. Thank you, Steve Bumblebee. Bumblebee! Yeah. That's, you know, yeah. Thank you, Rob the Panther. Rob!

medium confidence · Host cites statistic about uninfected population percentage

  • The host caught COVID-19 at a private home pinball tournament but was asymptomatic; family later contracted it from daycare

    high confidence · Personal anecdote from Dennis about infection at pinball gathering

    • David Dennis @ Manufacturer survival discussion — Clarifies that Deep Root's failure was due to internal financial mismanagement, not pandemic impacts

  • “I think the quality of the episodes has improved. I'm starting to pull more than just, you know, a couple of old podcasts and then regurgitating that. I have to do a lot more digging now.”

    David Dennis @ Silver Ball Chronicles discussion — Reflects on podcast quality improvement despite slower release schedule

  • “When we tie this all back together, that's the confusing part about listening back to that old episode is like we didn't know what was going on. And then when you think about what we thought was going to happen and then what actually did happen, you're like, man, we couldn't have been more wrong.”

    Dennis @ Retrospective closing — Emphasizes difficulty of accurate prediction during pandemic uncertainty

    • Deep Root Pinball
    company
    The Pinball Showmedia
    Ron Hallett Jr.person
    Zachperson
    WWE (Pinball Machine)game
    Raymond Davidsonperson
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    TopCastmedia
    Razagame
    Turner Pinballcompany

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2020 was cancelled, disrupting planned manufacturer reveals (Deep Root had 7-game launch scheduled); impact on industry visibility and community gathering

    high · Deep Root's 7-game reveal at TPF postponed; festival itself cancelled; Deep Root used pandemic as cover for deeper operational problems

  • $

    market_signal: Post-pandemic economic recovery created unprecedented demand surge with supply unable to meet market appetite, leading to secondary market appreciation and inventory shortages

    high · WWE LE copies appreciated above retail; Dennis states 'manufacturers and their reduced production capabilities and supply chain issues couldn't keep up'; 'everything got expensive'; 'people were buying pinball like crazy'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Smaller manufacturers like Multimorphic demonstrated greater operational agility during pandemic; able to pivot to home-based module production while larger manufacturers (Stern, AP, JJP) faced more rigid disruptions

    high · David Dennis praises Multimorphic as 'smaller, more nimble company'; able to project home module building capability while Stern/AP/JJP were shutting down or relocating

  • ?

    technology_signal: Initial pandemic response focused on surface/droplet transmission prevention (sneeze guards, surface wipes) which proved ineffective as virus was airborne; public health understanding evolved significantly

    high · Host notes sneeze guards were popular but 'didn't make any difference' as virus was airborne; David Dennis from public health notes they 'changed our minds on a number of things as we learned more'

    • 5:57
    You probably don't have panthers up there. No, no. We have cougars, though. Those women. At every CD bar, there are cougars. Yeah. Thank you, Frank the Falcon.
    6:12
    Yeah, Falcons? Is that like a hawk? Yeah, kind of. It's some sort of bird of prey. Yeah. Yeah, I think we've got... I don't think we have a falcon. I think it's mostly just hawks. A couple of bald eagles. We do actually have those here. Yeah, their battle cry is not as intimidating as their look might suggest. Do they have those mean eyebrows? Falcons.
    6:39
    Or they're always like judging you. I think that's more eagle, an eagle thing. I'm not sure though. Thank you, David. The red tremor shaker motor, you're finally upgraded.
    6:53
    Oh. I've tried to do that for years. I'd love to know the story behind this one, but I'll leave that. The story behind why he's a shaker motor or why the red tremor is a thing? Well, I know I read Tremor as a thing because it's the better and cheaper version. That's the only interesting story. But I'll leave that for like a whole full episode instead of a half an episode. Okay. Well, that makes sense. Thank you, Joe the Fox.
    7:22
    I wonder who that could be. That's tough to say. We can't reveal their last names for security reasons.
    7:30
    And thank you, Charlie the Bell. We've probably done more bell sounds than any other variants of audio. Zach's given me the audio to drop in here, so we're working with whatever he's kind of got prepped. Did he give you the loon? Did he give you the loon call? You know, I have not fully checked the audio. It was one audio file, so I might have the loon. We'll have to explore that as we get a little further in the episode. Okay, because that's going to be important. And finally, thank you, William the Dude. Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man.
    8:06
    Could have worked harder at that one. Yeah, yeah, could have. Okay, so you're here, David. We've podcasted together before. You remember this, but a lot of listeners probably do not because it was not on a The Pinball Show episode. It was on a The Pinball Show midweek episode. Yeah, that was a while ago. This was when I had first actually started podcasting. It was so long ago that it was TPS Midweek Episode 4. Yeah, wild, just wild. Now, I remember you were like, hey, the pandemic had broke out, and the economy was questionable, and you're like, let's do an episode. And I'm like, sure, no problem. So I got like a little chair and I put it in my like closet. So there wasn't a whole lot of bouncing walls. And I used my microphone. And, you know, you're going to include this in the show notes, right? Yeah, my plan is I'll have a link in the show notes to midweek episode four. It was rough. The audio quality was OK. I was not completed again. I was a bit wooden.
    9:16
    You know, I had only made maybe a couple episodes in with with Ron. It was awkward. You were new to podcasting. I was finding my way. Right. And this is common to people who are new at podcasting. You tend to be very formal. You try not to use a lot of humor. If you go back and listen to early Eclectic Gamers podcast episodes, it was the same way. We were very, very structured and formal. And a lot of that for us was, you know, it's new. You're putting yourself out there. You don't want to get a lot of criticism. You don't want people complaining or thinking you're taking too many hot takes because you're not sure how you're going to deal with the criticism and stuff. And then as time goes by, you start to be like, you know what? This needs to be a little more fun. I don't like how this sounds. I don't like how I'm doing this. And it kind of gets reshaped. So that's very, very normal. So when does CGP become funny? Well, it may never become funny. And I have plenty of people who, I mean, just this last episode, I think I had someone kind of go, before they even played it, they were like, is there going to be a Shark Eat Ball joke in here? I just love the Shark Eat Ball jokes. And I have a feeling they were being sarcastic.
    10:32
    I don't know. I thought that was humorous. I don't know. We took it pretty far. I mean, to be fair, Tony did a lot of, for our social media, a lot of pictures with his mouth open in front of all the games we were playing, and that was to eat the ball. Oh, very good. So it was kind of like, maybe we've taken it too far. I don't know. Maybe the people who wanted to mod their game to eat the ball took it too far. I guess we'll never truly know. So you mentioned that episode being a little rough, but that was so early in the pandemic. That episode dropped like April 2nd of 2020. So it was right at the start, not at the start of the disease, but it was right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in a lot of those shutdowns. It was wild that time. Do you remember washing your packaged groceries? Do you remember that? Oh, yes. The wiping. There was a lot of concern that it was being spread on surfaces. So Lysol wipes. This was back when the toilet paper shortage was happening, too. Yeah. Remember when you couldn't get toilet paper? Yeah. I had people telling me they like they had friggin they were microwaving their mail. Yeah, there was. It was in this. It was in the CBC, the Canadian broadcasting website. It was like, should you microwave your mail? A disease specialist explains. Hmm. You know, I never I never nuked the mail. Never nuked the mail. Did you remember when the government took all your freedoms and tracked all your movements with vaccine passports? this was when we recorded it that was when most of the states that started to do their stay-at-home orders and it was there was already pushback but it was before the big surge of anti-everything yeah i remember it's a shame i would never have volunteered to do that episode i think a month and a half later i was so burned out uh work-wise but i had just i had only been in my job that job I've now changed jobs again, but I'd only been in a job working with local health for just over a year at that point, a year and 13 months. And we did that episode from the context of you as a high level financial advisor and me as someone who worked and I do still work in public health. I just I now work at the local level. And so we were kind of coming at it from trying to do these predictions about what was going to happen with the economy and with the response to the disease in the context of the survival of pinball as a hobby, as a business, as an operated thing. Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, it was only 15 days to stop the spread. So it worked out OK, right? Yeah. The timeline, you know, I mean, we didn't know what we didn't know. That's a common thing we say in public health is there's a lot we didn't know and we learned a lot along the way. And then we changed our minds on a number of things as we learned more and more. And that confused people. But yeah, it never – I think – I went back and played episode four. And we made a lot of predictions about what was going to happen in the context of the pandemic. and it was like well you know i don't know it was just i mean we didn't predict all the waves you remember there was delta and then uh omicron and uh then all the sub variants that we still have now that it's more in an endemic state yeah it was it was oh it was like it kept just kind of going and going so we actually had like in canada it was significantly different than the than the experience you had in the u.s particularly in the warmer states like we would get those waves a lot sooner and we'd start to kind of shut that down as well as with here we don't have private health care like for-profit health care so you know the the people through taxation pay for health care right so there's a concern that oh my goodness if it becomes overwhelmed what do we do so so shutdowns come quicker and sooner and longer you know we had to cancel like christmas dinners with their family like two years in a row like it was it was crazy yeah and there were a response here in the u.s varied a lot by state but you know that does bring up the the obvious did you ever get covid i i had i was i i was asymptomatic when i got covid oh well good i'm glad i had no symptoms whatsoever uh i caught it at a pinball uh a private home in a small sort of local fun get together tournament. Um, but I was completely asymptomatic. Um, my family got it from daycare a few, a few weeks later, a few months later. And, but I mean, in general, it was, it was not particularly bad for me, although I did have quite a few clients who I work with like an elderly population and, and it did roll through some of them and they had a difficult go. Uh, they had a difficult go but you know that being said um i've probably had it again um but i'm i'm all vaccinated up i'm you know i take precautions when i can uh i wear you know masking here is is more normal now if you've got a cold or something where that was not a thing before the pandemic but uh it did you've had covet no i have not no no way not to my knowledge no is it because you don't want to put the the stick up the nose i test all the time you test all the time so you get if you get it up there i tested yesterday so i mean i i test pretty regularly wow so you got to get that thing up there so far into your brain it feels your middle school well different different tests tell you different insertion points into the nose so i've had a variety of different styles of the test and the pcr tests are the ones that go way up the nose the more at home ones usually only want to go in like a half an inch or so but that's what she said i so the first texas pinball festival that they were able to resume so that was the 2022 one when i got back i got really sick a couple days later really like like i felt like like flu and because i was immediately at another convention when i actually started to get sick and i did have someone who i think it was another tpn member who had emailed me after the show and said they had just tested positive and we had, you know, we were close contacts. So I had a bunch of tests at this other convention. I was masking at that convention anyway, and I tested every day for five days and none of those tests were positive. So I probably got something else. Maybe it was flu or some other, we call it con crud. Yeah. You know, some sort of convention related illness that just didn't happen to be coronavirus. But that has been the sickest I've been since the start of the pandemic. And in fact, listeners are probably able to tell my voice sounds more vocal fry than usual. I got sick at this Texas Pinball Festival. That's why I've been testing. So when I was driving back Sunday, later in the afternoon, my throat started to hurt. And that's on one side. And that's usually a sign of sinus drainage coming down the back of my throat. And that's always been is sinus drainage. So I don't know if it was my allergies because everything was warm and in bloom down there. Or if I got a cold, I haven't been feverish or anything, but I tested the next day, the day after that. And then I wasn't barbecue meat sweats. Yeah. And so it's not it's not showing up as covid. And so it's probably it's either a cold or, you know, some allergy related things. So. So, no, to my knowledge, and I get lots of free tests because I work in a health department. So, yeah, very cool. To my knowledge. No, I have not. And I've been vaccinated a lot, though. So that's that's wild. I find that. So I still bump into people that haven't had. And I'm like, what the hell? Yeah. At the start of 2023 in the US, it was calculated that 20 percent of Americans actually did not have ever had it. Which is a lot higher than I thought it would be. 20 percent. But look at you at the top 20 percent. It's like some crappy game show. So well, and, you know, but because the virus mutates so quickly, just like flu, it's very easy to get it and be low symptomatic. So I could have had it and not known it at one point with a runny nose where I'm like, because I have family members are immunocompromised. I will test before I go visit people. That's why I test all the time. Yes. So do you want to do you want to get into a time machine? Do you want to get into a time machine? I hate revisiting this time. This was probably the it was an interesting challenge that I hope to never replicate in my career ever. So in some ways, I don't like talking about the pandemic period. But but yes, for the purposes of pinball, I I think it's definitely worth it. So. All right. I'm in this. I'm in the Silver Rock Chronicles time machine. How does this work? Ron normally controls this thing. Yeah. So first thing you have to do is get your hand off my leg. Okay, so then what we do is we travel back to April 2nd, 2020, when we had this original midweek episode. Okay, so you punch that in over here.
    19:39
    Okay, it doesn't make the sound. It's just a switch, but you can make the noise if you want to. And then you have to pull the lever.
    19:48
    Okay, yeah, another fake noise. And then now we're here. These are real noises that people are hearing. Now we're here. Oh, wow. It's not actually – I didn't even get motion sick. It's not a real time machine, Dennis. It's just sort of a trope that we do. There's no actual buttons or switches. Do people actually listen to your show? Yes, but we don't ever do this. This just went off the rails a little bit. But anyway, Stern, April 2020, okay, they had just reduced their operations. They basically shut down their factory. Oh, yes, I remember that. Right? So they were reaching out and seeing like what was Ford going to do? How was Ford, a huge manufacturer, going to continue their operations? They were trying to learn from companies like them. They put up the sneeze guards between all their employees. You remember that? Oh, yeah. Those were very popular, yes. Because we all thought that this was a droplet-based virus, right? Like sneezing. Yes. Large particles were at the time seen as the primary means of spread, and the thought was it wasn't truly aerosolized illness like measles. And so the thought was if you could stop the large droplets, your chances of contracting the illness were greatly reduced. Turns out it was airborne, so the sneeze guards didn't make any difference. They may have made some difference, but not enough. Not enough to stop the spread. Yeah, American Pinball and CGC, they just stopped. Yes. They stopped everything. They didn't reduce. They just were like, you know what, we're all going home because we're only making 100 games a year. there's no reason to be here yeah but jersey jack was into that really do you probably recall they were moving to chicago from new jersey during this time frame yeah that's great time to pick the move guys terrible timing oh right they were putting things in containers setting up new lines moving to a new location like that was just i'm sure that cost them a fortune good thing they have billionaire backing well well well a company that didn't have billionaire backing spooky they stayed at home as well and they shut down completely yeah i believe uh wisconsin mandate was responsible for that one yeah which i mean i guess that's the way she goes what about Multimorphic. They shut down. Yeah, Texas was under stay-at-home, and so they did shut down. But I remember distinctly Multimorphic did communicate about next steps. They were telling people that they would still be able to build the modules, not the full machines, but they would be able to build the modules at home if the stay-at-home orders were in a prolonged format. That's pretty good. That's pretty – what do they call that? Pivot, right? That's the buzzword now. They were able to pivot very well because they're a smaller, more nimble company than a Stern or an AP or a CGC. Yeah, they were really the only manufacturer I remember that kind of projected some next steps just in case, which I thought was really interesting. Well, no, no. There was Deep Root. They also projected some next steps All right Yeah Again that why we had to hear the sound of that switch throw us back into time because this is back when Deep Root was still a thing and in no way a scam And so Deep Root was also based in Texas, and they had been planning to do their big reveal of their game, Raza, around. The Magnificent Seven? No. What was that called?
    23:26
    They were going to release seven games, right? This was before. I mean, yeah, they were talking a whole lot of stuff. They were coming to TPF, and they were bringing seven games. They were going to start production. And then this happens, and they're like, oh, I guess we're not doing that. Now, so 2020 TPF had already been canceled and would have already happened by the time we recorded this midweek episode four. But Deep Root had, before the whole pandemic thing, already announced that they were not actually going to do a reveal at Texas Pinball Festival. but they were planning to do their own reveal around the same time as TPF. Right. But this allowed them to say that their official launch is now postponed. Well, they just postponed it. Yes. They postponed it. It got postponed a lot. Let's put it that way. It got postponed a lot. When are they releasing their first pin? I think that's up to the SEC. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. They don't exist anymore because it turned out there was some money moving around. The closest you might see is I think Turner Pinball may control those IPs at this point. God, we were so excited for Deep Root, weren't we? A lot of people were. A lot of people were so excited for Deep Root. Now, one of the things on that episode that happened was we had a conversation about if we thought the manufacturers could survive a shutdown. And I asked you if the manufacturers were liquid enough, had enough liquid capital to survive the prolonged manufacturing shutdown.
    24:59
    And you talked about that there was government activity to help the economy, and this was different than the 2008 recession, and that they could use lines of credit or cash on hand to cover their rent and employee costs. And so we had that conversation. Yeah, I mean that was the biggest thing, right, is government supports. And in Canada particularly, we had things like – we had what's called CERB, which was Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit, which was cash payments sent directly to individuals under a certain income level who had lost their jobs. We also had support for businesses that had lost 70% of their income for a restaurant that shut down. So we had a lot of government support benefits as well as you did in the United States. Some of those have expired now. I think it was like a child care benefit and a bunch of other things that were paid out directly.
    25:57
    But I think a lot of those loans that were extended to companies, it did help. But there's a lot of cases where it didn't help. And in Canada, the payback of those loans that were provided actually came due just this year.
    26:14
    And a lot of businesses had struggled to find refinancing to repay that back. Yeah, we had – I mean there were – we called them ARPA loans were given to a lot of businesses. And then there were a lot of direct cash payments that went to a lot of Americans just in general from federal resources. And then there were some state interventions that happened, especially early on, like around the time we were recording originally.
    26:39
    And some of the things like I think the condition on the ARPA loans were if certain positions were preserved and stuff, they were like forgiven loans. So you wouldn't have to pay them back. So their bill does alone, but ultimately it was more like a grant. Yeah. So, I mean, when when the economy gets into trouble, this has been learned a lot since 2008 and even slightly before that is when the economy gets into trouble. The government has to bail out industries. They have to support, you know, businesses and people particularly, right? The employees, those people. And there's politics involved in that as well, which we'll leave out of this. But that stimulus is what inevitably kind of keeps things from completely falling apart. It gets – it could be really bad without that stimulus.
    27:30
    Yeah. For example. But we don't know how bad it would have been without that type of stimulus. Right. Could have been worse. Oh, absolutely. Because the I mean, the reality was the shutdown period, in particular in the US, because that's where all these pinball manufacturers that we're focused on are based. It turned out to be very short in terms of like so partial production capacity was actually restored relatively quickly, like within two months. I think they were all building again. So it didn't it didn't end up going very long, is my point in terms of. Obviously, there was a lot of pandemic controls and spacing and reduced operations. But the hardcore shutdown stuff of no working in businesses up close, that did not last very long in the United States. No. And I think you had wondered, do you think the manufacturers would have problems because they would have accumulated a bunch of debt during the shutdown? Well, I mean, in reality, no manufacturer failed. Well, except for Deep Root. But that's right. But that wasn't the pandemic. So, yeah, they turned out to have a lot of other deep-seated financial issues not related to COVID. In fact, the COVID funding probably bought them more time because they did get PPP loans from ARPA.
    28:44
    Yeah, absolutely. So we had that. We did some economic speculation, unsure of the financial future and if that would mean people wouldn't buy PINs. And you had predicted on the episode that – you didn't predict that, but you just noted that that sort of speculation could be a deciding factor on pinball's future. But in reality, the economy recovered so quickly, people were buying pinball like crazy.
    29:12
    Insane. It was – the manufacturers and their reduced production capabilities and supply chain issues couldn't keep up. And, you know, everything got expensive, every like bad game, like WWE became more valuable than its sale price was. It was it was it was nuts. All those all those copies of WWE L.E. that Raymond Davidson has stored away in a container have just gone. Everything was coming up Milhouse. It was so I mean, at the time, right, when you're in when you're in the shit, right, you're you're you're just trying to keep a long term perspective. But it's really difficult in times of panic and something like a once in 100 years pandemic. You know, it's pretty hard to keep a clear perspective, right? Like some of the expectation in the news was like every boomer would be dead within 24 months. You know what I mean? Like these people are in their 60s. You know, things are going to you know, they're not going to be healthy. It's going to be terrible. and that panic creates sort of this sell-off in markets, all markets, right? People are like, I'm getting out of here, right? I'm going to safety or something. When you think of the equity markets, particularly stock markets, it dropped so quickly. Then all this government stimulus comes into the market to sort of stabilize it and then it jumps right back up in like a month, maybe a half a month, month and a half depending on the type of market. that's what we call a v-shape recovery right so it drops really quickly and it comes back really quickly see i was i i was surprised i wasn't surprised at that initial drop but i was amazed as a non-financial expert at just how quickly that recovery happened on the equity market most people ended the year in a significantly positive you know return which i mean if if back in april when i was watching you know the market decline on a daily basis and you had told me by the end of the year, most of the clients in my business would finish the year with like a 6%. I'd be like, you're crazy.
    31:16
    It's not going to be a positive return this year, maybe next year. But it was a positive return, which is, I think when we tie this all back together, that's the confusing part about listening back to that old episode is like we didn't know what was going on. And then when you think about what we thought was going to happen and then what actually did happen, you're like, man, we couldn't have been more wrong.
    31:41
    Yeah. Especially you, Dennis. I was much less. I was. Yeah. Financially, yeah. No, I was. I was very surprised at how that ended up playing out. I was more right about the shutdown. So I mentioned that those didn't end up going very far. And I had predicted that. I had claimed on that episode that the shutdowns, the business shutdowns were going to need to go into May. And as a reminder, this episode dropped like April 2nd. So it was right at the start of April. And many of the shutdowns that were in place were set to expire at some point in later April. And that was in order to control outbreaks and that obviously every state got to make its own decision. A lot of local governments made their own decisions in terms of when restrictions would be lifted so people could get back at manufacturing. But the reason I was saying that is already being indicated from public health professionals that the whole main purpose of the shutdowns was to ensure that the hospital system did not get overwhelmed. It had to do with what we call surge capacity. So we're trying to ensure that the hospitals had enough beds to be able to handle the load of people coming in for COVID, which was exceeding the normal amount of traffic that you get in in intensive care units, in particular at hospitals. And I disagreed with you. I assumed at that time that they would go longer. Those restrictions would go longer. Right. Well, but we were already here in the U.S. seeing a lot of pushback to the restrictions and what that would mean. And in fairness to where you were mentally, a lot of public health professionals were noting, like, if the goal was to stop the actual disease spread, they would have had to go longer. They were thinking, like, you'd need to have the same level of aggressive shutdown into the fall if you actually wanted to stop the disease progression, that this was not going to stop the spread. All it would do is bend the curve down, smooth it out so that the hospitals could keep up.
    33:30
    And in reality, that's what we saw. Illinois, they eased most of their stay-at-home orders by the end of May. And Chicago, they went a little longer, but early June, like they only pushed it out a couple more weeks. And so by early June, Chicago was done with that. And so, yeah, that was I was pretty close to right on that one. So a lot of the pinball manufacturers were back at it in at least a limited capacity in June.
    33:55
    But what about the release schedules for pinball machines? This is where this was the fun part, right? So we got a little less in the old episode. We got a little less like sad. And we're like, yeah, let's go back to the fun stuff of when pinball is going to be released. And the assumption was things would be delayed. Right. Because once you shut down for three weeks or something. Right. Like, you know, you put a spanner in the mix. Right. Things are off. But what actually I think happened here was supply and demand. And that is the primary mover of of markets in general. Right. Be them, you know, collector cars or pinball or hockey cards or whatever. All of that stuff. The speculation would be, for me, the demand would drop, that people would not want to be spending money on an expensive toy, be it a classic car or a pinball machine, and that then demand would drop and supply would stay the same. So that's what I thought would happen, and that makes total sense. If things are on fire and the economy is in a free fall, people are probably going to stop spending money.
    35:11
    That's not what happened. No, it isn't. But, I mean, we were still on that left-hand side of the V-curve when you made that prediction. Absolutely. I mean, pandemic dragged on, right? People were stuck at home, and they needed to find things to spend their money on. The government gave them all this money to keep them from defaulting on mortgages and be able to pay their credit card bills and car payments and insurance premiums. But then the thing was that they didn't go out to eat. They didn't go on vacation. So they had not only the $5,000 from the government, they also had the $15,000 that they normally would have.
    35:49
    So they deployed it. They spent it. They did. But I'm going to say that you still were half right because while it was true that the demand ended up being there because you thought it would be a demand issue and not a supply issue, there did end up being the supply issue. Yeah, so – That is what caught me off guard and I didn't – I guess I didn't think of the supply chain, right? Like the coils, the metal for the coils has to be shipped in from like Asia and then the coil has to be melted down into like strands of coil. Then it has to be wrapped into a coil. Then you need the paper to go on the coil and then that's got to get disturbed and they got to solder it into a machine. well you know there's different jurisdictions uh asia canada the united states chicago illinois in general they all have different rules of shutdowns and who can work and how many people can work and distance protocols and that just caused a mess in the supply chain yes and when things when people who are not taking their vacations are spending food uh purchases in restaurants anymore and have saved up this money and have these windfalls, they started doing things like saying, you know what? I think it's time to buy a new truck. And I think many of us who were in the hobby at the time remember Stern going out there and saying, oops, you know, our spike two system, we use the same chips that the Ford F-150 uses. And Ford is the priority recipient on the on the Titan constricted supply chain. So they're getting all the chips. So we're struggling to get supplies because of these other bottlenecks. So it's not just getting the stuff made. There was stuff that other industries got higher priority for. So in the exact opposite, demand skyrockets because there's a lot of this free cash that people have and free time.
    37:37
    And supply has significantly dropped because we don't have things like chips. Yes. And that happened across everything. We're not talking. Oh, yes. Cars, trucks, four wheelers, snowmobiles, boats, hockey cards. uh magic art like everything oh yeah like all hobbies uh we saw the supply chain stuff happen with wrist watches rolex had to reduce their production by hundreds of thousands of units so those all went up good luck getting a daytona and and so we saw this in pinball with like stern for example uh we saw a lot of delays in the move back dates but i think the biggest thing with stern is they ended up as they wisely needed to reduce the number of cornerstones. We've only just now started to get back into the three cornerstones a year that Stern likes to do, but they were doing two a year because, and then they'd throw in like a boutique every now and then, right? They were like a Batman 66 or an Elvira. And good luck getting that. Cause then they never seemed to want to build them anymore. And you'd hear mixed things. Like it was either they didn't want to, or they had other stuff to build, or there was some part that was, you know, the rotating house needed and they couldn't get it because there was that, that one supplier was bottlenecked. So, yeah, it was tough. It was tough on operators also, though. I had noted on the midweek episode that many places that were open for food service were not allowing people to play pins. And some of that was under orders, government orders. But people were already avoiding that because of social distancing and stuff. And you had other locations like bars with pinball machines and pure arcades with pinball machines that were shut down, completely shut down when we recorded. And I had asked you on the episode if you thought we were going to lose a lot of those arcades and like the barcade style businesses that basically just couldn't operate under the pandemic structure because people weren't going out to drink, much less play a game. Yeah, it was this is bars notoriously have tight margins to begin with, especially ones with food. Right. So if you go to a barcade and they don't serve food, they just have pins and alcohol. The reason is it's so difficult to manage the margins on food service, right? The actual food itself, the materials to make the food, the cooks, the chefs, the people to clean the stuff afterwards, then servers. Like the margins are tight. And I mean if you had a passion project for a business and it was more of a fun thing as opposed to a business business where you're managing those margins, it was not going to happen. And I mean, we did see a lot of even business oriented businesses like actual like tight, well-run businesses. They didn't survive either. It was terrible.
    40:28
    Yeah. I mean, we have we had plenty of cases. I mean, your co-host on Silver Bowl Chronicles co-host over on Slam Tilt, Bruce Nightingale, had a had a bar at a bar like a pub style bar with arcade games, Silver Bowl Saloon. And he noted that they shut it down because of the restrictions over the pandemic. Yeah, and it was run well, right? Like it takes like five years before you kind of get your feet under you. You know, you're able to predict kind of cash flow, things like that. And what I remember from hearing from Bruce over on the Slamtail podcast when they were redoing that was they had a lot of this government assistance and loans. and then you get to a point where it's like, well, I can open and I can do takeaway and I can do this or that. But then it's like, how many more years when we get through this, am I going to be grinding my wheels, spinning in the mud to recover from this? And then you get into a cost benefit analysis. Is it worth the effort? And I think with Bruce, he decided, you know what, before this gets really bad before I owe too much money or before I, you know, I can't see the future. So it's best to just call it as it is. You know, people were buying gift cards to bars and restaurants. There was a couple of bars in Toronto here in Canada where, you know, they were selling T-shirts, right? And it was like, okay, buy the T-shirt, but pay an extra five bucks or Silver Ball Saloon. I bought a hundred dollar gift card, right? I would never go to the Silver Ball Saloon. But you know what? If I could give Bruce 100 bucks, it might help him get through it. But it was really tough to endure, I think, on a business level for operators with those tight margins. Yes, and I remember on Pennside reading a lot of closure, like a lot of arcades, a lot of barcades announcing their closures during that time frame and noting that they just can't do it. Some of them that were pure bars, they didn't have food. There was no takeaway.
    42:31
    You're going to go and get your liquor from a liquor store. You don't go to a bar if you're not drinking at the bar. We had a – we have – and it survived, but we have a pinball bar that I remember early in the pandemic. I was sending the owner information on how to access some of the state funding resources that I thought others might not know as much about because I was quite familiar with a lot of them because we'd hear about them in public health so that he could find resources to try and stay afloat until he would be allowed to open because he had nothing to do pick up for. Did PISA South by Northwest survive? They did. Okay. Yeah. Because they had the PISA takeaway bit. Yes. So they had already had a delivery model. But a lot of those food businesses still saw dramatic declines, of course, in the amount of revenue they were bringing in when going just takeaway. I actually still – really just out of habit at this point. But generally every weekend, I go out to local restaurants and buy food like I started doing during the pandemic.
    43:33
    I'm just in the habit of it now. I'm thinking, well, they need business. Let's not go to Taco Bell. Let me go to a local restaurant and just do it. I just do a pickup order and I just go and pick it up. And I don't know. I just do that now. But because that's stuck, that's stuck. Yeah. You're off the Taco Bell. No, I still do Taco Bell, too.
    43:54
    But not as much. Not as much. Nature's Drano. Yes. Well, yeah, you got to unclog sometimes. Now, that was another thing that that kind of came up, you know, about in terms of things that stuck. I had asked you on that episode if you thought there would still be a public reluctance in terms of the social distancing. If people are going to be willing post-COVID, quote-unquote post-COVID emergency maybe is a better way to describe it, to no longer socially distance. And you felt that people would get over it quickly, and you were right. They did. Yeah.
    44:28
    People – we're social, right? Like we want to be around each other. We want to be closer. you know should we have been as close as we were at some of these events right um probably not but that's just how it went but no we we went back to quote-unquote normal probably pretty quick yes i i did have a hope that i don't think has really borne itself out that there would be better hand sanitation post-covid um i still see some places that have like the sanitary dispensers but But like half the time they're empty. So I feel like people just kind of quit filling them up. Does this still happen in where you're from? Does it like so we still like when you were like waiting in line at a grocery store, are you still like awkwardly far away from the person in front of you? Or if you're at like a movie theater and you're waiting for your popcorn, are you still standing further back than you did pre-COVID?
    45:25
    Not I am not at this point, but early on I was. That still is a thing here. Like you still see people that are like on their phones waiting in a line and they're still like a little more space than you think they're normally would be. Like you're not going to be on top of the person, right? You are going to leave them space. But there still is seems to be a little more like weird space. But but like with movie theaters as an interesting example. So for about half a year, I'd say after the official kind of our official end of the emergency, I still masked at theaters.
    46:00
    So. Do you guys still have the stickers on the ground? You still got those? No, no. They still everywhere here I don know what kind of glue is on the bottom of those things but they are stuck on those tiles man and they are not coming off
    46:15
    Super funny arrows still all over the place. Yes, the flow directions. This side of the hallway, this side of the hallway.
    46:23
    On home collections, that was another thing that we talked about on the midweek episode. I asked you what you thought would happen with home collectors in terms of buying games after the lockdowns. I was very, very wrong on this. That's why I want to talk about that one. Yeah, great. Thank you.
    46:39
    This was where I had assumed that when you looked at supply and demand, that home collections would end up dropping sometime after lockdown phases because people who were out of a job might be concerned and needed to free up some cash. That did not happen. No. You had some interesting like travel stuff, though, in Canada that that kind of impacted the ability to buy pins, didn't you? Exactly. So so each province, kind of like each state in the US, kind of ran their own show. Right now, in Atlantic Canada, we had like this Atlantic bubble, right, which was the three major Atlantic provinces or we call the Maritimes here in Canada. we all kind of had this bubble where we could travel around because our populations, you know, were combined is under like a million and a half or two million. Like it's not a whole lot of people over here.
    47:36
    But we couldn't travel to Prince Edward Island for the first part, which is like this cottagey summer island just south of us or just north of us. And that island has one bridge onto it. And they shut it down. They're like, nobody's coming on here. because on an island of 300,000 people, if a bunch of tourists try to get away and all get sick and they end up in one of the two major hospitals on that island, there's a problem, right? So you couldn't cross the border. And then getting into Quebec, so Quebec is kind of north of my province. That's who we border with. There was no getting into Quebec. It was shut down, right? You are not getting in here. So when it comes to buying pinball machines, the larger city populations are in like the Montreal or Quebec City, Toronto, that kind of thing. You can't just kind of get in your car, drive seven hours, meet somebody in their home, pick up a pin and bring it back because you have these interprovincial travel restrictions.
    48:35
    And my assumption would be that that means, well, everybody's going to sell their pins and you have to sell them within your area. But what happens is there's a limited supply of the pins in my province. And they went through the roof like terrible pinball machines that nobody ever wants to buy. Like Raven went up a thousand dollars. Who's spending who's spending like fifteen hundred dollars American on a Raven? Canadians, Canadians who have a bunch of money and nothing to buy.
    49:07
    Was that was and that was one of the things I going back because I even I forgot how great my questions were for you during that midweek episode. I asked you about, well, what about the idea of people kind of going stir crazy at home and that resulting in them buying more games? And you said it could be a factor, but you didn't think it would be a big one. No, I didn't think so. Now, I don't know if it was stir craziness specifically, but we did, as you noted, we saw a lot of people just start blowing a bunch of money on pinball machines. And as you already talked about, they weren't going on vacations anymore and such. So they had this capital and they clearly weren't concerned about needing to hoard it. And that happened for all sorts of hobbies. Like you're into comic book collection and that got expensive. Ridiculous. Now, the thing here is that is exactly what the Canadian and the U.S. government wanted. Right? They want people to spend the money. We did what the government wanted. They manipulated you. No. You got this money. In Canada, we called it CERB or whatever you called it in the States. You got these payments and you used the money. You bought things at local restaurants. You went to, you know, you did renovations on your deck or your home or your basement. You kept those people working who otherwise might not have been working, right? You bought pinball machines, right? You deployed the cash that they gave you, which is exactly what stimulated the economy. It was the case for all hobbies. Try to buy a crappy 80s Mustang now. You know what I mean? Like the Fox Body Mustang, like the ugliest Mustang of all time, is now like actually worth money. I have no idea why, but all the people that grew up in the 80s were like, you know what? I'm stuck at home. Maybe I'll buy a four-liter Mustang and I'll work on it in my garage because I can't really go out anywhere.
    51:07
    Now, I think it's good to note, though, that we're really talking about people that had money already as well. So could you touch a little bit about the K-shaped recovery that we ended up seeing? So this is the thing, right, is that we're in this hobby.
    51:26
    And my assumptions were a few things, that people would be worried about their jobs. They would sell their pinball machine and free up $7,000 or $5,000 or $1,500 of cash because, you know, they needed to pay some bills or they needed to do this or that. And that was the reality for quite a few people. So if you think about our hobby, and this is really something that I learned during this pandemic period, is everybody here, although they may not realize it, listening, are probably quite affluent in comparison to most people. Right. We're buying a $15,000 toy. Right. Now, there's some of us who might be listening who are tournament players and they don't have their own pinball machines and things like that. But they're still going to a bar and spending disposable income on games, on food and beverage, right? So, like, people have different economic power, if you will. So you mentioned K-shaped recovery. So through the pandemic, it was very noticeable that there was this group of people, and you and I would probably be included in this, who could work from home, make the same income, do their job exactly the same, if not more efficient, right? We weren't stuck in traffic every day, so maybe we worked an extra hour, right? Like there's an – we recovered very quickly, a lot of people. Yes. And they had the stimulus. They had this government money coming in that they didn't need, plus the regular income, plus they weren't spending money on vacations. They just quickly recovered and all of a sudden had a bunch of cash. But then there's the other part of North American society who really significantly struggled. You know, students that had part-time jobs in bars or restaurants. You know, some laborers who need to be in front of people.
    53:25
    You know, certain industries really struggled. And sadly, I think as a society, we kind of forgot them because we're like, Like, how about all those people that went to work in a grocery store, assuming that they could contract COVID, take it home to their grandparents and everybody die? You know what I mean? Like, that was the concern that people had. The other thing was, all of a sudden, there was a mass retirement of the baby boomers. Ah, yes. Right? They're getting into Microsoft Teams or video conferencing or digital signatures on paperwork. They had to learn to work from home. You know, they had to take a laptop all of a sudden, you know, just, oh my God, you know, they just said, screw it. I'm out of here. Right. Teachers. Right. All these older teachers all of a sudden are dealing with all the crap in schools. They just said, I'm out of here. And that has created a bunch of jobs for the millennials and maybe even some Gen Xers that are maybe part-time teachers. Now, all of a sudden, they have a full-time job with a full-time salary, and they're able to spend this money that they didn't have 12 months prior. So that's what we called sort of the K-shaped recovery, was that some people went up, some people went down during the exact same period.
    54:43
    Yep. And back on the game stuff, I wasn't all right. I did ask you a little bit about on like what you thought would happen with used games. And I kind of approached it on this premise that used games were going to stay cheap. And as you noted, they didn't. Ravens Ravens got expensive. We saw the same thing with older stuff. I basically here in the US, even not pop. If it was solid state and it worked, you could get at least a thousand bucks out of it. And that wasn't true before the pandemic. So my premise there was like entirely wrong. Yeah, people weren't scared to lose their income. And because they weren't scared to lose their income, or let's say the people primarily in our hobby that spend that money were not concerned to lose their income. So that level of confidence meant that they could spend the money. Now, in the 1980s, okay, my father tells this story all the time. He had a Chrysler dealership in the late 70s and early 80s, okay? Him and his family sold Chrysler cars. The things would rust before they were like off the lot. It was crazy. But in the beginning of those rising interest rates in the 1980s, people would come in and they would still buy a car at 10 or 12 or 13 percent interest rates. No big deal. But then all of a sudden, kind of in 1984, it started to become apparent that people were losing their jobs. And as soon as you got scared that you were going to lose your job, you couldn't give a car away. You know what I mean? Like if your interest rates are now 16% and I will give you that car as long as you get it off my lot so I don't have to pay the interest on it, people wouldn't take it. And then that's when the spiral starts, right? Like, oh my god, I got all this stuff. And he did lose that dealership. Him and my father and his family in the early 80s gave up their Chrysler dealership because they couldn't give a car away. That didn't happen this time. The opposite happened.
    56:42
    yeah you could cars cost more than they were msrp'd at yeah it so i bought uh it sort of in 2021 i bought a a golf a vw golf three months later i saw a used one on a lot three thousand dollars more canadian more than what i paid for mine and it had three thousand kilometers on it I don't know what that is. Yeah, no. I don't know how many miles that is. I bought my Godzilla in early 2021, and if I had kept it in the box, I could have immediately that day sold it and made at least two grand.
    57:20
    And I could have opened it, played it, and sold it for the same amount. Which is not how it works. It's a depreciating asset. No. You buy it, and it goes down by 500 bucks. It wasn't an LE. It had absolutely no scarcity to it other than demand was so high and supply was so low because of the supply chain issues. Now, what about the tournament scene?
    57:42
    Yes. Oh, good point. So we talked a little bit because IFPA had suspended their sanctioned events. We didn't make any predictions on that. We just agreed that that was the right decision given all the shutdowns and everything because there were some people going out there trying to earn whoppers and move up the ladder while other places were just flat out shut down and legally couldn't do it. But we did actually try and do some predicting on Pinnberg. Pinnberg was coming up in the summer. And so I asked you if you thought Pinnberg would happen in 2020. This is where I was really right, by the way. You were very right. You were like, no, Dennis, it is not going to happen. And I disagreed with you. I was so wrong. I said, David, Pemberg is going to happen. It's far enough after when the shutdowns are going to be. They're just not going to, it was going to be a tight thing. So I said, you know what? They're not going to test all the games. It's not going to be as good as the other Pembergs. They're not going to make sure every game is perfect and ready to go. Maybe the group is smaller. But I said, you know, basically, as long as there weren't any prohibitions on mass gatherings that they were going to go ahead and have it. oh was i wrong not only did pinberg not happen in 2020 pinberg died yeah the replay foundation who are the the team behind pinberg sold like all of their machines yes it like replay foundation existed continues to exist it so it survived on paper but as an entity it essentially gave up and liquidated and got out of it. I remember I was very critical on that they – I understood that they couldn't do the event. I understood a lot about the decisions, except there was so much love for Pembroke in particular that I still to this day remain convinced that there was enough love for Pembroke and this was under a nonprofit organization that they could have saved it. The community would have been willing to save it if they had asked for help, but they didn't. It was just they gave up and they liquidated until this year. Now there's – Pinnberg is back for 2024, but we know it's not the real Pinnberg. It's this quasi-resurrection, and we're going to have to see if it can get back to its old state. But it's no longer the Replay Foundation owning this massive collection of games and putting on this massive event. It's now this highly restricted player count relying on games from the community and such. And so it just – I was really wrong. This is more what I had expected to happen here, Dennis. This is this panic selling. You know what? We don't want to deal with it. Let's just get out of here. Be done. They fire sale all those pinball machines. They restructure what is the replay foundation. That is what I figured would be the more common thing to happen. But of course, this was like the only example of that. And in fact, do you remember there was like that Captain Pirate Man's online auction that happened like a year and a half or two years later? Yes. Oh, my gosh. The most ridiculous prices ever. So they didn't sell – they sold all these Pinbird machines and they were all really great machines and they were expensive. Like don't get me wrong. You know what I mean? Like you're buying a – what's that with the Rocky one? You know what I mean? Like they only made like 50 of them or something. So they were expensive. But then a few years later, maybe a year, a year and a half later, somebody else sells off their collection at auction. And they went for ridiculous prices. So you can see the panic selling versus the, well, I'll just wait for an opportunity type of selling. Yeah, he sold at a great time. Yeah. If replay had waited another year, they'd have been able to get a lot more capital out of those games. in fact the ifpa so the international flipper pinball association i'm pretty sure they didn't start sanctioning again until like late summer or fall of 2021 yeah it was august of 2021 and that was another prediction i was wrong on i i my i had speculated on our midweek episode that the competitive pinball was going to recover eventually the location closers were going to have an impact on 2021 but i figured that they were going to sanction way earlier than they did so it was august of 2021 and um of course with all the arcades that ended up shutting down over the pandemic and such that the numbers of to recover in terms of events and players suffered because of that that was a year and a half after our podcast right because because you're kind of like it'll be like they'll start sanctioning again in like august of 2020 which is like Three months later. Yeah. But again, I was really taking a very American-centric view. And it is the International Flipper Pinball Association. And I know a big concern that Josh Sharp and the team had was not everyone was reopening at the same speed. Yeah, the Europeans and to some extent. So Canadians are pretty funny, right? We're like Europeans, except we have a lot of American influence because of the proximity of which we live to the world's largest, most innovative country. All right. So we tend to be a mixture of the two. So we opened up somewhat, but not as much as as you guys down south. The Europeans were even further behind us because they're so densely populated in these areas and Europeans don't shower as much. So there's a lot more of that, you know, issue of who's opening up speeds faster than others. Also, don't send me emails about the shower thing. It was just a joke. so you know we kind of we we built off of that though on the midweek episode and we talked about pinball shows as well because again we had recorded this right after tpf for 2020 had been canceled and if i recall you had said that you thought most of the pinball shows would resume once we saw major sporting events resume but that you thought fall of 2020 was was a good possibility Yeah, once the hockey games start again, right, once the basketball gets back, we'll see the mass gatherings like the Pinbergs and the pinball expos and stuff like that. But what they did is all of these major sporting events just didn't have crowds. Do you remember that? Yes. Yeah, that was it was. Yeah, they they kept these aggressive controls to protect the players from getting exposed. And then they just avoid the whole social distancing concerns by saying, well, there just won't be people at the stadiums. Yeah, all these rapid tests were developed to make sure that the sporting teams could test to keep on television. But they didn't develop those for the school system. Yeah.
    64:33
    Supply chain issues. There are always supply chain issues. Yeah, right. But that's the thing is that, oh, yeah, of course, when sports start. But there was like an asterisk to that, right? Like sports did start, but there weren't people there. And it was slower than you thought, but I was even more wrong. Of course, I already kind of hinted at this because I was telling you how I thought Hindenburg was going to help. This is my favorite part of the episode, by the way. Look, I was already seeing so much social political blowback over the state. Because, again, working in public health, we took a lot of criticism on a lot of stuff. And so I was already seeing a lot of U.S. pushback on basically everything that was restrictive. And so I'm thinking, no, as soon as people – they want to get back to normal. As soon as they can, they're going to. And so, as I noted earlier in this episode, I thought Pinberg was going to happen. So I qualified it by saying if Pinberg doesn't happen, then Pinball Expo is surely going to. And it's going to be the first big event that happens if there's no Pinberg. But there was no Pinberg. Pinball Expo happened as a virtual event. I don't even remember this, but it was a virtual Pinball Expo. It was a virtual Pinball Expo. That's the first time I saw David Fix in the mustache and the hat. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's why I remember. I'm like, what's with the hat and the mustache? And then now he runs a company that makes barbecue games. Yeah. And I was so wrong. TPF ended up being canceled for 2021 as well as 2020. And because there was no Pinberg, the first big in-person pinball event that a lot of people associate with happening was Pinball Expo of 2021. The first and only Pinball Expo I have ever gone to. Yeah, in the fall of 2021. one yes which is it was terrible craziness because i was like so i had been in the hobby for you know like what a year and a half or two years or so at 2020 and i had my hotel room booked and i was going to pintastic right it's the first time i had been to one of these events i was going to meet ron i was going to meet all the you know bruce and all those guys from the other spot and i was i was super excited uh you know to meet derrick who does a lot of work up in uh with pintastic and stuff i I was so excited to meet these people. And then it's like it just didn't happen. And that was April, I think, of 2020. So that canceled. And then it was like, okay, so then I scheduled in for the next year of 2021, and it didn't happen.
    67:00
    And then – so the first one I got to was 2022, and it was in the fall. Yep. Instead of in the spring.
    67:08
    It's like, oh, man. It sucked. And as part and parcel of that, we did talk about it. We thought we were going to see any of the shows actually go away because we knew cancellations were happening. And a lot of that was driven by the whole sunk costs, issues with like TPF had bought shirts and stuff. And I was pretty sure in their case because of the shutdown orders that they were basically going to get out of their lease clause, the rent, the purchase of the space to be able to hold the events because those can be very expensive. And those contracts are usually very punitive if you try and break them. But generally, there's an act of God exception. And so if the government gets to count as God. So if they shut you down, then you usually could get out of that. And I even knew about events like an event I was planning for public health that I ended up having to make virtual in 2020. And I was kind of like, I'm kind of hoping that there's an official government shutdown still in place so that I can break my contract. And I was able to do that. So we had speculated on whether or not some of the shows would go away. You thought some of the smaller ones might. And I thought that the shows were going to survive. But I thought that Midwest Gaming Classic and TPF were going to have the hardest time because of all the stuff they bought for the show. The scale of their spending. The banners and the shirts and the merch and all the stuff that they just weren't going to sell. and we were I guess both kind of wrong obviously replay effects is Pinberg but you were a little wrong with me yeah I was MGC and TPF were fine I don't know if any of the smaller shows went away I don't recall hearing any went away so Pinberg was the big loss the replay effects show but yeah and again that was that was that sort of panic but there were in context of that k-shape recovery we had talked about a moment ago as well like when we went with the first Pintastic that I went to,
    69:07
    you could really see it was sort of you know just as things were kind of coming back together and people were more comfortable traveling it was still awkward But you could see that the staff in the hotel they were just understaffed They didn't have enough housekeepers. They didn't have enough cooks. They didn't have enough, you know, administrative staff just to check people into the hotel. You could see that there was still these situations that were bubbling to the top because some of those industries were not recovering. But you've got all of us who are these folk that want to come and hang out, men and women. You want to play pinball and see their friends they haven't seen in a year and a half or two years. But the industries that support that, the hotel and hobby industry, they really struggled.
    70:00
    Yes. And so the last main thing we touched on back those years ago was whether or not pinball would survive COVID. And you thought the industry would survive? I thought the industry survived? I did say that I thought a contraction would happen, but we didn't really see that because the hobby itself thrived with the homeowner market. We did see the contraction on the location side. So I'm going to say I was half right, but I mean, it didn't really play out the way I thought it would. Yeah. I mean, that speaks down to the sort of the general, you know, covid experience, which I mean, everybody's going to be like, oh, God, here we go. They're talking about covid again. Can we just move on from that? been the whole episode right right but it's like you know general pinflation right like inflation through 2022 and most of 2023 was the highest it had been in 40 years yes you know what i mean and that's because of all that government stimulus that went into the situation into the market that comes down to the fact that people didn't have money to spend at restaurants or on $15,000 vacations so they spent that money elsewhere and inflation just in general happened because of that. Well, you know what? The alternative could have been worse. Yes. But it's been interesting, especially nowadays, where I feel – so now we have these new MSRP prices that have been increased because of all that inflation that we saw in that two-year timeframe in particular. But there has sort of been, I feel, a contraction in the buying public. A lot of people that bought pinball machines in the pandemic are not interested in buying more of them now. and so now there's this pushback like that the new and box games are too high for what we get but the manufacturers don't feel like they're in a position by and large to lower their prices pinball brothers has a couple times yeah in in 2022 my pinbargo ended so my yes my my spouse and we have very much a combined sort of management of our incomes, right? Like everything is combined. It's not like we're paying 50-50 of stuff. Like things are – it's combined, you know, general cash flow in our house, right? So when I bought my Tron pinball machine, you know, I had to – I had a pinbargo, which meant that I couldn't buy a bunch of pinball stuff for X amount of time, right? Because my wife had projects she wanted to work on or, you know, small home renovations or, you know, children are now in daycares and sporting events and things. Right. So the pin bargo ended right at the beginning. Yes. COVID. Yeah. I noted it on the episode. Right. So I'm like, all right, I can spend my, you know, my my eleven thousand Canadian dollars on a pinball machine. And then just all of a sudden I couldn't get a machine. I couldn't order a machine. There were no themes that I wanted. So I kind of waited. I picked up a Simpsons pinball party from a collector and I paid about market value and I played it for, you know, six or eight months till the next year. And then it got to the point where it was like, OK, I'm done shooting the garage over and over again. I want to move it on. And I sold it for slightly more than I had bought it for, which is crazy talk. but then it's like okay now i've got this money i want to buy something and i can't because now all of a sudden the msrp of a brand new pinball machine is like 12 000 canadian and then it was 12 500 canadian and then it was 13 000 canadian and i'm like and now i'm that's that's generally the the invisible thief of inflation right taking your buying power away from you oh yes and that is what inevitably happens. Well, I did eventually just do it, and I bought my James Bond premium. But I paid like $15,000 Canadian for that. And if I had told you in 2020 that I would spend that much on a pinball machine, I would say that you have something wrong with you. Because I wouldn't spend that much money on it. When I first bought my Star Trek, which was under $5,000 US new in box, I told myself, I'm never going to spend more than $5,000 for a pinball machine. And now, what are pros? $7,000 US? It's like, it's just different. It's just different. It's really, and I think there's a lot of us in the, you know, we're not crazy spenders. You know, we save our money. We work towards those things. You know, we try not to overextend ourselves. And we are significantly defeated. You know what I mean? And like it's really disappointing now to say, oh, wow, you know, because my expectation in 2020, 2019 was, oh, I'd love to have six pins because if I had six pins in my basement or in my house, I could have like local tournaments with buddies and friends and sanctioned events. And now I still have Tron and I've got my James Bond and I don't see myself being able to afford another pin, especially new in box for a couple of years. You know what I mean? And that's not what Stern and American Pinball and JJP want to hear. They want somebody buying a pin every 12 to 18 months.
    75:27
    I couldn't even buy a Raven at this moment. Has that not come down in price yet? No. Everything is still exactly where it was. It's not corrected yet, which is disappointing. It's okay. Just give me a second, Dennis.
    75:45
    I've given you a lot of seconds. Well, any final thoughts on this sort of historical look back on our on our hobby going through the pandemic? I mean, the biggest takeaway here is just how wrong you were. And I think part of that has to do with the fact that that that you're you're from public health and you just proved to be wrong a lot anyway.
    76:08
    Well, I did hear that a lot. What do you think? What's the takeaway here? Yeah. What a crazy time, I think. It was just it was unprecedented. And we to be fair, I like that we did the prediction so early in the pandemic response because we really didn't have any guidance on how stuff was going to play out. And we actually got a few things right, which was interesting. So we're not we're not all bad looking at the crystal ball. But, yeah, it was just it's a very different it's weird to me now because we still remember a lot of us who were in the hobby. remember going through the hobby in the pandemic time period, but I kind of feel like a lot of the stuff about the hobby is back to normal now. But as the pricing is the biggest takeaway, I think because the pricing didn't go back to normal. And now we're, we're in this weird boat where you've got people that have games that want to sell them, but they can't get as much as they were going to get in 2021 for them. And so they're sitting on games that they don't want and they don't want to pay the new prices. And it's just, And there are less people buying now because a lot of people are like, I know I'm going on vacations. Pinball was – I don't know if you ever looked on Twitch during the pandemic, but like everyone and their dog got into streaming during the pandemic. They're not there anymore. Those people are gone. Yeah. Yeah, they are. Absolutely. Here's the other thing. We learned how to bake bread and stream. That's what people did. I got so I still get emails to silver ball chronicles at gmail.com and and people actually join our patreon who are like hey I got into the hobby in 2021 and this resource that you have is so great and it's so cool to learn about you know the Barry Ousler's and the Steve Ritchie's of the industry it's so awesome that you do all this and I'm thinking to myself man I get a lot of emails from people that are like, I just joined the hobby and thanks for what you do. Like the amount of people that came into the hobby that weren't around in 2018, you know, it was a lot. Now, I guess when you think about when you joined the hobby, what is that like 2010 or something? 2012. 2012, right? You're thinking to yourself, man, I can't believe there's all these people in 2018 in the hobby. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, we've been on an upward growth cycle, but yeah, that the pandemic, again, you could, You have an arcade in your house. What a fun thing that even if you couldn't have people over, you had your family there and stuff. And it was something you could do or you could invite your close friends over and you didn't have to be out. And it solved – it just solved a lot of things. And, hey, if you're stuck at home, why not learn about a new hobby? So, yeah, it's interesting. And a number of those people have stuck with it. But they're not going to buy at the same rate that they did back when they had nothing else to spend their money on. So, yeah, I think that's the biggest takeaway. Cool. Well, for those that didn't want to hear about a bunch of history, even though I brought on the preeminent expert of pinball history onto the show, we do have a conversation planned about the 2024 Texas Pinball Festival. But only for those of you that are a Patreon member. I got a paywallet. Sorry, guys. That's brutal. It's the rules. So you can join for as low as $10 a month at patreon.com slash the pinball show. and you can hear David and I give our thoughts on the games, the layout, and all the fun stuff that had to do with 2024 TPF. Maybe I'll quiz you as opposed to you quizzing me. Oh, that would be a nice change of pace. Speaking of change of pace, you know what time it is? It's the most wonderful time of the year. Oh, you're going to love this because I'm giving it all to you. It's time for – I'll try and do the Zach thing. I'll try and be nice and do it. You can do your own version if you need to. It's time for Canadian Pinball Market Trends, eh?
    80:04
    It's a Bobcat Techno, boy! I like your style, dude. Yeah, eh? We're over here doing the Canadian Pinball Market Trends. We're all going to get together. We're going to see what's trending up and trending down through this wonderful nation's pinball market. Are you ready to jump in? I'm ready. Oh, you didn't do a hamming up accent.
    80:32
    I'm ready, eh? Well, trending up in Canada this week is Tron Legacy, the pinball machine, the launch of the new Tron ride at Disney World Orlando. Down there, that is driving people's love for Tron Legacy, including Jason from the Pinball Party podcast, who played Tron Legacy while he was at Disney World's resort.
    81:01
    But also trending up is James Bond Premium, specifically the Premium, because it's got that really cool ball lock, and it's got James Bond with a pole in his back. Now we're almost to 1.0 code. We're so close. Everybody complains about Lonnie taking his time, but it's been complicated because it's got a lot of video clips in there. The clips got to sync. You got to be able to double cancel them. Also, the code kind of sucked when it first started, so we're almost to 1.0. The Pro is a pretty good tournament, darling, as everybody remembers, but the Premium is where it's at. This is where it's at.
    81:41
    David, aren't these all games you own? That has nothing to do with anything because also trending up is CGC remakes, Attack for Mars and Monsters Bash. I've seen these on Pinball Rev, which is the local Canadian forum, which is outside of Pinside, so you don't have to pay those Pinside fees. And a lot of those CGC remakes are actually spiking. They're the ones that sell really quickly. The Bally Williams, they seem to have fallen off a bit. Now CGC's got the good build quality. Exactly, exactly. And you know what? I love Monsters Bash. I really do. I want to play that so much. Is that your favorite remake? No. Attack from Mars is my favorite. I don't like the scoop. You fall in the scoop from each direction. It slows everything down. I mean, that's a fair complaint. It didn't have the rear entry to that scoop? That's where it's at. But also trending up in Canada is a small company from Florenceville, Bristol, New Brunswick, called Covered Bridge Potato Chips. This local darling recently had a huge fire and the entire factory burnt to the ground.
    82:53
    Why is it trending up then? Because it's trending up because now there is a run on Covered Bridge Potato Chips. Oh! So you are having a difficult time getting those in stores. They have what's called Storm Chips, and Storm Chips are the kind of things that Maritimers get when there's going to be a big snowstorm because we're going to be stuck at home. We're just going to eat some chips, probably shovel some snow. And there has been a run on the Covered Bridge potato chips from Florenceville, Bristol, New Brunswick. Those are the ones that I usually take to people at Pintastic, by the way.
    83:28
    Yes. I think you sent me a bag once. I did. Weren't they amazing? They were. They were very good. It's too bad they're destroyed now. Yes.
    83:37
    But apparently they do have some plans to continue to manufacture at another plant, and they will be building a new plant sometime this year. But also trending up, the maple syrup season. Yes, Dennis, maple syrup season is early this year because we have had a really, really, really strange season when it comes to winter. We have all the snow. It's been really warm this season because of climate change and all of that other stuff. But that means maple syrup season is early. Uh-oh. Or is that good? Well, you said trending up. It's trending up. We're going to get that syrup sooner. Now, are you a Canadian, like a Quebec, Eastern Canada kind of maple syrup person? Or are you one of those stupid Wisconsin? Not Wisconsin.
    84:32
    What's the one? Vermont. The Vermont people. I actually, well, I do, if I buy syrup, I do generally buy maple syrup. I never looked to see where it came from. Do you want to know a secret? I actually much prefer the fake stuff.
    84:50
    Like fake maple or just like Mrs. Butterworth's? Yeah, like the Mrs. Butterworth's. I mean, that's what I grew up on. The high fructose corn syrup. Yeah, that is just basically liquid sugar. Yeah. No, I actually, I like maple quite a bit. Yeah. Now, I buy the maple syrup and I force myself to have it. But every time I have like a Mrs. Butterworth's, Western Mill or whatever they're called, I have that. I'm like, man, this stuff is good.
    85:15
    But trending down. Are you ready for this? Snowshoes. Yeah. This year, snowshoeing has been an absolute train wreck in Canada. Everybody has their snowshoes on the Facebook marketplace, the Craigslist. Everybody's getting rid of snowshoes because nobody snowshoed this year. In fact, I purchased snowshoes last fall because I was expecting to get out and about, and I couldn't. They haven't left the packaging. They're still in my garage, and I'm quite upset about that.
    85:48
    But let's get back to pinball. Houdini pinball. The massive blockbuster Barry O's Barbecue Challenge has meant that people need to free up their cash, And what they're doing is they're selling their Houdini pinballs en masse to get in line to get a Barry Ousler's last, partially last designed pin. Because there were other people that designed it. But it doesn't matter. We're not going to talk about that. Are you sure this is happening? This is actually happening. The Houdini pinball machines that have appeared on the Canadian market trend analysis here at TPS North has determined that Houdini pinballs have gone up more and more in Canada because people are trying to get in line for barbecue challenge. Now, lastly, trending down, flights from Evansville, Indiana to anywhere in the civilized world. This is probably true. Zach Menny's flight was canceled from Evansville, Indiana, all the way to Texas Pinball Festival. And quite frankly, I'm shocked that they have even airplanes in Indiana. I didn't think the technology from 1935 had even got to Indiana. Turns out it has. Now, I mean, come on. When the highlight of your in-flight entertainment in a place like Indiana is counting the tumbleweeds outside on the runway, Well, you're not exactly in the lap of luxury. So please subscribe to the Patreon for flipping out pinball to get a private jet.
    87:26
    Zach needs to get out of Indiana. He's got to move to one of those amazing, amazing states like, I don't know, Alabama. They have airplanes in Alabama, right? I mean, maybe. Georgia does. See? There you go. And that is your Canadian pinball market trends, eh?
    87:48
    Yay. All right. We've made it. David, how does it feel? We're at the end of the show. Oh, I don't know. I think it was a good episode. I don't know. It's only half an episode, though. Yeah, that's true. Well, where can people reach out to you? Plug your stuff. Yeah, people can reach out to me at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. That's where they can get a hold of all of the stuff for myself. Both Ron and I read every comment, positive or negative, and we respond generally to every single one. You can also subscribe to us on Patreon at patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. You get early ad-free access so I don't blow out your ears with a commercial which I put into the episode incorrectly. You don't have to deal with that over on the Patreon, just on the free feeds. and if you want to reach out to me the easiest and best place to do it is to email eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com if you want to write to zach and complain about how terrible this episode was you can write to the pinball show at gmail.com and as a reminder we can be supported at patreon.com slash the pinball show and i do need to note that the sponsor of the pinball show is flipping out pinball When I buy my pinball shit, I buy from Flippin' Out. From toppers, toppers, to the odds, I've got it figured out. Flippin' Out, figured out. When I take a pinball, I think Flippin' Out. Flippin' Out, figured out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flippin' Out. Buy, buy, buy. Deals of the week this week are I have no idea. Zach didn't tell me anything. So I have no idea what's available or what's in the Flippin' Out vault. He's probably got games. I don't know. You can email Zach at flip the letter in out pinball dot com and ask about like whatever game stuff you want or accessory or whatever they I don't know, whatever they sell over there. I'm not quite sure we're going to play that sweet jingle now. I might have already dropped that sweet jingle in if it was in the audio package that I asked for from Zach. Now, on the Pinball Network from last week, in terms of podcasting, we had Triple Jane Pinball Podcast, Episode 49, with your best friend Joe Engelberth, along with Tom Graff and Travis Murray, talking about their preparations for the Texas Pinball Festival. I heard that they had made many preparations to get down there, and they actually started at Preparation H, and they ended all the way at G before they came up with the perfect preparation, which was Preparation H. very exciting and also we had an episode of final round pinball podcast episode number 79 with jeff tiolis and martin robbins titled cultural so there you go in terms of that when is the next silver ball chronicles coming out see preparation h because joel's joel's a pain in the ass we get it when's the next people want to know when the next silver ball chronicles this has been like the ultimate history plug they got to hear about the history of the hobby and the pandemic and now they're like, I want to know about Wayne Nyans. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what. We've got our next episode, which is part two of Roger Sharp. So we've got part two of that, which is really Roger Sharp's kind of late 80s, 90s, and up to today. That is all written. It's ready to go. So the show notes are ready to go. We just have to record. This is that weird time of the year, right, where you've got TBF and you've got a bunch of tournaments that kind of land in the area as well. So hopefully we can get that recorded in the next couple of weeks.
    91:21
    Okay. Well, Ron was at TPF, but I never actually encountered him. I think it's because he avoids you. That could very well be. Because you two are both so awesome that if you have the same location in time and space, the universe may collapse.
    91:38
    That doesn't make any sense. It's like Time Cop. Remember Time Cop? Yeah, that was when they were meeting yourself. Yeah, Rob Van Dam. Oh, it was yourself. Yes. Oh. You couldn't. Well, it's probably better that you don't meet anyway, just in case. Okay. All right. Well, all right. We're at the very end of the show. So leave these people with something smart to say. And remember, everybody, Tron and James Bond are always trending up because, quite frankly, Stern has never made any other better games. That includes you, Elwin. And folks, always remember to practice safe pinball and mile our up. Yes, I've brought back the oldie but goodie.