Retrospective on pandemic-era pinball industry predictions and their inaccuracy.
Summary
In this episode of The Pinball Show (149.5), host Dennis Kriesel interviews David Dennis from Silver Ball Chronicles about their April 2020 pandemic-era episode. They revisit early COVID-19 predictions about pinball manufacturing survival, government stimulus, and the industry's economic outlook, reflecting on how wrong some predictions were given the actual rapid recovery and subsequent supply constraints that made pinball machines scarce and expensive.
Key Claims
Silver Ball Chronicles has released approximately 60 episodes and aims to displace TopCast as the primary historical pinball podcast
high confidence · David Dennis discussing Silver Ball Chronicles goals and episode count
By April 2020, Stern had reduced operations and implemented sneeze guards between employees; American Pinball and CGC stopped all production; Jersey Jack was moving to Chicago during shutdown; Spooky shut down completely; Multimorphic communicated plans to build modules at home if shutdowns continued
high confidence · David Dennis and host discussing April 2020 manufacturer responses during the pandemic retrospective
Deep Root was planning a reveal of seven games at Texas Pinball Festival 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic; the company later had financial issues unrelated to COVID and no longer exists; Turner Pinball may control Deep Root's IPs
medium confidence · Discussion of Deep Root's planned 2020 reveal and subsequent collapse; host mentions 'SEC' involvement suggesting fraud
The U.S. partial manufacturing shutdown lasted only about two months before production capacity was largely restored
high confidence · David Dennis: 'the hardcore shutdown stuff of no working in businesses up close that did not last very long in the United States'
Post-pandemic, pinball machine demand exceeded supply so severely that even poorly-regarded games like WWE became more valuable than their original sale price
high confidence · Discussion of post-pandemic market dynamics and supply chain issues causing price inflation
No pinball manufacturer failed during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown period (except Deep Root, which had separate financial issues)
high confidence · David Dennis: 'no manufacturer failed uh well except for deep rote but that's... that wasn't the pandemic'
By early 2023, approximately 20% of Americans had never contracted COVID-19
medium confidence · Host stating 2023 U.S. statistic about COVID-19 infection rates
Notable Quotes
“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”
David Dennis@ 1:41 — Humorous aside about Silver Ball Chronicles' international reach and merchandise sales
“the most famed pinball podcast focused on History... 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@ 2:05 — Self-aware commentary on avoiding industry drama while maintaining reputation, contrasts with news-focused podcasts
“the quality of the episodes has improved I'm starting to pull more than just uh you know a couple of old podcasts and then regurgitating that I have to do a lot more digging now”
David Dennis@ 3:13 — Explains evolution of Silver Ball Chronicles from simple aggregation to deeper research; reflects production challenges post-pandemic
“it turns out it was Airborne so the sneeze guards didn't make any difference”
David Dennis@ 21:05 — Scientific correction about COVID-19 transmission mechanisms; contextualizes early 2020 manufacturing responses
“we had a lot of government support benefits... stimulus is what inevitably kind of keeps things from completely falling apart”
David Dennis@ 27:23 — Economic analysis of government intervention's role in preventing manufacturer collapse; mentions PPP loans and CERB
“everything was coming up Mill House... it was so nuts”
Host — Colorful description of post-pandemic supply shortage making all machines valuable regardless of quality
historical_signal: Detailed retrospective on April 2020 pinball manufacturing responses to COVID-19 shutdown, including specific operational decisions by major manufacturers (Stern, American Pinball, CGC, Jersey Jack, Spooky, Multimorphic)
high · Comprehensive discussion of each manufacturer's shutdown vs. reduced operations decisions and their rationales
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business_signal: Analysis of government stimulus (PPP loans, CERB, ARPA funding) as critical factor in preventing manufacturer failures during pandemic shutdown
high · David Dennis: 'no manufacturer failed uh well except for deep rote but that's... that wasn't the pandemic' and discussion of how PPP loans provided relief
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market_signal: Post-pandemic demand vastly exceeded supply, causing even low-quality games like WWE to become more valuable than original sale price; severe supply chain constraints
high · Host: 'everything was coming up Mill House it was so nuts' discussing WWE price inflation and all machines becoming valuable
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content_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles improving production quality through deeper research and more comprehensive sourcing, moving beyond simple podcast aggregation; production pace slowed due to host's increased workload post-pandemic
high · David Dennis discussing quality improvements: 'I have to do a lot more digging now' and explaining release schedule slowdown
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business_signal: Deep Root Pinball collapsed due to financial issues (implied fraud/SEC involvement) unrelated to pandemic; company no longer exists; its IPs potentially controlled by Turner Pinball
Topics
COVID-19 pandemic impact on pinball manufacturingprimaryPinball manufacturer financial resilience and government stimulusprimaryPost-pandemic supply chain constraints and market inflationprimaryPodcast evolution and production quality improvementssecondarySilver Ball Chronicles show history and goalssecondaryDeep Root Pinball's failed launch and financial collapsesecondaryEconomic forecasting accuracy during crisis periodssecondaryPinball community media and content creatorsmentioned
Sentiment
mixed(0.45)— Episode is nostalgic and reflective about pandemic-era uncertainty, with humor and light-hearted banter offsetting discussion of economic hardship and manufacturing challenges. Host and guest find amusement in how wrong early predictions were, suggesting resilience and perspective. However, underlying theme acknowledges genuine crisis period and manufacturing disruptions. Tone becomes more serious when discussing Deep Root's collapse and financial losses.
Transcript
youtube_auto_sub · $0.000
warning The Following episode contains adult language and screaming goats listener discretion is [Music] advised 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 Antonio Cruz probably Contracting some sort of foodborn illness because that's what I know Antonio Cruz is 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 Antonio Cruz from Disney or any other named brand and that is the famed David Dennis from silverball Chronicles David welcome to the pinball show I'm I'm so glad that I'm being compared to Norwalk that's that's what I'm doing is it what is 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 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 Dave 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 silverball Chronicles with Ron how 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 to this to this you know 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 your co-host Ron howlet Jr what is your goal with silverball 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 we go back we 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 uh 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 uh 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 uh 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 Zack 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 Zack was like Dennis do you really think that we 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 going to do it and they're like I don't know guess we'll ask Dave and I did it with Zach that was a fulln numbered episode it's it's only because it was going to be 150 oh it's like a it's like a quasi miles Stone number okay 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 so but we've got Craig Bobby though even though it's half an episode right no we do not well if if Craig if Craig did top stories uh he sent them to Zach and Zach's on a Antonio Cruz so I don't have them so they ain't going in has there really been news there hasn't in fact we're gonna this is gonna be a weird episode not weird like in a Twilight Zone esway but rather this is not going to be so newsed focused as it normally is nor is it nor is it truly totally historical Focus 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 a0 five I I guess so but anyway I want guess so yes but I want to thank you for being on and while I'm thanking people I want to 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 slth pinball show so thank you Rodney the Bobcat oh shoot that [ __ ] oh hey um we don't have Bobcats here you don't no we have a thing called a lynx on the east coast of Canada I've heard of the lynx l y NX check worth a Google much cooler than a bobcat they don't attack ladies in front of their house no that's nice to know uh thank you Steve bumblebee yeah it's you know yeah thank you rob the panther you probably don't have panthers up there no no we have cougars though those those women at every at every CD bar there are cougars thank you Frank the Falcon you have Falcons I I don't is that like a hawk it yeah kind of like 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 couple bald eagles we do actually have those here yeah those are kind their uh their Battle Cry is not as intimidating as their look might suggest oh do they have those mean eyebrows Falcons uh where they're like they're always like like judging you like 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 oh I've tried to do that for years I'd love to know the story behind this one but I'll I'll leave that for the story behind why he's a Shaker motor or why the red trimmer is a thing well we'll just we'll just well I know why red trimmer is a thing because it's better uh that's the only interesting story that's the only interesting story but it 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 I wonder who that could be that's tough to say we can't reveal their last names for security reasons H and thank you Charlie the Bell we've probably done more bell sounds than any other variants of of audio Zach's giving me the audio to drop in here so uh we're working with whatever he's kind of got prepped yeah did you get the did you get did he give you the Loon did he give you the Loon call you know I have not fully checked the it was one audio file so I might have the Loon I might not well we'll have to 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 dude 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 AG this was when I had first actually started podcasting it was it was so long ago that it was TPS midweek episode 4 yeah wild just wild now I remember uh you know you were like hey the the pandemic had broke out and you know the economy was like 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 mic microphone and and you know you're going to include this in the show notes right yeah my plan is I'll I'll have a link in the show notes to midweek episode four so it was rough Dennis the audio quality was okay I went back anded it again I was a bit wooden um 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 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 you know complaining or thinking you're taking too many hot takes because you know 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 uh so that's very very normal so when does zgp become funny well it may never become funny and I have yeah yeah and I have plenty of people who I mean just this last uh 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 Sharky ball joke in here I just love the Sharky ball jokes and I have a feeling they were being sarcastic I don't know I thought that was I thought that was humorous I don't know we took it we took it pretty far I mean let's uh 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 he so it was kind of like maybe we've taken it too far I don't know 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 we'll never truly know but so you mentioned that episode being a little rough but we that was so early in the pan 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 so it it was wild that time do you remember washing your packaged groceries do you remember that oh yes the wiping wiping when there was a lot of concern that it was being spread on Surface so Lysol wipes this was back when uh 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 fraking they were microwaving their mail yeah there were they were it was in it was in the CBC the Canadian broadcasting website it was like should you microwave your mail a disease specialist explains you know like I never I never nuked the mail never nuked the male did did do 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 had started to do their stay-at-home orders and it was there was already push back but it was before the big surge of anti- everything yeah I remember I would never have volunteered to do that episode I think a month and a half later I was so burned out uh workwise but I had just I had only been in my job that job I've change jobs again but I'd only been in a job working with local health for just over a year at that point a year been 13 months and we did that episode from the context of you as a highlevel financial adviser 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 surviv 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 it worked out okay right yeah uh the timeline you know I mean we we didn't know what we didn't know that's it's common thing we say in public health is there's a lot we didn't know and we we learned a lot along the way and then we changed our minds on a number of things as as we learned more and more and that confused people but but yeah it never I think you know I went went back and played episode 4 and there we made a lot of predictions about what was going to happen in in the uh 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 Omicron and uh then all the subvariants that we still have now that it's more in an emic State yeah it was it was over it was like it kept just kind of going going so we actually had like in Canada it was significantly different than the than the experience you had in the US 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 we don't have private healthare 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 our family like two years in a row like it was it was crazy yeah and there were it and response here in the US 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 home in a small sort of local fun get together tournament um but I was completely asymptomatic uh 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 headed again um but I'm I'm all all vaccinated up I'm you know I take precautions when I can uh I wear you know masking here is is is more normal now if you've got a cold or something where that was not a thing before the pandemic but uh did you've had Co no I have not no not to my knowledge 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 every day but 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 memories 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 one 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 um and I did have someone who I think it was another tpn member who had uh emailed me after the show and said they had just tested positive and we had you know we were close contacts so uh 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 uh you convention related illness that just didn't happen to be Corona virus 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 all it's 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 uh I haven't been feverish or anything but I tested the next day the day after that and then I just wasn't barbecue meat sweats and so it's not it's not showing up as Co and so it's probably it's either a cold or um you know some allergy related thing so so no to my knowledge uh 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 I still bump into people that haven't had it I'm like what the heck yeah at the start of 2023 in the US it was calculated that 20% of Americans actually did not have ever had it which is a lot higher than I thought it would be 20% but look at you at the top 20% it's like some crappy game show well and you know but because the the virus mutates so quickly just like flu it's very easy to get it and be a low symptomatic so I could have had it and not known it at one point with a runny nose where I'm like uh because I have family members are imun compromised 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 get into a time machine though I hate revisiting this time this was probably it was an interesting challenge uh that I hope to never replicate in my career ever uh so in some ways I don't like talking about the pandemic period but um 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 BR 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 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 that 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 that okay yeah another another fake noise um and then real noises that people are hearing now we're here oh that's it's it was not get motion sick it's not a real time machine Dennis it's just a it's just sort of a Trope that we oh that we do there's no actual buttons or switches or do people actually listen to your show yes but we don't we don't ever do this this this just went off the rails a little bit but anyway you know Stern April 2020 okay they had just reduced their operations they basically shut down their right so they were they were reaching out and seeing like how what was Ford going to do how is Ford a huge manufacturer going to continue their operations they were trying to learn from companies like them they put up the sneez guards between all their employees you remember that mhm oh Snee guards very popular yes cuz we all thought that this was an air a droplet-based uh virus right like sneezing yes the 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 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 a 100 games a year there's no reason to be here yeah but Jersy Jack was into that really you you probably recall they they were moving to Chicago from New Jersey during this time frame yeah that's terrible 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 backings spooky they stayed at home as well and they shut down completely yeah I believe uh Wisconsin mandate was was responsible for that one yeah which I mean I guess that's the way she goes what about multimorphic they yeah yeah Texas was under stay-at-home and so yeah they did shut down but I remember distinctly multimorphic did communicate about like next steps that they said they were telling people that they would still be able to 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 that's what do they call that uh pivot right that's the buzz word now they're they were able to Pivot very well because they're a smaller more Nimble company than a than a than a Stern or an AP or a cgc they were really the only manufacturer I remember that kind of uh projected some next steps just in case which I thought was really interesting there was deep rout they o projected some next steps all right yeah again that's 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 um so deep root was also based in Texas and they had been planning to do their big reveal of their game uh Raza around seven The Magnificent Seven no what was that called they were going to release seven games right this was before I mean they yeah I yeah they were talking they coming to tpf and they were bringing seven games that were going to start production and and then this happens and they're like oh guess we're not doing that now so 2020 tpf had already been cancelled and would have already had happened by the time we recorded this midweek episode 4 but deep rooot 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 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 got postponed a lot when are they when are they releasing their uh 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 I we were we had a conversation about if we thought the manufacturers could survive a shutdown and I asked you uh if the manufacturers were were liquid enough had enough liquid Capital to survive prolonged manufacturing shutdown and you you talked about that you know 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 we we had that conversation yeah we had I mean that was the biggest thing right is is government supports and uh in Canada particularly we had things like um we had what's called Serb which was can 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 uh businesses that had lost uh you know 70% of their income uh for you know a restaurant that shut down right so we had a lot of government support benefits as well as you did in the United States and some of those have expired now like a I think it was like a child care benefit and a bunch of other things that were paid out directly but I think a lot of those uh 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 um actually came due just this this year uh and and a lot of businesses had struggled to find refinancing to repay that back yeah we had uh I mean there were we call them arpa loans were given to a lot of businesses and then there were a lot of direct cash payments that to a lot of Americans just in general uh from federal resources and then there were some State interventions that happened especially early on like around the time we were recording originally 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 they were build as a loan But ultimately it was more like a grant yeah so I mean when when the economy gets into trouble uh this has been learned you know a lot since 20 8 even slightly before then is when the economy gets into trouble the government has to bail out um Industries they have to support uh you know businesses and people particularly right the employees those people and there's there's 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 with that stimulus um yeah for example but we don't know how bad it would have been without that type of stimulus right it could have been worse absolutely because the I mean the reality was the shutdown period and particular in the US because that's where all these pinball manufacturers that were 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 it didn't end up going very long is 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 and I think you had wondered uh do you think the manufacturers would have problems because they would have accumulated a bunch of debt during this shutdown well I mean in reality no manufacturer failed uh well except for deep rote but that's yeah but that wasn't the pandemic so yeah they they turned out to have a lot of other de 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 yeah absolutely so we had that uh we did some we did some economic speculation you know unsure unsure of the financial future and what uh if that would mean people wouldn't buy pins and you had predicted on the episode that uh 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 what insane it was you know the the manufacturers in their reduced uh 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 that Raymond Davidson has stored away in AER have just gone everything was coming up Mill House it was so I mean at the time right when you're in when you're in the [ __ ] 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 and and something like a once in a hundred years uh pandemic you know it's pretty hard to keep a clear perspective right like the 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 um you know things are going to you know they're not going to be healthy it's going to be terrible and and that Panic creates sort of this sell-off in in 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 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 of of of Market that's what we call a vshape recovery right so it drops really quickly and it comes back really quickly see I was I I was surp I wasn't surprised at the 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 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 you know most of the clients in in my business would finish the year with like a 6% I'd be like you're crazy you know it's not going to be a positive return this year you know maybe next year but it it was a positive return which is I think when we 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 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 yeah especially you Dennis I was much less I was yeah financially yeah no I 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 shutdowns we're 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 uh and that was in order to control uh outbreaks and that obviously every state got to make its own decision a lot of local governments made their own uh 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 to 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 so and I disagreed with you I I I assumed at that time that they would go longer those restrictions would go longer right well but we were already here in the US seeing a lot of push back to the restrictions and what that would mean and 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 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 is bend the curve Down Smooth it out so that the hospitals could keep up and and in reality that's what we saw uh Illinois uh they eased most of their stay-at-home orders by the end of May and Chicago they 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 WR on that one so a lot of the pinball manufacturers were back at it in at least a limited capacity in June mm but what about the release schedules for pinball machines this is 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 let's go back to the fun stuff of when pinball is going to be released and the 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 a with 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 uh you know collector cars or pinball or hockey cards or whatever all of that stuff the the speculation would be from me that demand would drop that people would not want to be spending money on an expensive toy be it a a classic car or a pinball machine and that then demand would drop and Supply would stay the same so you know I that's what I thought would happen and that makes total sense if things are on fire and the economy is in a in a freef fall people are probably going to stop spending money that's not what we were no it isn't but I mean we were still on that left-hand side of the V curve when you made that prediction so absolutely 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 and car payments and and insurance premiums and they so but then the thing was that they didn't go out to eat they didn't go on vacations so they had not only the the $55,000 from the government they also had the the $115,000 that they would normally would have so they deployed it they spent it they did so but I'm going to say say that you still were you were half right because all it was true that the demand ended up being there um because you thought it would be a demand issue and not a supply issue there did end up being the supply issue yeah that is that is what that 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 and 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 dist stir and they got to sold it into a machine well you know there's different jurisdictions uh Asia Canada the United States Chicago uh 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 or spending food uh purchases in restaurants anymore and are 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 our Spike 2 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 and supply has significantly dropped because we don't have things like chips yes and that happened across everything we're not talk again oh yes cars trucks four-wheelers snowmobiles boats you know hockey cards uh Magic card 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 like a Batman 66 or an Elvira and then good luck getting that because then they never seem to want to build them anymore and you 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 uh I had noted on the on the midweek episode so 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 um but people were already avoiding that because of social distancing and stuff and and you had other locations like uh bars with 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 in 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 mergin 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 mergin on food service right this the actual food itself the materials to make the food the the 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 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 yeah I mean we have we had plenty of cases in I mean your co-host on Silver Chronicle co-host over on Slam tilt Bruce Nightingale had a had a bar had a a bar like a pub style bar with arcade games silver Ball 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 and what I remember from hearing from Bruce over on the slam tail podcast when they were redoing that was they had a lot of this government uh 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 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 is it and then you get into a cost benefit analysis is it worth the effort and I 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 to bars and restaurants there was a couple of uh 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 silverball Saloon bought a $100 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 it was really tough to endure I think on on a business level for operators with those tight margins yes and I I remember on pinside 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 they can't do it um some of them didn't some of them that were pure bars they didn't have food there was no takeaway like they no one's 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 it's and it it survived but we have a pinball bar uh 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 I was quite familiar with a lot of them because we'd hear about them in public health uh so that he could find resources to try and stay afloat until he would be allowed to open because he had nothing to do pickup for like No One's Gonna Go did Pizza South by Northwest survive they did okay yeah because they had the the the pizza takeaway bit yes so they were they had already had a delivery model so but a lot of those food businesses still saw dramatic declines of course in the amount of Revenue they were bringing in uh when going just takeaway I actually still have 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 just kind of I'm just in the habit of it now out of thinking well they need business let's not go to Taco Bell let me go to a local restaurant and just do a 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 so that's stuck that's stuck yeah yeah so you're off the Taco Bell no I still do Taco Bell too but not as much not as much Nature's Dino yes well yeah you got to unclog sometimes now that was another thing that that kind of came up the 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 uh in terms of the social distancing if people are going to be willing postco quote unquote postco emergency maybe is a better way to describe it to no longer socially distance and you felt that uh that people would get over it quickly and you were right they did yeah it it it's um 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 it's really borne itself out that there would be better hand sanitation post code um I still see some places that have like the sanitary dispensers but like half the time they're empty so I feel like people just kind of quit filling them up but does this still happen in in in where you're from does it like so we still had like when you were like waiting inline 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 a movie theater and you're waiting for your popcorn are you still standing further back than you did preo not I am not at this point but early on I was still is a thing here like you still see people that are like on their phones waiting in a line and there's still like a little more space than you think there 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 that's 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 so very good you guys still have the stickers on the ground you still got those no no they're still everywhere here I don't 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 super funny arrows still all over the place like yes the the Flow side of the hallway this side of the hallway um on home collections that was another thing that we talked about on the mid week episode I asked you if you what you thought would happen with home collectors uh in terms of buying games after the lockdowns this was I was very very wrong on this that's why I want to talk about that one yeah super yeah great thank you this this 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 now you had some interesting like travel stuff though in Canada that that kind of impacted the ability to buy pens 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 um 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 um 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 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 mhm 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 you know that kind of thing you can't just kind of get in your car Drive 7 hours meet somebody in their home pick up a pin and bring it back because you had these interprovincial travel restrictions 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 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 dollar who's spending two who's spending like a $1,500 American on a raven Canadians Canadians who have a bunch of money and nothing to buy was weird and 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 people going 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 that 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 you know they weren't going on vacations anymore and and such and so they had this capital and they clearly weren't concerned about needing to hoard it and uh and that happened for all sorts of hobbies like you're into comic book collection and that that got expensive ridiculous now the the thing here is that is exactly what the Canadian and the US government wanted right they want people the government wanted they manipulated you no you got this money in in Canada we called it Serb or 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 the you deployed the cash that they gave you which is exactly what stimulated the economy and it was the case for all Hobbies try to buy a a a crappy 80s um you know 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 a 4 L Mustang and I'll work on it in my garage cuz I can't really go out anywhere now now it's 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 like the the k-shaped recovery that we ended up seeing so this is the thing right is that we're in this Hobby and my assumptions were a few things that 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 $115,000 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 on games on food and beverage right so like people have different economic uh Power if you will will so you mentioned k-shape recovery so through the pandemic it was very noticeable that there was this group of people and you and I were 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 and they and they had the 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 had all of a sudden had a bunch of cash but then there's the other part of of North American society who really significantly struggled you know students that had part-time jobs in bars or restaurants you know uh some laborers who you know need to be in front of people um you know certain industries really struggled and sadly I think as a society we kind of forgot them because we're like those 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 I mean like that was the concern that people had the other thing was all of a sudden there was a mass retirement of of the Baby Boomers ah yes right they're getting into Microsoft teams or 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 but 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 and and maybe even some gen xers that are maybe part-time teachers and 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 it sort of the k-shaped recovery was that some people went up some people went down during the exact same period yep and uh back on the like on the game stuff I yeah I wasn't all right I 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 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 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 you know 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 133% 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 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 yeah you could cars cost more than they were MSRP at yeah it so I bought uh it sort of in 2021 I bought a a a golf a VW Golf 3 months later I saw a used one on a lot $3,000 more Canadian more than what I paid for mine and it had $3,000 kilometers on is I don't know what's that yeah no I know how many miles I uh I bought my Godzilla in 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 and I could have opened it played it and sold it for the same same amount which is not how it works it's a depreciating asset you buy it and it goes down by 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 what about the tournament scene yes a good 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 and moving up the ladder while other places were just flat out shut down and legally like couldn't do it but we did actually try and talk uh do some predicting on penberg uh penberg was coming up in the summer and so I asked you if you thought penberg would happen in 2020 this is where I was really right by the way folks keeping SC very right you were like keep score you were like no Dennis it is not going to happen and I disagreed with you I was so wrong I said yes I said David penberg is going to happen it's far enough after when the shutdowns are going to be they're just not going to it's it was going to be a tight thing so I said you know what they're goingon to they're not going to test all the games it's not going to be as good as the other penberg they're not gonna make sure every game is perfect and ready to go but 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 penberg not happen in 2020 penberg died yeah the replay Foundation who were the the the team behind penberg sold like all of their machines yes it like replay Foundation existed continues to exist it 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 the that not I understood that they couldn't do the event like I understood a lot about the decisions except there was so much love for penberg in particular that I still to this day remain convinced that there was enough love for penberg 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 penberg is back for 2024 but we know it's not the real penberg it's a 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 you know games from the community and such and so it just I was really wrong this is what this is what I this is more what I had expected to happen here Dennis this is this is this Panic selling you know 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 right like that is what I figured would be the more common thing to happen but it of course this was like the only example of that and in fact do you remember there was like that Captain pirate man's uh online auction that happened like a year and a half or two years later yes oh my gosh the most ridiculous price ever so they they didn't sell they sold all these pin Bird 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 uh with the Rocky one you know what I mean like they only made like 50 of them or something like so they were expensive but then a few years later maybe a year or 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 he sold at a great time yeah if they 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 ah it'll be like they'll start sanctioning again like August of 2020 which is like three months later yeah but again I was really taking a very American Centric View and it was it is the international flipper pinball Association and I know a big concern that Josh Sharpe and the and the team had was not everyone was reopening at the same speed yeah the Europeans and and and to some extent so SOA Canadians are pretty funny right we're we're like Europeans uh 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 uh Europeans don't shower as much so there's a lot more of that uh 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 cancelled 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 basketball gets back M we'll see the mass GA Mass Gatherings like the pins 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 was yeah they they kept these aggressive controls to protect the players from getting exposed and then they just avoided 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 the the sporting teams could test to keep on television but they didn't develop those for the you know the school system yeah you know I mean supply chain issues there are always supply chain issues so yeah right so 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 than you thought but I was even more wrong of course there was already I already kind of hinted at this because I was telling you how I thought my favorite part of of the episode by the way I was like look I was already seing so much like uh social political blowback over the state because again working in public health we were I mean we we took a lot of criticism on a lot of stuff and so I was already seeing a lot of us push back 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 penberg was going to happen so I I qualified it by saying if p 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 penberg but there was no pinburgh pinball Expo happened as a virtual event I don't even remember this but it was a virtual pin uh pinball excuse me pinball Expo it was a virtual first time I saw David fix in the mustache in 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 penberg 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 yes which is and it was terrible craziness cuz 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 Derek who who does a lot of work up in uh with pintastic and stuff 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 cancelled and then it was like okay so then I scheduled in for the next year of 2021 and it didn't happen and then so the first one I got to was 2022 and it was in the fall yep instead of in the spring it's it's like oh man it sucked it and and as part and parcel of that we did talk about 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 you know 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 uh you know the rent the you know 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 a Act of God exception and so if the government 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 like an event I was planning that um for public health that I ended up having to make virtual in 2020 and I you know 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 you know I was able to do that uh so we had you know 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 um 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 and the shirts and the merch and all the stuff that they just weren't going to sell um and we were I guess both kind of wrong obviously replay effects is penberg effect with pin yeah I was uh 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 penberg was the big loss the replay F show was the big loss that was that was that sort of panic but there was in in context of that k-shape recovery we had talked about a moment ago as well like when we went with the first uh pentastic that I went to um 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 of cooks they didn't have enough uh 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 uh 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 and hobby industry uh uh uh they really struggled yes and so the last main thing we touched on back those years ago was whether or not pinball would survive covid and you were you thought the industry would survive I thought the industry survive 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 uh we did see the contraction on the location side so I'm gonna say I was half right but I mean it it just it didn't really play out the way I thought it would yeah I mean that speaks down to the sort of the general uh you know covid uh experience which I mean everybody's going to be like oh God here we go they're talking about Co again can we just move on from that that's been the whole episode right right but it's like you know General pinl 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 uh especially now you know nowadays where I feel we so now we have these like new MSRP prices that have been increased because of all that inflation that we saw in that 2-year time frame in particular but there has sort of been a 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 a this push back 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 but in 2022 my pin Bargo ended so my my my spouse and I we have very much a a combined sort of management of our um incomes right like everything is combined we're we're it's not like we're paying 5050 of stuff like things are it's combined uh 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 pin Bargo which 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 of yes Co yeah you noted it on the episode right so I'm like all right I can spend my you know my my 11,000 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 uh Simpsons pinball party from a collector um 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 okay I'm done shooting the garage over and over again uh 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 you know eventually just do it and I bought my James Bond uh 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 I 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 for a pen machine and now what are Pros 7,000 us it's like it's just different uh it's really and I think there's a lot of us in the in the that you know we're not crazy Spenders you know we save our money we work towards those things you know we try not to to overextend ourselves and we are significantly defeated you know what I mean like it's really disappointing now to say oh wow you know cuz my expectation in 2020 2019 was oh I'd love to have six pins cuz if I had six pins in my basement or in my house I could have like local tournaments with buddies and friends and if sanctioned events and now I I still have Tron and and I've got my James Bond and and I I don't see myself being able to afford another pin especially new in box for a couple years you know what I mean and that's not what Stern and and American pinball and jjp want to hear right they want somebody buying a pin every 12 days 18 months I I 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 it's not corrected yet which is disappointing makes it's okay just give me a second Dennis I've given you a lot of seconds that's so well any final thoughts on this sort of historical look back on our on our yeah hobby going through the mic I mean the biggest takeaway here is just how wrong you were and 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 provve to be wrong a lot anyway well I I did hear that a lot what what do you think what's the takeaway here yeah what a crazy time I think is the takeway it was it was just it was unprecedented and we to be fair I I like that we did the prediction so early in the pandemic resp 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 um yeah it was just it's a very different it's weird to me now because we still remember a lot of us who are 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 price 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 less people buying now because a lot of people are like I no I'm going on vacations pinball was for I don't know if you ever looked on Twitch during the pandemic But like everyone in their dog got into scaming during the pandemic they're not there anymore those people are gone yeah yeah they are absolutely here's 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 silverball 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 ERS and and the Steve Riches 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 yourself man I can't believe there's all these people in 18 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 a fun thing that even if you couldn't have people over you had your family there and stuff and it it was something you could do or you could invite your close friends over and you didn't have to be out and it it solved it was 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 it's interesting and 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 that's 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 pay wallet sorry guys that's R it's the rules so you can join for as low as $10 a month at patreon.com theep 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 will 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 I think it's time most a wonderful time of the year oh you're going to love this because I'm I'm giving it all to you it's time for I got about all I'll try and do the Zach thing I'll try and be nice and do it you can you can do your own version if you need to it's time for Canadian pinball Market Trend the can't attack [Music] no I like your style dude yeah hey 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 you didn't do a haming up accent I'm ready e 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 but also trending up is James Bond premium specifically the premium cuz 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 cuz it's got a lot of video clips in there the clips got to sink you got to be able to double cancel them also you the code kind of sucked when it first started so we're almost to 1.0 the pro is pretty good tournament darling as everybody remembers but the premium is where it's at this is where it's at 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 uh 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 Bal Williams they seem to have uh fallen off a bit now cgc has got the good build quality so exactly exactly and you know what I I love monsters bash I I I really do I want to play that so much is that which is that your favorite remake no uh attack for Mars is my favorite H I don't like the scoop you fall in the Scoop from each Direction it slows everything down I mean that's 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 why is it trending up then cuz 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 florenville Bristol New Brunswick those are the ones that I usually take to people at pantastic by the way yes I think you sent me a bag once I did weren't they amazing the ketchup they were they were very good it's too bad they're destroyed now yes they're oh but they're uh 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 here because we have had a really really really strange season when it comes to uh winter we didn't have a whole lot of snow it's been overly 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 this syrup sooner now are you a uh are you a Canadian like a Quebec Eastern Canada kind of maple syrup person or are you one of those stupid Wisconsin not Wisconsin what's the one uh uh Vermont the Vermont people I actually while I do if I buy syrup I do generally buy maple syrup I've never looked to see where it came from do you want to know a secret I actually much prefer the fake stuff like like fake Maple or just like the gener like Mrs butter work yeah like the Mrs butter I mean that's what I grew up on the high fructose corn syrup yeah that it's just basically liquid sugar yeah no I actually I like Maple quite a bit yeah yeah I now I I buy the maple syrup and I force myself to have it but every time I have like a Mrs Butterworth Western Mill or whatever they're called um I have that I'm like man this stuff is good 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 cuz 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 but let's get back to pinball Houdini pinball the m 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 on mass to get in line to get a Barry oser's last partially last design pin cuz 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 many's flight was cancelled 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 inflight entertainment in a place like Indiana is counting the tumble weeds 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 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 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 I don't know it's only half an episode though yeah that's true well um where can people reach out to you plug your stuff it's yeah people can reach out to me at silverball Chronicles gmail.com that's where they can get a hold of all of the stuff for myself both Ron and I uh read every comment positive or negative and we respond generally to every single one you can also subscribe to us on patreon at to the pinball show at gmail.com and as a reminder we can be supported at patreon.com theep pinball show and I do need to note that the sponsor of the pinball show is flipping out pinball fing out from topper sh Tre I've got it figured out flipping out figured out when I think a I think flipping out slipping out fig that out when I by bye Bu from flipping out 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 flipping out Vault he's probably got games I don't know you can email Zach at flipthe letterin out pinball.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 are we GNA 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 ah now on the pinball network from last week in terms of podcasting we had triple Jin pinball podcast episode 49 with your best friend Joe engleberth along with Tom graph 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 tiis and Martin Robins titled cultural so there you go in terms of that when is the next silver ball Chronicles coming out see preparation AG 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 B 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 nans yeah well you 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 Sharpe 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 tpf 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 okay well Ron was tpf but I never actually encountered him I never I think it's because he avoids you that 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 uh that doesn't make any sense and it's like time cop remember time cop yeah that was when they were meeting yourself yeah Rob vanam 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 my are up yes I've brought back the oldie but
The original TPS Midweek Episode 4 was recorded on April 2, 2020, during early pandemic lockdowns and featured economic predictions about pinball's future
high confidence · David Dennis confirming episode recording date and discussing its predictions in retrospect
medium · Host: 'I think that's up to the SEC' when asked about Deep Root's release timeline; David Dennis: 'deep root was still a thing and in no way a scam'
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supply_chain_signal: U.S. pinball manufacturing shutdown period was brief; full production restoration occurred within approximately 2 months of initial April 2020 shutdown
high · David Dennis: 'the hardcore shutdown stuff... did not last very long in the United States' and 'within two months I think they were all building again'
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sentiment_shift: Retrospective shows significant gap between April 2020 economic predictions and actual outcomes; speakers acknowledge uncertainty during crisis period and humor about prediction failures
high · David Dennis: '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'
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community_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles positioning itself as avoiding industry drama and interpersonal politics, maintaining neutral/historical focus distinct from news-focused or commentary-heavy pinball podcasts
high · David Dennis: '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'