Get out of my dreams, get into my car. Set up, set up, set up, set up, set up, set up, set up. Welcome everybody to the only pinball podcast that can get the audio levels right when doing interviews. And you know what the key is? Stop doing interviews and then the audio level is always perfect. Here's what we're going to talk about on this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast. I want to make a prediction. I want to make a prediction about a behavior that I think we're going to see more of in 2023. As pinball prices go through the roof, as people are looking at their collections and thinking everything is worth 40% more money, here's what I think we're going to see a lot more of in 2023. I think we're going to see people trading games more than we've ever seen. And it makes total sense, right, that I'm going to trade you this game that is now worth this much money for that game which is now worth that much money because we're seeing it like there's a real slowdown in the ability to sell these games for so much money but people feel like they're getting a better deal now when they make a swap for another game you know we saw it like panzer freak traded a premium of ghostbusters for a brand new i think new in box maybe it wasn't new in box but a brand new Toy Story Collector's Edition. Just think about that for a minute. Toy Story Collector's Edition just sold for $15,000 and he traded a Ghostbusters Premium, not even an LE. Remember when Ghostbusters Premiums used to be like $7,000 and you could get one easily all day long? And he just traded it for a game that's worth more than twice as much as that Premium cost brand new. Now look, I also think we're going to see another behavior that we haven't seen in a really long time or we really haven't witnessed it since I've been covering this hobby. Let me use a cargument for a minute, which is why you heard that opening track. When you have an expensive car or just a car in general, which is an expensive item, and you want to get a new car, what do a lot of people do? They trade in their old car for a new one. Now, as we see these pinball prices going through the roof and the new in box prices being astronomically high for most people out there and we're seeing a lot of people are balking at these prices i think we're going to see more dealers and distros offering people a chance to trade in their old games as credit towards a new game because for so many years these dealers and distros it's been so easy for them to sell new in box games these games came in and they went immediately out the door. We're going to see a huge slowdown in that. The other thing is this. Do you think Stern Pinball is giving these distributors more of a cut now that these prices are so high? I hear they're not. And here's the scary part for distributors. They are now absorbing all of the risk, right? If you're now on the hook to buy stuff that's like 40% more money than it was just two years ago, you are now absorbing the risk of buying that expensive inventory. And Stern Pinball is the only one who's really making a profit off of these higher prices. The distributors are probably still only putting like $1,500 in their pocket for every LE sold. And yet now they're taking a much bigger gamble ordering games that might sit for a very long time. And so what I think we're gonna see, I think we're gonna see more dealers and distros going out to their customer base and offering to do trade-ins. I think they're gonna offer people a chance to trade in their old games, and it makes sense. So think about like a car dealership. When you pull up with your used car, they go over it, they tell you how much they think it's worth, and they give you a fair market value for the car. Now, of course, a dealership is never gonna give you as much money as a private sale. But why do people trade their cars in? Because it's more convenient. You don't have to deal with all the tire kickers. You don't have to deal with like people coming by and not being serious. And there's also just guaranteed money on the table. And I think we're gonna see more of that. And I also think if you're a distributor out there, you're gonna realize that maybe if you wanna make $1,500 a game or $2,000 a game, you're going to have a lot more opportunities making that kind of profit if you start selling used games and we're seeing it more and more and more and we're also going to see this and everybody knows this and it's like a dirty little secret we're going to see more and more distributors holding back some of these le's and trying to scalp them for even higher than the msrp these days. But I think we're going to see more trade offers on the table in 2023 than we ever have before. I also think if you read the vibe of the community right now, it's getting really, really soft on these new in box prices. And I think 2023 is going to be the moment in which these manufacturers realize they made a colossal mistake. All right. So that is my prediction. I think you're going to see a lot more trade-ins and I think you're going to see a lot more game swapping between the community. And it makes total sense. Everyone's sitting on all this expensive inventory, but they're not going to find buyers for it, right? Think about right now, if you have a Medieval Madness Royal Edition, how are you not taking like $18,000 on the table right now, knowing that Chicago Gaming Company has already said they're going to do another run of Medieval madness. And I keep telling all my pinball friends throughout COVID, you've got to be crazy. If you can get doubled for what you paid for a pin, sell it. Because in a few years, you're going to be able to get it back for what you originally paid for it. If people don't think this market's going to go soft, I can't wait to see what happens in 2023. All right, let's talk about what's going on with some of these companies. We're still seeing like James Bond pros are supposedly trickling out. I don't know anyone who's unboxed one yet. I don't know any on location yet. I'm waiting for Jack Barr to get their game, but it is a very slow release of this game. Remember, we saw James Bond in early September, and here we are. Maybe it was late September, and here we are, and it almost the end of November and still no James Bonds out there Now the L are supposed to go on the line in December and we still don know what the Keith Elwin game is We still don know what it is It is absolutely bonkers that Stern Pinball is screwing with the collectors like this I think, and mark my words, this is just Kaneda saying this, I think the Keith Elwin pin is going to be the biggest catastrophe for Stern Pinball. I think they are absolutely, with one greedy move, going to destroy the collector community's confidence in Stern Pinball. They are going to destroy the FOMO and the hype that is necessary to keep the collectors happy during each new game release. And I think this move is absolutely going to backfire. The only way this move will not backfire is if they price this game low. They have to price it low. If they come out with this game and greedily price it at like $20,000 to $30,000, I think you're going to see so many pissed off people who just wrote checks for $14,500 to get the James Bond LE. And now you're telling me this game is coming out and it's going to be the more sought after collectible version within the James Bond theme. And I think it's going to piss everybody off. I also think it's highly unprofessional that Stern is doing it this way. If you're going to do this, Stern, and you're going to release these two versions of James bond, then show both of them at the same time. You need to give your collectors who are about to spend this much money with your company, you need to give them enough information so they can make the right decision. I think they're doing it strategically by holding it back. And I think they want to sell all thousand LEs before they show the Elwyn version. And I think they're targeting some super rich guy. But let me tell you right now, I'm talking to the super rich men, the Bill Brandises, the Neil McCraes, they're done with this. Like they're fed up with this model. Let me tell you what makes wealthy men wealthy. They are smart. They don't like to throw money at bad investments. And we are seeing more and more of these high-end collectors realizing they are absolutely being played for fools. And for the rest of us, like I'm not a super wealthy collector. It's so easy for the rest of us to pass and just watch these fools throw money at these games that are only costing Stern like $5,000 to make. Are people going to forget that? How much money do you really think the bomb is on a single level Keith Elwin James Bond pin that doesn't even have like a full LCD of coding in the machine? How much do you think the bomb was on that game? And how much do you think they're going to charge for it? It is all going to be money in Stern's pocket. It's all going to be this cash grab for distributors. And trust me, it's going to backfire. All right, let's move on to some good news. After an entire year's wait, we are finally seeing Cactus Canyon Ellie's get out the door over at Chicago Gaming Company. Now, this is good news. It was another weird photograph, though. You know me, I always make fun of these photographs that are supposed to give us confidence that all of this progress is happening at these companies. Did John Youssi the photograph? Why can't we get more of an action shot of all of these games on the line and the people over there? I would just love to see behind the curtain so it actually feels like they're making like 20, 30 a week. I don't know how many a week they are making, but I do know they sold out of all 1,250 of them. And so look, if you're in on one, this is good news. You've waited a year. This is now turning out to be the best bang for the buck in pinball because think about it. You're getting this game and it's got more toys in it. I mean this, this game has more toys in it than James Bond and Toy Story combined. It's got great shots. It's super fun. It's a fan layout Bally Williams game. You're going to get this upgraded Lime and Sheets code, and you might even get working saloon doors that they give you as an upgrade to each machine that they sell. You also get what I would argue is one of the most impressive toppers in pinball history free of charge with your LE. That's right, for $9,700, you get a topper that is way more intricate and way more interesting than the Mandalorian topper. So look, if Stern made the topper, they would charge you $2,000, okay? So that means that you are now getting this game for $7,750 if you add the value of the topper. Now, if Stern made this machine, how much do you think it would cost? Think about it. If Stern put this much into a machine, how much would it cost? You know, I see people being apologists again for Stern Pinball. James Bond is $13,000 and Stern is now using a single node board to fire all of the pop bumpers. So they're no longer individually firing pop bumpers, which is so much cheaper for them to do. They do it in their cheap, like Stern the pin, you know, that home version of pinball. And you're telling me that they're not cutting more corners. They're not yanking more out of these games and then charging you more money. And it's really disgusting to see. They took out the foil decals. They're taking out individually fired pop bumpers. How much cheaper can they make these games and then charge us more money? And I think everybody's seeing this and being like, I'm done. I'm fed up with this. Why would I give them money when they're clearly removing stuff from the games? So look, Cactus Canyon LE is making its way to customers. The game is gorgeous. Now, this means we're going to start to think about what's next from CGC. The next game from them is going to be Pulp Fiction, which is a collaboration with Thraw Thrills. It is a single level game, and that should be coming out sometime in 2023. So CGC finally making progress. Haggis Pinball. Let's talk about them for a minute. Damien said that he would finish all of the Fathom Mermaid editions by the end of the year. He's not going to do that. There are 250 Mermaid editions he was supposed to have made by the end of the year. I don't even think they're making more than five a week. And if you do the math, and let's say they're making five a week, that means it would take them an entire year to make all 250. The Duck guy, the Duck Pinball, the Duck Dynasty, whoever that guy was down from South America, he's left Haggis Pinball. We have not seen another production update video. We've seen some games going out. Don't get me wrong. These games are going out, but they are nowhere near the timeline Damien has been telling people. And the reason why Haggis still upsets me is they are still telling people it will be eight weeks If you pay in full today you will get your game in eight weeks Damien continues to tell people that You know how long it taking people to get their games More like six months. So I just want to say for the record, whether you vote for me in the Twippies or not, I still think this business practice is disingenuous, and I think it speaks to the character of the people over at that company. Don't lie. Just tell people it'll be six months. Tell them it'll be a year, right? Jerry over at Multimorphic, he's telling people if you order a P3, it's going to be 12 months before you get it. At least he's being honest. If Jerry told people if you pay in full for your Multimorphic, you'll have it in eight weeks and then it takes six months, then yes, you are knowingly misleading your buyer base. And I don't like this behavior. And I don't hear any other podcast talking about it. Like nobody else is talking about the fact that Haggis Pinball, once again, is misleading its customers. Because as long as a few games trickle out, everyone has just like revisionist history and just gives this company a pass. They're not going to get a pass with Kaneda. I think the games are beautiful. But I think the management team over there has been misleading people since day one. And I don't see a long-term future for this company if they continue to do business practice like this, because this behavior indicates they have real cash flow problems. And the big problem for Damien now is he priced these games before COVID. And now his material costs must be through the roof. And he can't charge more for these games. Like he's going to look at a game like Fathom, which is going to have a lot more in it detail wise than the Keith Elwin pin. And he's charging, what, $10,000 for only 250 of them. And he's going to watch Stern Pinball charge like $25,000 to $30,000 for a game with twice as many units in the market. Think about it. But you know what? He couldn't really charge more because he's not efficient with the manufacturing. If he was able to make like $10,000 a week, he probably could to charge 15k and got it, but he can't. And they still, to this day, will not tell people how many they've made. Let me tell you something. If you have to hide how many games you can make a week, that's not a good sign. They always try to pretend like it's a trade secret, like this is an industry proprietary secret. We can't let people know how many games we make a week. That only is a stance you take when you're successful. Like Stern won't tell us how many games they really make a week. They don't want us to do the math because they don't want to know the sheer volume of games that are out there. Because if you knew Stern was making this many games a year, it might make you hesitant to think you have something that's actually rare and collectible. But when you're a boutique company, if you hide your production, that's really a bad indicator because we know when a boutique company can figure it out, they don't hide how many they can make a week. And we have to look no further than Spooky Pinball, who's always been very transparent about how many games a week they can make. And that is why Spooky had goodwill with the buyer base because you know exactly where you stand when you buy a game from Spooky. When you buy a game from Spooky, they tell you what number you are. So you can do the math. And they have pretty much hit to the exact bullseye their target dates on their production. In fact, they've usually like come in a little early and have rewarded customers by getting them their games even before they thought they would get the games. But maybe you thought Canadian was going soft that I'm going to be light on spooky pinball on this podcast. I'm not because did John Youssi this TNA for $10,000? The TNA game has two issues with it that they are shipping to customers. is it's got that weird like plate by the shooter rod where it's like not aligned properly. There's like a one inch gap, right? You could see it between like the lockdown bar and where the shooter rod housing sort of plate is. Spooky, come on, you've already made TNA. How is it hard to just make this game again without these boneheaded mistakes? And the other mistake people have pointed out, which is really weird because Spooky's background was a printing company. The other mistake is the quality of the TNA back glass is like kind of washed out now. And one of the owners who has the new game, he put it next to his old Translight and the old one looks 10 times better. And he's like, why does the new game, which costs a lot more money, look a lot worse when I'm looking at the Translight? And it's how it's printed. It's not the lighting. It's how it's printed. So spooky pinball, let me give you some advice. There's a reason why you're still not sold out of your TNAs. You need to up the quality. You need to stop shipping games to customers in which the first time they look down at their game, they see a lazy, boneheaded detail mistake like the gap by the shooter rod or the translate printing. I shouldn't look down at Halloween and see hedge multibar right away. You should have caught that at the factory. And I'm really encouraging Spooky Pinball now that they are making millions of dollars, Now that they are ordering Corvettes, and I've been saying it on my Facebook Live, they need to stop using glue guns. Stop making games with glue guns. It's too cheap. We're paying too much money for you to glue gun stuff down. They need to put the better LCD screens into the games. Like, for this much money, a customer should not have to buy a $30 LCD screen on eBay to make the contrast on their game look much better. You know people want the better LCD. They are out there. They wouldn't cost you that much more money. You are now charging $2,500 more for this TNA over the old one. And you can't put a $50 LCD in it that's better. This is my issue with all of pinball these days, people. Now that the prices are this high, we are going to be looking at these games like a hawk. And you better put everything in it and it better arrive with quality. You better not have these boneheaded mistakes. Come on, Spooky. You're better than this. All right, so we talked about Spooky. We talked about CGC. We talked about Stern Pinball. No real news over at Jersey Jack Pinball other than if you're a Guns N' Roses fan, go get your replacement play field. They are now available. They will help you out there. You know my feelings on Toy Story. It going to be like catching a falling knife We going to see this price go down and down and down If the next game is Godfather who knows Like I heard from someone who worked on Godfather that they think it going to be the surprise hit of 2023 And they also said it's going to be a Cinderella story for Jersey Jack Pinball in the wake of Toy Story 4. Eric Minier, I believe in. I have faith in Eric Minier. I love Eric Minier's designs. I think he approaches games uniquely. And I think he's one of the best designers in pinball. And if you don't like that, go look at his game sales. And I don't know why anyone who loves pinball wouldn't really be excited about Eric. Like, look at what he did with Pirates. Look at what he did with Guns and Roses. Why would you not be excited that pinball has a young designer like him who's willing to really push the envelope and think about theme integration in a really unique way? I really look forward to everything he does, and I think he is the shining star over at Jersey Jack Pinball. All right, what else is going on in the pinball world? All right, let's end this show talking about the Twippies real quick. Because you know me, for five years in a row, I've won favorite pinball podcast over at the Twippies. And I've always promoted the show. I've always been excited about the Twippies. I've always promoted it as the go-to annual awards for pinball. And I want to be honest with each and every one of you. I'm going to be totally candid. I still want to win the sixth Twippie. I hope each and every one of you votes for me as favorite pinball podcaster and possibly favorite pinball streamer. Last year, we were runner up favorite pinball streamer, which is crazy because I never streamed myself playing a single game of pinball. But I want to be completely candid right now. I'm not excited about the show at all anymore. Last year's show was a total debacle. I was in the room. It was embarrassing. They didn't put much effort into it. They got the awards wrong. Like they literally got up there and didn't know what order the awards were in. The audio was horrible in the room. And for those watching back home, it was equally as bad. And now we're being told that this year, they are not going to live stream the awards, that you can't watch it over the internet live and find out who wins each category. Let me ask you guys a question. Can you name a single other award show that is not broadcasted live? The whole point of an award show is that you want to see in real time who wins and who loses. You want to see people's acceptance speeches. You want to see what they're wearing. You want to see what they say. How can you pre-record that? That's going to ruin all the fun. There is not a single award show that is pre-recorded. And so here we are in 2022 being told by the new Twippy committee that this is how they're going to do it. They're going to make sure that the event at Texas goes off without a hitch and record it and put it up on YouTube probably days later so everybody else can watch it after they already know who won and who lost. Why would you do it that way? For five years, what I loved about the Twippies, whether it was over the internet or was live in Texas, is that I would go down to Texas when it was a live show. And I knew all of my friends and family who voted for me all over the world were able to watch live on the edge of their seat and see if I won or not. And I loved knowing that, that Brenda was there with our friends in New York City and with Bubba and everyone was celebrating and cheering as they saw the show as it was happening. So you're going to remove that element. 95% of people who vote in the Twippies will not be in Texas in that room. You need to make this show tailored for the 95% of people who are engaged with the show. So this news is absolutely inane. It is asinine. It is not how you do the show. It has me not excited for the show. This is not how you do it. And the reason why I know it's not how you do it, and I'm just going to end with this simple fact. I don't buy the excuse it can't be done because it was done when Zach and Greg did the Twippies. Remember, when they did it live in Texas, it was the best show ever. They figured out a way to get the volumes right in the room. Everybody watching back home could see it and hear it clearly and perfectly. so why were they able to do it perfectly and now you've done this show three times without them and arguably they've been getting worse each year and so either you figure out a way to go back and get Zach and Greg on board and mark my words people are just going to stop caring about the twippies people are not going to travel to TPF for the twippies and that's my other point I don't feel like going to Texas this year. I always used to want to go there for the Twippies, but now I don't even care. I don't even want to go. Why am I going to spend money to be in a room in which everybody else I know is not going to be able to see the show? I might as well just make a canned like acceptance video and a defeat video and give it to them and say, hey, if I win, can you edit this into your rebroadcasting of the Twippies? Because I don't really feel like going there. if everybody who supports Canada's Pinball Podcast all around the world can't watch the show live. It's a boneheaded move. And trust me, they're going to alter it. There's no way they're going to keep this thing the way it is right now. And I think it's absolutely boneheaded. And think about it like this. Now they've got Canada, the world's number one supporter of the Twippies, the guy who hyped it every single year, telling all of my listeners and everybody, I still want to win it because I think it sends a message to everybody out there that this is still the best pinball podcast. It's the most entertaining. It's the most honest. It's the most candid. But the show itself, I almost feel like boycotting because it's turning into an absolute joke. They need to get Greg and Zach back, and it's just that simple. Everybody, go watch the World Cup. I love you guys. Happy Sunday. More shows coming this week. There is always news in pinball, as you can tell. And for you new club members, welcome to the club. I'm so happy you joined. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Kaneda will be back with more episodes of the world's favorite trippy voted pinball podcast that he might now be boycotting. Oh, Kaneda, you're never happy. I actually am really happy. If you come to New York City, let me buy you some beer, ramen, and omokase. Later. Oh, yeah.