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This Month's Pinball Market March 2025
30 Plays1 month ago
We're answering the question if the market can be manipulated, we're going over last month's Stern numbers and Gottlieb DMD
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Transcript
Can you manipulate pinball market numbers?
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Speaker
Is it possible to manipulate the pinball market numbers?
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Speaker
Last month's Stern, Spike 2 numbers, and Gottlieb DMDs, it is this month's pinball market.
Sponsor acknowledgement
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Speaker
Alrighty, starting out, I want to thank our sponsor, Flippin' Out Pinball, Zach and Nicole Menny.
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Speaker
Thank you so much for supporting our content, making this possible.
00:00:39
Speaker
And if you're looking for new games and used games, they have it all.
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Speaker
Just hit up Zach.
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He'll tell you what he's got.
00:00:46
Speaker
Or you can go to their Facebook page.
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Speaker
They have a current list there.
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And everything to your heart's content should be there.
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And he's taking trade-ins.
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So talk to him about those.
Twippy awards recognition
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Silver Ball Swag.
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I'm not wearing a Loser Kid shirt, but I am wearing their Pinball Nintendo shirt.
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If you want to get our new retro Loser Kid, the 8-Bit is available now.
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Speaker
Also, I want to say congratulations to the Twippy winners.
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You all did an amazing job.
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Also, those that put on the show.
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It is very hard to put on those award shows.
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There's a lot of time and effort that goes into it.
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And so I totally understand what it means to do something like that when I feel like I did half the job they did this year.
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Speaker
Congratulations, you guys.
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Speaker
All right.
Stern market discrepancies
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Speaker
The question I posed at the very beginning, is it possible to manipulate the pinball market and the prices where they're at?
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Speaker
So as I was going through the Stern Spike 2 numbers this last month, because I wanted to see where the current market is heading.
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And Stern seems to be selling the most on the used market.
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I figured they're the best ones to track.
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So I figured let's go there with the numbers.
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But something started not adding up.
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I'm looking at...
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you know, from one month, 54 games sold the next month, 53 games sold.
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And I knew there wasn't that many games selling in one month.
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So I'm like, well, why did we lose?
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Why did we go back a number?
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And so I called 10 fiddly from pinball prices.com.
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And the way his site works is he records only sold games anywhere from auctions up to what pinsides doing.
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And he's doing a great job
Discussion with Ted from pinballprices.com
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with that.
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And I said, Ted, my brain hurts.
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He says, Josh,
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probably need to call a doctor for that i said i appreciate that but let me tell you what i'm starting to find i'm going back through the pinball market numbers on pin side and they're not adding up i'm going through archive games uh ones that i've actually sold and the numbers are fluctuating really weird like one month no game sold at all yet the value of that game dropped five hundred dollars
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What's going on here?
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So he's like, give me a day.
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Let me figure it out.
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He texts me the next day.
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He says, first off, it doesn't matter if it's sold or not.
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The price is included in their data.
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So that means if you list a game and it doesn't sell, it
Potential market manipulation strategies
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doesn't matter.
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They're including it in their data.
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On newer models, they sell frequently enough that the sales average update monthly.
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So it uses a rolling 12 months of usage.
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So, you know, November 2024 to October 2023.
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And then every month it does that, drops last month off, adds the new month.
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So if there was no games sold, that's why it's showing less games from 54 to 53.
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I said, Ted, thank you for figuring that out.
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But then I posed this question.
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Can you manipulate the pinball market by just tossing whatever ads you want on there?
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Say you want your Ninja Turtles to look really good for the secondary market.
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So you put it on there for $90,000.
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It would take that into account regardless if you sold it or not.
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And Ted said, you'd have to create multiple fake accounts to really crash Pinside and the system that they have.
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But he could see where I was coming from with my concern.
Gottlieb DMD market trends
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So I wanted to point that out for transparency because it kind of is interesting that you could, based off these numbers, kind of mess with what's going on on their data.
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I don't think that's what's happening, especially after going through all the archived ads and whatnot.
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There's just too many ads that kind of
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flush out the not sold posted for a high number.
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All righty, what you're here for.
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The numbers that make you wonder what's going on with this market.
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All right, first we're going to start off with Gottlieb's.
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They only had 19 DMD games before they closed their doors from 1992 to 96.
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Their games are not revered as the best games on the market.
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This isn't your Valley Williams or whatnot.
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But I know a lot of you out there are looking for games that are more modern.
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So DMD is a good place to start.
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We're not LCD like behind me, but we're still newer code sets, you know, with those 90s rules and stuff like that.
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All right, let's talk about the first game that is trending down.
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First game is teed off.
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It is currently sitting at 3,000 on the secondary market.
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It is down 14% from last year, but we're still up from COVID 43%.
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It was originally 2,100 back then.
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We're at three grand right now.
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Second one trending down is wiped out.
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Right now, sitting at 3,100, down 11% from last year from 3,500.
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And, but it's still up 55% from what was pre COVID.
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So 2020, which was at 2000.
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All right.
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And the last game that's downtrending right now, if you're looking for modern DMD, you might consider this one.
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This is one of the most recent DMDs from Gottlieb before they closed the doors.
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It was Mario Andretti right now, 1700s what's sitting on the, at the current average on the used market.
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It's down 32% from last year.
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It was at 2,500.
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In the last five years, it's down 6% from 1800.
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This is the only game on this list that has actually lost value since COVID.
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So I guess if you're taking a bet, don't bet on Mario Andretti.
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All right, let's talk about
Stern market analysis and trends
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what's going up.
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Barbwire.
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A lot of people love this Pamela Anderson theme.
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is up 7% in the last year, going from $2,800 to $3,000.
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It is still up 36% from 2020, which was at $2,200.
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The second one that is up, this one kind of shocked me.
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I actually really enjoy this game.
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Strikes and Spares.
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It's kind of a goofy game.
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It's not really pinball, but it is because it's bowling themed, but you're mostly shooting lanes.
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It is basically a bowling game in a pinball machine.
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So I don't know if I really should include this in this list, but I'm going to tell you anyway, Strikes and Spares is on the up and up.
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It is at $2,700 this year, which is up 8% from last year at $2,500.
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And it's up a whopping 108% when it was at $1,300 pre-COVID.
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All right.
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The third and final game that has the biggest jump in the last year, Freddy, A Nightmare on Elm Street, jumping 14% over the last year, going from $3,500 to $4,000, and overall 60% from COVID prices of $2,500 there in 2020.
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Those are your godly numbers.
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Like I said, if you're looking for those games or you're starting, you want to get into the hobby, these are games that you can buy that are going to help retain value or
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not fluctuate terribly by a couple hundred bucks.
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And it's showing that over the last five years,
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let's move on to numbers you guys really want to know.
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So what has Stern been doing over the last month, month and a half?
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The reason I did Stern numbers is because they sell the most within a month or two on the used market.
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So it gives us a good idea of where the market is trending from month to month.
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One crazy thing I want to point out about these numbers for Stern and Spike 2s over this last month and a half is over 150 games sold.
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That's just the used market.
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That's not including new in box.
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So there are a lot of these games moving right now.
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Like I said on previous episodes, I can't track these day to day.
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We're not selling enough games day to day or even week to week.
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A month is a pretty good idea when it comes to Sterns.
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So let's dive into these numbers.
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Down right now.
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is Bond Pro.
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Bond Pro sold two last month.
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It dropped just a whopping 2% from six grand to 5,900.
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So you're not doing terrible right there.
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A lot of these are just small percentages.
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Led Zeppelin Pro is our second worst drop from last year, or from last month, not last year.
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You need to get off those Gottlieb numbers.
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But Led Zeppelin Pro dropped 4%.
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with going from 5,400 to 5,200, only selling one last month.
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And then the one that's taken the biggest hit, and I do say biggest hit, dropping a whopping 9% this last month, because it only sold one, Elvira House of Horrors Signature Edition, going from 20 grand to 18.3.
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So if you're sitting on an Elvira Signature, still stay sitting on it, enjoy that game.
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All right, on the up and up,
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got uh guardians of the galaxy pro this game sold one last month uh and we went up two percent so from 6100 to 6200 uh the next one is deadpool premium which went up one percent as well but four of these sold last month went from eight grand to 8100 on the average but one did sell for 9400 that is the thing
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Some of these, it depends on location.
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It depends on the quality of the game.
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You know, I was looking at Shadow the other day and just to kind of get an idea of what mine is worth.
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Saw one sell for $3,700, but it was a project game.
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And I saw one sell in pretty good condition for $6.
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So really, these are ballparks of where the averages are.
00:09:49
Speaker
Okay, finally, the one that you want to, actually, I've got two that I want to talk about.
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Two more that are on the up and up.
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The first one is Godzilla LE.
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We are up.
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We're not actually up a percentage.
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The reason I did put this one in because we're at 14.4, it is higher than it actually was when it started first selling as an LE out of the gate, right?
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And this is the original.
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This isn't the black and white.
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But...
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One sold for $13,250 and one sold for $16,000.
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So even though it didn't mess with the average, it still shows that these games are retaining value.
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And even if you're selling on the low end, you're still have made money if you bought this originally out of the box.
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All right.
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And the final one, Jurassic Park LE.
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It is up.
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5% this last month.
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They sold two with one selling at 12 grand at the highest.
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Speaker
We went from 10, 9 to 11, 4.
New Stern games sales patterns
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Speaker
So these are some really great numbers.
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Speaker
The other ones I want to point out that aren't really fluctuating terribly, but we're seeing a ton of them sell right now.
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Speaker
If you have a Foo Fighters premium, seven sold in the last month.
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Speaker
That's quite the number considering a lot of these games are only moving maybe one, two, three units at most.
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Speaker
Another one, Jurassic Park Premium moved six units last month.
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And then the newer the game, it seems to sell a bit more.
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Speaker
Like if you go all the way back to Jaws, we're still selling five to six.
00:11:20
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The LEs obviously aren't moving as much, 5 to 6 on John Wick, 7 and 3 on X-Men Pro, and sorry, 10 and 7 on Premium and Pro on X-Men, and Metallica Premium and LE 10 and 6.
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So the newer the game, the easier it's going to be to find.
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Speaker
And these are used numbers.
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These aren't new in box selling from a dealer.
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So someone's getting them, holding on to it for a month or two, and then turning on selling it.
Closing remarks and listener engagement
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Speaker
I appreciate you sticking around.
00:11:49
Speaker
If you want to get ahold of us, we're a loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
00:11:52
Speaker
You can hit some up on the, all the socials at loser kid pinball hit, like subscribe, send us a review five stars really helps us out so people can find us.
00:12:01
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in.