Pete said

I couldn't find the message where you justified the $340 starting price.

Pete, I can't justify the $340 starting price. I don’t understand why any starting price has to be justified. There is no requirement that someone bid or buy at that price. Where do they justify the price of gasoline at over $2.00 a gallon?

About the closed casinos, are you going to stick with your original claim or keep changing and waffling?

I stick with my original claim. I would make a lousy politician as I am not good at waffling.

So you wrote that because they didn't have deliberate short runs or chaser strikes, they no longer have strike machines. You blame the availability of strikes, for the loss of machines. You blame the collectors for not playing enough. The world doesn't revolve around collectors.

Pete, if the casinos order too many strikes for to few collectors then they are stuck with an inventory they can’t get rid of and guess what, the machine sits there getting little or no play. Goodbye machine. Bottom line is the dollar. I have said in previous posts that those collectors who want higher mintage should give those casinos who have higher mintages more support or quit complaining and accept the lower more successful mintages.

It isn't so. Sometimes there is a machine with better profits. A machine that doesn't need as much worker involvment. A machine that doesn't have hopper jams as a regular "feature". A machine that doesn't need special order tokens to be ordered and re-filled. A machine that doesn't have people taking up time at the cage cashing them in, or trying to buy them, or trying to swap for a complete set. A machine that doesn't create a hassel for cage people, floor people, managers and security.

If they had the machines were there with the collectors in mind they wouldn’t care about all these problems. The bottom line is they would tolerate these problems (Four Queens is a good example) if they were making plenty of profit.

Many others have posted messages which point out why some of the casinos removed the machines, but you won't listen.

I don’t know where they got their information but it is probably secondhand info. You don’t believe what I print why should I believe what they print. Dennis Finn pointed out some casinos that removed their machines for various reasons, “ Many have unimaginative designs like Boulder Station's last series. Suncoast had problems with their fills because the machine was out of the way and the new strikes had to come from the cage. When they tried filling with returned strikes from a change booth, we couldn't get Pentagons and Twin Towers and raised heck.
Some places have simply had enough of the quarrelsome collector.
I was told that Hard Rock removed their machines because of maintenance problems. “

If these casinos were dropping $5,000-$10,000 a week I think the Suncoast would have found a way to get the strikes closer to the machine. Who at the Boulder Station decided their strikes were unimaginative therefore necessary to remove their machine. Hard Rock maintenance problems? It all gets back to if they were dropping $5,000-$10,000 a week I think they would solve their maintenance problems.

And Mark Karoll has said “And yes, the program at the Four Queens is profitable . . . the day that it isn't it will join the list of casinos which have eliminated their strike programs.” Pete, are you listening?

Last of all, I have NEVER written anything against casino profits, dealer profits or allowing the highest bidder to set their own value for strikes. I have tried to speak out against controlled and manipulated issues, where insiders get a special deal, where a casino employee gets inside information and chips or tokens, and where a small group controls and manipulates the prices to milk honest collectors.

Can you do something about gas prices? Maybe get my car to run on milk!