By Walt Hickey
Have a great weekend!
Hockey fans, I was over on Neil Paine’s newsletter podcasting about the start of the NHL season if you want to check that out.
Skins
It’s madness out there right now in the Counter-Strike digital items market, where a long run of investment in the digital goods produced a bubble that the bigwigs at Valve popped on Wednesday. The burst sent the market crashing 25 percent in one night. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Valve adjusted the exchange rate between various items such as knives and gloves, a forex adjustment that swiftly erased $1.75 billion in value across the broader economy of skins and items. It’s enough to send investors in the digital items space running for cover into safer, more sober investments like speculative memecoins. Either that, or retreating into more stable reserve currencies, such as the ruble.
Cecilia D’Anastasio, Bloomberg
Solar
The financial impediments to installing a rooftop solar system in the United States dwarf those of some peers. Americans pay a median price of $28,000 for a 7-kilowatt system, vastly more than the $4,000 an Australian will pay or the $10,000 a German would. While solar panels on the roof can be a great deal that pays off long term — cutting about $1,600 annually from a household’s utility bill, or $56,000 over the 25-year life of a typical system — that upfront sticker shock keeps them out of the realm of possibility for many.
Ginseng
For more than 300 years, central Wisconsin has produced and exported ginseng to Asia, as the mineral-packed soils of the region proved superb growing regions for the root vegetable. Almost all U.S. ginseng is produced in Marathon County, Wisconsin, by about 70 growers. Most of that product — about $14.7 million worth — is dried and exported to China, or at least it was before trade conflict between the U.S. and China imperiled the business. That has been harder on Wisconsin than Weihai. Alternatively, Canada also has that awesome soil that ginseng loves, and exported 3,000 metric tons of it to China in 2024 at $15 per kilogram. That said, the Wisconsin ginseng is considered particularly good, and the 213 tons sold in 2024 commanded a price of $69 per kilogram.
NBA
The FBI arrested dozens in two criminal cases that allege schemes to rig sports bets in the NBA, as well as a Mafia-controlled poker game that was also rigged. Over 30 people were arrested, including the coach of the Portland Trailblazers, who is accused of participating in a conspiracy to rig card games in Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and the Hamptons at the behest of the mafia. Among those charged was also a guard on the Miami Heat who allegedly aided people placing bets by giving them confidential information about colleagues.
Alanna Durkin Richer, Tim Reynolds and Philip Marcelo, The Associated Press
Magic
Hasbro’s revenue rose eight percent year over year to $1.74 billion in the most recent quarter, fueled by the ridiculously profitable Wizards of the Coast division, which prints money — sorry, prints Magic: The Gathering cards, which are way more valuable — as well as oversees Dungeons & Dragons. The Wizards division posted operating profit margins of 44 percent, which is nuts, thanks in part to a 55 percent increase in revenue from Magic. Indeed, the $252 million operating profit from Wizards constituted the vast majority of the $341 million that the company posted as a whole. Hasbro’s pursuits in board games and toys has increasingly become a diversion from its true industry of turning mana into money.
Pokémon Collector’s Problem
There is a common aphorism in the Pokémon fan community that every monster is someone’s favorite Pokémon, reflecting the overall diversity of the fanbase and the variety of the different species represented within the world — even if not all of them are a given trainer’s cup of tea, or Sinistea. However, a number of studies have raised the key question: really? Six years ago, a survey of 52,000 fans asked about their favorite of the 800 or so available monsters. The survey found that, as a matter of fact, four Pokémon were not selected as anyone’s favorite: Silcoon, Gothita, Eelektrik and Yungoos. This year, a new campaign asking a similar question has so far accumulated 26,402 votes from the fandom. The initial results published in mid-October revealed that 53 of the over 1,000 types of Pokémon and their varieties lack a devotee, including representatives from the original 150, such as Golbat and Tentacool. The exercise is basically a mathematical twist on the Coupon collector’s problem of “how many people must have a favorite Pokémon until we can be 50 percent certain that every single Pokémon is the favorite of at least one person?”
Park Is Open
According to the Themed Entertainment Association, attendance at theme parks globally hit 250 million last year, thanks largely to the rapid attendance growth of parks in China. Of the 25 top theme parks in the world last year, nine are located in the United States (of which seven were Disney-owned). Globally speaking, the Mouse owns a whopping 12 of the 25 most-attended parks. The six major theme parks in Florida saw 61.8 million in attendance, the six major parks in California saw 47.9 million and the rest of North America’s parks in the top 20 rounded out to 19.7 million.
Samantha Davis-Friedman, Attractions Magazine
The Sunday edition this week was a podcast featuring three of my favorites from a podcast I really dig, do check them — and it — out:
Numlock Sunday: Across the Movie Aisle
This week, I spoke to Alyssa Rosenberg, Sunny Bunch and Peter Suderman, the three panelists of the outstanding film podcast Across the Movie Aisle. I really enjoy the show and have been a longtime fan of their individual work.
I think that they’re a group with genuinely diverse opinions but who have a lot of love for cinema and as a result have some of the most deeply interesting conversations about the art form of any show I listen to.
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When the crash happened, did “If You Wanna Be Happy..” start playing?