Episode 10- Lance

[Kyle]

In this episode Max and I discuss Lance- a sadistic villain who enables Johnny Tran to carry out his treacherous deeds. Also someone gets slapped in the face with a pickle.

[Mike]

Okay, I'm looking at a decent TV/DVD combo unit from 2001... the RCA - BD2500. This is a 25" screen with built in DVD unit. Overall unit dimensions of 24" x 25" x20". Let's assume minimal packaging and optimal stacking. Let's also assume that the truck is the largest available cargo truck of the time. With all of that, a person could fit 400 of those units in a truck. That's 400 units under optimal conditions. Of course the packaging would have been larger than that to allow for styrofoam, peripherals, etc. Realistically, you could probably only fit 300 in there. Maybe less. I'm going to go with 350 to be generous. I haven't seen the movie, so maybe you can tell me how big the boxes were, how high they were stacked in the truck, etc.

The average cost of a DVD player in 2001 was around $350. However, you could buy high-end models for $2,000 if you wanted them "THX-certified" or whatever other bullshit sales stuff they wanted to put on there. Let's note that TV/DVD combo units have never been "high-end". Serious video/audio-philes wouldn't be caught dead with some cheap-ass combo unit.

So how much should such a combo unit cost? I couldn't find price lists for combo units around that time, but if you imagine slapping together a DVD player and a 25" TV, I can reasonably see a retail price of $1100 under the right circumstances. Probably wasn't really that high, but I'm being as generous as I can.

Even under those circumstances, that makes the value of the cargo in one van around $400,000. Didn't you say in an earlier episode that the "street value" of one van was $1 million? That would require that these units had a street value of $2800 each. That seems nuts.

**Yes, I know, maybe they were much bigger units that would have been more expensive. But if that were the case, then you wouldn't get nearly as many in the truck. Conversely, maybe they were smaller and you could fit 500 of them in there. Sure, but then they'd be even cheaper. I really think $400K is a best-case, generous scenario for the value of the items in one truck. A quarter-million is probably a more realistic actual number.

[Kyle]

Yeah- I think they'd boosted four or five trucks and made around 6.5 million- but let's round it down. Let's say it's just a million a truck.

Ridiculous. At least they got the physics of car jumping correct.

[Mike]

SWAT COP!

Best answer ever, Max! I totally didn't see where he was going with that.