I would personally consider £76k Halloween Chris's game (31/10/2007) to be the last classic era game before we entered "recession era DoND". Some might argue that £75k Daniel marked the end of the classic era, while others could give it another couple of months to include Olly Murs, JC, Miss Orry, Clive and the first "Santa or scrooge" and "Christmas stars" specials

I suppose Daniel's game may have been the final flourish, yeah. We'd had the first quarter-millionaire in 2007 of course, but what's often overlooked is that there were other notable milestones that year: Igor had plumbed the depths at the other end of the scale and dealt at tuppence on the first-ever 1p/10p final two; the banker had made terrible offers, incredible offers, and everything in between; Graeme and the redoubtable Jonathan Bunney had broken the £100,000 barrier in their games; there were more members of the 1p club, plenty more blue winners, plenty more low red winners, plenty more high rollers; then Daniel had the greatest game, and shortly thereafter Siobhan recorded the worst-ever game, and two days after that somebody dealt at an offer of a holiday...

...my point here being that we'd seen enough. We'd seen everything, really. What more was there that could possibly hold interest?

Hard to say when recession era Deal started, though the absolute latest is definitely £22,500 Richard's game. I'd argue it definitely started in early 2008 though, as we still had a lot of classics in terms of big wins AND characters in December 2007. I think I'd ultimately settle with 1p Matty's game as the last of the classic era, as after that is when players started to get notably more cautious with £100k Betty's game 6 weeks later feeling akin to Marlene's and Paddy's in 2013: a mostly one off game intertwined with a lot of cautious play.

I actually enjoyed the early part of 2008 more than I expected to when it got repeated on Challenge a few years later - the point where I feel it changed now were the first few games in March, there was Andy who was virtually in tears throughout, then a hat-trick of trainwrecks with Margaret, Joy and Steve (Joy in particular being really sad to watch) and IIRC that was the end of a recording session too. Although Sarah who played the first game after that got a massive feel-good OPW it felt like that's when the irreversible happened.

2013 was actually a similar pattern to be honest - having reviewed it the early part of the year was good if the games were taken in isolation rather than goings-on on here but the decline came around late spring/early summer

I've ultimately decided that £21k Kate's game from February 2008 was the point where things first started to go wrong; Matty was the newbie in Kate's game, which was the first of three jackpot squanders in one week, followed by an "out and proud coward" on the wings crashing to a bare red win, a mediocre win with lots of tears, three blue wins on the bounce, the (at the time) worst deal ever for a £75k box, and a contestant being manipulated into dealing early and then given stupidly inflated proveout offers!!

We did have £60k Matt's game during that run, but even he didn't seem completely satisfied with what he'd won, and seemed really pissed off about underselling the jackpot!!

I'd say that November 2007 to May 2008 was more of a "transition" period from "classic era DoND" to "recession era DoND"

Id have been able to answer this 18 years ago but now its all a blur and I suppose there was a notable shift around the 2007 era, although I couldn't tell you what.

I should revisit some of the episode threads from that time and see if it prompts me to an answer. I definitely could have told you back then.

Its fair to say novelty powered much of our early DOND magic.