WATA Finally Getting Sued?

[RH | 4,936]

Just now, final fight cd said:

I heard from somewhere that because this stuff is all collectibles there aren’t any laws or anything that prevents people from being smelly turds.  So while WATA/HA are a bunch of smelly turds, did they legally do anything wrong? Ethically and morally, without a doubt yes.

now, I know nothing about the law, so all this stuff I said could be a bunch of horseshit.

I’d be surprised if this were factually true.

There may not be anything on Federal law books that expressly mentions covering collectibles but the FTC has broad coverage of all markets, existing or merging.

Not apples to apples, but in the early days of crypto when it was starting to get some outside attention, one big hesitation that people had that were interested was that cryptocurrency was a 100% new concept with global implications but their were broad laws covering it regarding taxes and such, but no one knew how to interpret (or more importantly how the FTC would interpret) those laws in light of an untraceable global asset.

Crypto and sealed games are very different but my point is, if markets emerge, the FTC already has general laws in place and if anyone is in violation of those laws, they certainly can be prosecuted.

Will the Wata/HA crowd be fined? Who knows, but there is general legal coverage and Wata/HA are not exempt and weren’t allowed to basically do whatever they wanted.

[a3quit4s | 4,120]

42 minutes ago, final fight cd said:

I heard from somewhere that because this stuff is all collectibles there aren’t any laws or anything that prevents people from being smelly turds.  So while WATA/HA are a bunch of smelly turds, did they legally do anything wrong? Ethically and morally, without a doubt yes.

now, I know nothing about the law, so all this stuff I said could be a bunch of horseshit.

I’ve been battling with this myself, really from a civil perspective all they did was not meet their own SLAs for their grading tiers. Sure maybe the class action lawsuit gets money back for that and lawyers fees and damages or whatever the judge thinks is fair. Criminally, what real charges are there here? There are always people out there falling for the next get rich quick scheme and sure the people who are in on it and the early people who come in make money but someone somewhere is always the bag holder. It does look like it’s getting easier and easier to price fraud though so who knows. I dunno it’s all speculation at this point all we can do is follow along on the class action I guess. 
 

Here is a funny SEC filing that lists Mark Haspel as a promoter and Jeff Meyer as a director: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1711064/000171106418000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

I think we need to delineate the idea of grading games from this nonsense. 
 

Yes, I know it was a big scam. A pump-and-dump. Many of us have been talking about it for years (while getting accused of being “anti-grading” and getting warned from mods about it?)

 

There is still significant utility in authenticating and grading games. I was gonna send some games to wata and cgc (to try them out)

 

But now maybe just cgc. I want to see how this plays out with wata and their reaction if anything comes of the case. 

[a3quit4s | 4,120]

16 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

I think we need to delineate the idea of grading games from this nonsense. 
 

Yes, I know it was a big scam. A pump-and-dump. Many of us have been talking about it for years (while getting accused of being “anti-grading” and getting warned from mods about it?)

 

There is still significant utility in authenticating and grading games. I was gonna send some games to wata and cgc (to try them out)

 

But now maybe just cgc. I want to see how this plays out with wata and their reaction if anything comes of the case. 

On the topic of other grading companies whatever happened to that dude that came around and was opening up his own graded game company and you had to like send your games to his house?

Edited February 28 by a3quit4s

[Tyree_Cooper | 760]

30 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

There is still significant utility in authenticating and grading games.

if you say this out loud many times in front of a mirror it will come true

[Hammerfestus | 3,873]

27 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

On the topic of other grading companies whatever happened to that dude that came around and was opening up his own graded game company and you had to like send your games to his house?

Still looking for a non-comic sans font to use I assume

[DarkKobold | 191]

On 2/26/2024 at 3:25 PM, a3quit4s said:

This whole thing is pretty much NintendoAges fault for keeping track of variants and whatnot. Fucking GoCollect Jeff and the Carolina collection and all that. It’s all connected I’ll tell you what 

I'm sure others have said it - but I believe the purchase of NintendoAge was specifically to get rid of all of that data, and disband the experts. WATA didn't have as much knowledge as they said, (See them grading a PCEWorks Dracula X). They were going to fuck up when they started shotgun grading as much as they could in their pump and dump, so why not shut down the biggest, most useful source of information?

[guitarzombie | 927]

19 hours ago, Gulag Joe said:

Oh look, 45 comments of NOTHING HAPPENING other than Pat the nes punk collecting hundreds of thousands of views of the go-to content when things are slow. Rent must be due!

I would like to send this post over to WATA to be graded, so this post can be preserved for all future generations to show them how stupid you are.

[Gulag Joe | 584]

7 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

I would like to send this post over to WATA to be graded, so this post can be preserved for all future generations to show them how stupid you are.

Tag me whenever your witch hunt puts a witch in jail. Other than that, you and Lieutenant Pat the Angry Video Gamer can keep the conspiracy content coming. Maybe sell a few pillows while you’re at it!

[GPX | 1,371]

39 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Tag me whenever your witch hunt puts a witch in jail. Other than that, you and Lieutenant Pat the Angry Video Gamer can keep the conspiracy content coming. Maybe sell a few pillows while you’re at it!

Ok, it’s time to man up. How much are they paying you?

[spacepup | 2,406]

8 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

I would like to send this post over to WATA to be graded, so this post can be preserved for all future generations to show them how stupid you are.

Feel free to disagree with him and even to debate the issue passionately, but calling him or anyone else here 'stupid' is not the right way to discuss things here.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Damn this moderating has gotten crazy lol

 

 

[spacepup | 2,406]

48 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

Damn this moderating has gotten crazy lol

 

 

I'm just trying to reinforce people behaving like adults and not calling each other names.  I don't agree with him either, but I don't see the value in calling him stupid over it.  He didn't receive a warning point or anything, just trying to foster good constructive debate.  That's all.

[Scrobins | 1,727]

1 hour ago, MrWunderful said:

Damn this moderating has gotten crazy lol

 

 

He’s not even moderating, just acting as a voice of reason and respect. You’d think a former mod would know the difference, but then again you just like Monday morning quarterbacking us.

[guitarzombie | 927]

2 hours ago, Gulag Joe said:

Tag me whenever your witch hunt puts a witch in jail. Other than that, you and Lieutenant Pat the Angry Video Gamer can keep the conspiracy content coming. Maybe sell a few pillows while you’re at it!

Turn off the Fox news.

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,164]

3 hours ago, Gulag Joe said:

Tag me whenever your witch hunt puts a witch in jail. Other than that, you and Lieutenant Pat the Angry Video Gamer can keep the conspiracy content coming. Maybe sell a few pillows while you’re at it!

This information came from a deposition of Deniz Kahn himself... 

[final fight cd | 187]

14 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

This information came from a deposition of Deniz Kahn himself... 

I’m sure he is trolling at this point to give a rise out of people. And it appears to be working.  
 

With that said, all this may lead to nothing.  Who here is able to confidently say what they did was actually illegal. Cuz the law goes WAY above my head. 

Edited February 28 by final fight cd

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,164]

Just now, final fight cd said:

I’m sure he is trolling at this point to give a rise out of people. And it appears to be working.  
 

With that said, all this may actually lead to nothing.  Who here is able to confidently say what they did was actually legal. Cuz the law goes WAY above my head. 

Not too sure. There is the issue of criminal vs. civil liability. WATA used tv, press and the internet to ALLEGEDLY defraud god knows how many people and pump up the demand for their grading company. They ALLEGEDLY omitted details of massive conflicts of interest transactions that directly had an effect on the graded game market. I would LOVE to see records of bidding history on heritage auctions for certain games. I would bet anything that there was scammy shill bidding going on behind the scenes, folks driving up prices with zero intention of actually purchasing anything. It is just all gross. Even if nothing happens to these scumbags, I am at least glad that all of this information is now a matter of public record and will cast a shadow over them going forward in their respective careers. 

[final fight cd | 187]

3 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

I would LOVE to see records of bidding history on heritage auctions for certain games. I would bet anything that there was scammy shill bidding going on behind the scenes, folks driving up prices with zero intention of actually purchasing anything

The leakage of bids would definitely be some juicy content for sure! Hopefully it comes to light so Pat the NES Punk can do a podcast segment on it!

[Jeevan | 8,920]

14 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

Not too sure. There is the issue of criminal vs. civil liability. WATA used tv, press and the internet to ALLEGEDLY defraud god knows how many people and pump up the demand for their grading company. They ALLEGEDLY omitted details of massive conflicts of interest transactions that directly had an effect on the graded game market. I would LOVE to see records of bidding history on heritage auctions for certain games. I would bet anything that there was scammy shill bidding going on behind the scenes, folks driving up prices with zero intention of actually purchasing anything. It is just all gross. Even if nothing happens to these scumbags, I am at least glad that all of this information is now a matter of public record and will cast a shadow over them going forward in their respective careers. 

problem is, wasn't one of them already connected to the coin inflation?  not sure it will really ruin their image any more so than what it already was, although we can hope it has some negative effect on them

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,164]

Pigs get fat; Hogs get slaughtered. 

The sad thing about it all is that I believe WATA could have been successful WITHOUT all of this shady nonsense. They had the support of the community, a good product and service. The information on variants and print releases was beneficial to the community, informing the uninformed. The business strategy was sound and they accurately identified inefficiencies in the graded videogame market. There was very little competition other than VGA. 

But they got greedy. They did not want incremental growth. They wanted to get really rich really fast. And that is when a pig becomes a hog. None of this was necessary. Pat gets at this point toward the end of the podcast, albeit from the angle of natural growth of graded game prices.

[a3quit4s | 4,120]

17 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

Pigs get fat; Hogs get slaughtered. 

The sad thing about it all is that I believe WATA could have been successful WITHOUT all of this shady nonsense. They had the support of the community, a good product and service. The information on variants and print releases was beneficial to the community, informing the uninformed. The business strategy was sound and they accurately identified inefficiencies in the graded videogame market. There was very little competition other than VGA. 

But they got greedy. They did not want incremental growth. They wanted to get really rich really fast. And that is when a pig becomes a hog. None of this was necessary. Pat gets at this point toward the end of the podcast, albeit from the angle of natural growth of graded game prices.

They would have gotten all the help they needed from the pandemic. It’ll be great justice to see them have to pay back all that money in class action purely because they were so greedy about it. 

Edited February 28 by a3quit4s

[Tulpa | 3,526]

2 hours ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

This information came from a deposition of Deniz Kahn himself... 

Funny how he doesn't address that point, huh. 

[TDIRunner | 2,756]

2 hours ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

The sad thing about it all is that I believe WATA could have been successful WITHOUT all of this shady nonsense. They had the support of the community, a good product and service.

Agreed.  I remember when WATA was first announced, it was almost universally agreed upon in the gaming forums that, ON PAPER, they appeared to be a huge improvement over the practices at VGA.  Even if you weren't a fan of grading, it appeared that they were going to fix most of the things that made people upset.  

Things sure turned out different.  

Edited February 28 by TDIRunner

[GPX | 1,371]

5 hours ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

Pigs get fat; Hogs get slaughtered. 

The sad thing about it all is that I believe WATA could have been successful WITHOUT all of this shady nonsense. They had the support of the community, a good product and service. The information on variants and print releases was beneficial to the community, informing the uninformed. The business strategy was sound and they accurately identified inefficiencies in the graded videogame market. There was very little competition other than VGA. 

But they got greedy. They did not want incremental growth. They wanted to get really rich really fast. And that is when a pig becomes a hog. None of this was necessary. Pat gets at this point toward the end of the podcast, albeit from the angle of natural growth of graded game prices.

I think there are several layers of greed at play:

1. WATA overhyping and overmarketing themselves to be superior than VGA. It was mainly all talk without the actual evidence. The only thing they’ve shown from the start was that they had more collector friends than VGA, who gave them their backing. Meanwhile, the products were yet to be served.

2. Jim Halperin facilitating the speedy market growth and his application of prior market manoeuvres (that benefits him but to the detriment of the collecting market). 

3. Shonky bidding by HA participants which appear grossly disingenuous, relative to where the market was at.

——————

I like your pig to hog analogy. Meanwhile, it’s sad to see how genuine graded collectors were instantly being priced out overnight with the top-tier items, and to see so many newcomers who obviously have no care for the hobby other than the monetary value to boast/hype/resell.