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Can Anyone explain why this is a thing?


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https://www.ebay.com/itm/175309858564

Alright, it didn't take me very long to come to terms with sealed/graded stuff - It is a pure money thing (anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to themselves), and at this point, is anyone really going to open a sealed SNES or NES game? The people sending sealed stuff in to get graded are not really taking anything away from other collectors...

It took me longer to understand the CIB grading scene, since those are games that could be played, but I again justified it because mostly of money/fun to speculate, plus I can understand why someone might want a mint condition copy of their favorite game or two...and they might not be able to afford a sealed/mint condition copy. Especially if the game is rare or condition is rare...Whatever.

But what the hell is this? It is a cart only WATA 7.5 Donkey Kong Country...The 3rd most common game on the system...I mean the only thing I could think of is that it was this person's childhood copy and they wanted to preserve it to remember someone or sometime from their past...but then why sell it?  The fact that this even has bids higher than the $20 it would cost to get an avg. condition cart just blows my mind.

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It doesn't make sense but it's speculation, that's what all of this is. Alexis Ohanian posted this video recently and I really think it's a bad idea but I've seen this kind of thinking before. "Eventually everyone will be priced out of sealed and CIB and then they will bet on loose instead, so the price of that will go up too." <- a speculative argument I've seen in plenty other contexts. 

 

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You're generalising sealed collectors and turning off people from answering you with some of your comments.

I have many sealed / graded games and have only ever sold one, it's not always about money. I still have over 20 and have graded games because I personally wanted them graded. I also have quite a few that aren't sealed which I have graded.

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1 hour ago, Code Monkey said:

You're generalising sealed collectors and turning off people from answering you with some of your comments.

I have many sealed / graded games and have only ever sold one, it's not always about money. I still have over 20 and have graded games because I personally wanted them graded. I also have quite a few that aren't sealed which I have graded.

Yeah but why did you want them graded?  Can you honestly say that not even 1% of that was because of the perspective value of it?  Because of the value alone someone wants to have it sealed up tight with a number on a cute sticker with some gibberish about details and a certificate.  None of that has any other real true matter to it in the slightest, if it's personal and has zero monetary value behind it, why would it matter if it were graded a 5 or a 9+?  It really doesn't. To most a 7.5-8 grade will look basically identical to a 9 cart anyway... so why stick a loose game in a slab?  Value, monetary value, and to think otherwise is just convincing oneself they're different when deep down, they're not.

 

 

Grading loose games is an epic disaster and if the Halperin scam wagon is doing that now, we're all fucked if this gets wide spread and widely known.  Watch those copies of games that appear clean without little smudges or dents in stickers getting a fat, very fat premium with listings saying -- candidate for grading, or some variation.  This could be the one that really drive people to just say fuck it and bail because if you start grading loose, so so many people will just get priced out hard.

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A few thoughts on no particular side...

Loose action figures get grades, too. 

This is obviously really stupid, but it was pretty much inevitable.

The winning bid doesn't even cover grading cost, so I don't see this ever being lucrative for common games, but maybe rare titles. 

People trying to compile high grade CIB might purchase high grade carts to bump up their overall grade.

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16 hours ago, Naked Warrior said:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175309858564

But what the hell is this? It is a cart only WATA 7.5 Donkey Kong Country...The 3rd most common game on the system...I mean the only thing I could think of is that it was this person's childhood copy and they wanted to preserve it to remember someone or sometime from their past...but then why sell it?  The fact that this even has bids higher than the $20 it would cost to get an avg. condition cart just blows my mind.

You have to remember it's $85 (using the middle tier, the best "bang for buck" tier) plus shipping and insurance each way to get something graded.  The cost of grading is baked into graded items that sell.   That's not something I'd collect but a graded cart of almost anything probably has a stable floor of $50.  Seller is still losing at that price and buyer is "gaining value" over subbing themself.  One man's trash is another man's treasure.

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10 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

You're generalising sealed collectors and turning off people from answering you with some of your comments.

I have many sealed / graded games and have only ever sold one, it's not always about money. I still have over 20 and have graded games because I personally wanted them graded. I also have quite a few that aren't sealed which I have graded.

How so? Sealed collectors generally don’t care about loose carts therfore, they wouldn’t bother answering his question because they can’t understand either.
 

For example NWC hasn’t taken off like some other similar rare sealed games because it doesn’t have pretty artwork in a sealed box. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 6/13/2022 at 1:55 PM, MiamiSlice said:

It doesn't make sense but it's speculation, that's what all of this is. Alexis Ohanian posted this video recently and I really think it's a bad idea but I've seen this kind of thinking before. "Eventually everyone will be priced out of sealed and CIB and then they will bet on loose instead, so the price of that will go up too." <- a speculative argument I've seen in plenty other contexts. 

 

Who is this dipshit?

It's not like this is "new". It's the same for any "collectible". He could be right.... but if so, he'll only be "right" for a short time before the market is flooded with games again. 

The thing here is that these people have NO IDEA the sheer amount of games that people like us have stashed away.

There's probably THOUSANDS of people who don't even give a shit enough about going on the internet to talk/brag about it that have unfathomable collections that will only see the light of day once they die. 

So yeah.... you buy all the graded loose Donkey Kong Country's for $100 each, but then in 5 years someone dies who's been amassing a DKC collection like never before seen and has (of course) hundreds of copies of DKC sealed, boxed, loose, you name it. 

Or even if you look at a forum like this.... who DOESN'T have a copy of DKC???

Once we die that's like two thousand copies added back to the market right there. 

Edited by AirVillain
DKC
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