Curious about Wata Codes & New Collecting Tips

[yoshi1999 | 3]

Hi, Wanted to introduce myself and ask some questions about the wata holder, any response is much appreciated!

I am previously a collector in TCG/Comics, and they have certification numbers that can be looked up to display info about the item.

Does wata have something similar? Also the codes on the back of the panel, how do you scan them? Nothing seems to work for me.

 

Thanks (trying to get a smw snes cib as my first piece of my collection!)

[fcgamer | 4,739]

May I ask what made you become interested in wata over some of the alternatives?

I was going to go snarky but decided not to - wata and it's founders caused a lot of damage and run off towards the original generation gamers / collectors, aside from those who colluded and inside collected to make mints. Therefore a lot of us are salty about the whole thing, understandably.

There's a few pro wata guys here, I'm sure one of them will jump in here within a day or so. 

Either way hope you get the answer to your questions, welcome to the site, and please don't take any snark personally.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Dont they have QR codes? Ill check when I get home. 
 

I do know they use a proprietary QR like code, not sure if its accessible through app.
 

They have a serial number on back as well.  

[RH | 4,943]

19 hours ago, yoshi1999 said:

Hi, Wanted to introduce myself and ask some questions about the wata holder, any response is much appreciated!

I am previously a collector in TCG/Comics, and they have certification numbers that can be looked up to display info about the item.

Does wata have something similar? Also the codes on the back of the panel, how do you scan them? Nothing seems to work for me.

 

Thanks (trying to get a smw snes cib as my first piece of my collection!)

No, they don’t and I doubt they will within the decade.

There is a QR-like code on them and they advertised from day-one they wanted to make an app with this feature but it never manifested. Companies like WATA have to weigh the value of their investments and efforts for new features against the expected return.  They did such a good job shilling themselves as the “premium” grading company by partnering with Heritage Auctions and inflating prices, that people basically backed up their dump trucks of cash and dumped their money, so making good on some early promises like make an app that can read the codes simply never happened.

I’m surprised to see that WATA made good on pop reports, but I really think that was probably a contingent/part of the deal of selling to GoCollect. Regardless, I think we’d all love to be able to scan a game and see details, especially since some games have high quality photos and it’d be nice to know when games were submitted, but no, this is a feature that’s plausible but Wata hasn’t talked about since their pre-launch hype.

[RH | 4,943]

7 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

Dont they have QR codes? Ill check when I get home. 
 

I do know they use a proprietary QR like code, not sure if its accessible through app.
 

They have a serial number on back as well.  

It’s not a QR code but yes, it is QR like. Supposedly they worked with some security company to develop a proprietary code/data system to “support authenticity”. My guess is that it is probably the same general structure as a QR code, but visually organized slightly differently.  Their datagrams are probably encrypted data that can be decrypted by a local key on the non-existent app, and then the data can be displayed. I doubt the encryption is super-strong but I also doubt it’s easily crackable, but that could be wrong.  I just could see Wata wanting to control the access to the QR data for as long as possible so even simple encryption with a key you eventually want to distribute within an application would be near impossible to crack.  But I am assuming it’s encrypted, so maybe someone can hack the code if they care enough and crack it if it’s unencrypted ASCII/Unicode data or something

Edited May 4, 2023 by RH

[yoshi1999 | 3]

I see, that looks like the case to me because I have never seen that code before. Sad that they did not follow through on their codes and help the community understand more about their games at hand.

[yoshi1999 | 3]

On 5/4/2023 at 8:23 AM, fcgamer said:

May I ask what made you become interested in wata over some of the alternatives?

I was going to go snarky but decided not to - wata and it's founders caused a lot of damage and run off towards the original generation gamers / collectors, aside from those who colluded and inside collected to make mints. Therefore a lot of us are salty about the whole thing, understandably.

There's a few pro wata guys here, I'm sure one of them will jump in here within a day or so. 

Either way hope you get the answer to your questions, welcome to the site, and please don't take any snark personally.

I was mainly interested since I am a novice in raw games and grading, I wanted to collect a small collection of games I played when I was a kid, smw, all stars, mk2, etc. 

I currently collect CGC comics and PSA cards so it was natural for me to branch over here, but it seems as if Wata may not be of the same caliber as those companies even though I know they got acquired recently.

ended up purchasing a smw players ed in wata 7.5 sealed as my first piece.

Edited May 7, 2023 by yoshi1999

[jonebone | 1,307]

14 hours ago, yoshi1999 said:

I was mainly interested since I am a novice in raw games and grading, I wanted to collect a small collection of games I played when I was a kid, smw, all stars, mk2, etc. 

I currently collect CGC comics and PSA cards so it was natural for me to branch over here, but it seems as if Wata may not be of the same caliber as those companies even though I know they got acquired recently.

ended up purchasing a smw players ed in wata 7.5 sealed as my first piece.

As someone who collects all of the graded companies, some pros / cons of each:

VGA 
Pros: Longest in the business, beautiful case design and can grade all custom sized items (systems, accessories, big box games, etc.)
Cons: Extremely long turnarounds, high cost, archaic submission system (though supposedly getting online submissions at some point), no CIB grading unless "Qualified" (meaning new never played)

Wata
Pros: Probably the best "experts" in the scene, tamper-proof case, used to have the highest resale value but I'd say that's a moot point now, best online portal for submissions
Cons: Bulky case (but just got resdesigned), no custom sized items, a bit higher cost on fully complete CIB games (likes RPGS with maps, etc.)

CGC
Pros: Fastest turnarounds, cheapest overall
Cons: New to grading games, scale appears a bit softer overall

Good luck in the scene!

[yoshi1999 | 3]

10 hours ago, jonebone said:

As someone who collects all of the graded companies, some pros / cons of each:

VGA 
Pros: Longest in the business, beautiful case design and can grade all custom sized items (systems, accessories, big box games, etc.)
Cons: Extremely long turnarounds, high cost, archaic submission system (though supposedly getting online submissions at some point), no CIB grading unless "Qualified" (meaning new never played)

Wata
Pros: Probably the best "experts" in the scene, tamper-proof case, used to have the highest resale value but I'd say that's a moot point now, best online portal for submissions
Cons: Bulky case (but just got resdesigned), no custom sized items, a bit higher cost on fully complete CIB games (likes RPGS with maps, etc.)

CGC
Pros: Fastest turnarounds, cheapest overall
Cons: New to grading games, scale appears a bit softer overall

Good luck in the scene!

Thanks this is super helpful.