GameValueNow Main Thread

[Magus | 169]

Also to add, you can easily tell whether an item is CIB Qualified or Sealed Graded by looking at the total grade. If it has a letter grade, it is a sealed game. If it is just a number, it is a CIB qualified game. It's also usually easy to tell just by the price. You also may notice that some HA sales are missing some of the data. These are from past sales that we couldn't link a certification for one reason or another from the backlog of Wata sales that we added going back a year. Going forward, these certifications will all pull in like i mentioned above, so the cart, manual, and box scores will all be present like that bottom Zelda ALTTP.

[Amermoe | 150]

3 hours ago, Magus said:

Also please be aware that VGA is likely to no longer be tracked in GVN going further. Wata appears to be the future for a huge majority of graded collectors and this is what is being chosen as the platform for graded tracking.

I think this is a shame if true. I think both companies have their merits. While true a lot of the new investors entering the market only are aware of Wata, I think if you talk to many of the long-time sealed collectors, you will find that VGA is still the primary choice for certain games in their collections. For example SNES games are widely favored to VGA due to the box being horizontal rather than vertical. As well as for newer systems, or odd sized boxes that can only be graded by VGA. 

There is also a long history of VGA sales that would certainly be lost if omitted entirely, so not sure I would fully support this approach. 

I did want to mention, that while true you could always look at the graded sales and find a similar item's price, this is not true in the collection tracker. For example, If I were to add a rare game such as Haunting Ground for the PS2 in a graded condition, it would tally me a number of ~$300 and when I do the same for a sealed condition, it would give me a value of ~ $600 which is almost double. This is of course extremely misleading since graded copies typically would go for more or at the very minimum the same price as a sealed copy.

I think as a rule, no graded copy should ever be valued less than a sealed raw copy, because in essence it is a sealed copy by definition. Of course I am interchanging graded with sealed, and omitting CIB graded, because I think they are the exception not the rule. And of course I understand condition is key to either graded or raw, but my understanding is that there is no method/plan for tracking condition and correlating it to price, because it would be an extremely involved undertaking.

This brings me back to the FFVII discussion, I think the current price at $1000 for a raw copy is accurate as an average. I am aware that some have sold for much less. However, many of those lower priced sold copies had some sort of damage to them (drilled hole/cracks/tears in the seal etc.). Serious collectors will look for a near flawless copy, and that is where you will see the premiums. A gold graded copy of the game will almost always go in the several 4 figures (been that case much before the pandemic ~ last 5 years). A raw copy in the same condition will also go for the same amount if it has the right exposure.

Here's another raw copy from ebay sales I didn't see cataloged (25 bids, ended July 29, sale price: $2639 - small flaw/tear in cello)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Final-Fantasy-VII-PlayStation-1-1997-Factory-Sealed-see-description-/133477060195?epid=214699225&hash=item1f13da4e63%3Ag%3A3cAAAOSwUgxfICa0&LH_ItemCondition=1000&nma=true&si=qFdMNcrltr7BhjQOouAxsMQU0d0%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

 

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Amermoe

[OptOut | 8,879]

@Amermoe wasting your breath dude.

Below you will find a simple flow chart showing which graded games GVN will include in their database:

VGA ain't invited to the party. 

[JVOSS | 1,762]

@Magus,

Help me understand the goal of GVN?  As a collector. as a contributer (as this is what your wanting everyone to do)

If GVN is yours then i applaud the effect you have exerted in the development of this service.  To get something to work and "interact with ebay" is astronomical feat in it's own since.

So when i ask understand that as a collector data is everything and is only as good as the data provided.

Here is my point.  GVN list of titles for the GB is will less then accurate. the provided cost data is from 2018... 

Am I missing something here?

[Brickman | 3,978]

1 hour ago, JVOSS said:

So when i ask understand that as a collector data is everything and is only as good as the data provided.

I think this is a good point and what turned me off GVN.

I’ve always been an excel guy for tracking collections but I thought I would try one of the online ones.

I initially tried GVN because it was mentioned on this site but I found that the data is really inaccurate. The AUD prices for a lot of games are extremely inaccurate and sometimes the prices don’t even reflect the link you click on.
This turned me off it and I moved on.
Also to now read that it won’t be including VGA sales, that makes it even more inaccurate data.

[Magus | 169]

Bear with me guys, this is a long one with multiple responses. 

@Amermoe I completely understand wanting VGA included. This isn't something i am involved in unfortunately when it comes to decision making. Of course i will pass along the demand for VGA to be included and see what they say. But as far as i am aware, they wanted to stick with Wata and to my understanding are likely to keep it this way. 

Okay so you are speaking about the collection tracker? That is where the disconnect is happening here. The collection tracker was never mentioned in your original posts, so i was looking into the front end database itself which doesn't reflect the issue you are speaking about because there is no average price generated for graded games. Yes in that case, having a graded value be less in the collection tracker is misleading, i will see what we can do about that. Maybe a way to manually enter what the value is for graded games you put in your collection, since they are all over the place depending on grade and there is no real way to get an accurate average that will make sense in your collection anyway. It makes much more sense to have the user be able to add what their graded game is worth vs a forced inaccurate average due to the nature of how wide the margin is for prices of a graded game. 

So you are saying you agree that $1000 is a solid average price for a raw sealed FF7. But if that is the case, i guess i am not understanding what the complaint is with FF7 then? Was this complaint just pertaining to the collection tracker issue listed above like your haunting grounds example? Showing lower prices for graded vs sealed? Because that i get and agree with you. But if there is another component to the complaint, i am not following. GVN just logs in the sales data, condition isn't factored in the algorithm. So as long as the sales are being logged correctly, and average being calculated correctly for NEW games, the site is functioning as it should. BUT there are some missing games, the 2 you sent me for FF7 SHOULD be in there and we need to figure out why they got omitted. 

@JVOSS Hello, thanks for the input. GVN is actually not mine and i am not a dev, so i can't take credit for the actual programming portion! And yes, Ebay has been a real challenge to work with for a variety of reasons. I have been with GVN since it was Rick's(Hoagie) project though and while my main function is the manual sorting component the database needs for thousands of games a week, it has grown to much more. Although my affiliation and function with GVN was never to do what i am doing now going back and forth on here with the community like i have been. I recommended and volunteered to do this on my own time because i felt it was a great way to make the site better and give the community a way to have their issues directly responded to and heard by someone who has been in the nintendoage community for many years now. It's a much nicer experience when you can communicate with someone directly on here (me), vs sending an email to a generic complaint email. 

Do you happen to have a specific gameboy game or games? Any examples can help me narrow down potentially what is happening. It sounds like more games with missing sales data, which can be fixed. Lots of games had keyword issues from before Gocollect even came onboard, and the crossover that had to be done to a new format/website created some new ones. The goal is to track all of these and fix them, but you can imagine with 10,000+ games in the database, this can be a challenge. 

@Shmup Have you checked recently? Because international pricing was something that was just tended to last week. There was some very old architecture in place that wasn't updating the currency conversions as they changed in real time. Specifically for CAD prices, but the changes should have been across the board for all currencies. CAD was having the same issue where the GVN price was not accurate with the ebay sales data. If you have an example case, i can look into it if you are still seeing incorrect AUD prices. 

As for VGA. Leaving their sales out has no affect on the accuracy of any data. Graded games are not pumped into an algorithm that spits out an average like Loose/CIB/New (except in the collection tracker mentioned above which will likely be changed). The graded column is completely sale independent, meaning it's just a tab where you can see all individual sales. Missing sales from CIB/Loose/New would definitely skew the averages and make them inaccurate since it forms an average price. But again, where graded games are price independent with no average calculated, it doesn't affect or cause inaccuracies in data. All the sales in there for WATA are legit sales from both ebay and heritage auctions. 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Magus

[fcgamer | 4,718]

No offense, but no VGA, no point in using the tool imo. It's making the sell price / value (hence GVN, Game Value Now) political so to speak. If the data is biased, no need for me to bother even looking at it. Yeah it's a harsh mentality to take, but omitting valid sales info just because it's from a competitor, yup, then I'm out, lol. That info is no longer accurate.

Edited August 24, 2020 by fcgamer

[Magus | 169]

53 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

No offense, but no VGA, no point in using the tool imo. It's making the sell price / value (hence GVN, Game Value Now) political so to speak. If the data is biased, no need for me to bother even looking at it. Yeah it's a harsh mentality to take, but omitting valid sales info just because it's from a competitor, yup, then I'm out, lol. That info is no longer accurate.

I understand what you are saying and you are free to feel that way and choose which services you use. Again this is a decision that i had no part of, it's way above my involvement in GVN, i am just relaying the information along. I don't take offense to anything you guys put here. 

As for your last sentence though, as someone who doesn't even collect Wata games, it is very misleading. It is transparent that Wata is being the chosen grading company. It's values and data for all Wata sales are all accurate and in there for people to see. If you want to know what a Wata 9.8 A+ LOZ sold for, you can clearly see accurate data for it and use that information accordingly. Just because VGA data is missing, doesn't somehow negate or disregard the legit sales data for Wata graded sales. It just means GVN is focused on the Wata crowd which at the moment if you notice, is taking over both ebay and places like HA. Many people on this very site have converted over, or are in the process. 

If you are a VGA user and VGA is your big appeal to GVN, then yes, unfortunately GVN will no longer be a website for that use, and i can understand why that would upset a subset of users for sure. But to say the values of these graded games are somehow skewed because they chose to use a single grading company is just not true. Since the grading scales and prices are so different between the 2 companies they aren't even apples to apples anyway. If we were to even include VGA, it would have it's own tab with it's own values completely separate from Wata. They are 2 different beasts entirely. No data is being skewed, sales data is sales data. If there were an average being calculated like you have with Loose/New/CIB and sales were being omitted then yes you would have a point, because then the averages would be biased/skewed from the missing data. That isn't the case for graded games.

Also, Loose/New/CIB categories are not affected by this decision at all. So essentially it is just VGA users that are affected by this, by having their platform no longer be supported. 

You have to do what you think is best, and use what you think is best. If that's not GVN, i completely understand. 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Magus

[B.A. | 1,139]

GoCollect is a for profit company with a clear agenda, which is definitely not the love of video games.  Why so many of you guys provide free troubleshooting and data mining is beyond me.  

[fcgamer | 4,718]

@Magus Total bullshit, no offense, as others have pointed out VGA is more popular for SNES, oversized items, etc. The idea that everyone prefers Wata is just a narrative being promoted, likely from the guys behind wata and some investors.

It's definitely been revealed by now, I think, that despite the wata folks coming initially from the community, they have done literally nothing to help the community, and have done everything to harm it. If I were you, @Magus , I'd personally stop dedicating my time and efforts to feeding an evil beast, and instead do something that benefits the community. 

Simply put, if the info is biased (and it is, it fails to examine all graded games , lying by omissions essentially) then is it really beneficial to the community? 

[jonebone | 1,307]

GoCollect has an ownership share in Wata and bought out GVN.  They are making a conscious decision to eliminate the VGA tracking to push more people to Wata.  Let's just be transparent about that.  They are doing this with profit in mind. 

[JVOSS | 1,762]

14 minutes ago, jonebone said:

GoCollect has an ownership share in Wata and bought out GVN.  They are making a conscious decision to eliminate the VGA tracking to push more people to Wata.  Let's just be transparent about that.  They are doing this with profit in mind. 

will that explain everything.  and why i don't support / provide to the collection trackers.  they are simply taking and not giving much back.

And again i ask:

  Help me understand the goal of GVN?

@Magus, Are you a graded collector?

 

[O.G. CIB | 415]

In this case we can’t “shoot the messenger” while I’m sure he gets paid to maintain the data he doesn’t get paid to make decision nor to provide information in this forum. If I were him I wouldn’t provide information to any group if they are not thankful for the free service ..... nor would I put myself in the line of fire for a company that has already displayed they are for profit and for self. Anyone with data in the collector tracker I would find a different home..... all you are doing is providing information to help make the powers that be make decisions to line their pockets.

[Gloves | 11,759]

13 minutes ago, Mr. CIB said:

In this case we can’t “shoot the messenger” while I’m sure he gets paid to maintain the data he doesn’t get paid to make decision nor to provide information in this forum. If I were him I wouldn’t provide information to any group if they are not thankful for the free service ..... nor would I put myself in the line of fire for a company that has already displayed they are for profit and for self. Anyone with data in the collector tracker I would find a different home..... all you are doing is providing information to help make the powers that be make decisions to line their pockets.

This is something most people likely aren't considering while using these free services: they are using the data you put in to make decisions. 

They know not just how many sales happen per month per game, but also how many people who use their tracker own each game. They have information that could be used to game the market fairly easily, and by using their tool you are feeding them that information, effectively contributing to the problems that many on here complain about. Consider also that Want Lists exist - they know what you have, and what you want. 

Truth is though, you're a drop in the bucket and they won't mourn the loss of the 10-20 people on here who stop using their service in protest.

[Gloves | 11,759]

23 minutes ago, JVOSS said:

will that explain everything.  and why i don't support / provide to the collection trackers.  they are simply taking and not giving much back.

And again i ask:

  Help me understand the goal of GVN?

 

The original goal of GVN was to give the community a more modern tracker, and maybe earn the original creator some cash flow through rover links.

GoCollect purchased it to get the data from it. They keep it going because users continue to feed them data through it.

They WERE making their own version, I don't know what happened to that. Potentially they've decided to pivot and carry on using the GVN brand recognition and pre-installed userbase to bolster credibility.

[Tulpa | 3,488]

18 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Truth is though, you're a drop in the bucket and they won't mourn the loss of the 10-20 people on here who stop using their service in protest.

This. If you have issues with what GoCollect is doing with GVN, by all means, stop using it.

But let's not fool ourselves. GoCollect already has everything they need to sustain what they're doing. They already won that battle when they bought up NA, GVN, et al.

[Magus | 169]

1 hour ago, Mr. CIB said:

In this case we can’t “shoot the messenger” while I’m sure he gets paid to maintain the data he doesn’t get paid to make decision nor to provide information in this forum. If I were him I wouldn’t provide information to any group if they are not thankful for the free service ..... nor would I put myself in the line of fire for a company that has already displayed they are for profit and for self. 

Thank you for understanding that i am kind of caught in the middle here. It's not my place to speak for them or say things on their behalf, so i don't. I am not sure many people here understand this, or realize how NOT involved i am in the business side of GVN and how much i don't know in that area. My whole existence on this forum is on my own time to just try and keep people in the loop and have somebody they recognized to communicate with, IF they decided they still wanted to support GVN or they still liked the website. And also be able to solve the issues they had without dealing with a generic complaint email. Because i genuinely care about GVN and have since Rick brought me on. 

I am just doing what i can with the small amount of power i have with GVN to keep it running and hopefully running well, if not now with the current bugs, hopefully soon. Rick is no longer involved, but i genuinely wanted to try the best i absolutely could to keep the spirit of why he made GVN intact. But it's not my website, i have no say over many decisions. I am doing the best i can, and while people may have their feelings about the Wata/Graded decision, which i totally understand and respect. The actual data for the other 95% of the site which the majority is using the site for is hopefully going to be even more accurate than it was before. With the new tools i have available now and some new features it never had before, like saving sales images so they show up well after ebay removes the archived listing to just name a small one. 

It's taking a little longer than expected, and ebay has not made it easy, but it's getting there. But i by no means want to twist anyone's arm here or have any hard feelings. If you want to stick with the site, great, please use this thread to ask me whatever, i will try my best to help and fix whatever issues i can. If you don't want to use GVN for one reason or another, that is totally okay and you are entitled to feel that way and use something else. That's obviously not what i want, but everybody needs to use what they feel comfortable and like. 

[Brickman | 3,978]

2 hours ago, jonebone said:

GoCollect has an ownership share in Wata and bought out GVN.  They are making a conscious decision to eliminate the VGA tracking to push more people to Wata.  Let's just be transparent about that.  They are doing this with profit in mind. 

Thanks for this post, I didn’t realise GVN were owned by Go Collect. Definitely glad I moved on now.

2 hours ago, Gloves said:

Truth is though, you're a drop in the bucket and they won't mourn the loss of the 10-20 people on here who stop using their service in protest.

This is true, but if those people pass on their distaste for GVN and highlight data inaccuracies then that can draw more people away. The last few posts in this thread alone have had valuable information why not to use this service. 

 

[Gloves | 11,759]

1 hour ago, Magus said:

I am not sure many people here understand this, or realize how NOT involved i am in the business side of GVN and how much i don't know in that area. 

To be totally fair, you do say "we" a lot when referring to GoCollect, without really giving the full context of that what you mean is "the GoCollect dev team". Not to say you HAVE to by any stretch, but I could see how someone would mistake you for the dev, or for someone with intimate knowledge of their inner workings.

Maybe it would behoove you to adjust the OP of this thread with some context as to that GoCollect owns and runs GVN, and that you are their employee, as well as what your role is. Then you could point people there.

Understand that you are the only person on here with a direct connection to GVN through GoCollect, and the optics have not been all that clear.

[doner24 | 1,195]

I’ll play the other side of the coin. I supply data to GVN because I like the free service it provides me. It’s the best collection tracker I’ve found, easy to use and values are usually pretty solid (none are perfect). It’s also really easy to use the general price guide if I need to look something up without sorting through completed eBay listings. 

[Magus | 169]

39 minutes ago, Gloves said:

To be totally fair, you do say "we" a lot when referring to GoCollect, without really giving the full context of that what you mean is "the GoCollect dev team". Not to say you HAVE to by any stretch, but I could see how someone would mistake you for the dev, or for someone with intimate knowledge of their inner workings.

Maybe it would behoove you to adjust the OP of this thread with some context as to that GoCollect owns and runs GVN, and that you are their employee, as well as what your role is. Then you could point people there.

Understand that you are the only person on here with a direct connection to GVN through GoCollect, and the optics have not been all that clear.

I say we, because i do work for Gocollect/GVN. I am part of the team, so saying we is pretty standard when referring to the company you work for as a whole. That doesn't mean i am somehow on the board of directors with any major pull or privy to every detail and bit of knowledge that happens. In fact i have mentioned this many time before in other threads, what my role is and what i am involed in, and how i am essentially only on the data/video game knowledge side of it and manual entry. And that i have nothing to do with the dev part of it, and that i was just a middleman trying to offer a link to the community who still used and supported GVN. 

If you look at even my welcome post, i clearly defined and mentioned i worked for Gocollect right from the get go since signing up here. Also mentioned that i was with GVN before Gocollect even came into the picture with Rick. None of this was ever a secret and I definitely didn't think I needed to put a giant disclaimer in every single topic i make for GVN of what my job title and position is, and that Gocollect now owns it, even though i have put that information out here on more than one occasion and in more than one thread.......and it's been known for a long time now that Gocollect bought GVN. Kind of seems unreasonable.  
 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Magus

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

Yikes, good thing VGPC still exists.

Still, seems like there sure is a lot of anticompetitive practices going on.

[Gloves | 11,759]

1 minute ago, Magus said:

I say we, because i do work for Gocollect/GVN. I am part of the team, so saying we is pretty standard when referring to the company you work for as a whole. That doesn't mean i am somehow on the board of directors with any major pull or privvy to every detail and bit of knowledge that happens. In fact i have mentioned this many time before in other threads, what my role is and what i am involed in, and how i am essentially only on the data side of it and manual entry. And that i have nothing to do with the dev part of it, and that i was just a middleman. 

If you look at my welcome post, i clearly defined and mentioned i worked for Gocollect right from the get go since signing up here. Also mentioned that i was with GVN before Gocollect even came into the picture with Rick. None of this was ever a secret and I definitely didn't think I needed to put a giant disclaimer in every single topic i make for GVN of what my job title and position is, and that Gocollect now owns it, even though i have put that information out here on more than one occasion and in more than one thread.......
 

Yeah I getcha. My point being simply that this is the GVN thread and you can't expect people to read your welcome thread or any other thread by you, they may well come here specifically to get info on GVN (do GC post GVN news/info anywhere else?). To my knowledge VGS is, odd as it may be, THE place to get news on GVN.

They do have a link to their blog on GC, but the latest news for GVN was 3 months ago. Prob cuz that was the latest actual big update.

I'm not saying there's any onus whatsoever to disclaimer all your posts or anything, just saying how I could see some people being confused (I've actually personally gotten messages from a few people on here asking if you work for GVN or GoCollect and what the deal is there; I always direct them to ask you their questions, frankly they probably don't follow up).

To be clear, I'm just trying to offer friendly advice based on what I've seen. I use GVN myself for the same reasons as doner, and will continue to do so. That's why I continue to share bugs and stuff with you here.

[Magus | 169]

19 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Yeah I getcha. My point being simply that this is the GVN thread and you can't expect people to read your welcome thread or any other thread by you, they may well come here specifically to get info on GVN (do GC post GVN news/info anywhere else?). To my knowledge VGS is, odd as it may be, THE place to get news on GVN.

They do have a link to their blog on GC, but the latest news for GVN was 3 months ago. Prob cuz that was the latest actual big update.

I'm not saying there's any onus whatsoever to disclaimer all your posts or anything, just saying how I could see some people being confused (I've actually personally gotten messages from a few people on here asking if you work for GVN or GoCollect and what the deal is there; I always direct them to ask you their questions, frankly they probably don't follow up).

To be clear, I'm just trying to offer friendly advice based on what I've seen. I use GVN myself for the same reasons as doner, and will continue to do so. That's why I continue to share bugs and stuff with you here.

I definitely appreciate that. And i apologize if i sounded defensive in that last post, but i hope you can imagine how much work goes into all the posts here, and going back and forth trying to get everything resolved, and to make sure everyone gets a response and knows their question or issue is being acknowledged. All while trying to handle the daily data, and logistics of all the changes the site had to go through. And all on my own time. 

I appreciate every single comment i get here, even the complaints, i've said it before. Every issue i am able to get fixed makes me feel like i am 1 step closer to getting GVN where i want it to be and the more issues that get sent my way, the faster i can get to them. 

Some people here think i am just wasting my time, but i truly don't feel i am and think for MOST users GVN is going be better than it was before. 

P.S Blood Will Tell was fixed. If you look now, there is a ton of data. BUT it takes about 24 hours for the average to update, and i need to make sure it updates in the collection tracker as well. But it's on its way. 

FF7 is also being fixed, there is a keyword issue which caused some missed sales.
 

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Magus

[Armageddon Potato | 124]

40 minutes ago, Magus said:

I definitely appreciate that. And i apologize if i sounded defensive in that last post, but i hope you can imagine how much work goes into all the posts here, and going back and forth trying to get everything resolved, and to make sure everyone gets a response and knows their question or issue is being acknowledged. All while trying to handle the daily data, and logistics of all the changes the site had to go through. And all on my own time. 

I appreciate every single comment i get here, even the complaints, i've said it before. Every issue i am able to get fixed makes me feel like i am 1 step closer to getting GVN where i want it to be and the more issues that get sent my way, the faster i can get to them. 

Some people here think i am just wasting my time, but i truly don't feel i am and think for MOST users GVN is going be better than it was before. 

P.S Blood Will Tell was fixed. If you look now, there is a ton of data. BUT it takes about 24 hours for the average to update, and i need to make sure it updates in the collection tracker as well. But it's on its way. 

FF7 is also being fixed, there is a keyword issue which caused some missed sales.
 

 

Heya bud! Just a couple questions:

1.) Best offer sold listings have been inflating the price of BIN'd games when the best offer was present or made with the purchase. I've experienced this first hand already in a purchase I made of a somewhat rare game. Is there a way to find the best offer price and use that more accurate data, or has Ebay completely blocked that off from ever being tracked?
2.) Do you have plans to expand to other places such as Amazon for video game price tracking?