Wata - A year and a half after

[TheBiRD | 137]

38 minutes ago, Bronty said:

I don’t think anyone said that, as we’ve seen some big cib prices on select material.   It’s mostly on sealed though.   Not exclusively you’re right . 

I often read that "comicguy" new money is injected in sealed, rare stuff that doesn’t affect other "group" of collector.. (raw sealed, cib mint, cib, cart only..). IMO, it’s not only a bubble with the first print or the higher grades. Soon or late, every group will see prices go up because of that new injection of money..

[VegHead | 127]

17 minutes ago, TheBiRD said:

I mostly agree.. except for "people only care about first print".

Not only first print goes up.. we had a 11000$ not first print/not gold Punch out today... couple of days ago, I was watching a mint FF2.. was ready to put 300$ on it.. ends for over 500$.   I don’t track sealed stuff, what I hear is that prices go up on most.. I track cib mint snes and prices go up fast these day..

I think those auctions were outliers because of their uniquely minty state.  $1800 for a cib X3 is just ludicrous.  

[TheBiRD | 137]

32 minutes ago, epiclotus said:

I think those auctions were outliers because of their uniquely minty state.  $1800 for a cib X3 is just ludicrous.  

That’s where I say, those price are gonna be the next standard for real mint stuff.. but maybe not, who knows!

I was ready to pay 300$ for that FF2.. in the bid war who knows maybe I'd drop 350-360.. but 500$.. I guess it’s the new standard since two buyers were ready to paid that much..

Edited November 1, 2019 by TheBiRD

[hyrulevyse | 151]

I'm in the "too early to tell" camp in regards to the poll, but I have some thoughts about the topic in general.

I guess I'm not a big believer in the 'rising tide lifts all boats' theory when it comes to all the new money that's entered the hobby recently.  Hard to picture these comic folks caring about Pro Sport Hockey, Turbografx 16, Panzer Dragoon Saga or insert random game/console here.  When it comes to collecting comics, most of them (from what I understand) don't have library-ish collections or full sets of Amazing Spider-man, X-men, etc...  They own a handful of 'key issues' (hate that phrase) and that's it.  So I doubt this trickle down price increase for everything people are speculating about comes to pass.  Even if you just mean mint cib's for those high end sealed titles, I don't know if there's enough people getting into the hobby (or priced out of sealed) for that to be the case.

I'm with Jone in that I don't like the un-natural trajectory the new money has put the hobby on.  It isn't organic so it makes people uncomfortable, and also why people are quick to call it fake/scam/pumped, etc..   Also the xenophobic? (lol) part of me doesn't like that they're essentially changing the value calculator we've been using for years.  I just find it hard to believe there's a 1 to 1 parallel from collecting comics to video games that way.  Take the sealed vs cib thing, there really isn't a comic hobby parallel to compare that too, so I don't know if it's easy to assume mint cib stuff will rise like the sealed stuff has.

Also, not proud of it but in an honest moment I'd tell you I'm disappointed/jealous that I've apparently been collecting wrong the last 18 years.  I say that with a bit of sarcasm but it's absolutely true in this new market.  I think that jealousy, lack of foresight, or whatever fuels a lot of the hate.  I've probably had 10 sealed Zelda's in my collecting journey and only kept 1, had dozens of chances to buy sealed black box games and own 0, been on forums with Bronty, Qixmaster, and DreamTR for almost two decades and can't retire lol.  But at the end of the day I love the stuff I have and the memories this hobby has given me, and me being right or wrong about my opinions above won't change any of that.

 

[acromite53 | 337]

I was going to send in a sealed Gizmondo game for shits and giggles but I waited too long. Now there is a huge wait list. Maybe one day. But hey, I did get them to add Gizmondo as an option on their website. You're welcome everyone! ... I mean, the zero people that care about Gizmondo besides me. lol

Edited November 1, 2019 by acromite53

[GPX | 1,370]

I think it needs to be emphasised that there are 2 separate issues of discussions going on:

1. Is the grading of CIB any good for the hobby? I believe yes, but only in certain demographics of CIBs. For example, any CIB in poor condition should be rejected for grading because it’s wasting everybody’s time - it looks ugly for display and you won’t likely to make any profit when reselling (except maybe extremely rare items).

2. Is the hype and price hike a natural phenomenon or is it artificially made to take money from rich/stupid buggers? Whether right or wrong, here’s my opinion using an analogy: 

Ordinarily, when there’s a promotion of an item, I’d want it to be promoted by a salesman with facts and figures, pros and cons. The current hype and “articles” are seemingly done by cult members who want me to believe their ideologies without any linking with the mainstream thoughts. It just feels like I’m being brainwashed into thinking something rather than to give me the info for me to form an opinion on.

So kind of the feeling of “good salesman” vs “dodgy salesman”. And I’m sure there are plenty of people with this uneasy feeling about this price hike period.

[Bronty | 187]

6 hours ago, GPX said:

I think it needs to be emphasised that there are 2 separate issues of discussions going on:

1. Is the grading of CIB any good for the hobby? I believe yes, but only in certain demographics of CIBs. For example, any CIB in poor condition should be rejected for grading because it’s wasting everybody’s time - it looks ugly for display and you won’t likely to make any profit when reselling (except maybe extremely rare items).

2. Is the hype and price hike a natural phenomenon or is it artificially made to take money from rich/stupid buggers? Whether right or wrong, here’s my opinion using an analogy: 

Ordinarily, when there’s a promotion of an item, I’d want it to be promoted by a salesman with facts and figures, pros and cons. The current hype and “articles” are seemingly done by cult members who want me to believe their ideologies without any linking with the mainstream thoughts. It just feels like I’m being brainwashed into thinking something rather than to give me the info for me to form an opinion on.

So kind of the feeling of “good salesman” vs “dodgy salesman”. And I’m sure there are plenty of people with this uneasy feeling about this price hike period.

1) you (as an established collector) are really not whom those articles are pointed at, and there's only so much you can say in one.   You have to dumb it down a bit same way if you were starting out in say coins you'd want things dumbed down a bit too.

2) Personally, I'm really skeptical about the effectiveness of 'articles' anyways.    We've all read these stories.    Cabbage patch kid sells for 1,000 or Coin sells for a million, or elvis' bellybutton hair sells for 100k.    Have ANY of those stories ever resulted in a reaction from you that beyond 'heh would you look at that'?    An article doesn't make someone want to change the entire direction of their collecting energy and use of resources.    If you read an article tomorrow about the skyrocketing prices  of vintage dolls would you really go out and spend everything you had on dolls?   Of course not.    Converting someone from one hobby to another is really difficult.    It takes one on one conversations, and repeated exposures to the material, and more than anything the 'target' has to think of all this is a good idea.   All the articles in the world aren't going to result in new collectors (or not very many).    Its the other stuff that is drawing people in.   The discussions at trade shows, the connections with other collectors, the look at the material and wondering WTF they weren't collecting this already, that kind of stuff.    Without those other more important things an article gets read for 20 seconds and then recycled and completely forgotten about by the next day.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Bronty

[BreaKBeatZ | 136]

I just received this automated email from WATA today, and I thought the broken link to NA forums was pretty funny:

 

Wata Games - Shipment Status

Hello! Your submission to Wata Games is completed and on its way to you! Your FedEx Home Delivery tracking number is: . If you ordered any Post-Grading photos, you can view them in your user dashboard and save any images found there.

We thank you for your business and hope you are completely satisfied! We always want to hear your feedback and comments, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

 If you are overly satisfied with your experience, we love seeing you share your satisfaction and newly certified games online! Click on any of the social media links at the bottom to visit our Wata Games social pages or visit the NintendoAge forums here to show off your Wata Games with other collectors.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

9 hours ago, Bronty said:

1) you (as an established collector) are really not whom those articles are pointed at, and there's only so much you can say in one.   You have to dumb it down a bit same way if you were starting out in say coins you'd want things dumbed down a bit too.

2) Personally, I'm really skeptical about the effectiveness of 'articles' anyways.    We've all read these stories.    Cabbage patch kid sells for 1,000 or Coin sells for a million, or elvis' bellybutton hair sells for 100k.    Have ANY of those stories ever resulted in a reaction from you that beyond 'heh would you look at that'?    An article doesn't make someone want to change the entire direction of their collecting energy and use of resources.    If you read an article tomorrow about the skyrocketing prices  of vintage dolls would you really go out and spend everything you had on dolls?   Of course not.    Converting someone from one hobby to another is really difficult.    It takes one on one conversations, and repeated exposures to the material, and more than anything the 'target' has to think of all this is a good idea.   All the articles in the world aren't going to result in new collectors (or not very many).    Its the other stuff that is drawing people in.   The discussions at trade shows, the connections with other collectors, the look at the material and wondering WTF they weren't collecting this already, that kind of stuff.    Without those other more important things an article gets read for 20 seconds and then recycled and completely forgotten about by the next day.

“Articles” like that are only for clicks and to get you to look at ads really lol

[snes_collector | 56]

18 hours ago, hyrulevyse said:

Also, not proud of it but in an honest moment I'd tell you I'm disappointed/jealous that I've apparently been collecting wrong the last 18 years.  I say that with a bit of sarcasm but it's absolutely true in this new market.  I think that jealousy, lack of foresight, or whatever fuels a lot of the hate.  I've probably had 10 sealed Zelda's in my collecting journey and only kept 1, had dozens of chances to buy sealed black box games and own 0, been on forums with Bronty, Qixmaster, and DreamTR for almost two decades and can't retire lol.  But at the end of the day I love the stuff I have and the memories this hobby has given me, and me being right or wrong about my opinions above won't change any of that.

 

I'm not sure if jealous is the right word for me, but if I could do it again I definitely would have done a lot of things different. I couldn't really afford it then, and can't really afford it now- but it is interesting to think about and I would have made it work somehow. I'm sure most collectors (maybe of anything) feel that way. I think the important thing is to be able to enjoy what we do have and be able to look back on our past hunts and finds with good memories, even if we wished things were like they used to be.

[hyrulevyse | 151]

14 hours ago, snes_collector said:

I'm not sure if jealous is the right word for me, but if I could do it again I definitely would have done a lot of things different. I couldn't really afford it then, and can't really afford it now- but it is interesting to think about and I would have made it work somehow. I'm sure most collectors (maybe of anything) feel that way. I think the important thing is to be able to enjoy what we do have and be able to look back on our past hunts and finds with good memories, even if we wished things were like they used to be.

Yeah I don't know if jealous is the right word either but to be clear I'm not jealous because I wish I had them to keep them.  I have very little interest in owning that stuff obviously since I've been passing on it.  I think most of the black box games are average at best.  But I'd love to be sitting on a stockpile I could sell and purchase actual cool stuff.

[Link | 2,713]

180 business days is 36 weeks. So almost 8 months.

[Jim Jimmer | 234]

10 hours ago, Link said:

180 business days is 36 weeks. So almost 8 months.

For select tier they dont specify «business » days unlike other tiers. So i’d assume A 6months turnaround time.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Jim Jimmer

[Rareusgold | 1]

On 10/29/2019 at 4:33 PM, Californication said:

The most surprising thing for me in the article was that the coin industry is a billion dollar industry. Color me ignorant. That sounds super boring. 

And when I tell my fellow coin dealers that I collect video games. Some of them say. That cute! LOL What next! And Some say CAN YOU GET ME A DRAGON WARRIOR 1???? 

[JinxtheCat | 2]

On 10/31/2019 at 6:32 PM, ScaryD said:

I think that Wata is the start of the crash that happened in Comic Books. Speculation has become rampant by individuals who know very little about the medium. Some folks may enjoy that slab on their shelf but it means very little to a gamer who likes to collect like myself.

Comic Book crash?  Can i get a high level summary?  not familiar....

[tbone3969 | 304]

The comic books crash of the 90s had nothing to do with grading comics.  Actually the introduction of grading them seemed to bring back comic collecting and baseball card collecting, both from their crashes around the same time.  Super low level summary would be that people started realizing comics and cards were actually worth money in the late 80s and early 90s.  The hobbies exploded.  Businesses took note and started jumping into both hobbies and flooded the market with crappy quality books and cards.  Tons of new collectors who didn't know how to find where the real value was in certain books and cards just bought up all the garbage thinking it would be worth millions some day.  And then crash, everything imploded and prices plummeted.  Then the dust settled a bit and grading of books and cards came along.  This started the hunt for the super high grade versions of key books and key cards, which IMO brought back both hobbies.

 

[Bronty | 187]

2 minutes ago, tbone3969 said:

The comic books crash of the 90s had nothing to do with grading comics.  Actually the introduction of grading them seemed to bring back comic collecting and baseball card collecting, both from their crashes around the same time.  Super low level summary would be that people started realizing comics and cards were actually worth money in the late 80s and early 90s.  The hobbies exploded.  Businesses took note and started jumping into both hobbies and flooded the market with crappy quality books and cards.  Tons of new collectors who didn't know how to find where the real value was in certain books and cards just bought up all the garbage thinking it would be worth millions some day.  And then crash, everything imploded and prices plummeted.  Then the dust settled a bit and grading of books and cards came along.  This started the hunt for the super high grade versions of key books and key cards, which IMO brought back both hobbies.

 

that's good but it has to be emphasized that the crash was re NEW product not vintage product.

I.e. what happened at that time, if I were to paint that scenario today in games, is that people saw PS4 releases going for triple a month after they came out, so they started buying them by the case.    Major releases regularly started selling 100 million copies for unplayable games by studios the public liked.       Eventually, retailers like EB Games were buying so much gimmicky new product that they couldn't sell through it all.   Publishers kept pushing more and more gimmicks to keep retailers ordering.   Retailers ordered more and more to stuff to sell based on those gimmicks, but eventually the empty gimmicks turned people off, sell through rates dropped, and retailers were left holding mountains of unsold and now completely worthless inventory.

Simply put, way more product was printed than there was demand for.

None of that has anything to do with the vintage market.    This was a crash in the equivalent of PS4 games, not NES games.

[tbone3969 | 304]

13 minutes ago, Bronty said:

that's good but it has to be emphasized that the crash was re NEW product not vintage product.

I.e. what happened at that time, if I were to paint that scenario today in games, is that people saw PS4 releases going for triple a month after they came out, so they started buying them by the case.    Major releases regularly started selling 100 million copies for unplayable games by studios the public liked.       Eventually, retailers like EB Games were buying so much gimmicky new product that they couldn't sell through it all.   Publishers kept pushing more and more gimmicks to keep retailers ordering.   Retailers ordered more and more to stuff to sell based on those gimmicks, but eventually the empty gimmicks turned people off, sell through rates dropped, and retailers were left holding mountains of unsold and now completely worthless inventory.

Simply put, way more product was printed than there was demand for.

None of that has anything to do with the vintage market.    This was a crash in the equivalent of PS4 games, not NES games.

I generally agree with what you say here but the crash was so bad in both markets that it did have an impact on vintage prices as well, albeit not as much. 

[Bronty | 187]

That’s fair yeah.   I recall the price impact being relatively minor (10%?  20%?  on vintage [depends how you define that of course]) but certainly, vintage was impacted from a liquidity POV, a lot.   It was just harder to sell stuff; fewer buyers.    BUt those that owned good older material weren't going to give it away so it was a chill on sales of old stuff (less turn) but not so much on price.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Bronty

[peg | 372]

Sounds similar to the Atari crash in the 80s...a bunch of half assed useless shit flooding the market with ridiculous quantities.  Cough ET, Cough Pacman.

Edited November 4, 2019 by peg

[Bronty | 187]

you're right.   Its really very similar.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Bronty

[ERROR | 15]

Wait how is this similar to the videogame crash of 83?

[Link | 2,713]

‘83 Video game crash: market flooded with crap. High amount of speculation by publishers (“people will buy anything”)

90s comics crash: market flooded with crap; high amount of speculation and investing on new items by individuals (“I have to buy everything”) and publishers obliging

Current video game grading trend: high amount of speculation and investing on vintage items by individuals 

Edited November 4, 2019 by Link

[MrMark0673 | 197]

Umm, what?

[rorsch | 21]

On 10/28/2019 at 7:11 PM, MrMark0673 said:

I like Deniz (seriously, I've always liked Deniz), and no one called anyone a thief.  Pointing out the obvious isn't libel Dan, have a snickers.

Indicate anything I said as being objectively untrue and I have no problem changing what I wrote.

Is Jim not a WATA advisor?  Is he not also a founder of Heritage?  Was he also not a member of the buying party of the $100k Mario?  Would that sale not boost the stock of WATA, Heritage, and early sealed games in general?  

What is it exactly that you're taking issue with?

I love you Mark. This was exactly my argument.