WATA Population Report / Census

[Gulag Joe | 582]

Amazing how that data hasn't leaked

[inasuma | 1,203]

looks like wata does expose a "count" field for each game variant returned to the network request when searching for games in their submission form. no shenanigans here: it's easily accessible, and i agree that it's strange it's even included in the payload. sadly it does not differentiate sealed vs CIB, so the true division there is anyone's guess.

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i mean, i may or may not be building a list now.

Edit: nvm, you can differentiate because the CIB ones always say "cart" or some other descriptors for the internals of the game. sealed games only describe the box. fun.

Edit 2: nvm, the whole CIB vs sealed thing isn’t real. Each ”variant” merely refers to a piece of the game in question. Eg seal, cart, manual, box. Kinda confusing haha

[Gulag Joe | 582]

21 hours ago, inasuma said:

looks like wata does expose a "count" field for each game variant returned to the network request when searching for games in their submission form. no shenanigans here: it's easily accessible, and i agree that it's strange it's even included in the payload. sadly it does not differentiate sealed vs CIB, so the true division there is anyone's guess.

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i mean, i may or may not be building a list now.

Edit: nvm, you can differentiate because the CIB ones always say "cart" or some other descriptors for the internals of the game. sealed games only describe the box. fun.

Is it possible to determine the number of sealed vs cib in those figures?

[inasuma | 1,203]

Just now, Gulag Joe said:

Is it possible to determine the number of sealed vs cib in those figures?

It is indeed. all the "variants" they list for each game also include the detailed description. Anything mentioning "cart", for example, is a reference to only something you'd know with a CIB game.

It's confusing though because they mix ALL variants together: countries, CIB, sealed, even some vague variants that make no mention seal, tear strips, or carts. It's pretty vague all things considered.

I'm currently seeing how easy it is to parse out CIB vs sealed for strictly USA games and tbh, i'm considering just grabbing the data and dumping it for someone else to parse out. I'm not super educated on all the variants for a given game.

[Strange | 1,700]

It’s obvious why they haven’t released them and it’s an absolute joke to people on the outside looking in.

[A_Feisty_Pickle | 244]

21 hours ago, inasuma said:

looks like wata does expose a "count" field for each game variant returned to the network request when searching for games in their submission form. no shenanigans here: it's easily accessible, and i agree that it's strange it's even included in the payload. sadly it does not differentiate sealed vs CIB, so the true division there is anyone's guess.

[REDACTED]

i mean, i may or may not be building a list now.

Edit: nvm, you can differentiate because the CIB ones always say "cart" or some other descriptors for the internals of the game. sealed games only describe the box. fun.

After poking around for like 5 minutes it seems like sealed games may be the "type" field with value 6. 

EDIT: Just doing some spot checking I am not sure how accurate the count field is. Some of the counts are a lot lower than I would expect. Only showing 4 sealed Mario Party 1's for an example. 

LAST EDIT: Yeah I definitely don't think all the data is returned here. I submitted a Futurama for PS2 back in June 2019. I only see 2 'variants' of sealed copies with a count of 1 for each (so supposedly only 2 graded sealed copies, which I doubt). Both those variants were created after June 2019, so I don't think my copy is included in the response here. 

REAL LAST EDIT: Oh June was my submission date. Looks like it was graded on 9/27/19, 3 days after the entry returned from that response. Looks pretty likely then. (Damn I shouldn't have sold this looking back lol)

 

[A_Feisty_Pickle | 244]

@inasuma just sounds low. But I guess I haven't seen too many 1's graded compared to 2 and 3. I'm far from an expert though. I made some edits to my post, I am more inclined to believe it could be accurate now. 

[AdamW | 713]

So type 1 is box, type 2 is cart, type 3 is manual. Type 6 is exactly "seal" - not "sealed box", but literally "seal". In the database that backs all this there will be a table of "graded items" or whatever and it'll pull these together - the entry for one sealed game will reference a "box" (a type 1 item) and a "seal" (a type 6 item).

It's trivial to run the query with httpie or similar and store the raw json output for processing, BTW.

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[A_Feisty_Pickle | 244]

Off topic but looking through variants you can find cool descriptors for prototypes that have been submitted 

[AdamW | 713]

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[A_Feisty_Pickle | 244]

18 hours ago, AdamW said:

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Also seems to be the opposite issue where there are more seals than boxes
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[AdamW | 713]

btw there appear to be 14943 video game titles in the db (that's not "~15000 graded copies", it's "~15000 games of which they presumably have graded at least one copy"). I could dump every one, I guess...I'd have to set up a sensible storage backend though. maybe I'll do it tomorrow. edit: no I can't, they broke the trick. boo.

Edited June 30, 2021 by AdamW

[Gulag Joe | 582]

36 minutes ago, AdamW said:

btw there appear to be 14943 games in the db. I could dump every one, I guess...I'd have to set up a sensible storage backend though. maybe I'll do it tomorrow.

Wow. Less than 15k. That's mind blowing. No wonder people are dumping money into it. If the hobby launches into a comic book or baseball card interest level? To the moon!

[AdamW | 713]

6 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Wow. Less than 15k. That's mind blowing. No wonder people are dumping money into it. If the hobby launches into a comic book or baseball card interest level? To the moon!

Oh. Sorry, I should've been clearer. There are ~15,000 video game titles in the database. Super Mario Bros. is a video game. Pokemon Red is a video game. 14,943 of those. Not 14,943 graded copies. There would be far, far more graded copies (can't give you a count as we did not dump each game before they broke the trick, and there was no convenient 'total graded games' count anywhere we found).

[RH | 4,895]

40 minutes ago, AdamW said:

wow someone is quick on the uptake - they just broke the trick! API isn't returning the "variants" any more. well boo.

I wouldn't worry about that too much.

[RH | 4,895]

2 hours ago, inasuma said:

probably better than what i wanted to do (write a web scraper against their UI).

EDIT: by QR code do you mean the matrix? someone could probably see if an app already exists from the creator of that tech. unless wata had it made custom, then sadness.

 

Yes, the matrix but on their website, they call it a QR code. I assume it's a variant of QR codes, but they worked with a data company to design the system. It might be a modified QR schema to make it proprietary.

If I had the time, I'd read up on the QR spec and then try to analyse their code to see if a pattern emerges. I don't think the data is encrypted so it's probably the same data in the DB for any given graded game.

[AdamW | 713]

10 minutes ago, RH said:

I wouldn't worry about that too much.

PM me, if you mean something different from just the 'QR' code stuff you've been talking about...

[Gulag Joe | 582]

16 hours ago, AdamW said:

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Playstation 1- Resident Evil long box 

Genesis- Mortal Kombat 1

[AdamW | 713]

10 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Playstation 1- Resident Evil long box 

Genesis- Mortal Kombat 1

Sorry, I meant one of the games on the list. I have the more detailed data for all those games, but unless we find another way in, we can't get the data for other games we didn't already look up.

[Gulag Joe | 582]

3 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Sorry, I meant one of the games on the list. I have the more detailed data for all those games, but unless we find another way in, we can't get the data for other games we didn't already look up.

Dang. Do you know the breakdown of Pokemmon Yellow (white rating, no rating, solid black rating)?

[inasuma | 1,203]

1 hour ago, RH said:

I wouldn't worry about that too much.

If you know something, please DM  

[AdamW | 713]

1 minute ago, Gulag Joe said:

Dang. Do you know the breakdown of Pokemmon Yellow (white rating, no rating, solid black rating)?

I can figure it out after dinner. It takes a minute because the data is kind of messy. You know how wata tags often use a slightly different description for the same box? Each different description is an "item" in the data. So there will be three or four different "items" that are really all the same print. I have to go through them all and figure out which ones are for which actual print and add up the totals.

[inasuma | 1,203]

I pulled a pretty decent chunk of raw data (overlaps with what Adam posted above), will share here once I’m back at my computer. 

[AdamW | 713]

8 minutes ago, inasuma said:

I pulled a pretty decent chunk of raw data (overlaps with what Adam posted above), will share here once I’m back at my computer. 

I can parse out the counts for any more games you have the raw data for easily. The above included all the ones in the zip file you sent me already (thanks!)

[AdamW | 713]

@Gulag JoeYellow breakdown:

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Interesting note: three are counted as "Made in Japan, E Rating, 83% Fiber, w/Wal-Mart exclusive movie ticket". I'm not sure what that bundle was, whether it's an actual box difference, a sticker on the shrinkwrap, or what. Anyone know? edit: ah, thanks Google - looks like it's this thing: https://www.carousell.sg/p/pokemon-yellow-version-with-first-movie-ticket-95061837/