WATA Population Report / Census

[AdamW | 713]

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[bergalon | 8]

Wow

Edited June 30, 2021 by bergalon

[inasuma | 1,203]

Sorry for tonnage of mega man games. I happen to have quite a few and wanted to get those specifically. 

it’s interesting to see 8 gold NWC carts were graded. That’s about 1/3 (26 total) having passed through wata’s hands!

[inasuma | 1,203]

Couple more from the initial list (think Adam missed these)

legend: <box total>/<seal total>

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EDIT: sorry to double post

[GetTheGreg | 105]

WOW, that was really fun to read through everything

[OptOut | 8,883]

5 hours ago, AdamW said:

edit: no I can't, they broke the trick. boo.

THIS is the biggest revelation for me, out of this entire thread... It means they are WATCHING us!!! There is only one sensible thing to do now that we have this CRUCIAL piece of information...

Yo, WATA, over here:

Goddem! 

[AdamW | 713]

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[Brickman | 3,983]

Thanks guys, very nice work.

This data is very revealing and it is starting to show why Wata are dragging their feet on a pop report.

I don’t expect a pop report for quite a while after seeing this. They won’t do it until they can milk every last $$$.

[Gulag Joe | 582]

Even still with the totals that were shown, all of them are far lower than a PSA 10 Michael Jordan rookie card, or Batman #1. There may be more of each sealed game out there, but the amount shown vs the time they've been open, the speculation of rarity is real for sealed games. The release of a population report might do the opposite- the perceived rarity may make the hobby explode in popularity like a gold rush.

[GPX | 1,369]

5 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Even still with the totals that were shown, all of them are far lower than a PSA 10 Michael Jordan rookie card, or Batman #1. There may be more of each sealed game out there, but the amount shown vs the time they've been open, the speculation of rarity is real for sealed games. The release of a population report might do the opposite- the perceived rarity may make the hobby explode in popularity like a gold rush.

Not quite, you must remember the pop reports for WATA are only the items that has passed through WATA. There would still be host of other numbers passing through VGA, or still remaining out in the wild potentially. The hobby is still much too young to know in concrete details, as opposed to cards/comics of the rarest items.

[Gulag Joe | 582]

14 minutes ago, GPX said:

Not quite, you must remember the pop reports for WATA are only the items that has passed through WATA. There would still be host of other numbers passing through VGA, or still remaining out in the wild potentially. The hobby is still much too young to know in concrete details, as opposed to cards/comics of the rarest items.

Idk, I've been watching a slew of auction searches on eBay for the last 20 years. The rate at which some of these sealed games come up for sale is dwarfed in comparison to major comic book or sports cards. Seeing a list of sealed Mario Brothers sitting at less than 200... the probability that there are not even thousands, but hundreds more out there is low.

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,162]

Nice work all. There is not a chance Wata releases pop reports. They are making too much money and have their little minions at the top of the “market” defending the decision not to release pop reports. It’s deceitful and manipulative to NOT release transparent information. The argument that it might trigger a knee jerk reaction and that the market should mature for longer is such BS. Give people the information you said you were going to give them, and let them make those decisions. 

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

14 hours ago, AdamW said:

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Paging @ThePhleo. Figured you would be interested. 

[jonebone | 1,307]

I'm really confused why people think that Wata would intentionally withhold population reports thinking that it affects their bottom line?

They get paid on volume.  The don't care whether a sealed Mario is worth $1,000 or $100,000.  They are paid on the number of games submitted.  You could argue that higher declared values make them more money, but I assume that extra amount they are billing just offsets the cost of insurance.  Not a net gain.

End of day I would prefer to see some population reports out there at this time too, but I don't see it as profit driven.  It's likely just a laundry list hundreds of items of long and population report is not at the top of the priority list. 

[AdamW | 713]

26 minutes ago, jonebone said:

I'm really confused why people think that Wata would intentionally withhold population reports thinking that it affects their bottom line?

They get paid on volume.  The don't care whether a sealed Mario is worth $1,000 or $100,000.  They are paid on the number of games submitted.  You could argue that higher declared values make them more money, but I assume that extra amount they are billing just offsets the cost of insurance.  Not a net gain.

End of day I would prefer to see some population reports out there at this time too, but I don't see it as profit driven.  It's likely just a laundry list hundreds of items of long and population report is not at the top of the priority list. 

Well I couldn't tell you why either, but I posted these numbers to the WATA group on Facebook (which is 'unofficial', but people from WATA including Kenneth do read it and are in contact with the admins) and they were deleted by an admin. And they did very quickly change the code to not return this data any more, presumably in response to us posting it. (There isn't any other potentially sensitive info in the data, like personal info, that would explain that change). So clearly someone at WATA wanted to not let it out.

I was a bit surprised too, honestly, for the same reason - my understanding about their reasons for not releasing a pop report were the same as yours, and so I didn't expect they'd bother to stomp on this so fast if this is all data they intended to release anyway and just hadn't got around to organizing yet.

[AdamW | 713]

Also, I'm just now realizing that neither I nor @inasumathought to look up Stadium Events or Little Samson. Blame us for being a couple of Game Boy guys, I guess.

[RH | 4,898]

36 minutes ago, jonebone said:

I'm really confused why people think that Wata would intentionally withhold population reports thinking that it affects their bottom line?

They get paid on volume.  The don't care whether a sealed Mario is worth $1,000 or $100,000.  They are paid on the number of games submitted.  You could argue that higher declared values make them more money, but I assume that extra amount they are billing just offsets the cost of insurance.  Not a net gain.

End of day I would prefer to see some population reports out there at this time too, but I don't see it as profit driven.  It's likely just a laundry list hundreds of items of long and population report is not at the top of the priority list. 

Oh, there is good reason why.  Sure they are swamped, but we don't know if they've processed 200,000 games or 2,000,000.  I'm sure some really smart people could probably look at trends and make a solid, educated guess but in general it keeps a false sense of scarcity regarding games.  Do you have the only graded copy of game-X that's a 9.8 or better?  Who knows?  You think your one game is rare, so you might submit more, thinking they will be rare and valuable too.

If people saw that their sealed copy and variant of Pokemon Red has been graded 1,000 times and there are 30 games with a higher score than yours, you're likely to be more choosy on which games you submit, and how many.  So long as you think you are increasing the value of your collectibles, you are inclined to continue to submit them.  Wata will let this happen until 75% of all games are slabbed if they can keep up the marketing and the illusion.

[RH | 4,898]

Guys, I wouldn't worry about those variant counts.  Someone managed to pull  all of that data Monday for every game currently in their db. Just give it time.

Edited June 30, 2021 by RH

[O.G. CIB | 415]

10 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Also, I'm just now realizing that neither I nor @inasumathought to look up Stadium Events or Little Samson. Blame us for being a couple of Game Boy guys, I guess.

LOL I was looking for the Stadium Events pop information too  Great work! 

 

[O.G. CIB | 415]

14 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Well I couldn't tell you why either, but I posted these numbers to the WATA group on Facebook (which is 'unofficial', but people from WATA including Kenneth do read it and are in contact with the admins) and they were deleted by an admin. And they did very quickly change the code to not return this data any more, presumably in response to us posting it. (There isn't any other potentially sensitive info in the data, like personal info, that would explain that change). So clearly someone at WATA wanted to not let it out.

I was a bit surprised too, honestly, for the same reason - my understanding about their reasons for not releasing a pop report were the same as yours, and so I didn't expect they'd bother to stomp on this so fast if this is all data they intended to release anyway and just hadn't got around to organizing yet.

Too much money at stake for some of the people there so I am not surprised they wiped it clean. The mods there are heavily invested so they want to protect their investment if there is any fallout from this. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to put the "squeeze" on the information on this thread to have it removed.

[RH | 4,898]

Look what I found.

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[OptOut | 8,883]

2 hours ago, RH said:

Look what I found.

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I have absolutely NO idea what any of this means, but I am shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you! 

[RH | 4,898]

2 hours ago, OptOut said:

I have absolutely NO idea what any of this means, but I am shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you! 

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[OptOut | 8,883]

7 minutes ago, Mr. CIB said:

Too much money at stake for some of the people there so I am not surprised they wiped it clean. The mods there are heavily invested so they want to protect their investment if there is any fallout from this. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to put the "squeeze" on the information on this thread to have it removed.

Oh! That would be scandalous! They were able to do that sort of thing on NA back in the day, perhaps @DefaultGen remembers...

They try anything like that around here, there'll be HECK to pay! 

[RH | 4,898]

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