Million Dollar Mario...1.56M...What the..?

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

2 minutes ago, Hammerfestus said:

A couple nights ago actually.  Are you Jack or the giant in this?  Do you have a goose that plops out sealed NES games?

price match headlines or top ask no problem-- dm me -- vgs gets most of it

very much want it to be real too but still wait playing magic beans on Ocarina of time instead

 

 

 

[DoctorEncore | 3,690]

On 7/12/2021 at 4:19 PM, CasualCart said:

A man after my own heart.

On 7/12/2021 at 4:47 PM, GPX said:

You gotta be careful with half-truths in marketing. 2 known copies in this WATA grade (currently). That doesn’t mean 100 others don’t exist in that same grade. There would likely be a fair few from VGA that could later be converted. Then there are others perhaps still in container boxes and isolated ones well kept in dark storage etc.

Ars Technica has a really good article about the SM64 sale with some great quotes from our very own @Bronty as well as some other big wigs in the collecting community. If you compare videogames to cards, the populations may actually be substantially lower. Taken directly from the article: "population reports show only 318 known Fleer Michael Jordan rookie cards rated at a perfect 10 by grading service PSA. When it comes to Pokémon cards, only 122 first-edition Charizard cards have received that same perfect rating."

https://arstechnica.com/features/2021/07/collectors-are-as-confused-as-you-are-about-that-1-56m-super-mario-64-sale/

I highly recommend everyone reading it.

[Californication | 1,477]

1 hour ago, DoctorEncore said:

A man after my own heart.

Ars Technica has a really good article about the SM64 sale with some great quotes from our very own @Bronty as well as some other big wigs in the collecting community. If you compare videogames to cards, the populations may actually be substantially lower. Taken directly from the article: "population reports show only 318 known Fleer Michael Jordan rookie cards rated at a perfect 10 by grading service PSA. When it comes to Pokémon cards, only 122 first-edition Charizard cards have received that same perfect rating."

https://arstechnica.com/features/2021/07/collectors-are-as-confused-as-you-are-about-that-1-56m-super-mario-64-sale/

I highly recommend everyone reading it.

It's an okay article, more for people that are unfamiliar with the last couple years imo. It did skip the actual/legitimate complaints video game collectors have made about the incoming investors and summed that all up as feeling threatened which is weak tea.

I think the most interesting thing about the article is the size of Bronty's nuts to still be holding his collection. I mean his collecting is obviously on a dif. level, but that is a pretty thoughtful decision .

Edited July 19, 2021 by Californication

[Dumars2001 | 164]

2 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

A man after my own heart.

Ars Technica has a really good article about the SM64 sale with some great quotes from our very own @Bronty as well as some other big wigs in the collecting community. If you compare videogames to cards, the populations may actually be substantially lower. Taken directly from the article: "population reports show only 318 known Fleer Michael Jordan rookie cards rated at a perfect 10 by grading service PSA. When it comes to Pokémon cards, only 122 first-edition Charizard cards have received that same perfect rating."

https://arstechnica.com/features/2021/07/collectors-are-as-confused-as-you-are-about-that-1-56m-super-mario-64-sale/

I highly recommend everyone reading it.

That was a great read and it provided more insight to the current situation in the hobby. Thanks so much for posting it.

Bronty is literally the Michael Jordan (The Godfather/Legend) of sealed collecting and his thoughts carry a lot of weight/merit as to what is currently going on in the video game market today.

[AdamW | 713]

The most interesting thing in that article for me was that HA actually wants WATA to release pop reports. At least that's what they said on the record to a journalist.

[YOURTURN | 1,256]

The combination of this sale, that article, and my past experiences have me convinced that I need to step away from collecting video games. Which is fine because the worst I now face is deciding what comes next, and wondering when I will stop buying stuff just to have it graded. Which is the year 2121. 

As for the mania... Been there, forced to deal with the worst it had to offer on both sides, and all that junk. All I can say is that those experiences have caused my anxieties being here an issue. Double when I get that "You don't make sense" type of narration. Which is something I hope does not happen to you guys. With this being a tie-in to that issue.

Whew! I should consider doing a "I don't Wata know..." sale for one of the games I sent to CAS for grading! Granted that it will be the second import game they have graded, it will be the first for that console and series. Then again, it might be harder to sell than a "Men of VGS 2022" calendar. But I might be wrong. 

[Gulag Joe | 582]

4 hours ago, FenrirZero said:

The combination of this sale, that article, and my past experiences have me convinced that I need to step away from collecting video games. Which is fine because the worst I now face is deciding what comes next, and wondering when I will stop buying stuff just to have it graded. Which is the year 2121. 

As for the mania... Been there, forced to deal with the worst it had to offer on both sides, and all that junk. All I can say is that those experiences have caused my anxieties being here an issue. Double when I get that "You don't make sense" type of narration. Which is something I hope does not happen to you guys. With this being a tie-in to that issue.

Whew! I should consider doing a "I don't Wata know..." sale for one of the games I sent to CAS for grading! Granted that it will be the second import game they have graded, it will be the first for that console and series. Then again, it might be harder to sell than a "Men of VGS 2022" calendar. But I might be wrong. 

Get in on the ground floor of sealed VHS while the gettin is still good!

[Gulag Joe | 582]

I am a huge advocate for pop reports, but Wata does make a good point about not releasing them. They may be misleading if they were released at this point since not many games have been graded, providing the potential illusion of games being scarce. However, who is Wata to decide what prospective buyers want to do with their money based on that information?

Edited July 19, 2021 by Gulag Joe

[a3quit4s | 4,090]

The Ars article is interesting and a good account of happenings, at least from what I have seen here and around and not so much being interested in the sealed market and it's shennanigans (goofy shit on the wall Farva). One thing sticks out to me though, the author keeps referencing the $100k Mario as the starting point of this and then very quitely has this sentence;

"Just a month later, though, the co-chairman of Heritage was part of a group that spent $100,000 on a copy of Super Mario Bros., gaming's first six-figure individual game sale."

I'm not going to speak on ethics or legality because it's a dead horse at this point but it seems very self serving to buy things, basically from yourself, to drive the market up. I've always had a similar distrust in coins, comics, sports cards, etc. 

Edit: in all fairness it does say the co-chair was part of a group that bought the $100k Mario, he may or may not have had anything to do with the purchase.

Edited July 19, 2021 by a3quit4s

[jonebone | 1,307]

The population report argument will make my head explode.  You can't compare a mature to an immature market.

Point being, a 1906 tobacco card or 1930 comic or anything from nearly a century ago is pretty mature.  If the population says there's only 20 in existence, then there's pretty much only 20 in existence.  You may find a new one every once in a blue moon but those are known collectibles and everyone has turned over every rock possible trying to bring them to market.

Then take a sealed game from the 90s like Mario.  Granted the market is much more mature than it was, but it's so new that you will keep finding new copies come to market.  It will be much slower than it used to be and competition will be fierce, but the population is going to keep increasing.  Drawing those parallels to a mature market is fool's gold.  

I do entirely agree that many titles will not have enough copies available compared to the waves of new buyers coming in, but comparisons to something nearly 100 years old are a little silly.  It's just the typical car salesman type pitch where you're giving the new money every excuse in the book to overspend.  

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

11 minutes ago, jonebone said:

The population report argument will make my head explode.  You can't compare a mature to an immature market.

Point being, a 1906 tobacco card or 1930 comic or anything from nearly a century ago is pretty mature.  If the population says there's only 20 in existence, then there's pretty much only 20 in existence.  You may find a new one every once in a blue moon but those are known collectibles and everyone has turned over every rock possible trying to bring them to market.

Then take a sealed game from the 90s like Mario.  Granted the market is much more mature than it was, but it's so new that you will keep finding new copies come to market.  It will be much slower than it used to be and competition will be fierce, but the population is going to keep increasing.  Drawing those parallels to a mature market is fool's gold.  

I do entirely agree that many titles will not have enough copies available compared to the waves of new buyers coming in, but comparisons to something nearly 100 years old are a little silly.  It's just the typical car salesman type pitch where you're giving the new money every excuse in the book to overspend.  

pop reports would tell you relative rarity like how much rarer 1999 is than 1992 is than 1985 in a general sense

they dont tell us pop because of how much rarer sealed games are than any other hobby

 

[Khromak | 768]

1 hour ago, Gulag Joe said:

I am a huge advocate for pop reports, but Wata does make a good point about not releasing them. They may be misleading if they were released at this point since not many games have been graded, providing the potential illusion of games being scarce. However, who is Wata to decide what prospective buyers want to do with their money based on that information?

This total BS in my opinion. They've been grading as fast as the money machine will print money, they can't claim that there isn't enough data. If there have been 200 copies of Dragon Warrior graded, 0 NWC gold cartridges graded, and 70 SM64 graded, it says a lot about the rarity of those games.

At the end of the day some people may make unwise decisions overspending on sealed QIX because "it's never been graded before ZOMFG SO RARE" but they're not responsible for the stupidity of consumers not asking "why" behind pop reports.

For my $0.02, I think the real reason is the one most other people have raised in this and other threads: they know if they release the reports everyone will realize that their 9.0A sealed SM64 is not worth a million bucks.

[docile tapeworm | 4,194]

2 hours ago, Gulag Joe said:

I am a huge advocate for pop reports, but Wata does make a good point about not releasing them. They may be misleading if they were released at this point since not many games have been graded, providing the potential illusion of games being scarce. However, who is Wata to decide what prospective buyers want to do with their money based on that information?

the misleading costumers line is bs. watas argument for not releasing pop info to people who can understand it, is that they are protecting the un informed?.....

i got some ocean front property in arizona. from my front lorch you can see the sea

[Californication | 1,477]

50 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

the misleading costumers line is bs. watas argument for not releasing pop info to people who can understand it, is that they are protecting the un informed?.....

i got some ocean front property in arizona. from my front lorch you can see the sea

That sounds like one of a kind or one of two property, I'm in.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Californication

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,162]

Anybody else see the irony in the fact that (X) some dope bid a Mario 64 to $1.56M, and (Y) Wata is OMG so concerned about people overreacting to the data and oh my there might not be enough to really draw a legitimate conclusion. 

 

You don't want to release the reports because it is not in your financial self-interest to do so. Anyone that thinks otherwise needs to have their head examined. 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by WalterWhiteJr.

[docile tapeworm | 4,194]

21 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

You don't want to release the reports because it is not in your financial self-interest to do so.

 

thats the vibe im getting.

[inasuma | 1,203]

16 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

A man after my own heart.

Ars Technica has a really good article about the SM64 sale with some great quotes from our very own @Bronty as well as some other big wigs in the collecting community. If you compare videogames to cards, the populations may actually be substantially lower. Taken directly from the article: "population reports show only 318 known Fleer Michael Jordan rookie cards rated at a perfect 10 by grading service PSA. When it comes to Pokémon cards, only 122 first-edition Charizard cards have received that same perfect rating."

https://arstechnica.com/features/2021/07/collectors-are-as-confused-as-you-are-about-that-1-56m-super-mario-64-sale/

I highly recommend everyone reading it.

I'm surprised this article barely mentions the cozy relationship between WATA and HA. Then again, wouldn't expect pop culture journalists to dig very deep into this stuff.

[kell | 102]

I am a huge numbers/data driven person, but I don't get why so many are pushing to get pop reports. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't believe one can extrapolate that much useful data from a process that really only took off what, a couple years ago, and has very limited visibility to the entire population.

I usually find those that push numbers will do so in pursuit of their own interest. Statistics can, and often do, lie.

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by kell

[AdamW | 713]

53 minutes ago, kell said:

I am a huge numbers/data driven person, but I don't get why so many are pushing to get pop reports. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't believe one can extrapolate that much useful data from a process that really only took off what, a couple years ago, and has very limited visibility to the entire population.

I usually find those that push numbers will do so in pursuit of their own interest. Statistics can, and often do, lie.

 

Nobody is expecting a population report to actually reflect how many sealed copies of each game or variant or whatever exist.

But.

When someone is paying $1.5m for a 9.8/A++ Super Mario 64 - wouldn't it be kinda useful to know whether another one exists already? Or another two? Or another ten?

Wouldn't it be useful to know how many sticker sealed SMBs WATA has graded, and in what grades, when people are spending crazy money on those?

When people are dropping over $100k on a 9.4/A++ Pokemon Red "Sandshrew", do you think it'd be useful to know how many of those there are? And whether there are any 9.6s or 9.8s?

[JamesRobot | 5,785]

What in holy hell is going on?!  I'm gone for a couple weeks and you people let something like this happen?  Jeezuss!  This is no longer funny.

[kell | 102]

24 minutes ago, AdamW said:

When someone is paying $1.5m for a 9.8/A++ Super Mario 64 - wouldn't it be kinda useful to know whether another one exists already? Or another two? Or another ten?

If the person who bought that game doesn't care, why should we ...?

I get the idea of them, and your point. However, I just don't think they add much, if any, value at this time. Again, it's just one part of the equation driving the market value.

Edited July 19, 2021 by kell

[Gulag Joe | 582]

15 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

What in holy hell is going on?!  I'm gone for a couple weeks and you people let something like this happen?  Jeezuss!  This is no longer funny.

I wonder if Rick looks back on this moment with regret

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,162]

15 minutes ago, kell said:

If the person who bought that game doesn't care, why should we ...?

I get the idea of them, and your point. However, I just don't think they add much, if any, value at this time. Again, it's just one part of the equation driving the market value.

Is this a serious question?

[YOURTURN | 1,256]

57 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

What in holy hell is going on?!  I'm gone for a couple weeks and you people let something like this happen?  Jeezuss!  This is no longer funny.

[JamesRobot | 5,785]

Dammit Murray! I said it's not funny.