Heritage Auctions Thread

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,162]

1 minute ago, ExplodedHamster said:

I bought 2 Ocarina casepacks from someone who had maintained them meticulously. Two were graded by prior owner as 90+ (one is overgraded imo) and 3 of the remaining 10 got 9.8s. The rest were a mix of 9.4 and 9.6.

So 3/10 received a 9.8? And you just bought this from someone last year? Yeah I will definitely stick to my over 50 in existence odds...

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

3 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

So 3/10 received a 9.8? And you just bought this from someone last year? Yeah I will definitely stick to my over 50 in existence odds...

Sure, if you think finding casepacks of Ocarina and Mario 64 maintained in great condition is a normal occurrence (the number of “Uncirculated” designations on VGA’s pop reports suggest otherwise). But let’s see what pop reports say. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by ExplodedHamster

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

1 minute ago, ExplodedHamster said:

But let’s see what pop reports say. 

Oh, when are they coming out?

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

Just now, CodysGameRoom said:

Oh, when are they coming out?

I have no idea, but hopefully soon. I’ve wanted pop reports for over a year now. There is no need for the speculation. Let the numbers speak for themselves, though VGA’s old numbers do provide some clue.

[WalterWhiteJr. | 1,162]

2 minutes ago, ExplodedHamster said:

Sure, if you think finding casepacks of Ocarina and Mario 64 maintained in great condition is a normal occurrence (the number of “Uncirculated” designations on VGA’s pop reports suggest otherwise). But let’s see what pop reports say. 

I never said finding casepacks is a "normal occurence." I said, and do believe, that there are certainly more that exist and have not come to light (or those that own them are not the type to flash them all over social media).

[OptOut | 8,884]

1 hour ago, captmorgandrinker said:

Why else do you think we'd be nice to him?

Well, you could all stand to be nicer. 

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

5 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

I never said finding casepacks is a "normal occurence." I said, and do believe, that there are certainly more that exist and have not come to light (or those that own them are not the type to flash them all over social media).

Yeah, I mean if people have stuff and have not graded them, that is always a possibility. The opportunity for grading has been around a long time, however. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by ExplodedHamster

[jonebone | 1,307]

I have high confidence saying there aren't 50 perfect SMB64s out there.  Rarebucky's case was from 2007 / 2008.  I suspect someone else may have subbed a case and not used the "U" designation for perceived rarity, but the collecting pool has been looking for case fresh copies since then.   Even when it was only a $2k game the return was worth it to try and find the mint ones.  Now the collecting pool is infinitely larger and they just aren't going to pop up like that. 

One thing that people haven't mentioned yet, is that I like knowing I'm done with a game at Wata 9.8 A++. You don't have that same feeling on VGA scale.  I hated upgrading from 90 to 90+, maybe would go 90 to 95 if opportunity presented itself, but even a game like Mario 64 has a 95+ out there.  

Knowing that you're done upgrading a game has some intrinsic value that  is hard to quantify.

Though in all honesty, the Wata 9.9 has to come out in the next 5 years.  It'll piss off a lot of 9.8 owners but it will invigorate the market again and cause a ton of resubs (more money).  That's kind of inevitable IMO. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by jonebone

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

2 hours ago, karljobst said:

Does $6000 for Majora's Mask in that condition seem extremely cheap. Considering how much other N64 titles were going for on HA, that seems insane. Also a good condition Mario 2 went for $90k which seems really cheap as well given how much Mario 3 went for.

Majora's Mask is far less desirable than Ocarina of Time

Mario 2 is far less desirable than Mario 1 or 3

This is irrespective of rarity, which others have provided info on

Think of it like comic book "keys"... the first appearance of a certain character is a key like the first 3D Zelda is a key. and Mario 2 is like a weird spinoff whereas 1 and 3 are both groundbreaking titles. 

I wish MM and SMB2 were more beloved but I can't change the zeitgeist. 

[AdamW | 713]

6 minutes ago, jonebone said:

Though in all honesty, the Wata 9.9 has to come out in the next 5 years.  It'll piss off a lot of 9.8 owners but it will invigorate the market again and cause a ton of resubs (more money).  That's kind of inevitable IMO. 

Egad, sir! You are making scurrilous accusations against a company of faultless reputation! How dare you cast such mud against a firm which has been tireless in its devotion to neutrality and fair pla-

<breaks down corpsing helplessly>

[AdamW | 713]

6 minutes ago, MiamiSlice said:

Majora's Mask is far less desirable than Ocarina of Time

Mario 2 is far less desirable than Mario 1 or 3

This is irrespective of rarity, which others have provided info on

Think of it like comic book "keys"... the first appearance of a certain character is a key like the first 3D Zelda is a key. and Mario 2 is like a weird spinoff whereas 1 and 3 are both groundbreaking titles. 

I wish MM and SMB2 were more beloved but I can't change the zeitgeist. 

Hey, SMB2 is the first playable appearance of Princess Peach! Also a key title for large vegetable fans

[jonebone | 1,307]

6 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Egad, sir! You are making scurrilous accusations against a company of faultless reputation! How dare you cast such mud against a firm which has been tireless in its devotion to neutrality and fair pla-

<breaks down corpsing helplessly>

The VGA scale used to have no plus signs and then the 85+ evolved out of the necessity to have a grade between 85 and 90 as the graded population increased.  It's nothing for or against Wata as a company, it is just inevitable the 9.9 will evolve as the 9.8 graded copies become numerous.  I could also see a "A+++" (probably called something else) evolving that will consitute a perfect or near perfect seal.  The current A++ seal rating is more like 9.4-10 type seals and the 10 type seals should command significant premium over 9.4 sealed barely making A++.

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

6 minutes ago, jonebone said:

I have high confidence saying there aren't 50 perfect SMB64s out there.  Rarebucky's case was from 2007 / 2008.  I suspect someone else may have subbed a case and not used the "U" designation for perceived rarity, but the collecting pool has been looking for case fresh copies since then.   Even when it was only a $2k game the return was worth it to try and find the mint ones.  Now the collecting pool is infinitely larger and they just aren't going to pop up like that. 

One thing that people haven't mentioned yet, is that I like knowing I'm done with a game at Wata 9.8 A++. You don't have that same feeling on VGA scale.  I hated upgrading from 90 to 90+, maybe would go 90 to 95 if opportunity presented itself, but even a game like Mario 64 has a 95+ out there.  

Knowing that you're done upgrading a game has some intrinsic value that  is hard to quantify.

Though in all honesty, the Wata 9.9 has to come out in the next 5 years.  It'll piss off a lot of 9.8 owners but it will invigorate the market again and cause a ton of resubs (more money).  That's kind of inevitable IMO. 

Jesus, some people must have a ton of money and a massive drive to obtain the "best" version of a game.  This is beyond me because at this point you are grading how pretty the seam of seal is and not even how well the boxed game looks.  But hey, if I had money to blow I guess this is as worth while as hookers and blow.  At least this doesn't have any negative health risks.

But I totally see collecting sealed minty boxes as a type of art collecting in a way.  But when you get to grading the seal it self and how it looks around the edges I feel like the point is missing and then you are judging a painting by how it looks on the back of the canvas.  

[guillavoie | 1,210]

1 hour ago, jonebone said:

Well Nintendoage was a forum, that's the main reason people went there.  

However, through the forum participation, databases were created.  Forum members scanned in manuals and boxes.  A rarity guide was there but more or less a swag and not something updated continually.  There was an eZine that was popular but not enough participation to keep going more than quarterly by the end.

And to be fair, Nintendo age was mostly a centralized location of stuff.  Checklists of "sets" for collecting, scans of items, etc.  Most of that information could be found elsewhere, so it's not like Jeff bought NA and instantly has executive power to delete all info from the internet.  People were also given enough warning that they could backup whatever they deemed was important to them. 

Indeed, the idea that NA was nuked instantly from the moment it was bought by Jeff is nonsensical. It took well over a year for the forum to disappear, and it wasn't because Jeff deleted it, the server tech expired by a precise date (something like that, Gloves could explain further). His plan to preserve the forum was a joke, but still, all the threads are still searchable somehow in the gocollect version of it, though largely chaotic to navigate.

The database was a very useful tool, but honestly, it had absolutely no utility regarding gathering any info on the sealed market.

[doner24 | 1,196]

5 minutes ago, jonebone said:

The VGA scale used to have no plus signs and then the 85+ evolved out of the necessity to have a grade between 85 and 90 as the graded population increased.  It's nothing for or against Wata as a company, it is just inevitable the 9.9 will evolve as the 9.8 graded copies become numerous.  I could also see a "A+++" (probably called something else) evolving that will consitute a perfect or near perfect seal.  The current A++ seal rating is more like 9.4-10 type seals and the 10 type seals should command significant premium over 9.4 sealed barely making A++.

Isn’t their scale based on the comic scale? Would a 9.9 mean that it only has a very minor manufacturing issue, versus a handling issue?

[karljobst | 242]

6 minutes ago, guillavoie said:

Indeed, the idea that NA was nuked instantly from the moment it was bought by Jeff is nonsensical. It took well over a year for the forum to disappear, and it wasn't because Jeff deleted it, the server tech expired by a precise date (something like that, Gloves could explain further). His plan to preserve the forum was a joke, but still, all the threads are still searchable somehow in the gocollect version of it, though largely chaotic to navigate.

The database was a very useful tool, but honestly, it had absolutely no utility regarding gathering any info on the sealed market.

I would like to find out what expired. All websites need to be maintained, if you purchase it you'll also need to consistently renew licences, hosting etc. Not doing so and just letting something lapse so the website goes offline would be seen as terminating it. I'd genuinely like to know what actually happened there.

[AdamW | 713]

1 minute ago, karljobst said:

I would like to find out what expired. All websites need to be maintained, if you purchase it you'll also need to consistently renew licences, hosting etc. Not doing so and just letting something lapse so the website goes offline would be seen as terminating it. I'd genuinely like to know what actually happened there.

from earlier posts in the thread it sounds like it actually used server software that was proprietary and paid for on some kinda subscription basis.

[OptOut | 8,884]

16 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Hey, SMB2 is the first playable appearance of Princess Peach! Also a key title for large vegetable fans

First appearance of Birdo! 

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

11 minutes ago, OptOut said:

First appearance of Birdo! 

Literally one of the holdover Doki Doki Panic characters, come on!!

[guillavoie | 1,210]

23 minutes ago, karljobst said:

I would like to find out what expired. All websites need to be maintained, if you purchase it you'll also need to consistently renew licences, hosting etc. Not doing so and just letting something lapse so the website goes offline would be seen as terminating it. I'd genuinely like to know what actually happened there.

@Gloves, can you please provide our good pal Karl here with all the info you have on this?

Jeff and gocollect have certainly been careless about preserving the forum and database in the shape it was. Was it a conscious hit at hiding knowledge about the video game market is something possible, though harder to prove. IMO, if this was the goal, he kind of failed, as there was nothing in the database that could be really useful to know how the sealed market was going and unfolding.

[spacepup | 2,404]

Jeff announced the GoCollect acquisition of NA around May of 2019.  

NA ran on the old system until October 2019.

Not too long before that, what was communicated to staff, is that it was discovered or communicated from the company, that whatever super duper antiquated server / software system NA was running on, was going to shut down and NA would have to 'move.'  

The existing architecture was outdated, limited, and super expensive to run, so a change was inevitable at some point anyway.

So in this sense, NA as it existed in its prior form, was limited in time, and that was not necessarily instigated by GoCollect but by the software / server company.

GoCollect 'moved' the NA site to their own site, and while technically the forum threads remained there, the system was (is) pretty bad and made navigation and finding older content near impossible.  And items such as private threads and the open database was gone and as far as I know, never re-implemented.

I will note, that during this time, the existing NA staff did offer to assist with migrating the site, and some members offered to buy NA.  These purchase offers were not accepted.

[Alder | 243]

32 minutes ago, karljobst said:

I would like to find out what expired. All websites need to be maintained, if you purchase it you'll also need to consistently renew licences, hosting etc. Not doing so and just letting something lapse so the website goes offline would be seen as terminating it. I'd genuinely like to know what actually happened there.

This is tangential to the discussion of licenses and hosting, but Jeff made this thread when the sale happened, so it may be worth checking out if you haven't seen it:

https://connect.gocollect.com/discussion/187248/nintendoage-gocollect

Or via the WaybackMachine: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20191023063730/http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?StartRow=1&catid=5&threadid=187248

Edit: You can see what I mean about things being hard to read in the new forum tech. Quote blocks are missing and expanded, for one thing. But unfortunately the WaybackMachine snapshot is missing formatting as well.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Alder

[OptOut | 8,884]

13 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Literally one of the holdover Doki Doki Panic characters, come on!!

**SIGH**

Can someone please explain to Tyler that Japanese games don't count. AGAIN.

Come on man, we've been over this! 

[karljobst | 242]

Thanks for the info. I will have to ask Jeff why the Database couldn't be maintained. I've read the announcements but they all relate to the forum and nothing is said at all about everything else on the website.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

2 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Yes, this was proven earlier in the thread, thanks to Dain's emails that he shared and Sealed Wholesale's emails that he shared. Without these private emails, we wouldn't have the proof, but there they are right in this thread. That is a super shady thing for WATA to do. If a guy who brings legitimacy to your company backs out, his name should immediately be removed from any and all communication to investors/ etc. 

Point being, if there's one shady thing they are doing, what else are they doing that is shady?

I think some of what keeps getting Dain mixed up in all of this is the idea of him continuing to be an advisor, albeit from his view in a personal/friend capacity, after he had officially divested himself from WATA as an investor.  Another thing that's really murky and ambiguous is the term/idea "advisory board."  Was this some sort of official group within WATA, whether you were paid/compensated or not?  Is that just what they called people they reached out to for "bro"/friend/whatever advice?  If that "board" was some sort of non-compensated body, it's possible that Dain unknowingly remained part of WATA on paper, which would presumably allow them to at least name drop him if not provide quotes from him, advice, etc., within the company or pass it along in some sort of official capacity, all the while, Dain being unaware that this is happening.  As such, he might still have some mud on his shoes without ever realizing it, and despite his best efforts to officially separate himself.  Conversely, Deniz/WATA may have just kept using his name without his permission, with Dain having expressed that he didn't want to be officially associated with them in any way, shape or form.  Hard to know for surewithout more exact details from Dain.

2 hours ago, karljobst said:

Jeff Meyer has made a more detailed response - https://blog.gocollect.com/jeff-meyer-responds-to-questions-raised-by-karl-jobst-video/

There are other issues that I won't bring up again here but I will definitely talk to him about when we catch up.

Yeah, I noticed several "pants on fire" statements within that whole thing, to the point that I went ahead and printed out a copy to have in its original form/verbiage should someone decide to edit or remove the blog post.

43 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

I never said finding casepacks is a "normal occurence." I said, and do believe, that there are certainly more that exist and have not come to light (or those that own them are not the type to flash them all over social media).

Hey, there were 3 casepacks of Stadium Events that survived, very quietly, in private collector hands, not having been graded, for the better part of 3 decades after their discovery and recovery.  Two of those were still around by the time the information came to light.  I'd say that you're right in that those probably do exist here and there, perhaps not in enormous numbers, but likely much greater quantity than something like SE did, and certainly more than folks invested in the current bubble would like to admit.

18 minutes ago, guillavoie said:

Indeed, the idea that NA was nuked instantly from the moment it was bought by Jeff is nonsensical. It took well over a year for the forum to disappear, and it wasn't because Jeff deleted it, the server tech expired by a precise date (something like that, Gloves could explain further). His plan to preserve the forum was a joke, but still, all the threads are still searchable somehow in the gocollect version of it, though largely chaotic to navigate.

The database was a very useful tool, but honestly, it had absolutely no utility regarding gathering any info on the sealed market.

While true as far as the timeline of the site changing over from its original form to the new, deprecated one, Jeff's statement says that he was suddenly made aware by the host that the host could no longer support the site, and that they had one week to get things out the door (with the implication that they would somehow "lose" the site if they didn't).  That couldn't be further from the truth, as there were notices about things going to a different platform virtually from the beginning, when answers from Jeff and the GC staff were still being answered and relatively quick to appear.

As I recall, it was revealed that NA had been built on the platform "Cold Fusion."  This sticks in my mind, because a web developer friend had related to me many stories about a particular coworker who refused to work in anything else.  My friend beat it into my head via his tales that Cold Fusion is/was incredibly awkward to develop in compared to more modern platforms/packages, and that adding new things that would simply plug into newer software had to be adapted, kludged, etc. to Cold Fusion.  He also remarked at how comparatively expensive it was to operate, and that you needed to constantly pay for/update your licenses in order to continue doing so.  The story I recall from NA was that the software was (supposedly) no longer being supported, period, and thus the absolute need to switch platforms ASAP.  I believe I may have even commented something akin to this back then, pointing out that all they would have to do to extend things was to just pay for the new license.  Regardless, the site got moved, and it was confirmed by GC staff that the old server software had expired.

Interestingly enough, despite the license being null and thus supposedly keeping the old site from being functional, clever folks found ways to get the old version of the site to come up for weeks, if not months, after the conversion happened.  Similarly, the sister sites, running off of the same software and licensing, continued to operate as normal for weeks after the change over, then get shut down, then be accessible for longer via the same tricks that allowed the dedicated to get back into the "real" NA, before whoever was doing web development for GC managed to plug all the holes and stop the old server content from being accessible.  My guess is that they finished porting all of the data out of the old server dump and deleted those specific folders from the hardware server, leaving folks access to only what had been quickly and sloppily ported into the new server.  Promises were made to fix everything and make it actually function like the old site (forums properly separated and displayed, search working properly, PMs that transferred being sorted properly, etc.), but that idea was abandoned quickly, and thus the site became more or less permanently unusable in any standard fashion.

9 minutes ago, karljobst said:

I would like to find out what expired. All websites need to be maintained, if you purchase it you'll also need to consistently renew licences, hosting etc. Not doing so and just letting something lapse so the website goes offline would be seen as terminating it. I'd genuinely like to know what actually happened there.

See my above comment within this post.  The site was run on Cold Fusion, so an updated license would have been all that was necessary to keep things going.  Even if their host decided they no longer wanted to support a Cold Fusion based server/site, there wasn't anything stopping the GoCollect folks from pulling a full server dump of the old NA site, setting up Cold Fusion on their own hardware, then dumping the backup into place.  It likely would have taken a day or two for all of the IP issues to work themselves out, so that "nintendoage.com" redirected to the GC servers, but otherwise it would have been seamless.  As you say, just letting something go (presumably because you don't want to be bothered with it) is absolutely a form of terminating it.

7 minutes ago, AdamW said:

from earlier posts in the thread it sounds like it actually used server software that was proprietary and paid for on some kinda subscription basis.

Kind of?  It was Cold Fusion, which is/was owned by Adobe, so there was a licensing fee involved every so often, and Adobe's fees across the board went up after a while, especially when they went to the "you can no longer own a copy of PhotoShop, but we'll be happy to rent you one" business model.  That being said, there wasn't anything in there that couldn't be properly ported out to an alternative software package by a competent web developer.  My friend that I mentioned above talked about how he would be porting all of their clients' sites onto a different platform the first moment he could (got promoted above his coworker or coworker left the company), and how they wouldn't know the difference.  I'm not saying it's necessarily as easy as pushing a button, but anyone who wanted to do it and was competent at web development could have done the job (my friend had no background in Cold Fusion but managed to work on sites that used it by simply reading the documentation available online).