Heritage Auctions Thread

[Californication | 1,477]

20 hours ago, Shmup said:

Hahaha is this guy still going?!

I swear I’ve seen him grade an Atari Frogger before. This guy must have the WATA VIP pass, he’s always got something graded and most of it is rubbish. 

He really loves his Atari…any day now he’s going to be a millionaire cashing those Atari games out.

That guy looks and sounds like a Doonesbury character.

[OptOut | 8,884]

1 hour ago, inasuma said:

That youtube channel is literally the guy (mark I think?) pumping his bad investments so he can sell them later. His opinions are questionable at best. lol

Main problem with this channel is that his videos are so DEATHLY boring! Watching the dude slowly and awkwardly unpack the box, sometimes tripping over his words, it's cringe.

Then each game he shows, basically EVERY game he just says like "oh there's a new Netflix show for this one, it's attracting a lot of attention now" and "this one is really hard to find sealed, should have graded higher"! 

I mean, put a fuggin TANK TOP on ferchrissakes and do your hair nice, sheet! I doubt Certified Collectables even lifts TBH... 

[Californication | 1,477]

On 9/3/2021 at 7:42 PM, OptOut said:

Nice to see Certified Collectables is still on the WATA grind...

I'm sure he'll make a tidy profit on that GBA He-man 8.5! And the Atari market is just BOUND to come roaring back any day now, huh, lol! 

I think his comment about Wata giving a high percentage of modern sealed games lower grades is interesting. I don't follow sealed games, but I noticed that when I glanced at ebay. Is that a way of making million selling games sound rare, by artificially holding down their grade or is there a reason why millions of relatively new sealed games should get lower grades.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Californication

[OptOut | 8,884]

5 minutes ago, Californication said:

I think his comment about Wata giving a high percentage of modern sealed games lower grades is interesting. I don't follow sealed games, but I noticed that when I glanced at ebay. Is that a way of making million selling games sound rare, by artificially holding down their grade or is there a reason why millions of relatively new sealed games should get lower grades.

You obviously don't know much about the science of grading dude. You see, modern games come in clamshell boxes made of a firm but malleable plastic, resistant to damage. They are also far newer, giving them less time and risk of being damaged. There are also FAR more of them still around sealed, meaning the chances of finding good condition copies is far greater.

This is worst case scenario for pumping a market when the sole determinant of price is a high grade multiplied by scarcity. So, you GOTTA grade that shit down dude! Science. 

[GPX | 1,369]

2 hours ago, OptOut said:

Main problem with this channel is that his videos are so DEATHLY boring! Watching the dude slowly and awkwardly unpack the box, sometimes tripping over his words, it's cringe.

Then each game he shows, basically EVERY game he just says like "oh there's a new Netflix show for this one, it's attracting a lot of attention now" and "this one is really hard to find sealed, should have graded higher"! 

I mean, put a fuggin TANK TOP on ferchrissakes and do your hair nice, sheet! I doubt Certified Collectables even lifts TBH... 

Ya know, I would not be one bit surprised if he’s one of the ones that’s been pumping out some of those high HA bids. Particularly for those Atari and PS2 games.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

On 9/2/2021 at 10:35 AM, Crystalis88 said:

There’s a similar thread on the cgc forums and bronty is (indirectly)requesting them to close the thread down. Why is everyone so in love with censorship these days?

Amen.  On the one hand, I do feel for the guy for the potential invasion of his privacy.  On the other hand, he put the information that Seth Abramson dug up (confirmation of his real name, anyway) out into the public years and years ago, then essentially became a "public figure" by being part of WATA (featured on their website for a while, starting a few years ago, and apparently abruptly ending a week or two ago), so he gave up some of that expectation whether he realized it or not.

On 9/2/2021 at 12:07 PM, charleybrown3 said:

https://www.thegamer.com/wata-cofounder-conflict-of-interest-criticism/

I love how theyre playing telephone with the headlines now 

Honestly, I think it's just a way so that every "gaming news" outlet can claim to have covered the story while not having to do any actual sleuthing on their own.  Quick payday with their readers, with the potential for luring new eyes to their site(s) from people who are interested in the overall story and won't realize until they've already arrived and had ads served that they're just seeing a rehash of the same old information.  Gaming news site circle jerk is really what it is, at this point.

On 9/2/2021 at 3:38 PM, tidaldreams said:

The reason is because none of the big ballers know what VGA is. Hence, why everyone grades with WATA now.

None of the "big ballers" are actually collectors, then, and are investors and speculators versus actual hobbyists who give a shit about the games, hobby, etc.  Essentially the people that are doing everything they can (without realization or care) to ruin the hobby for everybody else, so long as the siren song of the almighty dollar holds true.

On 9/3/2021 at 12:06 PM, AdamW said:

This doesn't seem as odd to me as it does to you. I mean, if you get a gemstone assessed, the same person will decide if it's genuine, weigh it, grade it, and then give you an estimate of its price (and then, possibly, offer to buy it off you). If you get your house assessed, the same person will come and count the bedrooms and check if the roof's falling off and give an estimate of the price. They don't have separate people for each function. They're pretty related functions.

I think this depends on where you're going.  In all my experience in shopping for and buying jewelry, there were people who did the sort of assessment and verification duties that you're discussing, then a whole other staff to discuss what those various scores meant and how they affected the overall value that was being presented.  Outside of super high end chains that only exist in big cities, I've probably shopped for stuff at most major US jewelry chains at one point or another and always seen the same sort of division of labor--specialists doing the assessment, verification, etc., and the rest of the staff providing value statements based on their training and/or material provided by the higher ups in the chain.  Both sets of folks worked for the same company, but there was still a clear division of duties, where the people going, "Oh, this is great/crap grade" weren't also the people going, "Because of the great/crap grade, this is expensive/worthless."

Regarding the assessor example, somebody else already spoke to that and and rebutted it accurately and brilliantly.  Does not apply here.

On 9/3/2021 at 12:38 PM, JeremiahJT said:

Of course the offers could have been from Deniz and Jim themselves. The "offers" really existed. Now if another copy of the same game ends up going for much less and the seller decides to take one of those offers there is nothing stopping whoever made the offers to go through with the sale.

So WATA can say whatever they want about the offers as long as they were "made" by someone. Of course that someone is under no obligation to go through with the purchase once the game is done with its turn on Pawn Stars.

I totally disagree here.  This is an old example, for which I can no longer find the article which made it relevant, but as my wife and I have said (and giggled about for years)--I'll give her my cat for $1M, and she'll give me her cat for $1M and we're both suddenly millionaries!  (Article was an in depth piece about the Norwegian banking bubble/crises from 2-3 decades ago where essentially that's what was happening.)  If I don't have the money to back up something and don't intend to honor it, but make you an offer for $1M for something and you decline, that doesn't in any remote sense provide you with a legitimate offer that really existed, that you should in any way, shape, or form mention to anyone, anywhere, especially when speaking to other people in regard to the value of whatever I provided the BS "offer" for.

Sure, absolutely, WATA can totally make up whatever they want to, but at the very least they are being absolutely unethical in doing so when referencing "private offers" (especially those that they don't go ahead and provide verifiable proof of).  At the worst, it's very possible that they've stepped out of line somewhere amidst the many rules, regulations, and laws that the FTC has on the books regarding fraud, market manipulation, etc.

[Zach | 186]

6 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

 

None of the "big ballers" are actually collectors, then, and are investors and speculators versus actual hobbyists who give a shit about the games, hobby, etc.  Essentially the people that are doing everything they can (without realization or care) to ruin the hobby for everybody else, so long as the siren song of the almighty dollar holds true.

 

That's how it's always been. A lot of these people came from the world of sports cards or comics and saw video games as the next thing to make money on.

There's also some of them that just want to wave their e-peen around. You ever notice how all of the arguments from the sealed/graded collectors always boil down to "You're just jealous!" They refuse to acknowledge any criticism of their "investments". They WANT people to be jealous of them, that's part of the appeal. They love the aura of elitism. That's why you see all these comments coming out since Karl's video like "he's just jealous - he just hates graded games - he's just mad he didn't get in on graded games when it first started" or some variation of that. 

It's weird because I'm involved in a lot of collecting circles for different things and I really only see this with vintage games. You see these guys whose entire life and personality is defined by their video game collections, and a lot of them seem to not really have any interest in the games themselves, it's just an internet ego-boost thing, which is also why you see so many of these people sell everything off and completely leave the hobby all together. 

[inasuma | 1,203]

13 hours ago, WarMech said:

Which?

mega man and bass. i know the guy who consigned it and he claimed it would be up. i suppose there's still time though. technically the cut off is thursday so they could list things up to wednesday i suppose.

12 hours ago, OptOut said:

Main problem with this channel is that his videos are so DEATHLY boring! Watching the dude slowly and awkwardly unpack the box, sometimes tripping over his words, it's cringe.

Then each game he shows, basically EVERY game he just says like "oh there's a new Netflix show for this one, it's attracting a lot of attention now" and "this one is really hard to find sealed, should have graded higher"! 

I mean, put a fuggin TANK TOP on ferchrissakes and do your hair nice, sheet! I doubt Certified Collectables even lifts TBH... 

no need to understate how boring he is. also, i've noticed he is constantly hiding his finger nails. #revealthenails

12 hours ago, OptOut said:

You obviously don't know much about the science of grading dude. You see, modern games come in clamshell boxes made of a firm but malleable plastic, resistant to damage. They are also far newer, giving them less time and risk of being damaged. There are also FAR more of them still around sealed, meaning the chances of finding good condition copies is far greater.

This is worst case scenario for pumping a market when the sole determinant of price is a high grade multiplied by scarcity. So, you GOTTA grade that shit down dude! Science. 

those clamshell cases were made to break. after PS2/GC/XBOX it's like every clamshell started getting weaker and weaker, and now just breathing on a PS4/PS5 case will crack it.

 

[inasuma | 1,203]

So Mark Haspel made an interesting statement in a few fb groups this morning.

Interestingly, he doesn't deny the allegations put forth via Seth Abramson or Karl Jobst. Strangely he just admits here to selling Wata graded games while acting as a "passive investor" (the distinction of passive vs. active is unimportant; he had a large financial stake in the company).

[WarMech | 82]

44 minutes ago, inasuma said:

mega man and bass. i know the guy who consigned it and he claimed it would be up. i suppose there's still time though. technically the cut off is thursday so they could list things up to wednesday i suppose.

I was told it will be in the lineup. In my latest back and forth with an HA rep I asked and he said there was going to be a 9.6 in it, I'm using it to decide if I get mine graded or not for Feb.

Edited September 5, 2021 by WarMech

[Generic | 215]

48 minutes ago, inasuma said:

So Mark Haspel made an interesting statement in a few fb groups this morning.

Interestingly, he doesn't deny the allegations put forth via Seth Abramson or Karl Jobst. Strangely he just admits here to selling Wata graded games while acting as a "passive investor" (the distinction of passive vs. active is unimportant; he had a large financial stake in the company).

Lol all of a sudden no one works for WATA

[LifeGame | 760]

How to lose all credibility….LOL…did he really post this…

[Gloves | 11,779]

Come on lol.

 

"I have put money into the company, and am an equity stakeholder. I am featured as an Executive Team member on their site (to this day!). I've never had any oversight role (CHIEF ADVISOR!?!?). I DON'T WORK FOR WATA!!!!"

[Gloves | 11,779]

3 hours ago, LifeGame said:

How to lose all credibility….LOL…did he really post this…

 

I stopped caring about what this Seth person wrote the moment he spent an entire VERY long article trying to identify Bronty (DAN!!?!?) when his name is (was) CLEARLY stated on Wata's website:

 

Feels like old people trying to figure out who this "4chan" fellow is.

[Zach | 186]

1 hour ago, inasuma said:

So Mark Haspel made an interesting statement in a few fb groups this morning.

Interestingly, he doesn't deny the allegations put forth via Seth Abramson or Karl Jobst. Strangely he just admits here to selling Wata graded games while acting as a "passive investor" (the distinction of passive vs. active is unimportant; he had a large financial stake in the company).

That group is a comedy gold mine. 

 

We've reached levels of cope never thought possible:

[LifeGame | 760]

2 minutes ago, Zach said:

That group is a comedy gold mine. 

 

We've reached levels of cope never thought possible:

So do you believe this as well  ? :

 

 

[AdamW | 713]

1 hour ago, inasuma said:

So Mark Haspel made an interesting statement in a few fb groups this morning.

Interestingly, he doesn't deny the allegations put forth via Seth Abramson or Karl Jobst. Strangely he just admits here to selling Wata graded games while acting as a "passive investor" (the distinction of passive vs. active is unimportant; he had a large financial stake in the company).

This is a great example of the classic PR move, the "non-denial denial", wherein you spend a bunch of time heatedly denying several things that weren't actually alleged, and hope nobody notices you didn't deny any of the things that were actually alleged...

Edit: I'm also a big fan of him saying he didn't speak to any graders at WATA...except the CEO and the chief grader.

Edited September 5, 2021 by AdamW

[Zach | 186]

9 minutes ago, LifeGame said:

So do you believe this as well  ? :

 

 

I don't see how whatever you're showing me has anything to do with some random guy in a Facebook group saying Karl and everyone who likes his video are "jealous" 

[LifeGame | 760]

5 minutes ago, Zach said:

I don't see how whatever you're showing me has anything to do with some random guy in a Facebook group saying Karl and everyone who likes his video are "jealous" 

It doesn’t but I wanted to make sure you saw this nonsense and maybe see how ridiculous this is

[Zach | 186]

Just now, LifeGame said:

It doesn’t but I wanted to make sure you saw this nonsense and maybe see how ridiculous this is

I didn't read that guy's article but I looked at some of his older substacks and without getting political here, he seems like an idiot 

[Zach | 186]

36 minutes ago, Gloves said:

 

I stopped caring about what this Seth person wrote the moment he spent an entire VERY long article trying to identify Bronty (DAN!!?!?) when his name is CLEARLY stated on Wata's website:

 

Feels like old people trying to figure out who this "4chan" fellow is.

To be fair, I can't figure out where you even found that page at. Even if you Google his name + WATA, that doesn't come up 

[LifeGame | 760]

3 minutes ago, Zach said:

I didn't read that guy's article but I looked at some of his older substacks and without getting political here, he seems like an idiot 

Good at least we agree on one thing

[Gloves | 11,779]

4 minutes ago, Zach said:

To be fair, I can't figure out where you even found that page at. Even if you Google his name + WATA, that doesn't come up 

It's on Wayback Machine. 

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

2 hours ago, Gloves said:

Come on lol.

 

"I have put money into the company, and am an equity stakeholder. I am featured as an Executive Team member on their site (to this day!). I've never had any oversight role (CHIEF ADVISOR!?!?). I DON'T WORK FOR WATA!!!!"

Mark Haspel did not know the first thing about sealed games when WATA started up. I can assure you he was not capable of overseeing WATA even if he wanted to lol. He was brought on as a liaison to the collectibles community. 

As for a “nondenial,” he’s been public about this for years and has never hidden it. There was never going to be a denial, and in fact he literally states right there he’s been buying, submitting, and selling. I’m not saying if it’s wrong or not, but clearly HE has been under the impression it is not because he’s been 100% open. WATA should have been more clear about his role. 

Ultimately, I think this all boils down to whether it is or is not ethical for investors in a grading company to use the service. 

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by ExplodedHamster

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

25 minutes ago, ExplodedHamster said:

 I’m not saying if it’s wrong or not

Why not?

25 minutes ago, ExplodedHamster said:

I think this all boils down to whether it is or is not ethical for investors in a grading company to use the service. 

Clearly it is not! Like... why pose the question? How in any world could that be ethical? It's NOT ETHICAL!!! lol jesus