Heritage Auctions Thread

[doner24 | 1,197]

1 minute ago, GPX said:

I think you’re being too correlational with how a game plays and what price the game deserves. How good of a game has no real bearing on the overall price it garners. The end price of a collectible has to do with how sought after it is, with a sprinkle of hype, and how much money people are willing to throw at it. 

Also, I’m not saying all sealed games should be 4-figures or more henceforth. No, siree! The market should still have its share of bargain items, not all will be zillions of titillions worth by 2025.

Exactly, how good the game is plays no part, other than the initial nostalgia that it might’ve sparked. 

[Seth | 172]

37 minutes ago, GPX said:

I think you’re being too correlational with how a game plays and what price the game deserves. How good of a game has no real bearing on the overall price it garners. The end price of a collectible has to do with how sought after it is, with a sprinkle of hype, and how much money people are willing to throw at it. 

Also, I’m not saying all sealed games should be 4-figures or more henceforth. No, siree! The market should still have its share of bargain items, not all will be zillions of titillions worth by 2025.

My point is that in a robust sealed-and-graded video game market, the majority of buyers will be those who are gamers.

I don't know why so many people think their ideal buyer is a Saudi prince who's read about Super Mario Bros. in PEOPLE or a reseller hoping to create a supply chain from their man cave to the corporate offices of a Chinese billionaire.

That works for now—I grant you that—but the history of collectibles markets is that the primary buyers by volume, finally, are those who actually love those collectibles. Coins are bought by people who love coins, stamps are bought by people who love stamps, trading cards are bought by people who love trading cards, and so on.

David Robbins—a former stockbroker—is telling people that sealed and graded video games will be bought in the same way that stocks are, i.e. by dispassionate investors. The entire history of collectibles suggests he is wrong. At best, dispassionate investors buy an asset until the next asset comes along, then they're done. The people who stay—the market that stays, if you're a seller—are the lovers of what you're selling. So, gamers. Thus far folks like Robbins have done nothing to get gamers interested in sealed and graded video games and everything to offend them. They're spitting on their 2027 customers to please their 2021 customers, but then Robbins says in a livestream that he wants Karl Jobst to talk about him so that Jobst's audience (gamers) gets into collecting sealed and graded video games. It's such horrific mixed messaging.

So if you're ultimately going to sell to gamers, why would you spend all your time talking about the twenty most-played games on (say) the NES? Sure, gamers love those games too, but they also know that they're so common that "collecting" them feels like a foreign concept. But if you were the one kid on your block who had Dragon Spirit and to this day you feel like you uniquely understand how amazing that game is, that game is the one you'll put a premium on collecting if you decide to become a sealed-and-graded collector.

What I'm saying, and I mean it wholly respectfully, is that in everything but the short term "how a game plays" is the ballgame. Because the collectors of video games will be those who have a deep knowledge of the consoles they're collecting for, and they're not going to be excited by slabbing a copy of SMB3 along with everyone else.

Edited October 30, 2021 by RETRO

[Seth | 172]

40 minutes ago, doner24 said:

Exactly, how good the game is plays no part, other than the initial nostalgia that it might’ve sparked. 

I just... respectfully, where do you get this stuff? Have you ever been involved in collecting at scale and over a period of time, or selling into a long-standing collectibles market? This isn't how it works. This is how a bunch of vultures who've swarmed into retro gaming since 2019 are telling everyone it works because for a few more months it's to their financial benefit to say so. It has no correlation to how selling in a collectibles market works.

While I grant you that rarity is a second huge factor in long-term collectibles markets along with how a game is generally regarded, the vultures (I actually think of them as jackals) don't value that, either. Their new watchword is "historical significance," by which they simply mean "a game title that a non-gamer, dispassionate investor who's going to be in the sealed-and-graded video game market for about ten more months has heard of."

Edited October 30, 2021 by RETRO

[Amermoe | 150]

1 hour ago, RETRO said:

GPX, do you mean a very few games or many of them? If you just mean a few, couldn't you really say there have been very low five-figure games since pre-WATA? Not many, but there were a few.

I think terms like "few" are relative. GPX is right, a good amount of the rare or very high condition and/or high demand games were well into the 4 figures I would say for the past 10 years well before WATA (less in 2011, but many started to creep up 2015-beyond). 

In some instances, there were games that also did break the 5 figure mark organically but were generally the cream of the crop items, we're talking about NWC Grey or Gold/Stadium events, Air Raid/ Sealed circle seal/Hangtab/ No Rev A NES games, etc. Mostly extreme rarities, but to my knowledge still never broke the $20-30K barrier. That was a collector market driving those prices, and there was a universal agreement among sealed/ hardcore collectors at that time that those prices were justified due to their shear rarity and/or significance.

Specifically the sealed and graded (VGA) market had many such sales in the 4 figures. Granted the amount of collectors who participated in the that hobby was low, but 4 figure games were common at that stage. For example even if you talk about newer PS1 era games, a high grade FFVII would've cost you $1-2K 5-8 years ago (sometimes more depending on condition and variant), a longbox RE1 or Twisted Metal several times more if you could even find them. Many sealed SNES titles broke the 4 figure mark, games like Super Mario World/FFII/FFIII/Metal Warriors/Secret of Mana/Chrono Trigger/Pocky & Rocky 1 & 2/ Ninja Warriors/ Hagane/Exertainment Speed bike combo/Aero Fighters/Earthbound and many more were all between $1-8k. Same is true for some Sega Master System/Genesis/CD/Saturn games (albeit on lower end - typically $1-2K range).

The point I'm making is that we had already reached the 4 figure mark (when it comes to sealed collecting) 10 years ago, it's the 5 figure mark (and beyond) that's completely inflated.

[tidaldreams | 654]

Waiting patiently for the @DefaultGen recap video. Hope it's as good as the last time

[GPX | 1,373]

7 hours ago, RETRO said:

My point is that in a robust sealed-and-graded video game market, the majority of buyers will be those who are gamers.

I don't know why so many people think their ideal buyer is a Saudi prince who's read about Super Mario Bros. in PEOPLE or a reseller hoping to create a supply chain from their man cave to the corporate offices of a Chinese billionaire.

That works for now—I grant you that—but the history of collectibles markets is that the primary buyers by volume, finally, are those who actually love those collectibles. Coins are bought by people who love coins, stamps are bought by people who love stamps, trading cards are bought by people who love trading cards, and so on.

David Robbins—a former stockbroker—is telling people that sealed and graded video games will be bought in the same way that stocks are, i.e. by dispassionate investors. The entire history of collectibles suggests he is wrong. At best, dispassionate investors buy an asset until the next asset comes along, then they're done. The people who stay—the market that stays, if you're a seller—are the lovers of what you're selling. So, gamers. Thus far folks like Robbins have done nothing to get gamers interested in sealed and graded video games and everything to offend them. They're spitting on their 2027 customers to please their 2021 customers, but then Robbins says in a livestream that he wants Karl Jobst to talk about him so that Jobst's audience (gamers) gets into collecting sealed and graded video games. It's such horrific mixed messaging.

So if you're ultimately going to sell to gamers, why would you spend all your time talking about the twenty most-played games on (say) the NES? Sure, gamers love those games too, but they also know that they're so common that "collecting" them feels like a foreign concept. But if you were the one kid on your block who had Dragon Spirit and to this day you feel like you uniquely understand how amazing that game is, that game is the one you'll put a premium on collecting if you decide to become a sealed-and-graded collector.

What I'm saying, and I mean it wholly respectfully, is that in everything but the short term "how a game plays" is the ballgame. Because the collectors of video games will be those who have a deep knowledge of the consoles they're collecting for, and they're not going to be excited by slabbing a copy of SMB3 along with everyone else.

I think if we take a step back and ask “why long term sealed collectors (not investors/speculators) collect sealed or graded games?” The answer I think would likely be because “they want to obtain games in pristine and/or rare condition”. At least that is my main mindset as a collector. And most of the long term sealed collectors I know have a genuine passion for gaming either current or in the past. 

For the sealed/graded games market to prosper, you don’t need to cater for gamers, but to sealed collectors, because it’s a different market with different agendas and rules. In other words “what do sealed collectors collect?”, not “what do gamers play?”

Case in point, every collector here will have their favorite 10 games to play, and it will likely be different to 10 of their favorite games in their collection.

 

[Seth | 172]

1 hour ago, GPX said:

I think if we take a step back and ask “why long term sealed collectors (not investors/speculators) collect sealed or graded games?” The answer I think would likely be because “they want to obtain games in pristine and/or rare condition”. At least that is my main mindset as a collector. And most of the long term sealed collectors I know have a genuine passion for gaming either current or in the past. 

For the sealed/graded games market to prosper, you don’t need to cater for gamers, but to sealed collectors, because it’s a different market with different agendas and rules. In other words “what do sealed collectors collect?”, not “what do gamers play?”

Case in point, every collector here will have their favorite 10 games to play, and it will likely be different to 10 of their favorite games in their collection.

 

I'm not at all questioning whether what you say is emotionally true for you. I'm sure it is; I don't doubt that. But it's also empirically false.

I knew a somewhat boorish guy back when I was in college—this was almost 30 years ago—and one time, while drunk, he mused to me, "You know, Seth, the average girl just isn't that attractive." I was sober but it still caught me off-guard. "Actually," I said to him finally, "I'm pretty sure the average girl is average-looking. Like, by definition."

Sealed and graded games exist in every conceivable combination. Low-grade sealed, low-grade CIB, mid-grade sealed, mid-grade CIB, high-grade sealed, high-grade CIB, good box/bad seal, bad box/good deal, and on and on and on. There's a reason VGA's scale starts at 10 and WATA's at 0.5—because while higher grades are more common than lower grades, both those grading houses are regularly putting 4.0s and 5.0s and 40s and 50s out into the world. They may come to market a little less frequently but (a) they're still in collections all over, and (b) the same can't be said for 6.5s and 7.5s or 60s and 70s, as those are all over the 24 markets that sell sealed retro games even if they're less common in a blue-blood meat market like Heritage except in CIB. (Mind you, I'm talking about cardboard retro games; I don't know why anyone would purchase sealed mass-produced games in decay-resistant plastic casing—there's no real condition premium except at the literally academic end of the NM/M subsphere—but collectors of those games really can't have a conversation that makes much sense with those of us hunting fragile cardboard, anyway. Someone who says they only collect 9.8/A++ NES games is a joker 99 times out of 100, not a devotee.)

Now here you are, telling me that the average collector is only interested in "pristine" (9.6/9.8 or Gold Tier) games, which are vanishingly rare relative to the entire population of sealed and graded games and even silly rare for the early post-cardboard consoles.

So that maxim is a literal impossibility, or else we would have to say that 95% of the market is irrelevant to the people who... make up the market. It's a mathematical nonsense. It also would mean that no one in the market has anyone to sell to long-term, because if you have a 7.5/A+, who the hell are you selling to if every potential buyer wants only pristine games?

What I've been saying from the jump here is that high-end collectors have lost all sense of perspective. Less boorishly by far, they're nevertheless by analogy like the college kid insisting the average girl isn't attractive, except in this case they're saying that a pretty amazingly attractive girl isn't of any interest to anyone because she isn't (to strain the analogy) a perfect 10. That's, like, a textbook sign that one has lost perspective and is vainly universalizing one's own idiosyncrasies.

I don't collect for the reason you do, and I've got plenty of very nice games. I collect because I consider video games art, and they're art whether they're in pristine condition or not. But because I want to display them as art, I need them to be visually attractive enough for that purpose and I need them to be games I connect with emotionally (in the same way I wouldn't want a painting in my home that neither I nor my wife connect with emotionally). There are VGA 75+ Silver Tier games—not all of them, but some—that are visually arresting and attractive enough to quite happily be displayed as art, and I have even (on rare occasion) seen an 8.0/A+ that met this requirement. I've also seen dogsh*t 9.0/A games and 9.4/A+ games with enough dog hair in them I'd never put them on display. None of those games are pristine in some abstract sense that could only be ascertained with a magnifying glass, nor do I need them to be to decide what I think of them.

My point: the hobby is going to expand in the coming years. More people like me (in the broadest sense) are coming, and they are likely to crowd out (by numbers) folks who are (a) looking only for "pristine" games at some level of abstract perfection virtually no one cares about and even fewer can afford, and (b) insistent that the quality of a game (as a matter of game development) doesn't matter, even though the only readily justifiable reason to want a game slabbed in your house is because you consider it a quality work of art. If you're out there buying "pristine" copies of Wally Bear and the NO! Gang more power to you, but I kind of doubt it. And if you're buying games and then hiding them away, that's totally cool too, but you're not really a collector in any sense the term has traditionally been understood unless a decent part of your collection is in your line-of-sight somewhere in your home.

IOW, no two collectors are alike. Some will buy raw and send off for grading, some only buy pre-graded. Some buy CIB only, some sealed only. Some will buy PAL or JP games and some will only buy NTSC. Some value box more than seal and some seal more than box. Some want rarity and some "historical significance" (whatever that means). Some collect across consoles and some don't. Some look for tie-ins and licenses and some don't. Some have a price limit and some don't, some prefer auctions to straight buys, some prefer VGA to WATA or WATA to VGA, some collect across consoles but only in one game genre, some won't buy below a 9.0/A and some won't buy below a 9.6/A+. And on and on. Conversations about why and how people collect are stupid because the reasons and modes for collecting are as varied as why one might be attracted to someone or why one might choose one hobby over another. 

We're in the final days of a very small cabal of men with a very particular view of collecting being 90% of the conversation. Either that cabal becomes a tiny and irrelevant fraction of the collecting sphere or the sealed and graded market collapses altogether. Why? Because this particular cabal doesn't have the values or vision or catholic aesthetics that would allow for a market of this kind to grow beyond the 200 or so people who are in it now. Mind you, I'm not saying the collectors coming down the road will collect the way I do, either; they won't. But they certainly won't succumb to gaming-sphere bromides the equivalent of, "The average girl isn't very attractive."

Edited October 31, 2021 by RETRO

[GPX | 1,373]

3 hours ago, RETRO said:

I'm not at all questioning whether what you say is emotionally true for you. I'm sure it is; I don't doubt that. But it's also empirically false.

I knew a somewhat boorish guy back when I was in college—this was almost 30 years ago—and one time, while drunk, he mused to me, "You know, Seth, the average girl just isn't that attractive." I was sober but it still caught me off-guard. "Actually," I said to him finally, "I'm pretty sure the average girl is average-looking. Like, by definition."

Sealed and graded games exist in every conceivable combination. Low-grade sealed, low-grade CIB, mid-grade sealed, mid-grade CIB, high-grade sealed, high-grade CIB, good box/bad seal, bad box/good deal, and on and on and on. There's a reason VGA's scale starts at 10 and WATA's at 0.5—because while higher grades are more common than lower grades, both those grading houses are regularly putting 4.0s and 5.0s and 40s and 50s out into the world. They may come to market a little less frequently but (a) they're still in collections all over, and (b) the same can't be said for 6.5s and 7.5s or 60s and 70s, as those are all over the 24 markets that sell sealed retro games even if they're less common in a blue-blood meat market like Heritage except in CIB. (Mind you, I'm talking about cardboard retro games; I don't know why anyone would purchase sealed mass-produced games in decay-resistant plastic casing—there's no real condition premium except at the literally academic end of the NM/M subsphere—but collectors of those games really can't have a conversation that makes much sense with those of us hunting fragile cardboard, anyway. Someone who says they only collect 9.8/A++ NES games is a joker 99 times out of 100, not a devotee.)

Now here you are, telling me that the average collector is only interested in "pristine" (9.6/9.8 or Gold Tier) games, which are vanishingly rare relative to the entire population of sealed and graded games and even silly rare for the early post-cardboard consoles.

So that maxim is a literal impossibility, or else we would have to say that 95% of the market is irrelevant to the people who... make up the market. It's a mathematical nonsense. It also would mean that no one in the market has anyone to sell to long-term, because if you have a 7.5/A+, who the hell are you selling to if every potential buyer wants only pristine games?

What I've been saying from the jump here is that high-end collectors have lost all sense of perspective. Less boorishly by far, they're nevertheless by analogy like the college kid insisting the average girl isn't attractive, except in this case they're saying that a pretty amazingly attractive girl isn't of any interest to anyone because she isn't (to strain the analogy) a perfect 10. That's, like, a textbook sign that one has lost perspective and is vainly universalizing one's own idiosyncrasies.

I don't collect for the reason you do, and I've got plenty of very nice games. I collect because I consider video games art, and they're art whether they're in pristine condition or not. But because I want to display them as art, I need them to be visually attractive enough for that purpose and I need them to be games I connect with emotionally (in the same way I wouldn't want a painting in my home that neither I nor my wife connect with emotionally). There are VGA 75+ Silver Tier games—not all of them, but some—that are visually arresting and attractive enough to quite happily be displayed as art, and I have even (on rare occasion) seen an 8.0/A+ that met this requirement. I've also seen dogsh*t 9.0/A games and 9.4/A+ games with enough dog hair in them I'd never put them on display. None of those games are pristine in some abstract sense that could only be ascertained with a magnifying glass, nor do I need them to be to decide what I think of them.

My point: the hobby is going to expand in the coming years. More people like me (in the broadest sense) are coming, and they are likely to crowd out (by numbers) folks who are (a) looking only for "pristine" games at some level of abstract perfection virtually no one cares about and even fewer can afford, and (b) insistent that the quality of a game (as a matter of game development) doesn't matter, even though the only readily justifiable reason to want a game slabbed in your house is because you consider it a quality work of art. If you're out there buying "pristine" copies of Wally Bear and the NO! Gang more power to you, but I kind of doubt it. And if you're buying games and then hiding them away, that's totally cool too, but you're not really a collector in any sense the term has traditionally been understood unless a decent part of your collection is in your line-of-sight somewhere in your home.

IOW, no two collectors are alike. Some will buy raw and send off for grading, some only buy pre-graded. Some buy CIB only, some sealed only. Some will buy PAL or JP games and some will only buy NTSC. Some value box more than seal and some seal more than box. Some want rarity and some "historical significance" (whatever that means). Some collect across consoles and some don't. Some look for tie-ins and licenses and some don't. Some have a price limit and some don't, some prefer auctions to straight buys, some prefer VGA to WATA or WATA to VGA, some collect across consoles but only in one game genre, some won't buy below a 9.0/A and some won't buy below a 9.6/A+. And on and on. Conversations about why and how people collect are stupid because the reasons and modes for collecting are as varied as why one might be attracted to someone or why one might choose one hobby over another. 

We're in the final days of a very small cabal of men with a very particular view of collecting being 90% of the conversation. Either that cabal becomes a tiny and irrelevant fraction of the collecting sphere or the sealed and graded market collapses altogether. Why? Because this particular cabal doesn't have the values or vision or catholic aesthetics that would allow for a market of this kind to grow beyond the 200 or so people who are in it now. Mind you, I'm not saying the collectors coming down the road will collect the way I do, either; they won't. But they certainly won't succumb to gaming-sphere bromides the equivalent of, "The average girl isn't very attractive."

I think we’re talking on tangents, because whilst you’re focusing on the average sealed/graded games collector, I’m focusing more on the high end collectors who have pre-existed WATA/HA. My focus was to explain that sealed/graded games have been 4-figures for quite some years, and the natural progression to low-to-high 5 figures is what I would deem natural organic growth. 

With the current era of collecting, of course the average collector will continue to do what they do. It’s currently the high end collectors (as in long term sealed collectors pre-dating WATA), that I see is being affected the most. With a hobby of previously 4 to low 5 figures now suddenly becoming 6-7 figures, I doubt many of these collectors would be jumping on board (the buying part, that is).

 

 

[Dumars2001 | 164]

4 hours ago, RETRO said:

I'm not at all questioning whether what you say is emotionally true for you. I'm sure it is; I don't doubt that. But it's also empirically false.

I knew a somewhat boorish guy back when I was in college—this was almost 30 years ago—and one time, while drunk, he mused to me, "You know, Seth, the average girl just isn't that attractive." I was sober but it still caught me off-guard. "Actually," I said to him finally, "I'm pretty sure the average girl is average-looking. Like, by definition."

Sealed and graded games exist in every conceivable combination. Low-grade sealed, low-grade CIB, mid-grade sealed, mid-grade CIB, high-grade sealed, high-grade CIB, good box/bad seal, bad box/good deal, and on and on and on. There's a reason VGA's scale starts at 10 and WATA's at 0.5—because while higher grades are more common than lower grades, both those grading houses are regularly putting 4.0s and 5.0s and 40s and 50s out into the world. They may come to market a little less frequently but (a) they're still in collections all over, and (b) the same can't be said for 6.5s and 7.5s or 60s and 70s, as those are all over the 24 markets that sell sealed retro games even if they're less common in a blue-blood meat market like Heritage except in CIB. (Mind you, I'm talking about cardboard retro games; I don't know why anyone would purchase sealed mass-produced games in decay-resistant plastic casing—there's no real condition premium except at the literally academic end of the NM/M subsphere—but collectors of those games really can't have a conversation that makes much sense with those of us hunting fragile cardboard, anyway. Someone who says they only collect 9.8/A++ NES games is a joker 99 times out of 100, not a devotee.)

Now here you are, telling me that the average collector is only interested in "pristine" (9.6/9.8 or Gold Tier) games, which are vanishingly rare relative to the entire population of sealed and graded games and even silly rare for the early post-cardboard consoles.

So that maxim is a literal impossibility, or else we would have to say that 95% of the market is irrelevant to the people who... make up the market. It's a mathematical nonsense. It also would mean that no one in the market has anyone to sell to long-term, because if you have a 7.5/A+, who the hell are you selling to if every potential buyer wants only pristine games?

What I've been saying from the jump here is that high-end collectors have lost all sense of perspective. Less boorishly by far, they're nevertheless by analogy like the college kid insisting the average girl isn't attractive, except in this case they're saying that a pretty amazingly attractive girl isn't of any interest to anyone because she isn't (to strain the analogy) a perfect 10. That's, like, a textbook sign that one has lost perspective and is vainly universalizing one's own idiosyncrasies.

I don't collect for the reason you do, and I've got plenty of very nice games. I collect because I consider video games art, and they're art whether they're in pristine condition or not. But because I want to display them as art, I need them to be visually attractive enough for that purpose and I need them to be games I connect with emotionally (in the same way I wouldn't want a painting in my home that neither I nor my wife connect with emotionally). There are VGA 75+ Silver Tier games—not all of them, but some—that are visually arresting and attractive enough to quite happily be displayed as art, and I have even (on rare occasion) seen an 8.0/A+ that met this requirement. I've also seen dogsh*t 9.0/A games and 9.4/A+ games with enough dog hair in them I'd never put them on display. None of those games are pristine in some abstract sense that could only be ascertained with a magnifying glass, nor do I need them to be to decide what I think of them.

My point: the hobby is going to expand in the coming years. More people like me (in the broadest sense) are coming, and they are likely to crowd out (by numbers) folks who are (a) looking only for "pristine" games at some level of abstract perfection virtually no one cares about and even fewer can afford, and (b) insistent that the quality of a game (as a matter of game development) doesn't matter, even though the only readily justifiable reason to want a game slabbed in your house is because you consider it a quality work of art. If you're out there buying "pristine" copies of Wally Bear and the NO! Gang more power to you, but I kind of doubt it. And if you're buying games and then hiding them away, that's totally cool too, but you're not really a collector in any sense the term has traditionally been understood unless a decent part of your collection is in your line-of-sight somewhere in your home.

IOW, no two collectors are alike. Some will buy raw and send off for grading, some only buy pre-graded. Some buy CIB only, some sealed only. Some will buy PAL or JP games and some will only buy NTSC. Some value box more than seal and some seal more than box. Some want rarity and some "historical significance" (whatever that means). Some collect across consoles and some don't. Some look for tie-ins and licenses and some don't. Some have a price limit and some don't, some prefer auctions to straight buys, some prefer VGA to WATA or WATA to VGA, some collect across consoles but only in one game genre, some won't buy below a 9.0/A and some won't buy below a 9.6/A+. And on and on. Conversations about why and how people collect are stupid because the reasons and modes for collecting are as varied as why one might be attracted to someone or why one might choose one hobby over another. 

We're in the final days of a very small cabal of men with a very particular view of collecting being 90% of the conversation. Either that cabal becomes a tiny and irrelevant fraction of the collecting sphere or the sealed and graded market collapses altogether. Why? Because this particular cabal doesn't have the values or vision or catholic aesthetics that would allow for a market of this kind to grow beyond the 200 or so people who are in it now. Mind you, I'm not saying the collectors coming down the road will collect the way I do, either; they won't. But they certainly won't succumb to gaming-sphere bromides the equivalent of, "The average girl isn't very attractive."

Great post and very articulate writing! I laughed out loud reading the average girl analogy:).

This also gave me a pretty good chuckle that you wrote below in one of your previous posts:

"I don't know why so many people think their ideal buyer is a Saudi prince who's read about Super Mario Bros. in PEOPLE or a reseller hoping to create a supply chain from their man cave to the corporate offices of a Chinese billionaire."

On a side note, I personally collect a little bit of everything from box only to low/high end graded games.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Dumars2001

[doner24 | 1,197]

15 hours ago, RETRO said:

I just... respectfully, where do you get this stuff? Have you ever been involved in collecting at scale and over a period of time, or selling into a long-standing collectibles market? This isn't how it works. This is how a bunch of vultures who've swarmed into retro gaming since 2019 are telling everyone it works because for a few more months it's to their financial benefit to say so. It has no correlation to how selling in a collectibles market works.

While I grant you that rarity is a second huge factor in long-term collectibles markets along with how a game is generally regarded, the vultures (I actually think of them as jackals) don't value that, either. Their new watchword is "historical significance," by which they simply mean "a game title that a non-gamer, dispassionate investor who's going to be in the sealed-and-graded video game market for about ten more months has heard of."

Yes, I’ve been involved in multiple hobbies as a large scale collector for over 20 years now. Simply put, you’re wrong. 

[Gulag Joe | 584]

If I recall correctly, back in the good ole days VGA didn't slab anything under a 70.

[doner24 | 1,197]

30 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

If I recall correctly, back in the good ole days VGA didn't slab anything under a 70.

Not sure how long back you’re talking about, but Paul back at NintendoAge got a 10 or something on a Super Mario Bros like 9 years ago.

[Gulag Joe | 584]

17 minutes ago, doner24 said:

Not sure how long back you’re talking about, but Paul back at NintendoAge got a 10 or something on a Super Mario Bros like 9 years ago.

I sent a batch to VGA back in 2012 and recall reading on their site then that they did not grade/slab anything that would be lower than a 70. Where's the old heads because I'm curious to know if I read that wrong or misinterpreted.

Anyway, I never sent bum games to VGA in the early days for that reason. I held off on sending a Genesis Holyfield because the seal was all banged up. Still haven't gotten it graded for that reason.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Gulag Joe

[doner24 | 1,197]

19 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

I sent a batch to VGA back in 2012 and recall reading on their site then that they did not grade/slab anything that would be lower than a 70. Where's the old heads because I'm curious to know if I read that wrong or misinterpreted.

Anyway, I never sent bum games to VGA in the early days for that reason. I held off on sending a Genesis Holyfield because the seal was all banged up. Still haven't gotten it graded for that reason.

Here’s a thread from early 2013 about it, with an earlier link that doesn’t work to the original thread. 

[Gulag Joe | 584]

6 minutes ago, doner24 said:

Here’s a thread from early 2013 about it, with an earlier link that doesn’t work to the original thread. 

Yikes. Maybe they lifted that rule after I submitted or I simply read their submission rules incorrectly, but I avoided sending any games to VGA that I thought would not come back above that standard, especially seal damaged games because they sent me back a mint game with an 85 grade because it had 2 light scuffs on the back of the seal. So, anything with seal breaks never made it to them. I had to wait for Wata to come along.

[guitarzombie | 927]

17 hours ago, doner24 said:

Exactly, how good the game is plays no part, other than the initial nostalgia that it might’ve sparked. 

This is exactly why Stadium Events is so expensive as it is.  Or, my other favorite to use, Waynes World.

[Dumars2001 | 164]

The 2nd part (water down) of Heritage Auctions is ending in about 3 hours. Any guesses what will do well?

I predict the Nes Super Maro Bros 9.0 A white seal goes for the highest amount, but I think the Double Dragon 2 & 3, Bionic Commando, Double Dribble, Snes Zombies ate my Neighbors, and of course the N64 Zelda go for a decent amount.

[Amermoe | 150]

8 hours ago, RETRO said:

It also would mean that no one in the market has anyone to sell to long-term, because if you have a 7.5/A+, who the hell are you selling to if every potential buyer wants only pristine games?

This is exactly what happened with VGA collectors back way before WATA/Hertiage. Any item graded less than an 80 (with some very very few exceptions to extreme rarities) was considered trash, undesirable and unsellable and is precisely why none of them came to market at that time. The old adage was if it was not at least Gold or Silver, don't sub it in or break the case and sell it raw. 

All graded collectors wanted Gold, but high Silver (85) was seen as a good enough consolation prize for most. For some, even Gold (85+) was not good enough (it was a dime a dozen, as someone once said to me), they had to have 90 or above only.

I have personally witnessed Bronze graded items sit for years on ebay until it was taken down, or put up for auction only to end at a lower price than a CIB game (insanity). No one wanted to touch it with a 10 foot pole. It was affordable enough for non-sealed collectors but they didn't want it because they abhorred the idea of entombing it in a slab, and for sealed/graded collectors, it was pitied/mocked and looked at as a failed attempt at grading.

There was zero market for those items, on either side of the collecting sphere, and if you were caught holding one of them, it was like a death sentence if you ever wanted to move it.

I'm not saying or agreeing with any of this, but I'm just stating that this was the reality of sealed collecting back in that time. And I do agree that this type of thinking does not allow the hobby to grow, which is why it stayed (and almost died) within a very small group of people for a very long time.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Amermoe

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

Today's session has been very strong. The low to mid level market is bustling. The super high end you have limited buyers and you'll probably need a pop report to bring more on board. 

[tidaldreams | 654]

1 hour ago, ExplodedHamster said:

Today's session has been very strong. The low to mid level market is bustling. The super high end you have limited buyers and you'll probably need a pop report to bring more on board. 

Yeah that's what I thought as well. Won't come close to getting anything at this rate.

[a3quit4s | 4,124]

What did that cheetah man 2 sell for out of curiosity 

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

Super Mario Land on Gameboy just went for double what the same grade went in the floor. 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

25 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

What did that cheetah man 2 sell for out of curiosity 

$8,400.

[a3quit4s | 4,124]

5 minutes ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

$8,400.

Interesting I didn’t look through the entire list but it looked to be one of the higher actual rare games. Any others of interest?

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

Just now, a3quit4s said:

Interesting I didn’t look through the entire list but it looked to be one of the higher actual rare games. Any others of interest?

I didn't really take a hard look at it either. I'm still mostly surprised that the TM Zelda and hangtab SMB didn't go higher than they did.