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Jonebone, if you watched the video, you know he wasn't talking about loose carts. Loose cart prices have gone up only slightly in the last few years, and he certainly wasn't complaining about Contra being $32 instead of $18. Nor was he speaking of sealed and graded games—he didn't want any and didn't express any envy whatsoever of those who did and/or who were buying sealed and graded games at TMG. He seemed to fully understand that this was others' bag and not his.

He was talking about CIB games—which on average have gone up *over 150%* in price in just 24 months, which is literally insane. It's happened because of speculators in the sealed and graded market. They buy CIB games and send them off to WATA, VGA, and now P1. You know this. You do this yourself. So you know *exactly* what he was upset about—you know exactly what he was able to get CIB games for in 2018 versus today—and you also know it has nothing to do with luck. You're too smart and too self-aware to be this disingenuous, man. That was a really disappointing post by you.

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So Seth, it is OK for carts to have gone up in price (which you acknowledge), but apparently CIB was not allowed to also go up?

CIB in nice shape has been severely undervalued for years, just as sealed was.

Can you also clarify where he says he wanted CIB boxed games?

CIB is still undervalued as a whole, for the record, in nice shape.

Also not to mention that TMG is the priciest game convention to vend at, as I did state. Portland is up there as well. You are dealing with mostly larger vendors who do price their games above ebay.

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2 hours ago, operationivy said:

So Seth, it is OK for carts to have gone up in price (which you acknowledge), but apparently CIB was not allowed to also go up?

CIB in nice shape has been severely undervalued for years, just as sealed was.

Can you also clarify where he says he wanted CIB boxed games?

CIB is still undervalued as a whole, for the record, in nice shape.

Also not to mention that TMG is the priciest game convention to vend at, as I did state. Portland is up there as well. You are dealing with mostly larger vendors who do price their games above ebay.

They've gone up for different reasons.

Carts have gone up because during the pandemic more people are gaming because they are home more. Carts are clearly not going up because of grading because at this point very few of the games being graded by the six or seven grading houses out there are loose carts.

Talking about whether prices going up is "okay" or not is a red herring—a trap. When I said that prices had gone up for CIB over 150% in 2 years and that that was insane, my point was that it was and is unusual and that it did and is pricing people out of a hobby they have enjoyed for decades. That's what the video the OP was writing about was clearly discussing—not whether he had gotten lucky at conventions in the past or whether he properly appreciates his friends and spending time with them. Because no one specifically has a "right" to any particular hobby (in the legal sense), it is sort of impossible to say whether it is morally okay when prices explode; it is not, however, difficult to say that it is sad for many people, unless you lack empathy—in which case one will simply bathe oneself in self-justifications perpetually.

The gentleman in the video certainly did talk a lot about "eBay plus," and I can't speak to whether it is a good idea to buy games at a convention (though having been to many conventions I will agree that prices obviously should be lower at conventions than outside them, as it is logically absurd when they are higher—it defeats the theory of how/why you can convince people to spend a lot of money to come to a convention in the first place) or how the prices at TMG this year compare to eBay right now. But I don't think any of us doubted this man when he said that prices were higher than they had been previously (pre-2019) and that games he previously could have afforded he now cannot. Even the OP did not call this man a liar.

My nit to pick with the other poster was not about whether it is okay for prices to go up or down but whether he was misrepresenting this man's basis for being concerned about his ability to continue in the game-collecting hobby. You can justify price changes however you like, and you can pretend that extraordinary price changes with an obvious cause are just part of the normal up and down of the collectibles industry even when you know they are not and are specifically caused by speculators, but it's not going to bring back into the hobby people who were priced out of it.

The reason Jonebone and others are struggling to sell many of their games is that there aren't enough low- or mid-range buyers—and the reason there aren't enough buyers of this sort is because everyone but millionaires and resellers is getting priced out of the hobby, even as resellers like Jonebone celebrate every new price record set. They can keep shooting themselves in the foot interminably if they like, that's not my business.

Edited by SethA
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As someone who owns around 170 sealed mainly Nes games (about 50 VGA graded and 5 WATA graded), I  really want this sealed market to flourish and be real, but I still can't quite come to grips with how much these games have skyrocketed in value over the past year or so! It just isn't natural.

The next time that I have time to fly back to the States (and not be required to be quarantined in Taiwan for 21 days, upon my return), I plan on bringing some of my games back (my carry-on) and cosigning about 15 of my games with either Heritage or Goldin. I need to to go through the whole process and see the money in my account to believe it, lol. 

(One question here for some of you who have sold on Heritage or Goldin, is there any way around the 28% Capital Gains Tax?)

Aside from the occasional big sale on Ebay, you usually don't see the big ending prices anywhere, except on Heritage Auctions and now Goldin Auctions. Ceritified Link doesn't get the prices of the other two.

So who are these buyers? Are they the same group of guys (investors) buying from the Auction Houses at inflated prices and then putting them up for sale again for the next auction and doing it all over again with each new big auction (setting new record prices for various games from different systems each time)? I also realize that these could all be legit buyers that only want to buy their games from a "reputable" Auction House and they are just filthy rich people and want to spend their money on whatever they choose and in this case, video games? 

Anyways, it has been months/a year or so now with this craziness and I still really don't know what to honestly think about what is going on with these 4, 5, 6, and 7 digit sales.

I also believe that if some of these games that are selling for these record prices at the Auction Houses were listed for the same price that they sold for at Heritage, on Ebay, they would more than likely just sit and not sell.

I have observed that almost all of the high end games on Comic Connect just sit there with no buyers. Why? You would think that they would all be bought up, if they were listed at or below what they are selling for at Heritage and now Goldin Auctions. anyways, i am just a very confused and conflicted person. My apologies:).

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54 minutes ago, Dumars2001 said:

As someone who owns around 170 sealed mainly Nes games (about 50 VGA graded and 5 WATA graded), I  really want this sealed market to flourish and be real, but I still can't quite come to grips with how much these games have skyrocketed in value over the past year or so! It just isn't natural.

The next time that I have time to fly back to the States (and not be required to be quarantined in Taiwan for 21 days, upon my return), I plan on bringing some of my games back (my carry-on) and cosigning about 15 of my games with either Heritage or Goldin. I need to to go through the whole process and see the money in my account to believe it, lol. 

(One question here for some of you who have sold on Heritage or Goldin, is there any way around the 28% Capital Gains Tax?)

Aside from the occasional big sale on Ebay, you usually don't see the big ending prices anywhere, except on Heritage Auctions and now Goldin Auctions. Ceritified Link doesn't get the prices of the other two.

So who are these buyers? Are they the same group of guys (investors) buying from the Auction Houses at inflated prices and then putting them up for sale again for the next auction and doing it all over again with each new big auction (setting new record prices for various games from different systems each time)? I also realize that these could all be legit buyers that only want to buy their games from a "reputable" Auction House and they are just filthy rich people and want to spend their money on whatever they choose and in this case, video games? 

Anyways, it has been months/a year or so now with this craziness and I still really don't know what to honestly think about what is going on with these 4, 5, 6, and 7 digit sales.

I also believe that if some of these games that are selling for these record prices at the Auction Houses were listed for the same price that they sold for at Heritage, on Ebay, they would more than likely just sit and not sell.

I have observed that almost all of the high end games on Comic Connect just sit there with no buyers. Why? You would think that they would all be bought up, if they were listed at or below what they are selling for at Heritage and now Goldin Auctions. anyways, i am just a very confused and conflicted person. My apologies:).

It's even stranger than you imagine.

My website tracks 25 markets, and apart from the auctions almost nothing sells—ever. Sealed and graded games just sit there untouched, seemingly forever, at prices no one would seriously consider. I exaggerate just a little, of course—the comic book shops that sell graded games may move one or two a month from what you can see online, and across all consoles and grade types and grading houses eBay might see ten to twenty sales total a month, which is nothing obviously—but the games always sell when they appear at auction. Strange, right?

At Heritage, the really expensive games are bought by a small number of anonymous millionaires, many of whom (I believe) are overseas. But yes, the resellers are buying a ton and then trying to sell them to the millionaires—or one another. It's a shockingly turgid, blind, stupid, immature, out-of-control market, and the resellers are well aware of the fact that they don't have the imagination or foresight to do any of the obvious things to try to build a low- to mid-range graded-game fan base.

In fact, they've done the opposite of what any sensible person would do: they've ensured that the most common and popular games, the ones a new entrant to collecting might be interested in as a sort of gateway to the hobby, are impossible to afford.

I don't know how this all ends up, but neither do they. All I know is that they are not growing the market horizontally, only vertically, and it will likely be fatal to this bubble they've set up. Don't know when.

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51 minutes ago, SethA said:

I don't know how this all ends up, but neither do they. All I know is that they are not growing the market horizontally, only vertically, and it will likely be fatal to this bubble they've set up. Don't know when.

Agreed with almost everything you have said.

The sealed/graded market is huge in terms of value, but TINY in terms of participation. It's highly cannibalistic, and you see a lot of the same games in the Heritage weekly sales that have already sold on there before, in many cases selling for less than they did the first time around. There has also been SIGNIFICANT deflation in certain categories of games, particularly the Pokemon games which have lost a lot of value across the various titles. It seems that supply is easily keeping apace with demand on those ones, which is really not surprising to any of us who have been collecting games forever.

 

Anyway, it's a REAL risky way to make money, if that's really what people are doing it for, IMO. Although the big headlines come from all the 30 thousand, hundred thousand, million dollar sales, actually the VAST majority of stuff selling on Heritage goes for hundreds or perhaps the low thousands of dollars. When you account for the grading fees and time, plus the auction fees and shipping and stuff, you got people scraping a few hundred dollars profit out of a few thousand invested, with the real risk that they are gonna take a bath any time they put one of their "investments" back up for sale. There are NO established prices in this market as of yet, PERIOD. 

Of course, people only pay attention to the big ticket sales and yeah obviously someone selling a copy of Sonic for two hundred grand is making bank. But even for the real committed players trying to make money in the market, it looks to me like there are far more silver and bronze medals at best... and over time the list of losers is only going to get longer...

 

Only people making REAL money in this scene are those of us who picked these games up super cheap way back when, the people who caught on early and helped manipulate the market to its current state, the graders, and the auction houses. And, it goes without saying, that those categories of people tend to... overlap... 🤔 Funny that isn't it! 😅

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Here’s my observation of the current graded games scene:

- in the past, it was a niche market for passionate sealed collectors into high end condition

- currently, it’s for anyone with money, and little to no sense.

TLDR formula:

past = less cents, more sense

current = more cents, less sense

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4 hours ago, SethA said:

They've gone up for different reasons.

Carts have gone up because during the pandemic more people are gaming because they are home more. Carts are clearly not going up because of grading because at this point very few of the games being graded by the six or seven grading houses out there are loose carts.

Talking about whether prices going up is "okay" or not is a red herring—a trap. When I said that prices had gone up for CIB over 150% in 2 years and that that was insane, my point was that it was and is unusual and that it did and is pricing people out of a hobby they have enjoyed for decades. That's what the video the OP was writing about was clearly discussing—not whether he had gotten lucky at conventions in the past or whether he properly appreciates his friends and spending time with them. Because no one specifically has a "right" to any particular hobby (in the legal sense), it is sort of impossible to say whether it is morally okay when prices explode; it is not, however, difficult to say that it is sad for many people, unless you lack empathy—in which case one will simply bathe oneself in self-justifications perpetually.

The gentleman in the video certainly did talk a lot about "eBay plus," and I can't speak to whether it is a good idea to buy games at a convention (though having been to many conventions I will agree that prices obviously should be lower at conventions than outside them, as it is logically absurd when they are higher—it defeats the theory of how/why you can convince people to spend a lot of money to come to a convention in the first place) or how the prices at TMG this year compare to eBay right now. But I don't think any of us doubted this man when he said that prices were higher than they had been previously (pre-2019) and that games he previously could have afforded he now cannot. Even the OP did not call this man a liar.

My nit to pick with the other poster was not about whether it is okay for prices to go up or down but whether he was misrepresenting this man's basis for being concerned about his ability to continue in the game-collecting hobby. You can justify price changes however you like, and you can pretend that extraordinary price changes with an obvious cause are just part of the normal up and down of the collectibles industry even when you know they are not and are specifically caused by speculators, but it's not going to bring back into the hobby people who were priced out of it.

The reason Jonebone and others are struggling to sell many of their games is that there aren't enough low- or mid-range buyers—and the reason there aren't enough buyers of this sort is because everyone but millionaires and resellers is getting priced out of the hobby, even as resellers like Jonebone celebrate every new price record set. They can keep shooting themselves in the foot interminably if they like, that's not my business.

First off, I don't know you, you don' t know me (clearly), and many of your assumptions are way off.  I'll briefly explain some of the woeful inaccuracies here.

1) 150% in 24 months is nothing.  Plenty of times over the past years games have jumped 200 / 300% or more in a month or two in crazy spikes.  If that guy has been collecting for years like he claims, surely he's seen some of them.  Sometimes it was blamed on a Youtube review, sometimes a re-release (think what Pokemon Go did to original Pokemon prices, something like $50 CIB to $150 CIB over night), sometimes an NA hype post, etc. 

2) We're all priced out!  It's hard to feel sympathetic for a guy who can't afford the $100 to $250 CIB when I'm looking at 4 figure sealed games that are now 5 figures or even 6 figures!  One can still afford to collect lower value stuff at a slower pace (save better, liquidate better, budget better, etc.) but in the other case you're making life altering decisions or just changing the direction you collect entirely (CIB vs Sealed, Loose instead of CIB, etc.)  You can't speak to this man in a vaccuum like he's the only one priced out and the rest of us aren't.

 3) Most people aren't struggling to move their games.  Every time I list a wave on eBay at least one is side dealed in 24-48 hours.  Ebay is merely a fraction of my sales and good stuff still moves pretty quickly direct.  Overseas buyers are extremely numerous as well.  You've talked about tracking stuff, but public sales are only a fraction of the market.  Your best attempt to monitor market pulse is watching where the weekly ebay auctions end.  

4) Last but not least, if you think I'm a reseller who hypes the market, you clearly don't know me.  I've been at this since 2008 and I'm a collector who only resells to fund the hobby.  There are so many buyers spread out across the globe and once you make connections, it's very easy to move good stuff.  The only ones truly hyping stuff are the auction houses, I don't get that vibe on social media at all (unless you want to talk VHS, that's a whole nother topic).  A lot of the good stuff still sells privately without prices being disclosed.

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Just wait til those pop report comes out and Wata's PR machine starts working with media outlets to produce news articles letting everyone know there are far less sealed video games out there than there are Batman #1. It won't only be Wata running marketing, it'll also be all the millionaires who bought a lot of these games running PR campaigns as well.

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11 hours ago, Dumars2001 said:

As someone who owns around 170 sealed mainly Nes games (about 50 VGA graded and 5 WATA graded), I  really want this sealed market to flourish and be real, but I still can't quite come to grips with how much these games have skyrocketed in value over the past year or so! It just isn't natural.

The next time that I have time to fly back to the States (and not be required to be quarantined in Taiwan for 21 days, upon my return), I plan on bringing some of my games back (my carry-on) and cosigning about 15 of my games with either Heritage or Goldin. I need to to go through the whole process and see the money in my account to believe it, lol. 

(One question here for some of you who have sold on Heritage or Goldin, is there any way around the 28% Capital Gains Tax?)

Aside from the occasional big sale on Ebay, you usually don't see the big ending prices anywhere, except on Heritage Auctions and now Goldin Auctions. Ceritified Link doesn't get the prices of the other two.

So who are these buyers? Are they the same group of guys (investors) buying from the Auction Houses at inflated prices and then putting them up for sale again for the next auction and doing it all over again with each new big auction (setting new record prices for various games from different systems each time)? I also realize that these could all be legit buyers that only want to buy their games from a "reputable" Auction House and they are just filthy rich people and want to spend their money on whatever they choose and in this case, video games? 

Anyways, it has been months/a year or so now with this craziness and I still really don't know what to honestly think about what is going on with these 4, 5, 6, and 7 digit sales.

I also believe that if some of these games that are selling for these record prices at the Auction Houses were listed for the same price that they sold for at Heritage, on Ebay, they would more than likely just sit and not sell.

I have observed that almost all of the high end games on Comic Connect just sit there with no buyers. Why? You would think that they would all be bought up, if they were listed at or below what they are selling for at Heritage and now Goldin Auctions. anyways, i am just a very confused and conflicted person. My apologies:).

If you look at the auctions every week many of the same game has made multiple appearances (not the same title/grade, but literally the exact same game). I wouldn't risk this myself, but i suppose there are worse ways to gamble 🤣

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14 hours ago, jonebone said:

First off, I don't know you, you don' t know me (clearly), and many of your assumptions are way off.  I'll briefly explain some of the woeful inaccuracies here.

1) 150% in 24 months is nothing.  Plenty of times over the past years games have jumped 200 / 300% or more in a month or two in crazy spikes.  If that guy has been collecting for years like he claims, surely he's seen some of them.  Sometimes it was blamed on a Youtube review, sometimes a re-release (think what Pokemon Go did to original Pokemon prices, something like $50 CIB to $150 CIB over night), sometimes an NA hype post, etc. 

2) We're all priced out!  It's hard to feel sympathetic for a guy who can't afford the $100 to $250 CIB when I'm looking at 4 figure sealed games that are now 5 figures or even 6 figures!  One can still afford to collect lower value stuff at a slower pace (save better, liquidate better, budget better, etc.) but in the other case you're making life altering decisions or just changing the direction you collect entirely (CIB vs Sealed, Loose instead of CIB, etc.)  You can't speak to this man in a vaccuum like he's the only one priced out and the rest of us aren't.

 3) Most people aren't struggling to move their games.  Every time I list a wave on eBay at least one is side dealed in 24-48 hours.  Ebay is merely a fraction of my sales and good stuff still moves pretty quickly direct.  Overseas buyers are extremely numerous as well.  You've talked about tracking stuff, but public sales are only a fraction of the market.  Your best attempt to monitor market pulse is watching where the weekly ebay auctions end.  

4) Last but not least, if you think I'm a reseller who hypes the market, you clearly don't know me.  I've been at this since 2008 and I'm a collector who only resells to fund the hobby.  There are so many buyers spread out across the globe and once you make connections, it's very easy to move good stuff.  The only ones truly hyping stuff are the auction houses, I don't get that vibe on social media at all (unless you want to talk VHS, that's a whole nother topic).  A lot of the good stuff still sells privately without prices being disclosed.

Jonas,

(1) 150% is a gaming-wide average. You and I know that the in-demand games have seen 300% or more increase in just 18 months, and in some instances 100% increases in the last 120 days. Price Charting does not confirm your claim that spikes like this are common. Yes, we may see 50% increases for certain games over a two-year timeframe (though surely you know, as Pat Contri and Ian Ferguson have covered on the CUPodcast, that NES prices in particular were plummeting, not rising, until WATA came along) but nothing like this. I understand that you like to note that you've been collecting for a little over a decade—which is not actually that long in the grander scheme of video games hitting their 50-year anniversary next year—but your anecdotes do not trump hard data.

(2) I am trying to figure out what universe you're in that you think CIBs a long-time collector would want—the guy from the video wasn't a dude in his first year of collecting, looking for a Top Gun—are "$100 to $250." Graded CIBs in public markets are now $500 to $2,500 depending on title and grade, and raw CIBs are $500 to $1,000. Saying you don't feel sympathy for a CIB collector right now is like saying that everyone in America, if they just save enough, should be able to *collect* flat-screen television sets or lower-priced laptops in the midst of a pandemic and economic downturn. C'mon, man, I know you make a ton of money annually, but you can't be serious with this view of how the average person lives.

(3) You put a $999 StarTropics on eBay a while back, and I thought that was good of you—a reasonable (obviously insane, but in our times reasonable) price for the title (though it's the #11 most commonly graded title on its console) and grade (decent but sub-investment). I know that your crew pretty much agrees not to sell things for under $1,000 in order to destroy the three-figure market as soon as possible, thereby eliminating the chance of collecting graded games for anyone in the middle class, so I admired you for that listing. (I also admired your "crossover" article, as I have told you before, as it exposed how much more likely a *buyer* is to find value in VGA-graded games rather than WATA games; it was your article, ironically on the WATA website, that convinced me that all buyers should prefer VGA games not merely as a matter of business ethics but dollars-and-cents and bang-for-buck. Not surprisingly, and indeed I suspect this is why WATA published the article, it also implicitly made the case that *sellers* should always use WATA. Virtually no articles in this space are ever intended for buyers—only sellers—which is both telling and explains why WATA, which you advised at its founding or shortly before/after, would have wanted to publish your hard-data analysis of crossover grades.)

Anyway, your copy of StarTropics did not sell at $999. You re-listed it, and it still did not sell. You've now dropped it to $899 and it hasn't sold. During the period all this was happening, I bought a same-condition VGA copy of the game for hundreds less (proving my point about the "crossover" issue). Meanwhile, DRob is cutting YouTube videos begging friends like Dan Riga to buy his games—and admits that no one is buying them. I don't doubt that you or anyone can make money on Heritage, but this idea that you or Tom Curtin or whoever is making bank on private sales is undercut by DRob conceding he can't move any of his product in private sales to his fellow high-end resellers.

As far as you saying I only watch eBay when the 25 markets I track are listed on my website and in my data... I can't help you there. What you've said is wrong. I attend every Heritage weekly and signature and, just to be clear, I own a large number of graded games from both WATA (mostly) and VGA (a few but now, as I noted, my primary focus). I've bought things on Heritage and have a game being looked at by WATA right now. I am not a dilettante—I just don't run with crowds or hang out on private boards, which is why you don't know about me or my collection. While it's true I don't know you or your collection, you have to excuse me if I can't accept your representation of private transactions with anonymous individuals for unlisted prices in a market rampant with corruption whose public-facing components (including the hard data of sales) are distressing and turgid. You have a motive to present things a certain way and, as you say, I don't know you.

(4) Jonas, I did not say you "hype the market." I said you are a reseller, which you are. I said that you are part of a group of high-end resellers who have no idea how to expand this hobby beyond overseas millionaires and your fellow high-end resellers—which you are. You haven't even contested me saying that, or offered any example of how those in your set are working to expand the hobby. None of this makes you a bad person, and I am not calling you a bad person. I am saying you are not a steward of the hobby, nor are your fellow resellers, unless and until you come up with even a single idea—just *one*—about how to make it accessible to more people and thereby expand your buyer base.

If it's "very easy to move good stuff," explain to me why one of the highest end sellers—DRob, who pretended to be a pleb interested in raw Atari product to help Deniz on Pawn Stars—is on YT videos repeatedly saying he can't move his stuff. And you haven't responded to those noting that the Heritage sales are the same games over and over in a one-year cycle, or the fact that the once-robust three-figure marketing is evaporating, or how CIB prices for the games collectors actually want are now in the four figures (CIB, mind you!) or anything else. All you seem to have is denigrating this longtime collector from the video we're now discussing by saying he should spend more time outside playing with his friends.

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15 hours ago, SethA said:

They buy CIB games and send them off to WATA, VGA, and now P1. You know this.

Nobody is sending anything to P1 🤣 they seem sketch as hell, claiming an address in the U.S. but only one guy on eBay in Brazil has significant stock of P1 graded games (which seem to be graded extremely generously, and haphazardly). I haven't seen a single person in any of the usual places say they're sending games to P1.

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1 minute ago, AdamW said:

Nobody is sending anything to P1 🤣 they seem sketch as hell, claiming an address in the U.S. but only one guy on eBay in Brazil has significant stock of P1 graded games (which seem to be graded extremely generously, and haphazardly). I haven't seen a single person in any of the usual places say they're sending games to P1.

Actually DRob is pushing P1 to his crew now, because WATA and VGA are so backed up. But yes, believe me, I know all about the man in Brazil behind P1 (who is openly—not even hiding it—using a Kingston, Tennessee address to sell games his company graded).

That's right: the only P1-graded games being sold by anyone but DRob are being sold *by P1*. Shady as hell, as you say.

But mark my words, P1 has a good shot of growing given their turnaround times, passable physical product, and the absolute collapse of WATA (which backed out of Too Many Games, faces new competition from CGC [and to a far, far lesser degree P1 and UKG and VGG], has answered none of the present allegations of corruption, is increasingly sending out cases with scuffs and detritus and/or dog/human hairs inside them, has been caught in positively *fantastical* grading errors [usually involving seals] over and over in just the last two months, and is now taking over a year to return orders while not answering its customer service calls).

Is P1 shady? Looks that way so far. But shadiness has never stopped the high-end resellers from using—and even pumping up—a grading service before.

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53 minutes ago, SethA said:

Jonas,

(1) 150% is a gaming-wide average. You and I know that the in-demand games have seen 300% or more increase in just 18 months, and in some instances 100% increases in the last 120 days. Price Charting does not confirm your claim that spikes like this are common. Yes, we may see 50% increases for certain games over a two-year timeframe (though surely you know, as Pat Contri and Ian Ferguson have covered on the CUPodcast, that NES prices in particular were plummeting, not rising, until WATA came along) but nothing like this. I understand that you like to note that you've been collecting for a little over a decade—which is not actually that long in the grander scheme of video games hitting their 50-year anniversary next year—but your anecdotes do not trump hard data.

(2) I am trying to figure out what universe you're in that you think CIBs a long-time collector would want—the guy from the video wasn't a dude in his first year of collecting, looking for a Top Gun—are "$100 to $250." Graded CIBs in public markets are now $500 to $2,500 depending on title and grade, and raw CIBs are $500 to $1,000. Saying you don't feel sympathy for a CIB collector right now is like saying that everyone in America, if they just save enough, should be able to *collect* flat-screen television sets or lower-priced laptops in the midst of a pandemic and economic downturn. C'mon, man, I know you make a ton of money annually, but you can't be serious with this view of how the average person lives.

(3) You put a $999 StarTropics on eBay a while back, and I thought that was good of you—a reasonable (obviously insane, but in our times reasonable) price for the title (though it's the #11 most commonly graded title on its console) and grade (decent but sub-investment). I know that your crew pretty much agrees not to sell things for under $1,000 in order to destroy the three-figure market as soon as possible, thereby eliminating the chance of collecting graded games for anyone in the middle class, so I admired you for that listing. (I also admired your "crossover" article, as I have told you before, as it exposed how much more likely a *buyer* is to find value in VGA-graded games rather than WATA games; it was your article, ironically on the WATA website, that convinced me that all buyers should prefer VGA games not merely as a matter of business ethics but dollars-and-cents and bang-for-buck. Not surprisingly, and indeed I suspect this is why WATA published the article, it also implicitly made the case that *sellers* should always use WATA. Virtually no articles in this space are ever intended for buyers—only sellers—which is both telling and explains why WATA, which you advised at its founding or shortly before/after, would have wanted to publish your hard-data analysis of crossover grades.)

Anyway, your copy of StarTropics did not sell at $999. You re-listed it, and it still did not sell. You've now dropped it to $899 and it hasn't sold. During the period all this was happening, I bought a same-condition VGA copy of the game for hundreds less (proving my point about the "crossover" issue). Meanwhile, DRob is cutting YouTube videos begging friends like Dan Riga to buy his games—and admits that no one is buying them. I don't doubt that you or anyone can make money on Heritage, but this idea that you or Tom Curtin or whoever is making bank on private sales is undercut by DRob conceding he can't move any of his product in private sales to his fellow high-end resellers.

As far as you saying I only watch eBay when the 25 markets I track are listed on my website and in my data... I can't help you there. What you've said is wrong. I attend every Heritage weekly and signature and, just to be clear, I own a large number of graded games from both WATA (mostly) and VGA (a few but now, as I noted, my primary focus). I've bought things on Heritage and have a game being looked at by WATA right now. I am not a dilettante—I just don't run with crowds or hang out on private boards, which is why you don't know about me or my collection. While it's true I don't know you or your collection, you have to excuse me if I can't accept your representation of private transactions with anonymous individuals for unlisted prices in a market rampant with corruption whose public-facing components (including the hard data of sales) are distressing and turgid. You have a motive to present things a certain way and, as you say, I don't know you.

(4) Jonas, I did not say you "hype the market." I said you are a reseller, which you are. I said that you are part of a group of high-end resellers who have no idea how to expand this hobby beyond overseas millionaires and your fellow high-end resellers—which you are. You haven't even contested me saying that, or offered any example of how those in your set are working to expand the hobby. None of this makes you a bad person, and I am not calling you a bad person. I am saying you are not a steward of the hobby, nor are your fellow resellers, unless and until you come up with even a single idea—just *one*—about how to make it accessible to more people and thereby expand your buyer base.

If it's "very easy to move good stuff," explain to me why one of the highest end sellers—DRob, who pretended to be a pleb interested in raw Atari product to help Deniz on Pawn Stars—is on YT videos repeatedly saying he can't move his stuff. And you haven't responded to those noting that the Heritage sales are the same games over and over in a one-year cycle, or the fact that the once-robust three-figure marketing is evaporating, or how CIB prices for the games collectors actually want are now in the four figures (CIB, mind you!) or anything else. All you seem to have is denigrating this longtime collector from the video we're now discussing by saying he should spend more time outside playing with his friends.

S.

I think the biggest problem from either end (buyer vs seller) is the phrase “I’m priced out”. 

Seller end: can’t pay? Too bad, I’ll wait for someone with bigger pockets.

Buyer end: no actually, I can pay, just I don’t want to partake in such madness.

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1 hour ago, AdamW said:

Nobody is sending anything to P1 🤣 they seem sketch as hell, claiming an address in the U.S. but only one guy on eBay in Brazil has significant stock of P1 graded games (which seem to be graded extremely generously, and haphazardly). I haven't seen a single person in any of the usual places say they're sending games to P1.

Bruh, whatchu talkin' 'bout 🤔 😂

2056313816_HaganeP1grading.jpg.126218e1dfb04fbb81e0ee81a07207e6.jpg

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1 hour ago, SethA said:

Actually DRob is pushing P1 to his crew now, because WATA and VGA are so backed up. But yes, believe me, I know all about the man in Brazil behind P1 (who is openly—not even hiding it—using a Kingston, Tennessee address to sell games his company graded).

That's right: the only P1-graded games being sold by anyone but DRob are being sold *by P1*. Shady as hell, as you say.

But mark my words, P1 has a good shot of growing given their turnaround times, passable physical product, and the absolute collapse of WATA (which backed out of Too Many Games, faces new competition from CGC [and to a far, far lesser degree P1 and UKG and VGG], has answered none of the present allegations of corruption, is increasingly sending out cases with scuffs and detritus and/or dog/human hairs inside them, has been caught in positively *fantastical* grading errors [usually involving seals] over and over in just the last two months, and is now taking over a year to return orders while not answering its customer service calls).

Is P1 shady? Looks that way so far. But shadiness has never stopped the high-end resellers from using—and even pumping up—a grading service before.

Doubt that someone with anything of value would send it to this company. I certainly won't. Then again I see pokemon cards with some real sketch AF labels so what do I know. 🤣

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42 minutes ago, Maertens29 said:

Here, try these glasses on.

 

(Same game).

Screenshot_20211015-132300(1).png

Holy cow.

But this sort of underscores my point about what crossover data teaches us (something I've been writing an article on). We have to remember that all VGA games graded under 95 and over 70 are in "near-mint" range (from EX+/NM to NM/M). In practice, this means that over 80% of VGA games on the market are in the near-mint range *officially*—as you never really see a 95 or 100 VGA at market (and if you do, it's irrelevant to anyone but a millionaire) and candidly VGA games 70 and below often aren't at market either (and of those that are, maybe 90% are 70 or 60, which are both still EX or EX+).

Meanwhile, do the math: any WATA game under a 9.0 is *not* in the near-mint range definitionally—per WATA partner Heritage Auctions' official assessment—and even some of the 9.0 and 9.2 WATA boxes are *not* in the near-mint range because they have B+ seals or (as we've seen a lot of lately from WATA) erroneous "A" seal grades.

Yet WATA games consistently sell at 25% to 75% *more* than VGA games, even comparing like to like.

If you're a seller, you use WATA; if you're a buyer, I have no idea what you'd be doing not looking for VGA games first. The only disadvantage is that people don't understand the condition crossover data yet, so they don't realize that an 80+ from VGA is likely to be in *better* condition than a 9.0/A from WATA and possibly even a 9.2/A+.

While sure, both companies make mistakes—VGA far fewer than WATA—as long as you review pictures before purchase, as a buyer you should *always* look to VGA first. Ultimately it's the actual condition of the item, not the fact that WATA's grading scheme is devised to be a psychological ploy, that matters; WATA's grading scheme falsely convinces us, because of how we're conditioned to "read" numbers and 10-point/100-point grading scales, to imagine a 9.0/A equals a 90 VGA.

Not even close. Not even in the stratosphere of correct.

And this isn't even counting the fact that your WATA case (and I have many) will almost certainly have scuffs, bubbles, detritus, and/or human or dog hair in it; is more likely to have a mis-graded game in it; and will be contained in a box that explicitly gives derogatory information about your game on it. If you graded the game from raw, you also probably waited over a year for it, during which time you had to watch (and, spoiler, will have to keep watching) WATA's brand devolve due to scandal and new competition.

I guess I'm saying that I'm not actually that surprised that an 80+ VGA gets a 95 at P1. An 80+ VGA is a much higher grade than people realize, in part because the WATA fanboys have convinced everyone that (at best) 85+ [Gold Tier] equates to the very lowest end of WATA's NM tier (9.0/A).

That is factually wrong—and deliberately so. It's pure WATA marketing, not reality.

Seth
RETRO (launches 10/19)

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1 hour ago, tidaldreams said:

Damn, didn't know it got crossed. Do you know what it sold for? I forgot to look at it after the auction ended so now I have no clue 😪

I don't unfortunately.  I had a few more pictures/info awhile ago but it seems I may have erased the screen capture.  They also *may* have re-did the grading on this one too because it's obviously BS, but yea, that's P1 for ya haha.

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