Co-Founder Of WATA Accused Of Selling Company's Games On eBay

[AnimalHouse | 117]

article here

I randomly found this article. It doesn't say the sellers name, but it is very easy to find by searching the titles in the photo. To save you all time its m*s*h.

[tidaldreams | 654]

Dude's a cofounder and all he has to offer is atari 

[Ricky Winterborn | 80]

This has already been debunked.  Here is a statement from Mark Haspel himself.

 

Certification has transformed vintage video game collecting considerably in the last 3.5 years. Discussions regarding video game certification, its purpose and future are to be expected. Transparent dialogue is necessary and healthy for all participants in the video game collecting space.

As part of this public discourse some concerns have been raised regarding my involvement with Wata and the video game hobby. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify my role as it relates to Wata.

I have never been an employee of Wata.

I have never been a board member or officer of Wata.

I was a passive investor in Wata. Like other passive investors in the company, I never had any oversight role or made any management decisions for Wata. I have never been involved in the day to day operations at Wata.

I was listed in the Wata SEC filings as was required because of my investment in the company.

I no longer have any equity in the company because of the sale to Collector’s Universe in July 2021.

I am featured on Wata’s website to help market video game certification to collectors, investors and dealers in other collecting fields. I attended various conventions with Wata in order to help cross promote video game collecting to collectors from other collectable spaces.

I provided feedback to Wata when it designed its original holder and label. I also provided my opinion to Wata before its launch on how components of CIBs should be categorized and dealt with.

I briefly visited the Wata offices 2 times since its launch in April 2018. The last time I was there was in July 2019. I live in Florida. Wata is located in Denver, CO.

I have never graded any of my own games or any other video games submitted to Wata. Apart from Deniz Kahn and Kenneth Thrower, I have not spoken with, nor have I ever met, any of the other graders at Wata. Wata’s integrity is important to me and I have never asked for or received any preferential grading.

At no point did I have access to information from Wata that the general public does not. I have no access to Wata’s computer system or database, and I have never had access to any private information about submissions, submitters, financials or population reports. Additionally, I have never requested or received such information from Wata.

I submit games to Wata the same way any other customer or collector submits games.

I do buy and sell vintage video games openly. I have been doing this in plain sight with nothing to hide.

My return address has my name on every package I ship. I often reach out to other collectors, including providing my personal contact information, in order to build relationships in the hobby.

I am proud to have been part of Wata’s first steps. I am confident that the resources and opportunities made available to Wata under the new ownership will ensure its future success. I am also excited to see CGC enter the video game certification market. Healthy competition makes companies better and serves collectors well.

Mark Haspel

[inasuma | 1,206]

18 minutes ago, Ricky Winterborn said:

This has already been debunked.  Here is a statement from Mark Haspel himself.

 

Certification has transformed vintage video game collecting considerably in the last 3.5 years. Discussions regarding video game certification, its purpose and future are to be expected. Transparent dialogue is necessary and healthy for all participants in the video game collecting space.

As part of this public discourse some concerns have been raised regarding my involvement with Wata and the video game hobby. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify my role as it relates to Wata.

I have never been an employee of Wata.

I have never been a board member or officer of Wata.

I was a passive investor in Wata. Like other passive investors in the company, I never had any oversight role or made any management decisions for Wata. I have never been involved in the day to day operations at Wata.

I was listed in the Wata SEC filings as was required because of my investment in the company.

I no longer have any equity in the company because of the sale to Collector’s Universe in July 2021.

I am featured on Wata’s website to help market video game certification to collectors, investors and dealers in other collecting fields. I attended various conventions with Wata in order to help cross promote video game collecting to collectors from other collectable spaces.

I provided feedback to Wata when it designed its original holder and label. I also provided my opinion to Wata before its launch on how components of CIBs should be categorized and dealt with.

I briefly visited the Wata offices 2 times since its launch in April 2018. The last time I was there was in July 2019. I live in Florida. Wata is located in Denver, CO.

I have never graded any of my own games or any other video games submitted to Wata. Apart from Deniz Kahn and Kenneth Thrower, I have not spoken with, nor have I ever met, any of the other graders at Wata. Wata’s integrity is important to me and I have never asked for or received any preferential grading.

At no point did I have access to information from Wata that the general public does not. I have no access to Wata’s computer system or database, and I have never had access to any private information about submissions, submitters, financials or population reports. Additionally, I have never requested or received such information from Wata.

I submit games to Wata the same way any other customer or collector submits games.

I do buy and sell vintage video games openly. I have been doing this in plain sight with nothing to hide.

My return address has my name on every package I ship. I often reach out to other collectors, including providing my personal contact information, in order to build relationships in the hobby.

I am proud to have been part of Wata’s first steps. I am confident that the resources and opportunities made available to Wata under the new ownership will ensure its future success. I am also excited to see CGC enter the video game certification market. Healthy competition makes companies better and serves collectors well.

Mark Haspel

Not only does Mark not address the allegations but he downplays his role at Wata. I believe AdamW put it best from the HA thread:

The only distinction I'd make is that, while Mark is not an employee per se, he was still a shareholder and therefore was receiving compensation. The best argument I can see here is that he was selling who-gives-a-fuck Atari games, so it would have been hard for him to make a huge profit anyway.

Edited September 10, 2021 by inasuma

[Ricky Winterborn | 80]

51 minutes ago, inasuma said:

Not only does Mark not address the allegations but he downplays his role at Wata. I believe AdamW put it best from the HA thread:

The only distinction I'd make is that, while Mark is not an employee per se, he was still a shareholder and therefore was receiving compensation. The best argument I can see here is that he was selling who-gives-a-fuck Atari games, so it would have been hard for him to make a huge profit anyway.

Shareholders do not receive compensation.  A publicly traded company can choose to pay dividends, this is not the case here.  Only after the sale of the company, will the investor be rewarded financially.  If the company doesn't sell and goes under, then the money spent on the investment disappears too.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

Oh cool, he investigated himself and found no wrongdoing. Case closed!

Give me a break. Dude's shady AF. You can SAY anything you want in a statement. Where's the proof?

[phart010 | 1,708]

I disagree with the statement that he was a passive investor. I am a passive investor in a lot of companies who’s shares I own. This means I just researched their current share price, analyzed that against the growth potential considering some opportunities that company has in the market. After buying shares, I cross my fingers and watch the company’s performance.

He himself says that he attended conventions with Wata and attempted to promote graded video games as a collectible to existing comic book collectors. That sounds like marketing on behalf of Wata to me. Which would appear to be work.

As a passive investor in companies I own shares of, I am not doing any work to promote these companies. I am simply just watching their price.

Although it makes me wonder where the line is drawn. I also buy cryptocurrencys, and I definitely do promote the ones I am invested in with various levels of messaging. I doubt I’m am making any dent, more just interested in getting people’s feedback to see if they agree with my analysis. Am I passively invested or actively invested in cryptos?

Edited September 10, 2021 by phart010

[AdamW | 713]

10 hours ago, Ricky Winterborn said:

Shareholders do not receive compensation.  A publicly traded company can choose to pay dividends, this is not the case here.  Only after the sale of the company, will the investor be rewarded financially.  If the company doesn't sell and goes under, then the money spent on the investment disappears too.

It doesn't matter whether he receives compensation (although you can't possibly know how a private company chooses to make distributions to shareholders). It's a very simple point. Deniz told the NYT that employees could not get games graded or trade in graded games. Mark, who has his name in lights on the WATA site under Executive Team, then goes ahead and sells graded games. This is what's known in the trade as a bad look.

We are in the court of public opinion here, so it's not necessary to play word games about whether Mark technically qualifies as an "employee" (and the NYT actually wrote it up as an indirect quotation in any case, so we don't know what precise word Deniz used). It's more important that a reasonable, unbiased observer who read that commitment in the NYT would not expect someone in Mark's position to be trading in graded games. The purpose of the commitment is clear - to avoid the obvious conflict of interest inherent in insiders being able to grade games or trade in graded games. On the face of it, Mark is very clearly enough of an "insider" that it presents a huge apparent conflict of interest for him to be doing so, and yet he is.

Edited September 11, 2021 by AdamW

[inasuma | 1,206]

1 hour ago, Ricky Winterborn said:

Shareholders do not receive compensation.  A publicly traded company can choose to pay dividends, this is not the case here.  Only after the sale of the company, will the investor be rewarded financially.  If the company doesn't sell and goes under, then the money spent on the investment disappears too.

Splitting hairs. Compensation or not, employee or not, he was an investor with a massive stake in the company. The optics are bad no matter how you slice it. I don't really have any interest in discussing nuance of his role. Money was involved where he stood to gain, either way.   

[Silent Hill | 276]

Optics are bad but I think it's an overreaction to highlight this as some massive collusion or manipulation. Proof of preferential treatment on grading would be a stronger issue IMO.

[Tanooki | 4,953]

1 hour ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Oh cool, he investigated himself and found no wrongdoing. Case closed!

Give me a break. Dude's shady AF. You can SAY anything you want in a statement. Where's the proof?

Dude needs a US government job then, he passed the litmus test as a politician or cronie there of.