Wata NES pop report now available

[DefaultGen | 5,400]

11 minutes ago, Gloves said:

In 30 years I expect to be deep in the resource wars, and we'll all look back on such conversations like "is Mario 64 really a 1.5m dollar game?" and laugh, then cry. 

People are speculating on sealed Fortnites as if kids today have a prosperous future, lmao

[OptOut | 8,881]

10 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Oh, I think you're right that that's what it comes down to. But I think, realistically, nobody knows how future demand is gonna pan out, especially at that end of the market. Seth doesn't know, DetonatedGerbil doesn't know, you don't know and I don't know. Are sufficient numbers of rich people, in ten or twenty or thirty or whatever years, going to think it's neat to own a sealed copy of Super Mario to keep the price in that 6-7 figure range? I have no idea. I don't think anyone can say for sure.

Once again, we are in agreement!

 

Ultimately, I am in here because I love video games, and I find the sealed/graded market fascinating. I love these arguments and discussions, and I like to feel like we are able to explain ourselves and our different positions in a LARGELY amicable and pro-social way.

I DO see myself as a bastion of the average, common, old school retro game collector, and I DO feel it is important to have a more cautious and critical voice in all these discussions. After all, we are talking about ever greater sums being spent on these games, the risk to people entering this market is climbing higher all the time.

There's a place for hype, and we have those types here, and there is a place for caution, I feel this balance is very important, ESPECIALLY in a market that is currently almost entirely sustained by speculation and hype.

[Gulag Joe | 582]

7 hours ago, RETRO said:

Looks like the new high-end reseller/investor talking points are out.

1. Because everyone who grades a game with VGA "crosses over" that game with WATA to resell it under the 25% to 50% WATA premium that exists for... reasons... the WATA pop report data released today effectively takes into account every game graded by VGA in 13 years and can be treated as the "total" population of each sealed NES title out there. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0

2. Only 9.6 and 9.8 grades actually matter, so you can talk about the "rarity" of a title by eliminating all instances of that title that don't have a 9.6 or 9.8 box and pretending that the "total" population of the game is however many 9.6 and 9.8 boxes there are for that game. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0

3. After 15 years of being a niche hobby with about 200 practicing hobbyists, sealed and graded collecting is suddenly going to blow up, which means that there being hundreds of sealed and graded copies of SMB3 is amazingly good news for the hobby and anyone who has a sealed and graded copy of SMB3, as demand for these hundreds of copies will suddenly outstrip supply for the first time ever for... reasons. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0

4. Though everything about the two hobbies is different—from the percentage of all enthusiasts who want sealed and graded copies of the product to how many years grading companies have had to produce sealed and graded copies, from the ease of entry into the hobby based on the cost of the lowest-tier exemplars to the length of time the market for sealed and graded copies of the product has existed in a healthy and stable state—sealed and graded video games can be casually, even flippantly compared to comic books. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0

5. Even though high-end resellers spent years saying that certain NES games only had 5 or 10 sealed and graded copies (and so slapped the "RARE" and "GRAIL" labels on all their eBay listings despite having no data whatsoever to back either claim up), and even though it's now clear that some of those same games have scores of WATA-graded copies out in the world, scores of VGA-graded copies, and a "pace" of appearance on the market in sealed and graded condition that means they'll have many hundreds of copies on the market by 2026 with only (if past is precedent) a dozen or so potential buyers for each, today's pop reports are great news for the premise that you should buy {checks notes} copies of the most popular and readily available games for five figures. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0

6. Even if you think this data is bad news for high-end resellers and investors, this is only NES data, which is misleading and not an indicator of anything because... reasons. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0

7. Forget what the data means, the fact that it was released at all means that every unkind thing ever said about WATA is demonstrably false. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0

What am I missing here? What else is the "Video Games to 10 Million!" cult saying now that they started planning to say the second pop reports were announced in early November?

 

This entire comment is a complete misrepresentation of what is being discussed and shines a great big light on some people's ignorance of the entire subject of video game collecting.

1. Try actually speaking to anyone who works at Wata. It might help you get a good idea of what they do and what kind of submissions they receive. Accuracy rating: Accurate

2. The higher the grade, the more valuable the game is. This is the standard practice across all graded collectible markets. Accuracy rating: Accurate

3. The hobby has exploded and will continue to explode. Video games are literally selling for millions of dollars. Accuracy rating: Accurate

4. Video games can't be compared to comic books because the vast majority of comic books don't come factory sealed. Accuracy rating: Accurate

5. Only 22 NES titles (out of 778 total titles graded by Wata) have a population that can be accurately described as "scores" (at least 40 copies). Accuracy rating: Accurate

6. Not sure where the OP was going with this one. This data is great news for high end resellers because in this case, "scores" is not equal to "thousands". Accuracy rating: Accurate

7. It's not cool to trash business owners and their employees who are simply working a job to make a living doing what they love. Accuracy rating: Accurate

[MinusWorlds | 193]

Quietly walks in, whispers “Tim Atwood” 

Slowly and quietly back peddles from the room

[Seth | 161]

42 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

This entire comment is a complete misrepresentation of what is being discussed and shines a great big light on some people's ignorance of the entire subject of video game collecting.

1. Try actually speaking to anyone who works at Wata. It might help you get a good idea of what they do and what kind of submissions they receive. Accuracy rating: Accurate

2. The higher the grade, the more valuable the game is. This is the standard practice across all graded collectible markets. Accuracy rating: Accurate

3. The hobby has exploded and will continue to explode. Video games are literally selling for millions of dollars. Accuracy rating: Accurate

4. Video games can't be compared to comic books because the vast majority of comic books don't come factory sealed. Accuracy rating: Accurate

5. Only 22 NES titles (out of 778 total titles graded by Wata) have a population that can be accurately described as "scores" (at least 40 copies). Accuracy rating: Accurate

6. Not sure where the OP was going with this one. This data is great news for high end resellers because in this case, "scores" is not equal to "thousands". Accuracy rating: Accurate

7. It's not cool to trash business owners and their employees who are simply working a job to make a living doing what they love. Accuracy rating: Accurate

Joe, we're both collectors interested in this market, but only one of us is in a "prosperity gospel" cult of Joel Osteen-like proportions. I don't doubt your intelligence at all, only your willingness to "hear" basic facts—which is a feature of any cult and its members.

1. The idea that you have to have personal relationships with grading house employees to understand what that grading house does is so preposterous that it could only be uttered by someone who fails to understand that in a healthy, stable, mature collectibles market almost no one in the market knows anyone at the grading house, but rather it is the grading house that (unlike WATA) has made its processes and ethos transparent to all its consumers. The very fact that the high-end resellers in this market all know the WATA folks confirms how small, sad, and provincial this market is.

2. Don't lecture me about how grading works just because I said that you can't reduce the population of a game to only its 9.8 and 9.6 exemplars. You and your crew have so misunderstood how markets work that it would probably blow your ears off to hear that I own the best WATA copy of a certain desirable NES game in the world... and it's an 8.5.

3. The prices paid in the hobby are exploding. The number of buyers is relatively static. You've been told this repeatedly and just can't hear it. That's what being in a Good News Cult does to a person.

4. So you're saying that the fact that the "vast majority" of video games "come factory sealed" is evidence that... factory sealed NES games are rare? Uh... okay. I guess this is why Heritage Auctions can run a weekly sale of sealed NES games, and why Goldin and ComicConnect and CertifiedLink and now Hake's can run semi-regular video game auctions of sealed NES games decades after the last licensed NES game was produced without ever running out of things to sell. Don't worry—only every fact is against you on this.

5. You persist in ignoring 13 years of VGA data—coming soon—and the fact that (see #4) sealed NES games keep spilling into the market every week and will continue to do so for years and years and years, and you persist in doing this because you are in a Good News Cult.

6. High-end resellers will be killed by this data, because it shows that they missed out on all the actually rare games and that the games they thought would sell for bonkers cash are over-saturated in the market relative to demand. If high-end resellers thought pop reports would make them rich, you and I damn well know they would have been militating for these reports in highly aggressive, orchestrated, public, vocal, personal terms for years and years—especially given their privileged access to and relationships with a couple guys at WATA. They haven't ever done this because this report exposes their ignorance and hype.

7. No one ever "trashed" WATA "employees" and you know that. I have praised WATA for many things, as have many of its critics. A grand total of two WATA executives have been criticized. You conflate two millionaire execs with the workers of a company because you are in a Good News Cult and your values lie with management, not workers, and the ultra-wealthy rather than regular people.

S.

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by RETRO

[Seth | 161]

P.S. Having said all this, don't worry, Joe, I am not saying that the members of the Good News Cult have to—or will—stop gouging buyers. You and I both know that what the GNC members are counting on is that these pop reports will soon be forgotten, be eclipsed by new reports for other consoles, and be unknown (as to their existence) by the richest foreign buyers and the scattered mega-wealthy domestic buyers. So these reports won't change that much, except for (1) buyers who do their research (a small group) and (2) ethical high-end resellers (also a small group), with the latter now refusing to lie about the rarity of their games in online listings and private negotiations.

What none of this will do is expand the hobby. What it will do is ever so slightly contract the market for the games the high-end resellers have been hawking, and ever so slightly increase the tendency of speculators to seek out actually rare games.

[Gulag Joe | 582]

15 minutes ago, MinusWorlds said:

Quietly walks in, whispers “Tim Atwood” 

Slowly and quietly back peddles from the room

Been through this on other threads but the "Atwood collection" was primarily comprised of all the leftover junk that nobody bought. Have any of the games out of Atwoods collection sold for 100k or even 50k? Regardless, his 2 six packs of Astyanax only equal 12 games that, if piled up correctly, resemble a trash can.

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

5 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Been through this on other threads but the "Atwood collection" was primarily comprised of all the leftover junk that nobody bought. Have any of the games out of Atwoods collection sold for 100k or even 50k? Regardless, his 2 six packs of Astyanax only equal 12 games that, if piled up correctly, resemble a trash can.

remember when ppl thought he had cases and cases but sent 0 pics

ya and that got a whole collection denotation

Edited November 30, 2021 by CIBWholesale

[MinusWorlds | 193]

3 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Been through this on other threads but the "Atwood collection" was primarily comprised of all the leftover junk that nobody bought. Have any of the games out of Atwoods collection sold for 100k or even 50k? Regardless, his 2 six packs of Astyanax only equal 12 games that, if piled up correctly, resemble a trash can.

From what he sold it was a mix of good stuff with mostly mid to low tier. There were some great titles in there tho, Mario Bros Arcade, MTPO, Power Blade 2, Stack-Up off the top of my head. None of the case packs were sold. Only his loose set. And he’s got much more than Astyanax. 

[MinusWorlds | 193]

4 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

remember when ppl thought he had cases and cases but sent 0 pics

ya and that got a whole collection denotation

Yeah I remember. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by MinusWorlds

[Gloves | 11,761]

11 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Been through this on other threads but the "Atwood collection" was primarily comprised of all the leftover junk that nobody bought. Have any of the games out of Atwoods collection sold for 100k or even 50k? Regardless, his 2 six packs of Astyanax only equal 12 games that, if piled up correctly, resemble a trash can.

Hey now, Astyanax is a really fun game with a great soundtrack! 

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

5 minutes ago, MinusWorlds said:

From what he sold it was a mix of good stuff with mostly mid to low tier. There were some great titles in there tho, Mario Bros Arcade, MTPO, Power Blade 2, Stack-Up off the top of my head. None of the case packs were sold. Only his loose set. And he’s got much more than Astyanax. 

u got to have 6 pics of every angle or it doesnt count. anyone can bring out old albums from the 90s

[MinusWorlds | 193]

3 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

u got to have 6 pics of every angle or it doesnt count. anyone can bring out old albums from the 90s

I have plenty of pics. If it didn’t take an act of Congress to upload them here maybe I would post some. 

[Gulag Joe | 582]

18 minutes ago, RETRO said:

Joe, we're both collectors interested in this market, but only one of us is in a "prosperity gospel" cult of Joel Osteen-like proportions. I don't doubt your intelligence at all, only your willingness to "hear" basic facts—which is a feature of any cult and its members.

1. The idea that you have to have personal relationships with grading house employees to understand what that grading house does is so preposterous that it could only be uttered by someone who fails to understand that in a healthy, stable, mature collectibles market almost no one in the market knows anyone at the grading house, but rather it is the grading house that (unlike WATA) has made its processes and ethos transparent to all its consumers. The very fact that the high-end resellers in this market all know the WATA folks confirms how small, sad, and provincial this market is.

2. Don't lecture me about how grading works just because I said that you can't reduce the population of a game to only its 9.8 and 9.6 exemplars. You and your crew have so misunderstood how markets work that it would probably blow your ears off to hear that I own the best WATA copy of a certain desirable NES game in the world... and it's an 8.5.

3. The prices paid in the hobby are exploding. The number of buyers is relatively static. You've been told this repeatedly and just can't hear it. That's what being in a Good News Cult does to a person.

4. So you're saying that the fact that the "vast majority" of video games "come factory sealed" is evidence that... factory sealed NES games are rare? Uh... okay. I guess this is why Heritage Auctions can run a weekly sale of sealed NES games, and why Goldin and ComicConnect and CertifiedLink and now Hake's can run semi-regular video game auctions of sealed NES games decades after the last licensed NES game was produced without ever running out of things to sell. Don't worry—only every fact is against you on this.

5. You persist in ignoring 13 years of VGA data—coming soon—and the fact that (see #4) sealed NES games keep spilling into the market every week and will continue to do so for years and years and years, and you persist in doing this because you are in a Good News Cult.

6. High-end resellers will be killed by this data, because it shows that they missed out on all the actually rare games and that the games they thought would sell for bonkers cash are over-saturated in the market relative to demand. If high-end resellers thought pop reports would make them rich, you and I damn well know they would have been militating for these reports in highly aggressive, orchestrated, public, vocal, personal terms for years and years—especially given their privileged access to and relationships with a couple guys at WATA. They haven't ever done this because this report exposes their ignorance and hype.

7. No one ever "trashed" WATA "employees" and you know that. I have praised WATA for many things, as have many of its critics. A grand total of two WATA executives have been criticized. You conflate two millionaire execs with the workers of a company because you are in a Good News Cult and your values lie with management, not workers, and the ultra-wealthy rather than regular people.

S.

 

1. Employees at Wata are not top secret government employees. They have lives and relationships just like everyone else. Your comments lead me to believe you want Wata to hire people who don't know what they're doing. These companies come to many boards like this one to hire people to grade games. And a lot of video game collectors are friends with other video game collectors. Keeping these graders in a basement prison similar to how Jesse Pinkman ended up in Breaking Bad is not how things work!

2. I'm not arguing that if there's only three total games of a title that have been graded, that anything not a 9.8 would be worthless. This is where the importance of the population report comes in and why so many of "my crew" wanted it. But obviously the highest grade will command the market.

3. Incorrect. The number of interested buyers in this high end market is growing much faster than you want to believe.

4. Sealed video games have a perceived higher value than most comic books and you will see that trend grow now that this pop report has been released.

5. You seem to believe that VGA accepted thousands of video game submissions over the last 13 years when that is definitely not the case. Apply your "niche collector hobby" to this scenario and ask yourself, being a collector, how many collector friends you know of that sent their games to VGA and is that a high number?

6. I simply disagree with you here.

7. If you ever start up a grading company (since that's the new thing to do considering the hobby is exploding in popularity), don't lock up your graders in a basement like Jesse Pinkman.

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

2 minutes ago, MinusWorlds said:

I have plenty of pics. If it didn’t take an act of Congress to upload them here maybe I would post some. 

there's always a reason

Edited November 30, 2021 by CIBWholesale

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

1 minute ago, CIBWholesale said:

picturegate 2021 is real

The competition for second best collection behind RareBucky is getting NASTY. Can’t we all just get along!?

[MinusWorlds | 193]

I mean, it’s only 1 angle but I think you get the point. 

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by MinusWorlds

[MinusWorlds | 193]

2 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

there's always a reason

That’s hilarious coming from the girl, I mean guy, that couldn’t get a game listed because they took a pic with a shoe and tried to sell it for a billion dollars. 

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

4 minutes ago, MinusWorlds said:

I mean, it’s only 1 angle but I think you get the point. 

there's no reason to believe those games are available or not from 2005

 

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by CIBWholesale

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

3 minutes ago, MinusWorlds said:

That’s hilarious coming from the girl, I mean guy, that couldn’t get a game listed because they took a pic with a shoe and tried to sell it for a billion dollars. 

ya when asked to prove something all the other things come up rather than a serial number from a grading company

 

why do all the people from the news articles have 0 transaction feedback?

[RH | 4,895]

The ghost of Atwood strike again!

I'd honestly like to meet that man and shake his hand, if for no other reason than all the drama he's indirectly stirred up for going on decades and I love popcorn!

Edited November 30, 2021 by RH

[MinusWorlds | 193]

7 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

there's no reason to believe those games are available.

 

also you posted  A private address

Who said they were? Literally nobody said that. And they aren’t. Never have been. Nice deflection tho. 
 

Two questions. 
 

1. How mad do those pics make you? Scale of 1-10  

2. Is it upsetting that everyone knows you’re a guy now? Like, you pretended you were a girl for years to get deals, sympathy, etc. and now we all know it was just a weird ploy. I mean some knew for many years, but now EVERYONE knows. Also, that’s a 1-10 scale as well. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by MinusWorlds

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

1 minute ago, RH said:

The ghost of Atwood strike again!

I'd honestly like to meet that man and shake his hand, if for no other reason than all the drama he's indirectly stirred up for going on decades and I love popcorn!

You could have! At 2019 Too Many Games :).

[MinusWorlds | 193]

 

2 minutes ago, ExplodedHamster said:

You could have! At 2019 Too Many Games :).

Excuse me sir, could you provide feedback for me. Annie, I mean Curtis is saying I’m not valid cuz I don’t have feedback. 
 

Maybe you can put it on Yelp for me. Thank you. 5 stars. Thank you. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by MinusWorlds

[inasuma | 1,203]

2 minutes ago, MinusWorlds said:

 

2. Is it upsetting that everyone knows you’re a guy now? Like, you pretended you were a girl for years to get deals, sympathy, etc. and now we all know it was just a weird ploy. I mean some knew for many years, but know EVERYONE knows. Also, that’s a 1-10 scale as well. 

Well this got weird