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Wata NES pop report now available


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35 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

You know they are real. What are you getting out of disputing? It took a certain someone like 700 back and forth emails to get your Zelda 1 off your hands. I think I lasted 40 back and forth emails of nonsense with you before I decided it was a colossal waste of time.

now that's a trillion dollar game. sorry couldnt figure out how to put tri in there

how many pop is zelda 1? do they split all the vars

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The VGA Loopz (NES) I was watching last night—$269 and one of the highest-grade copies in the world, but honestly crushed enough in the back that I always stayed away from it because I display my games rather than re-sell them—is now gone.

So is the sequel to Wizardry.

While we debate old feuds, all the rare NES games on the market are being bought in the most dramatic shift in this market in a while.

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10 minutes ago, RETRO said:

The VGA Loopz (NES) I was watching last night—$269 and one of the highest-grade copies in the world, but honestly crushed enough in the back that I always stayed away from it because I display my games rather than re-sell them—is now gone.

So is the sequel to Wizardry.

While we debate old feuds, all the rare NES games on the market are being bought in the most dramatic shift in this market in a while.

Loopz is rare? I have a sealed copy.

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27 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

now that's a trillion dollar game. sorry couldnt figure out how to put tri in there

how many pop is zelda 1? do they split all the vars

There are plenty of sealed Zelda's to go around, apparently, depending on your flavour of variant and grade:

Screenshot_2021-11-30-23-58-02-02_40deb401b9ffe8e1df2f1cc5ba480b12.thumb.jpg.18717ae34dbb42ac45163cbda94a526a.jpg

EDIT: @ZeldaFan042 @ZeldaFreak check out my auto-correct! 😅

Looking good fellas! 😘

Edited by OptOut
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1 minute ago, Mijael said:

They should had included Pal editions

Americans don't understand that videogames exist outside of the USA... I heard that some even ORIGINATED from outside the US! 😲

Games are only rare, worth money, or notable historical and cultural artifacts if they got USA stamped on the box somewhere, don't you know anything?! 😛

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The issue with Reserved Investments is that he doesn't understand how to determine when a factory-sealed six-pack exists, so he just declares that one exists whenever he sees a game with a lot of high-grade copies.

That's nonsense. The market allows us to tell when factory cases exist.

Factory cases of Battletoads (PAL) exist. Factory cases of Legend of Zelda (PAL/ESP) exist. Factory cases of Wild Gunman (PAL/ESP) exist. Factory cases of Batman: Return of the Joker exist. Factory cases of Swords & Serpents exist. Factory cases of Friday the 13th exist. We know this because anyone watching the market can watch these cases being sold (one unit at a time) in real time, and because the market research reveals that all of these games skew wildly—relative to their total population—toward factory-sealed grades. Just because many copies of a game exist and some are in factory-fresh condition does not indicate the existence of a box, let alone future boxes.

The hard data at RETRO kept me away from the games above and many others, like Adventures of Dino Riki, Dragon Warrior, Impossible Mission II, Airwolf, Destination Earthstar, Flight of the Intruder, Tetris 2, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Back to the Future, Tiger-Heli, every RoboCop game, Bandai Golf, and more. Zoda's Revenge exists in boxes but I bought one anyway because it was under $300 to get the second-best copy WATA has ever graded. Only suckers (or big fans of these games, as with me and Zoda's Revenge) buy them. RETRO subscribers knew all this months ago because they saw the data. These games exist in boxes.

That Dragon Warrior II, Dragon Warrior III, and Dragon Warrior IV—all better and more critically acclaimed games than Dragon Warrior, BTW, especially the last two—are so hard to find in any grade underscores that we can tell when cases exist and when they don't, as no one would sit on those cases in this market, those games did not sell well and do not appear to have had long runs or been a focus of collectors historically (the people who would find and preserve cases), and even the CIB market is super light for these titles (with only 2-7 copies available each).

So what Sean fails to acknowledge is that games with boxes move differently in the market than those without. This is also true with Atari 2600 games—which like NES games I specialize in—with many games indicating box existence but some (all evident from the data at RETRO) clearly not extant in boxes.

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P.S. I understand this is gauche, but I will only do it once: through midnight tonight, you can get a year of RETRO for $2.90/month (see my pinned tweet at @sethabramson). I mention this because pop reports are not market research, and what folks need now is data on which games that WATA graded came or will come to market (as it's only a fraction of the total—about 33%—that will do so, with the rest staying in private collections, possibly long term).

I don't do RETRO for the money, but it takes a lot of work to produce the reams of hard data that have already saved my subscribers an insane amount of money. They knew (and know) which games to avoid and which to buy, and given that we're talking about thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, they feel the cost is more than worth it. Even Tom Curtin, who you've all seen me fight with here, said the cost (even at $5/month rather than $2.90/month) would be "well worth it" even if RETRO only offered market reports rather than everything else it does.

So I make this note not because I need money—I don't—but because I want folks here to have access to my research at a cost I know means next to nothing to any of us except as a means of acknowledging my hard work. I've been a professional researcher and games journalist for years now, so I don't work for free any more than any other professional does.

Adam W., feel free to attack me now.

Edited by RETRO
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1 hour ago, Code Monkey said:

Loopz is rare? I have a sealed copy.

Yes. But not good...! 😉 

I'd rather have Mendel Palace or Puzznic, or a PAL game like Rod Land (which I do have, VGA graded) that WATA has never touched at all.

Edited by RETRO
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Can someone offer the best possible argument for why the SMB3 market shouldn't collapse today? I'd honestly like to hear the argument from someone willing to acknowledge the facts (e.g., that whopping "237" figure is not the total pop, as we don't yet have VGA games, WATA back-log, CIB games, or the coming years of CIB and sealed SMB3s included; the buyer pool is minuscule and not growing at the same pace as new sealed SMB3s are being graded; and so on) but who is still bullish on SMB3.

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Sean (reserved investments) probably knows about coins , historical documents , 1st edition books etc but knows little about videogames , comics and other pop culture collectibles. The market already proved since a long timr he is wrong

Edited by Mijael
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Just now, Mijael said:

Sean (reserved investments) probably knows about coins , historical documents , 1st edition books etc but knows little about videogames , comics and other pop culture collectibles. The market already proved since a long tile he is wrong

Yeah, I like his energy but on video games he's only right as to about 25% of what he says—and I mean even factually speaking. (And I say this as someone who agrees that one should not invest in video games long-term, but should either be a short-term flipper or a bona fide gamer-collector.)

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10 minutes ago, RETRO said:

Can someone offer the best possible argument for why the SMB3 market shouldn't collapse today? I'd honestly like to hear the argument from someone willing to acknowledge the facts (e.g., that whopping "237" figure is not the total pop, as we don't yet have VGA games, WATA back-log, CIB games, or the coming years of CIB and sealed SMB3s included; the buyer pool is minuscule and not growing at the same pace as new sealed SMB3s are being graded; and so on) but who is still bullish on SMB3.

Sure, for the low price of $2.90 I'll give you full access to all of the data and deep market analysis I've built into my mind over the last decade.  

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5 minutes ago, jonebone said:

Sure, for the low price of $2.90 I'll give you full access to all of the data and deep market analysis I've built into my mind over the last decade.  

It's bizarre that I've been called arrogant but have never considered my opinion the equivalent of hard data in terms of value. You do you, though, Jonas—marking up common NES games by 300% over their proven market value because your buyers don't have access to hard data... only your years of experience in hype.

I mean, RETRO readers would never have paid you $1,000 for a 9.2 StarTropics... but now no one will.

Edited by RETRO
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15 minutes ago, RETRO said:

Can someone offer the best possible argument for why the SMB3 market shouldn't collapse today? I'd honestly like to hear the argument from someone willing to acknowledge the facts (e.g., that whopping "237" figure is not the total pop, as we don't yet have VGA games, WATA back-log, CIB games, or the coming years of CIB and sealed SMB3s included; the buyer pool is minuscule and not growing at the same pace as new sealed SMB3s are being graded; and so on) but who is still bullish on SMB3.

Here you go:

quantity of people that want a sealed copy > 237

That should be pretty clear.

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6 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Here you go:

quantity of people that want a sealed copy > 237

That should be pretty clear.

Huh. So why are there only 10 bidders whenever one comes up for auction? And why are you using the "237" figure when this pop report confirms that 237 (3 years of WATA) is now the floor for how many VGA copies there are from 13 years of VGA grading, so we're talking about a bare minimum of 574 buyers you'd need for the SMB3 market to even be at perfect equilibrium (i.e., everyone who wants one can get one, which would equal a collapsed market)? I think you need to prove that there are 1,500+ avid SMB3 buyers right now to suggest there's a market for the 575 SMB3s out there, though as the number is almost certainly more like 1,000 you'd really need to produce 4,500+ buyers—none of whom can be CIB collectors, mind you! Has to all be sealed collectors. (You'd still have to explain why almost none of these buyers ever show up to auctions, though.)

I've been assuming everyone here understands basic market dynamics, but if we need to take a step back to review, lemme know.

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