Chuckbiii

I was able to work with the sell and get a refund on mine. Thanks for the tip though!!! As far as the variant you mention. Yes, that is suspicious. I’ve seen many sealed copies of all variants, and the one you mention should be the older security seal. Even now on eBay all of those have the older seal except one copy.....that variant has a manufacture date on the back of 2003. From everything I have found and personal experience, everything with a manufacturer date of 2001-2003 has the older security seal. This includes black label, promo NFR, system pack-in NFR, and foil. The platinum hits variant is always the newer security seal and was manufactured in 2004. Halo 2 has the same 2004 manufactured date and also always has the newer seal. So for all the Combat Evolved copies (and maybe all Xbox games?): 2001-2003 - older security seal 2004-Present - newer seal. Any other observations are welcome!!!

And now another raw copy just went up on eBay for auction with this later security seal.....something strange going on now all of a sudden these showing up.. He did change his item description and said multiple people have told him about the seal. I asked him twice where he obtained the game and will not answer. Just talks around it.

What year are your games from? I’ve never seen anything from Xbox launch (2001) that had the later security seal. If you have a lot of sealed Xbox games maybe check the seal types and years the games were released? I am willing to bet only the one earlier seal type is present from the first couple years of Xbox games. Interested to see what you come up with!

The seal is legit. I’ve seen them particularly on Sonic 2s (not sure why that game is so prone to it) and right out of factory sealed cases of that game. Back in the day I had 2 of them graded at VGA. They both graded 85+ with similar enlarged vent holes. Totally normal for that title anyway.

Yes I asked him where he got these as soon as WATA notified me they cannot guarantee authenticity. He said he acquired them from another eBay retailer.

I agree 100% with your statements. I’d say inconclusive is a better description. The seal likely is a legit Microsoft/Xbox security seal. It was just likely not the original seal and at some point, opened and resealed at a factory. The thing that makes the whole thing strange is that the there are 3 of these copies (as mentioned before, the 2 copies being auctioned and my raw copy) all came from the same seller and looking back I’ve never seen any other black labels with that security seal (and I’ve seen many of them). That being said shame on me for not noticing though. But the seal looks like a legit factory seal, just not the right one.

Correct, it’s the seal type that’s the issue. This is a fail all around. VGA grading fail, and WATA fail for taking so damn long to get me my game that I may not be able to return based on the item not being authentic, which will really piss me off...... Fails all around!

Yeah I have had horrible wata response times. Yes hopefully that gets straightened out. I think all the garbage CIB grading is bottlenecking the process. But anyway..... Here is a pic I received from the guy selling the VGA copies. Hopefully he doesn’t mind. The top 2 games are the combat evolved (with the later security seal). The bottom 2 games have the correct seal. The game you pictured has the earlier security seal. The top 2 games with the later security seals were never present in 2001. They didn’t show up until 2004 at the earliest to my knowledge and are present on everything Xbox 360 and newer.

I’m going to chime in here. This came up because of me. This seller and myself bought 3 black label halo copies from another particular seller on eBay. I sent mine to WATA and they will not grade these as they cannot confirm authenticity. The security seal on these did not exist in 2001. They are only on the “greatest hits” variants of combat evolved. I checked with the seller selling the VGA copies and confirmed he did indeed buy these from the same person I did. We both believe VGA messed up and he does not want his seller rep tarnished for selling non-authentic items (even though VGA graded otherwise). Now the more maddening part. I paid for 10 day speed run on the copy I sent to WATA. It took them almost 5 weeks to tell me this was not authentic and only after I emailed them a bunch asking where it was!! It took so long that I am outside of the ebay money back guarantee window of 30 days......the person we bought these from says he has no money to refund us.....