jonebone

Honest question here, are you actually trying to get to the bottom of anything or just looking to attack the parties involved? Because you are so pointedly biased in many of your accusations that it's a bit hard to watch. Let me break down a few of the obvious ones. Point 1) Valuing 100k Mario, Around 17:00. You said the game sold for $100k and 10 days later Deniz valued it at $3.21M. He certainly didn't, he just speculated that future values could hit that range based on an analogy of collectability, rarity and desirability. You immediately lead into Pawn Stars where he put a value of $300-$350k on it, so obviously you knew you embellished with your original comment. And any of us in the market knew it had at least doubled by then regardless, so $200-$250k was certainly fair and reasonable. So for one, he's not lying, it's just that you have taken offense to him being a value spokesperson based on his connections. Yet you go here and are basically outright lying with the word selection that you so carefully chose I assume. Point 2) NintendoAge, Around 27:30. Who are you to know anything about NintendoAge? It was absolutely a forum and marketplace first and foremost. It had origins as a database but the daily active users (who which donated to the site for the most part, myself included), were there for forums and Buy / Sell / Trade. A deal posted there was gone in minutes, yet we had to beg for volunteers to upload into the database. We're not going to split hairs about what percentage of visitors spent there time where, but it absolutely was the socially connected marketplace for retro gaming. Other sites like DigitPress had rarity guides and bare bones databases too, it wasn't NintendoAge exclusive. Though NA became the premier database site, it was not that feature driving daily traffic. Point 3) Jeff Reaching Out, Around 28:45. You've made time to talk to all of these various social media personalities and youtubers, yet you can't make time to talk to the guy you're accusing over the last 3 months? When he's making himself available to you? Are you kidding me? You have so many pointed comments and accusations toward him, yet haven't spoken to him, but have made plenty of time to gossip with various internet personalities. This tells me you have little interest in solving anything, and more interest in blasting the people you've targeted. Point 4) HA Wata Partnership instead of VGA, Various Times. The key factor you seem to miss is that the Wata cases were designed as tamperproof where VGA is not. And I say that as a guy with 150+ VGA games. I think the tamper argument probably affects .01% of VGA games and is more of a scapegoat scare tactic, but it is a valid criticism if you have a lot of money and no eye for authenticity. Then you want to know you are buying an authentic product and a tamperproof case is a must. Furthermore, anyone plugged into the scene knows that Deniz and Ken were experts in variants and NES collecting especially, much more so than VGA. VGA was first to market and are definitely experts, but they have let fakes slip through the cracks and have made absolutely zero effort to innovate or market their product until recently. Wata capitalized on that, took the marketing to a new level, made a better and more tamper proof case, and that was the motivating factor between getting their products to market at an auction house while VGA could not. You can argue that it's money which is definitely a contributing factor, but that was not the causation as you imply. Same applies to collecting. Ask any collector what their motivating factor is and it's usually owning the nostalgic end items or thrill of the hunt. You can argue that money is a contributing factor, but it's not the driving force or you'd just trade stocks / crypto / etc. to make money. It's the product and nostalgia that you love, and here it was the tamper proof case that made HA align with Wata over VGA. As someone who is plugged in all over the scene with experience all over, glad to answer any genuine questions you have that aren't just targeted accusations.

Here's one I can do 1 for 1 since there aren't any variants associated with it (yet discovered at least): TMNT 3 NES Pop Comparison VGA Pop Report January 2015 1991, Konami, NES, White Nintendo Seal, Turtles III:The Manhattan Project, NTSC: 90(1), 85+(3), 85(7), 80+(1), 80(1), 75(2). = 15 Sealed Total Wata Pop Report November 21 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project 0 0 0 0 0 6 1 5 6 1 2 0 21 = 21 Total These pops were always miniscule compared to other hobbies but close to relative demand. Someone would upgrade and list their downgrade or you could find a raw one with patience and dedication. Now the investors and sharks have piled in and there just simply won't be enough to go around on many of these. Market will overreact and panic buy or FOMO on some things, but the truly desirable titles in desirable grades aren't going any where.

Here's some real data for conversation, and free of charge. VGA to Wata Report Comparison on SMB2 NES (I don't have SMB3) VGA As of February 17, 2016, White Oval Seal Copies: 1989, Nintendo, NES, White Nintendo Seal, Super Mario Bros 2, NTSC: 95(1), 90+(1), 90(4), 85+(19), Q85+(1), 85(31), 80+(9), 80(1), 75+(1), 75(1), 60(1). Total = 69 Sealed / 1 Qualified VGA As of June 25, 2014, Black Round Seal Copies: 1988, Nintendo, NES, Black Nintendo Seal, Super Mario Bros 2, NTSC: Q95(1), 90+(2), 90(4), 85+(7), Q85+(1), 85(11), 80+(3), 80(2), 75(2). Total = 31 Sealed / 2 Qualified Wata as of November 1, 2021 Super Mario Bros. 2 6 5 6 4 7 21 18 15 21 11 3 0 117 Granted the VGA populations are a bit dated, but those were fairly mature pulls at the time. I wouldn't expect anymore than 5-10 a year added to that population. It is impossible to know how many got crossed but you can infer there were at least 110 sealed VGA SMB2 copies and now 117 Wata copies.

Come on man, you walk into every thread and turn it into some rabbling drivel with your self-centered posts like your have some infinite pool of knowledge. Let me be blunt, you don't have one fucking clue about anything that you are talking about. And when anyone chimes in, you immediately get defensive and with straw-man retort. And then the best part is you make it about everyone else, when you're the only common denominator here. But to humor you since you want to poke the bear. I don't care if any my shit sells. I have normal career based income and this is a pure hobby to me. Prices low, I buy more. Prices high, I sell more. You keep lumping people into "resellers" when that spectrum is as broad as the full-time guy who literally hold items for ransom at insane markups to the part-time hobbiest just moving along a duplicate and breaking even. Last but not least, when you have an eye for condition, titles, rarity and demand, you develop a feel for what things should be worth. No one cares about 270 SMB3s, what people are about are the collector grade copies, 9.4 A+ and any release other than challenge set. It's simple bell curve normal distribution type of stuff. The copies to the left of the hump in the bell curve become placeholders, bounce around and become hard to move unless at auction or priced well. The collector grade copies are much more in demand and a seller's market. Based on SM3 pop that's 70 above 9.4 that aren't Challenge set copies, and I bet at least 20 of those are A or less seals. So really 50 SMB3 "collector grade" copies of one of the most iconic games of all time. Easy to understand there aren't enough of those to go around and that one will never go for $100s or low $1000s or whatever you want to preach.

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.

I have a VGA 95 and sold one to @Braveheart69 years back. Also I wonder when this pop report was pulled, it's not live. I see at least one title on ebay right now that doesn't exist according to this pop.

Real question, can anyone clarify how to see sold listings? I tried advanced search clicking sold to see all and I see nothing. Haven't created an account though, do you have to be logged in?

Oh okay, I didn't watch the video and sealed games are obviously 100% condition dependent. I was just assuming it was nice shape and a non hangtab based on the Rev.

Have you ever heard of www.stockx.com ? If not you should check it out. This is the same exact business model except they do it for brand new (deadstock) shoes, and have expanded into other collectibles too (Cards, clothing, etc.) I'm not for or against this concept but this business model has already worked before.

Balloon Fight would go a lot higher personally.

All analogies are imperfect when drilled down to the semantics and literal sense. But the overarching point remains. If you have nostalgia for something or just like the look of it, there is a very cheap alternative for you to own the item and scratch that itch. Buying a fake Wagner is no different than someone buying the PAL SE cart for pennies on the dollar to "complete" a set. It's just a collector using a cheap stop gap to scratch the itch. And then if you really want to play in the big leagues and own a legitimate collectible that is a store of value (whether thousands or millions), then there are authenticated and graded copies that allow you to do so. For the record in terms of SMB3 value, if I were a collector looking to own it, $5k as a floor for a 9.4 A+ right bros is an excellent spot with no downside. Exact price is probably closer to $7500-$10k right now but I see that floor as no downside, $400 is a CIB price or a beat to crap copy. I don't believe in the left bros price at this level and I would avoid the challenge set version / exporter seal versions as well. The right bros in 9.4 A+ and up is the sweet spot where demand will always outweigh supply and price is affordable enough for a lot of fish to play in that pond.

I don't know why this Honus Wagner analogy is still going but I'll humor it. You say there's only 60 copies of Wagner vs. 18 million SMB3? Well that's wrong, there's an infinite supply of Wagners because reprints are sold on a daily basis. You can get your $2.5M Wagner card as 1 of 60 or you can get your reprint card that is $5 (with sales on a daily basis on ebay). No different here, get 1 of 500-1000 or so SMB3 sealed / graded copies or buy the loose cart for $25. Oddly enough, sealed collecting is the one with growing demand (speculators / investors / collectors / grading companies / etc.) but the loose cart market is the one dying (NES / SNES classics, repros, virtual console, etc.) I have the hardware hooked up to a CRT because that's what us odd folk do, but last time we've played anything it was NES / SNES or Genesis classic through HDMI in the basement. Sealed game collecting is not niche anymore, you can't say that when auction houses have picked it up and prices have exploded. It's the loose cart collecting that is becoming more niche and gamer oriented. That's why you're seeing loose SE prices stall out compared to some of the highs of sealed.

Why do we have two extremist opinions here? Both are wrong, answer is in the middle. For example: A card from a 120 years ago with 60 known graded copies is infinitely rarer than a video game from the 1980s with 60 known and graded copies. One has much higher probabilities of copies coming to market. One is much more mature where literally all of the valuable and authentic copies are already graded whereas one is still sold raw on a daily basis. Relative rarity is what matters, and in terms of NES games, 60 confirmed graded copies is a good amount. Not necessarily enough to go around for the collecting pool but much more than truly scarce stuff like hangtabs that may have 10 copies confirmed period and likely will never go much above 20 except for "common" hangtabs (Section Z). Then on the other hand, touting 78 copies of Mario 3 as some damning number is quite laughable. I'd peg the confirmed sealed number in the 500-1000 range (graded less than that) and that is still not enough to go around as it's a must own NES title that everyone played. It's actually a great title to keep up with NES pricing as you'll almost always have copies available in varying grades and you could track the price over time well. The stuff that appears once a year or once every couple of years is impossible to assess accurately because prices change drastically in that long of a drought. And last but not least, the population report is a "population guide" essentially, just like sold points become price guides. There's going to be a good plus / minus percentage error around it (which any good data analyst would mention). Especially as more grading companies come online, the same game can get cracked and regraded with a new company multiple times and show as 4 or 5 copies of a game when it was really one. Also just counting sold copies without tracing the serial will skew numbers upward as the same game can get sold repeatedly. My bottom line from someone with many years of experience: The games have less confirmed copies than some other hobbies, but in no way does that imply that prices still shoot to the moon because of it. Pricing has gotten pretty nutty fairly quickly and we're finally hitting a long overdue cool down.

That's normal Xmas seasonality, things usually taper Thanksgiving to Xmas before starting back up in swing next year / tax seasons.

Well anyone who watched the last HA signature auction should have realized games were underperforming expectations and indicating a pullback.

Was this a signature win? Still haven't even gotten a shipment notification with mine.

It's obviously a bandwidth / SW issue that they are trying to brute force. If it was a simple switch you'd just flick it on and turn it on for everything. The fact that they are slow rolling this without seal grades and limited to one platform means they manually doing it somehow. I can't visualize how it will look myself either, so many dimensions and not a simple stacked 2D arrays of name / grade like PSA cards. I'd almost like you'd have to have a page for each title, then list variants, then you still have Seal / Box Grades to worry about which is multi dimensional. Or even worse with CIB, 3 grades (plus GSI). If it were me, I'd concatenate the seal / grade together (9.8A, 9.2C+, etc.), but then filtering becomes more complex. You also have to worry about presentation, something like a 9.6C+ would show higher in the pop than 9.4A++ which would clearly be the better game, but no way around that. So it seems to be a visualization / database problem with understaffed resourcing. It's a good first step but SW has never been the Wata stronghouse. We were promised a Matrix for over 3 years running now that never happened. Either way, some people can remove their tinfoil hats and we'll just see what it looks like soon enough. Instead of complaining about what's happening, I'm more interested in the over / under that it makes it out this month. They must be getting close to make a public announcement, but we have Thanksgiving soon too. I think if anything comes out this month it would literally be on the last day of the month (30 November), and I guess we'll see.

Holy smokes long time no see, welcome aboard!

Well it's up over 100% since I mentioned it Monday so there's that. Need to get off my butt and open a darn Coinbase account sooner than later.

I've been hearing a lot about Loopring recently, what do the smart Crypto people in this thread think of that one?

My early January Turbo order has been post grading at least 2 months now. My oldest Speed Run unshipped order is from 5/25 and has been in post grading for months. My most recently received back order was a Speed Run from 5/11 that I got about two weeks ago. Just to give you some realism.

Just a reminder, you can't play a sealed game (or graded CIB). I thought the whole playability argument for sealed values was a dead argument 5 years ago but history repeats itself. Nostalgia, not playability, drives values. I haven't played a 16 bit Madden since the 16 bit days but I still like them sealed... and I collected them "before they were cool". I never played many of these movie video games but I love having a sealed NES Terminator for example. And I'm not some dumb new guy, I'm a longterm collector. Same with stuff like Simpsons, Looney Tunes, etc. Maybe you like the franchise and want to collect the games, it's not a tough concept. Also worth mentioning that stuff can be an acquired taste for some. You get your Mario / Zelda / Tyson / etc, what's next? Terminator and Madden weren't my day 1 purchases but when you've collected for a long time your want lists expand. Last point, up until auction houses were around with games, virtually all high end sales were private, and kept private. For one, most people want to net more money that way without paying the site fees, and for two, people want to keep it private so they can try to buy back stuff at lower values. Those are real data points and plenty of people have transactions logs to prove it. Wata had absolutely no bearing on the market until the Black Box article in January 2019 as well. Many people, myself included, wished them luck but thought they were years too late. Hobby was quite stagnant at that point, people were dormant, some sold off, and new blood was not entering. Sales from 2017-2018 and anything pre-auction house era were still mostly organically driven.

Ghost Dog from Luigis Mansion 3, Pikachu and Psyduck with the family.

It's interesting to see where 9.6 to 9.8 multipler will be on case games. For non case games you can't be as picky, but mint purists know they can hold out for 9.8 on case games. If this 5x multipler is to be believed, then you'd still think 9.8 A++ Mario 64 would be 500k by that line of thinking. I'm not sure what the fair number is but time will tell.

I think that's a good grab, it was just hard for me label it as best deal when the 9.6 A+ was about 10k last year. I do agree I expected more there and that game is an easy set it and forget it type of game where it would go for more in a year or two if buyer wants to get out of it.