A_Feisty_Pickle

Persona 5 followed by Nier Automata. 

52 minutes ago, epiczail said:

Sorry if my original question was confusing. Was your order only for those 3 games? My order are rather large and I'm trying to figure out if they'll partially ship an order back to me if certain cases are in stock or if they will only ship whole orders out. 

My bad. This order included 6 games. 3 Turbo tier 3 Speed Run tier. I haven't received them back yet but I believe all 3 Speed Run's were shipped together. I have heard from others that they do occasionally send a few at a time though. 

5 minutes ago, epiczail said:

Did they ship your whole order out, or just partially ship?

My others are Turbo tier so they'll probably be shipping somewhere around 2023. 

After almost 6 weeks of post grading. Feels good.

I've got somewhere around 10 Rogue Squadrons. I've been selling them slowly on eBay over the past year. None have back stickers. I'd be looking for $150 shipped each or possibly a small discount if you want multiple. Feel free to PM me if interested. 

15 minutes ago, inasuma said:

To be fair, you sent them in when the estimated turnaround was only 15 business days (jan this year, right?).

What's even more puzzling is I sent in a turbo order at the same time (early jan) and it was graded and shipped back by mid-february.

nothing makes sense 

Jan 10. Turbo or speed run? I didn't think turbo was ever as low as 15 days, but it's been so long I wouldn't be surprised if I misremember. 

Just shy of 7 months later my turbo order flipped to Post-Grading. With any luck I'll have them back by the end of the year! 

140 business days for an "estimated" 45 at the time of order. At the rate they're going probably another 30-40 business days in Post Grading. 

59 minutes ago, cma2032 said:

Anyone know of a good source for replacement Switch game cases w/ legit artwork?

Alternatively, anyone want to trade a Tales of Vesperia empty case for a Mario Kart 8 empty case?

You might have luck in the Facebook group "Video Game Pieces: Lost, Found, Reunited". It's a group for finding components to complete your games. 

2 hours ago, AnimalHouse said:

I sent Wata 15 games/same platform (Speedrun service) delivered Apr 21st.

Unboxing began on Apr 23rd
Grading ended on Jun 17th
Been in Post-Grading stage for 32 business days now

I'm at 5 weeks post grading now. I'm pretty sure they're out of cases for a lot of consoles. Between various forums / groups I've only been seeing people post Gameboy sized cases for the past week or two. 

2 hours ago, 3rdStrongestMole said:

Got a FedEx tracking number for 1 sealed game order submitted April 26th on Speed Run. It just so happened to come 1 day after I messaged in to complain... It looked like they were accepting WZ submissions again, and I'm like... yo, you better not be sending off any games before the ones that are almost double their expected turn around time. Idk if that's what did it. But I should be getting my game next week.

 

Edit: Also, the grade info that @A_Feisty_Pickle showed how to get matched the final grade. It may not always be the case, but it was for me. 

What system was your 1 game for? I've got 3 Speed Run games from April 26th I'm still waiting on as well. Genesis and 32X. 

Small stakes compared to other posts in here, but I was planning on going for a full sealed Mario Party collection. Just a year or two ago you could find sealed // mid grade copies of the N64 games for ~$1k if I remember right. 

I also sold my 9.8 A+ Futurama for PS2 either late 2019 or early 2020 for $775. At the time I was happy since I only had $250 in it, but seeing a 9.4 A sell for $5k on Heritage last week makes me wonder what it's worth now : ')

According to this article they are moving if I am reading it right. 

https://www.actionnetwork.com/news/psa-grading-parent-buys-video-game-grader-wata

2 thoughts on Wata being sold...

How much is this going to delay orders they already have?

How the hell are they going to move all this inventory to California without damaging anything. 

Probably 100% of the stores I've gone to it's the overall cheapest games free, not split into groups of 3. However I have also had stores that will refuse to let me do multiple transactions, so it's either suck it up and go with the flow, pass off a set of 3 to my wife who is usually with me, or just go put some of the games back. 

18 hours ago, AdamW said:

[REDACTED]

Also seems to be the opposite issue where there are more seals than boxes
[REDACTED]
 

Off topic but looking through variants you can find cool descriptors for prototypes that have been submitted 

@inasuma just sounds low. But I guess I haven't seen too many 1's graded compared to 2 and 3. I'm far from an expert though. I made some edits to my post, I am more inclined to believe it could be accurate now. 

21 hours ago, inasuma said:

looks like wata does expose a "count" field for each game variant returned to the network request when searching for games in their submission form. no shenanigans here: it's easily accessible, and i agree that it's strange it's even included in the payload. sadly it does not differentiate sealed vs CIB, so the true division there is anyone's guess.

[REDACTED]

i mean, i may or may not be building a list now.

Edit: nvm, you can differentiate because the CIB ones always say "cart" or some other descriptors for the internals of the game. sealed games only describe the box. fun.

After poking around for like 5 minutes it seems like sealed games may be the "type" field with value 6. 

EDIT: Just doing some spot checking I am not sure how accurate the count field is. Some of the counts are a lot lower than I would expect. Only showing 4 sealed Mario Party 1's for an example. 

LAST EDIT: Yeah I definitely don't think all the data is returned here. I submitted a Futurama for PS2 back in June 2019. I only see 2 'variants' of sealed copies with a count of 1 for each (so supposedly only 2 graded sealed copies, which I doubt). Both those variants were created after June 2019, so I don't think my copy is included in the response here. 

REAL LAST EDIT: Oh June was my submission date. Looks like it was graded on 9/27/19, 3 days after the entry returned from that response. Looks pretty likely then. (Damn I shouldn't have sold this looking back lol)

 

@RH the URL requires authorization so I don't think you'll have much luck, but it's just
https://api.watagames.com/api/labels/{orderId}

@tidaldreamsnot too sure. There have been a few high sales on HA this year, including a $20k+ sale this month, but those are tube seals whereas mine is a later print (although I think the later print displays better). I'm not sure how much that impacts price. Plus graded games have been cooling off this month. I think the 9.8 will bring 5 figures but I think the 9.6 will be mid 4's. 

10 minutes ago, kell said:

How you pulling that data?

Open dev tools (assuming Chrome, it's key F12) -> Network tab -> Click 'View Grades' on your order in Wata -> There will probably be multiple network calls with your order number as the URI. Click one of those and in your dev tools select 'Preview' pane -> Click different requests until you find one with a list of your games that are in Post Grading status

(Request to click)

(Preview panel, list of games in Post Grading status)

 
Expand each of those, expand 'grade'

A few of mine finally went into post grading today. Assuming it doesn't change, looking at the response from the API... I've got a few nice grades coming back!

Doom 32X - 9.8 A++
Sonic 2 Genesis - 9.8 A++
Sonic 2 Genesis - 9.6 A+

Unfortunately the Sonic's are late prints, but still happy!

1 hour ago, AdamW said:

I don't think the "liability" thing means "cost of insurance on return shipping" exactly, or not only that. There's also the liability they have while they're holding the game. Their warehouse could burn down or get flooded or burgled, a rogue employee could take all the SMBs and run...that kinda liability. (Of course, who is actually on the hook to whom and for how much in such a situation is presumably in whatever agreement you sign when you ship something to them; I haven't done that so I don't know what it says).

Of course, whether those costs should be paid by a value percentage charge in this way, and exactly how that should work, is up for debate. But I'm just saying I don't think it's purely about shipping insurance.

Well the fact that they come after you for more money AFTER it's been sitting in their warehouse for 3, 6, 12+ months is the biggest issue for me. They're obviously not concerned about valuation while it's waiting to be graded... Just after they have taken their sweet time and made you wait. If it was an issue of insurance money while in their possession they should be verifying sealed, non graded prices at step 1 as soon as they receive it and catalog it. Not after grading it and holding it hostage. 

I've got games at Wata right now and of course I want high grades, but it's pretty sketchy when they have a financial interest in giving you a high grade so they can charge you more money at the tail end of the process. 

Went through the house buying process late last year. It was a pain then but I'm sure it's gotten even worse since. Also the fact I live in a small/mid sized town probably helps too, although there were plenty of houses we were interested in that sold within a day. 

I guess I am partially biased as this was my first RPG. I was 9 when this came out and was like anything else I had ever played. I still go back and revisit it every few years. 

Pros

• The story still holds up today IMO. I liked almost all the characters. Tidus is whiny but I feel like it's intentionally done.
• The sphere grid is really nice, especially in subsequent playthroughs where you can do what I believe is 'Expert' sphere grid where everyone starts in the middle and you can level your characters however you want. I don't think this was added until the international version though, or at least I don't remember it on the original PS2 release. 
• The fact you could see ~10 moves ahead of you in battle made it feel more strategic to me. A lot of games it's a guessing game on when your next turn will be. 
• International version adds a lot of extra bosses including the dark aeons which increases the difficulty. 

Cons

• Definitely Linear
• Blitzball is not my cup of tea. At least you can score a point and hide behind your goal. 
• Some of the ultimate weapons are a pain. Looking at you 'dodge 200 lightning bolts'. 
• I didn't care for the temple puzzles, but it added some variety.