Dan64

13 hours ago, OptOut said:

What, you mean like a bunch of sellers are gonna get less money than they expected for their games?  (If they actually manage to sell at all, I mean!)

We did contact nearly every single seller and had them confirm they understood the change that was taking place. I believe out of just shy of 100 sellers, 1 did not get back to us and we deactivated their two listings to ensure no one was charged a fee or unable to adjust their pricing due to the change.

Changes like these are rare, but I would rather react quickly to the feedback of our sellers than to drag it on. 

We noticed people were listing the same on our site than on ebay etc we believe to not understanding the structure. 

At end of all this, it was about doing what was right. Also about lowering our fee. Potentially on any transaction from 3-8% less. 

And yes optout, there has been plenty of sales contrary to your positive outlook and support

We had noticed that many items were being posted for same of Ebay etc so we decided to listen to the clients. We are switching out fee structure. Instead of a baked in fee that has the buyer paying the fees, we have gone to a seller fee structure. 

Seller Fees

12% < 20k

10%< 20-99.9

7% > 100k

And to celebrate this, we are waiving the 3% credit card fee for 24 hours. 

Our sellers all have been made of the change so while a few priced accordingly, most prices starting right now are 15% cheaper. 

Thank you for the overwhelming support and feedback. We are getting there day by day 

-Dan

12 hours ago, AnimalHouse said:

Go to the bottom until you see the Recent Sold tab or use the <> arrows.

Question for MW owner: When browsing the sold listings as a non-member and clicking on a random listing. Where is the sold date?

There currently is no sold date. We haven't displayed sale data as we should but that is because we are working on an overall sales data from many auction houses to display all sales as a full category. We have the format down and working with developers, I expect we will be able to have this free on our site in first quarter 

6 minutes ago, OptOut said:

Well, the big problem I had is it seems very sensitive, so you just scroll down like a TINY bit and it chops off the top of the screen. Also it is a BIG area, like a good 25% portion of the usable area of the page is obscured.

Personally, I would prefer it to be a lot thinner, and a little less jumpy, so it gives you more chance to inspect items at the top of the page without it immediately obscuring the area.

I can't disagree. I will see what the developers can do about it 

13 minutes ago, OptOut said:

I have downloaded all the guides for future reference, thanks!

 

One genuine problem I have had with the site that is really bugging me is when I scroll down, the search bar kinda bumps down as well and cuts off the top of items on the top of the page? Not sure if I'm explaining it right, but it's like this:

 

Then I scroll down and it's like this:

 

Like, you understand what I mean? I scroll down just a little and I loose all the content at the top of the page, it's a little annoying, can you change that? THANKEE! 

Yes, it is so the top portion is there in case you want to click on another category. I was debating if we should go without. Thoughts? Want the top to go with you or scroll without? 

We did go ahead and post an article on No Rev-A and Circle Rev-A, please do not hesitate to correct any mistakes we made. @OptOut I look forward to your feedback so we can learn from it

NES: No Rev-A & Circle Rev-A

https://minusworlds.com/knowledgecenterdetails?bid=41&cid=2

37 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

are there any successful transactions on mw yet and what kind of feedback program is there between buyer/seller

We had 18 sales in first 12 hours. We continue to have multiple sales today which is great being a holiday weekend and less than a week old. A few of the buyers have reported received their games and really liked the experience so far. 

There is no feedback system because we are ensuring the quality and experience for the buyer. This is why the game is shipped to us, we provide a service to ensure the customer is getting a great experience. Also why we have standard for photos. We are trying to make a process that is best for the seller and buyer. We hope to continue to improve the process to have this vision prove out in what we know to be the best for everyone. 

-Dan

5 hours ago, jonebone said:

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?

 

This bug is active but being worked on, we fixed a few bugs with "sold" listings that have affected this function. You can see sold listings on the home page in two spots in mean time. We have created a bug that many of the sales in the first 3 days were not being attributed but now can see them and their sales data price points

5 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

 There were plenty of pictures to see the game and serial number

 

Unfortunately we disagree. That is okay, I disagree with the best of my friends. 

We do not play gate keepers and are working to display our guidelines Monday via pdf so it is more clear on our standards for our sellers photos and the process.

Due to great feedback we are also adding "The Process" tab on top left of home page this week to do a better job explaining the site and the process. 

Thank you for your feedback and take care, Dan

5 minutes ago, CIBWholesale said:

 

 

the issue isnt with the pictures it's with the system . Were the listings taken down for not having 6 pictures? or being too high in price? because 1 was valued with no comps so I used relative rarity compared to 9.8mario 64 to come up with the number. I documented other listings that were worse listed than mine. You referenced a 5k threshold for the higher standards but there were many examples of 2 pictures and bad pictures.

p.s. all of those issues could be resolved with automatic validation on the submit button....

the other 1 was competing with a higher priced wata graded item so if my listing was too high, the same game was higher by 40k

 

"follow our standards" is already been a fast moving target and so i'll wait a bit to see if the real collectors benefit because i didnt see much of older collectors benefit from the last boom

 

To state what you told me, you wanted to list games without taking pictures. We believe the buyers have the right to see the item they purchase.   If that is a deal breaker for you we understand and wish you the best.  

1 hour ago, CIBWholesale said:

thanks for calling me a 1 off

 

It's a serial number. Who is the grader? the buyer? or the grading company? The serial is in clear view and the verification happens at your facility correct? what exactly is the service you're offering?

 

 

 

like I said i agree with you about the 6 pics and them being clearly visible. What i dont agree with is other sellers not being held to that standard and the response I got about how to handle it. Like a instaban vibe

 

also.... the minor details are very upsetting because I asked for a billion, not 1.5. but who cares about minor details?

 

The situation was a one off. As stated you are welcome to list with Minus Worlds if you want to follow our standards. We are posting guidelines Monday

4 minutes ago, RETRO said:

As I wrote above to Tom, Dan, I accept your representation. Thank you for clarifying.

S.

I want to be clear that I (not Tom) am working to release sales data on Minus Worlds. 

We (minus worlds) will not be adding the service of dissecting the data but merely displaying it. Currently I am trying to work with the  auction houses to bring the 4 main auction houses data with the data of ebay to have a search function of sales data. We will represent Wata, VGA and CgC data points. We will not be disecting the data nor commenting on what it represents but just laying it out there in a digestible format for people to research and come to their own conclusions.

Your way may be better, and support you and others who provide any service or content in video games. Being a marketplace I am very cautious of how we represent data and want to really have a neutral hub to help buyers and sellers on their collecting journey. 

Any questions never hesitate. thanks-Dan

11 hours ago, RETRO said:

Of course they're friends. Everyone knows that. That's not my point. My point is that RETRO was contacted 2+ months ago by someone who is in this crew and they said that Tom was pushing "his new brokerage" hard in private conversations—and began doing so not long after falsely attacking my market research. Dan writes "we" repeatedly on MinusWorlds and mentions that he spoke with Tom about the project, so until Dan comes here to say that Tom has had no role whatsoever in this project besides lending his handle to it, I'm steamed.

Your sources are wrong. 

I wanted to write the clearly because if you care for truth you would never trust that "source" again. 

I state "We" a lot because we have employees at Minus Worlds and its a company. 

Clearly state, 

Tom has had no role whatsoever in this project besides lending his handle to it. 

10 hours ago, RETRO said:

Here's what I saw:

• WATA is referred to as a grading house, and VGA as a mere "authenticator." That is false.
• VGA's grading scale is misrepresented as relating to "authentication," while WATA gets two lengthy box-checking filters for the entirety of its grading rubric. By comparison, VGA gets a single slider (I'll put aside that the two grading houses aren't listed alphabetically or by age or by volume of games graded—any of which would have put VGA first—but by the site's clear preference for WATA).
• When you search for VGA graded games, even if you check the box, nothing comes up. WATA games come up just fine.
• There are three times as many WATA games as VGA games (and when the site first went up and I formed my opinion, it was about 10x WATA games), even though VGA has—over 13 years—graded substantially more games than WATA has in its 3.5 years.

You could argue that The Jackals simply prefer WATA because the Jackals hyped the market for WATA games to the point that WATA games always sell for more—that's why they (and WATA) push the preposterous idea of "crossing over" games needlessly; the only reason to do this is to sell your product for an artificially inflated price because it's WATA-branded (the sort of tautological reality that market manipulation is intended to create)—and that MinusWorlds.com is simply getting most of its up-charged product from Jackals, but that kind of proves my point. The whole milieu that birthed this site is a series of high-end resellers who act as WATA fanboys and shills for the sake of personal financial profit.

Edit: In the Knowledge Center, VGA is properly presented as a grading company. I'm referring to the most important part of the site: the game search.

Let me answer these questions one by one, sorry for multiple posts but a lot of different posts to respond to and will try to go back and condense them to one post. 
 

Referring to VGA as an Authenticator is nothing more how I use grading company and Authenticator interchangeably. 
 

the Sliding scale was simply to save space. Their grading scale is much easier to represent and saved us from making the filter box too long. 
 

search for vga graded: are you typing by title? This is working on my end . If you type VGA or Wata, neither come up because not in title. 

we have a section for VGA grading company that we worked with VGA to use materials from their site to show their grading scale and break down their label. 
 

regarding the number of VGA games, sellers put up their games. If you want to list a hundred VGA games to level it out, I welcome you to

We look forward you trying our services in time. If any questions, I am transparent because I can be so ask away. 
 

thanks and take care

11 hours ago, RETRO said:

Multiple people told me Tom is involved in this project. Again, if Dan wants to say that Tom has had no role of any kind whatsoever, I'll believe it about as much as I believe WATA saying Richard Lecce had no role in WATA but I will accept it.

As for the FB nonsense, I'm not going to let Dan pitch here as a valuable public service the same research that his crew elsewhere implied was without value. I lost sleep over those attacks—a lot. Seeing an idea I put into action months ago and got slammed for pitched here as a fresh, honorable contribution is not something I can or should let slide.

By all means, if Dan wants to say his crew was dead wrong about RETRO and that they want to build on my idea for widely available marketplace research on sealed-and-graded games, they can—but linking to a Reddit tool that is now offline and making no mention of RETRO while cribbing from it is BS and needs to be called out.

Seth, let me clearly state this is 100% my own effort. Your anger for Tom is miss placed. There is no conspiracy theory. Happy to chat with you on the phone or post your questions here

11 hours ago, RETRO said:

So Tom Curtin is going to create the sort of marketplace database RETRO is already doing for Intellivision and Atari and NES games, and which it has been doing for months, and which Tom publicly attacked me for doing.

I guess it all makes sense now. You guys really are sharks. Or perhaps some much smaller land animal.

In any case, I suppose you *can* do this work for free—instead of as one minor feature on a massive website that costs $2.90/month, like RETRO—when you're making money hand over fist as an unnecessary middleman in a market Tom helped inflate with years of bullsh*t, and when you work directly behind the scenes (as you say you plan to) with the very auction houses that also (like Tom) want these prices inflated.

God help us—or more specifically, buyers in this new market. Their actual advocates get steamrolled so that high-end resellers in bed with auction houses and grading companies can offer "free" services for the masses as they overcharge them by 25% to 50% for games. You guys made me feel like garbage for charging anything for hundreds of hours of research; little did I know that you were going to do the same work but make it free because you're making 1000x my monthly sub rate via up-charging.

I never was a shark like that. Didn't have the bloodlust for it.

This community gets what it deserves, candidly. It doesn't demand better, so it gets this. I'll continue buying the same games for three figures (sealed and graded) that you're selling for thousands. Make sure that when you tally thousands of sales at Heritage and 24 other markets (as I already have at RETRO), you leave off what things sold for. You don't want people seeing that at Heritage games go for half of what they're going for at MinusWorlds.

Hey Seth, Dan Allegra here. Your anger is miss placed. Tom Curtin was kind enough for me to use his handle when i asked because I thought the name was perfect for this but this project is mine and mine alone. Clearly state I am the sole owner.
 

Since I became more involved in the community aspect of video games 2+ years ago, Tom Curtin has been nothing less than a great friend to me going above and beyond. I feel questioning his values is unjust being I have never experienced anything less than a passionate collector that truly cares about this community. 

10 hours ago, CIBWholesale said:

my listings were deactivated because I didnt provide 6 pictures and the pictures were not quality pictures

 

that makes sense and I agree with the policy, however other sellers had the same issues but were not pulled

i'll wait to see automated standards but went from excited to ---- immediately getting a king vibe

 

 

 

This was a one off because games that this user listed at 800k and 1.5 billion dollars were blurry and not at a professional manner. 

13 hours ago, tidaldreams said:

Yeah, I thought this was pretty cool. It's pretty glitchy though (like most things on this site atm lol), it doesn't actually fill out for a few games I tried and when it does the date sometimes comes out as nonsense. 

The console list is pretty disorganized, it looks like just a random list, would be nice if you could alphabetize it.

Yes, that has been on bug list for a bit, it drives me nuts when listing a game as well

3 hours ago, tidaldreams said:

Ebay has an API you can use. You will probably have to scrape the data and parse out the grades/title of the game, but there is definitely a way to do it programmatically. A lot of other websites already do this (e.g. on PSA you can pull up all the listings for a specific card). But you just do it for sold listings instead of active ones.

Ebay does let you go back many years last time I checked with their api. Getting the data is not as hard is organizing it right. The other part is that Ebay really has to be combed to ensure relisted items arent put back up etc. 

We are working with auction houses etc to do this right. We are doing this as a free service because we feel it is really needed for everyone. We want buyers to be able to make educated decisions and most of us to simply enjoy researching easily. This projects take time to really get processes right so we arent going back and getting stuck on this one project when we can focus on the future. 

The one good thing is we spent a lot of time making a database of tens of thousands of games already and an identification system that we have as our back bone. You barely see it now but if you go to list a game, when you pick the system, it narrows the games shown to that system and if click on the game- it autofills the game developer and year of release. We still got to clean it up a bit but while seems simple, there is something like 18,000 games in our database. 

We will get there. While juggling a few major we are working on, it is critical that when we launch one it is right. Does not mean it is perfect but means when we launch we can learn and get it where it needs to go quickly. As many flaws as the MW website had, it performed amazing and many errors already fixes or will be fixed shortly. 

I probably should mention that on Instagram my personal handle is d.a.n_64   

Some of you we have interreacted previously and you can get a sense of my collecting, podcast, work with artists, etc. 

Please do continue to post feedback, critiques, etc. I like if you have a contact and direct answer from myself than just assuming the worst. Here for the long haul. 

2 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

a) Why is it coded from scratch and not using an existing product like Shopify?

2) How are you dealing with privacy and security? I would need to know how the data storage works before I sign up.

d) I think I have a good idea of some of the mistakes you're making and why it's doing some of the things it's doing. I've been developing customer portals for a decade, let me know if you need any help with the back end. I can take a look for free and offer some consulting or I can send you an hourly rate to change things if needed.

a) Shopify unfortunately does not have marketplace capabilities as well the customization and expansion we can do with investing in building this out right.  Having the ability to add any function we can imagine and go any direction was the right move. 

2) We do not store credit cards. We use stripe for credit cards currently. Feel free to read our privacy policy. We are not selling data to outside or sharing with third parties. 

d) Thank you for kind words. Will reach out in time if so and appreciate the offer. 

5 hours ago, OptOut said:

D... Dan? Are you okay buddy???

Someone check on Dan, I think he just fell asleep at his keyboard, lol! 

Whoops, I was rambling so I cut myself off

15 hours ago, tidaldreams said:

Have you seen this? 

 

Someone created a website that shows all of the HA sales data up to Aug. 31, 2021. I think it might be missing some sales, but this could help get you started. I saved the raw sales data file if you want it.

Yes, I like the effort here. My biggest hurdle is really how to format it to keep is digestible. We hope to do something similar but with all auction houses and ebay. The problem with ebay is really has to be manually combed through but we will figure out a way that makes sense. If there is a will, there is a way. 

I like the charts he did. The date of sales is nice touch. I think how I intend to do it is the seal grades are broken down in the box grades and you can open up the box grade row to see the seal grades. But we will test run a few different formats. 

Our goal really is really to be a neutral knowledge hub for the community. Our data will not be represented any differently than other data points. We are hoping to have links to each sale so it is helpful and transparent. But I am getting way ahead of myself, I get excited for what I know we will get to in time. 

59 minutes ago, tidaldreams said:

When you go to advanced search -> sold, does that show all the solds or just the recent ones? Think this might be one of the most valuable things about this website if you are showing all solds and the actual sold price (not like the listed price when a best offer was accepted).

Interesting how a 9.8 A+ and 9.2 A+ Shinobi 3 sold for the exact same price... sucks to be the 9.2 A+ buyer...

The website is glitchy as hell lol

To be honest, we had some issues the first day where the items were not marking "sold" so some games were marked up to avoid double sales. Those sales are legitimate, 9.8 was full price at $5750 and Shinobi 9.2 sold for $2200 I believe. We just fixed a bug that shows the sales, it was not working last 36 hours or so where there were many sales but they are not showing in that section. We will make sure they get represented and accessible asap.

Sales Data The reason why there isn't a bigger category for it is that I am working with all the auction houses to bring all sales data onto Minus Worlds. That way users can look at all sales data easily for FREE. This project has been in the works  for months and we are a few months out for completion but wanted to mention why we had not done a better shop making sold sales more a category. Also we got to figure out the format better to make the information digestible. 

 The developers are working daily to bring this site to a higher standard, we are not there yet but we will get there. The backend functionality is quite amazing. This is a site literally made from scratch. I am very pleased with the developers, First day the site was bogged down due to 1100 new photos uploaded. The problem we have with images is that I have asked them not to cap the seller's size of images. I do not like anything the inconvenience users from using the site, or having a hurdle. But with that you will notice how it bogs down the home page on loading. We are working to some automation compression techniques and we will get there. 

Last note, we are expediating the start of creating an App. We originally were going to wait to create it  6-12 months till we started but we will begin that process in the next 6 weeks. It will take 5-6 months but we are starting now to be able to bring a better experience for the mobile. 

 I am currently playing/enjoying Doom II nightly, surprising how great the Doom series is to play still 25+ years later

5 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

I played through it.  It's surprisingly well done for a game for 5 year olds

What happens if the game (i.e. the WATA or VGA case) gets damaged on it's way to you or the buyer or you or the buyer claim it's not what we shipped?

All items are opened under camera surveillance in our office. If we receive game and we ship to buyer, they say its empty- thats our problem and not the seller. We wouldn't even tell the seller the problem, they delivered the game to us and we pay out the seller. If game is damaged we have an insurance policy for such. 

Also, how would we get paid?

14 days after delivery the payment is cleared for payment, currently we are mailing checks on that Friday (with tracking.) We will have an ach type payment within 4-8 weeks but we are swamped and want to take time to pick the best method for our sellers. 

Can you also describe exactly how you would be packing the package to the buyer (if you are repackaging it)?

We re-package the game for the buyer. I see each opportunity to satisfy the buyer as extremely important, I know getting games myself is like opening a Christmas gift. Sucks when is smells like smoke or re-used trash to package.

We have created custom end caps and boxes specifically for graded games. This is also double boxed. I posted a video of our custom boxes on Facebook groups. I believe High End and Wata games group. 

I think you mentioned your facilities will be under video surveillance when you open the package. Will the video of opening up the package be available to the seller? I think this will alleviate a lot of concerns that I and perhaps other potential sellers have if you send us a copy of the video (of our own games ofc).

While we like the be as open and transparent as possible, having constant videos uploaded for orders with no problems reported would not be productive for our time or bandwidth. 

Can I just use my ebay feedback or do you need one of your buddies in those FB groups to act as a reference? I literally have hundreds as a seller with zero neutrals and zero negatives

You can apply and we will look at this at a case by case basis. More references the better. Once you apply to be seller, we send an application and we review the applications daily. We try to be as accommodating as possible. 

In total

I hope this answers some of your questions. 

If you are very concerned with the site, I will be the first person to say wait till comfortable.  We are here for the long haul and will look to prove our intention of being an amazing platform for buyers and sellers to transact for years to come.

Thank you and hope you have a great Thanksgiving as well. Take care