GPX

On 3/11/2024 at 3:40 AM, Gulag Joe said:

This didn’t happen with only video games. People were spending 6-7 figures on modern sports cards, comic books, vhs tapes, sealed G1 iPhones FFS. This is where the whole “wata and ha” completely falls apart in the bigger picture. It was ALL collectible markets. Video games are not special! Wata and HA didn’t make Timmy poindexter drop $60,000 on a Trevor Lawrence rookie card.

I seriously doubt VHS tapes and iPhones were going at 7 figures. While sports cards and comic books had many decades of establishing their top-end markets.

Then you have HA/WATA teaming up, and then an item magically transforms 100 times more than it’s going rate within the space of 1 year. 

Now we also have a lot of evidence that there is a lot of hanky panky going on, which you seem to have conveniently ignored and rather, to focus on “most other collectibles were going up too!” 
I’m sure there is market manipulation in all forms of market, but most of us here are likely to focus on the games market because…it’s a games forum! 

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t much of a music fan when back in the 90s, particularly when it came to the gaming. Most of the music I’ve heard from games I can barely remember but I did enjoy Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi, Sonic and Castlevania Symphony of Night.

Up until more recently, I came upon a clip on YouTube:

When I saw this video, I could instantly recall the music from the title screen, to the varying stages of the characters Balrog, Guile and Ken. It was like I was instantly time warped into the past! The impacts of the sounds and music never really hit me up until now, and no doubt had played a crucial role in me having such fond memories of this game.

8 hours ago, T-Pac said:

I’d say my ROM collection is pretty unique because, due to my views on piracy, every ROM I have was dumped myself from my own copy of the game (excluding digital releases).

Not many people can say that when they’re emulating a game, they’re emulating with the data from their specific cartridge. I would say that makes me more of an “outlier” than a “pioneer”, though - since most people don’t share my opinion on piracy and I don't anticipate much of a "ripping your own games" trend in the future...

[T-Pac]

A pioneering YouTuber to dump roms from his own physical copies, and to play from said roms! 

You are indeed a pioneer!

I think there’s some sense to the madness. I mean, I can see people trying to get a nice grade on some of their favorite movies. 

I’ll be more interested if any of the graded DVDs end up being a million bucks and to see if @Gulag Joe agrees with the prices.

1 hour ago, Gulag Joe said:

Point is, the prices went up across all collectibles (not just video games) when everyone got free money. And a lot of people who suddenly have lots of money tend to not know how to use it wisely. Once the free money dried up, the steady but steep drop in price is no surprise. There’s definitely a sting bugging some people who had some of these titles selling for tens of thousands and now they’re angry because they held on to theirs for too long and missed the opportunity to sell. I guess if that were me I would want to sue somebody too, but ultimately it would be my own fault. As for the speculators who bought these games at the inflated prices, as Ray once famously said on trailer park boys “it’s the way she goes”.

There is a serious false logical fallacy going on over the years, which is..

- people had received extra government financial assistance (true)

- the people above are contributing to the bidding of 6 to 7 figures on HA (false)

What some members on VGS were banging on previously weren’t the rise in market values, but more so the rapid trajectory, that it became obvious something was dubious. We just never really could tell the extent of this dubiousness. That is up until recent times, when actual lawyers and peed off clients are digging their teeth into the fine prints of the “what really went on”.

1 hour ago, OptOut said:

I don't need to sue anybody, because I didn't burn all my money in a giant hype pit like a ton of other people did.

The only rookies I know of are all the comic book and baseball card collectors who stumbled blindly into graded game collecting as though it was a thing. 

I think there are 2 separate issues here. Graded collecting was definitely a thing, even prior to the pandemic. It was never really a thing of 6 to 7 figure proportions.

I would argue though that in time, natural organic growth of the market may well lead to those sorts of values. However, the inorganic manner such was the hype train from WATA and HA, promoted scam artists into participation rather than encouraging prior genuine graded collectors to collect. 

I’ll try and answer this topic with my own collecting trajectory.

Initially, I just wanted to buy some cheap games for nostalgic thrills and pieces that I had missed out that I had always wanted to try. Mainly stuff from the 90s. Then I started noticing sellers on eBay with humongous amounts of listings and I both admired and envied their collections. Effectively that lead me to the path of “follower” where I wanted to emulate others’ full sets, subsets etc. 

Somewhere along this collecting path, I branched out into my own variant desires as well as started to trim and add games that had fitted better with my collecting tastes and circumstances. Eventually, it’s got me now to the point I don’t care what others have, and I just keep doing my own trimming and adding to my collection, and at my own pace. I certainly stIll enjoy seeing others stack of goodies, but I now no longer feel the need to emulate anyone.

I haven’t played some of these games, particularly the Genesis-only games. 
Some quick comments:

- Altered Beast was a cool early title, pack-in game. However, it’s shallow as heck and probably one of the weakest games in the poll list.

- Greendog vs Turtles. No contest!  

- I loved Quackshot. Possibly one of the most underrated Sega games in the 90s.

I’ve seen around 20 on the list. I definitely plan to watch more of the titles on this list, but not keen on watching all of them. I like a good mix of US/English movies but also Eastern movies, where I love the action/thriller/ horror elements.

Just the other day I had a funny parcel story so I thought I share it here (actually 2 stories).

1. Recent story:

3-4 months ago I had purchased a cheap Sega Megadrive game around $20 AUD (including postage). A week then passed and on the tracking it says delivered on the official tracking website. I checked everywhere, front porch, front lawn, I didn’t see anything. So weeks go by and I honestly thought the package was either stolen or there was some dogdy stuff going on with the local postal office. 3 months later, I had completely forgotten about it..Until..my mother told me she found a package put in the garage shed which somehow nobody noticed! Sure enough, it was the Megadrive game from the eBay purchase at the end of 2023! The postman had the bright idea of leaving it inside my garage when the door was left open, instead of leaving it in the usual spot at the front porch!

2. Embarrassing tale:

I would be interested if anyone else has ever done the same..
A few years back, I sold some stuff and sent one of the parcel with my details as the buyer and the buyer details put in the seller’s section. 
TLDR - I sent the package to my damn self!! 

One of the most iconic games on Atari. Loved it when I had played in the late 80s. Hard to rate any Atari games with modern era games, but for pure simplistic fun, this one is a recommend.

8/10.

2 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

Agreed.  I remember when WATA was first announced, it was almost universally agreed upon in the gaming forums that, ON PAPER, they appeared to be a huge improvement over the practices at VGA.  Even if you weren't a fan of grading, it appeared that they were going to fix most of the things that made people upset.  

Things sure turned out different.  

Yeah, ON PAPER. They were piggy backing their reputation from the NA forum and its members. Once they got a sniff of the momentum, it became an amazing disappearing magic trick. 
 

5 hours ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

Pigs get fat; Hogs get slaughtered. 

The sad thing about it all is that I believe WATA could have been successful WITHOUT all of this shady nonsense. They had the support of the community, a good product and service. The information on variants and print releases was beneficial to the community, informing the uninformed. The business strategy was sound and they accurately identified inefficiencies in the graded videogame market. There was very little competition other than VGA. 

But they got greedy. They did not want incremental growth. They wanted to get really rich really fast. And that is when a pig becomes a hog. None of this was necessary. Pat gets at this point toward the end of the podcast, albeit from the angle of natural growth of graded game prices.

I think there are several layers of greed at play:

1. WATA overhyping and overmarketing themselves to be superior than VGA. It was mainly all talk without the actual evidence. The only thing they’ve shown from the start was that they had more collector friends than VGA, who gave them their backing. Meanwhile, the products were yet to be served.

2. Jim Halperin facilitating the speedy market growth and his application of prior market manoeuvres (that benefits him but to the detriment of the collecting market). 

3. Shonky bidding by HA participants which appear grossly disingenuous, relative to where the market was at.

——————

I like your pig to hog analogy. Meanwhile, it’s sad to see how genuine graded collectors were instantly being priced out overnight with the top-tier items, and to see so many newcomers who obviously have no care for the hobby other than the monetary value to boast/hype/resell.

39 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Tag me whenever your witch hunt puts a witch in jail. Other than that, you and Lieutenant Pat the Angry Video Gamer can keep the conspiracy content coming. Maybe sell a few pillows while you’re at it!

Ok, it’s time to man up. How much are they paying you?

Great read @PII!

You're quite talented in various fields! In fact, I’m starting to realize this forum is actually filled with multi-talented geeks, rather than just plain game geeks!

I’m not quite sure on your stance on the music thing. Maybe it was the type of music that you were playing that was more associated with depressive scenes? Lately, I’ve been heavily into sports and fitness, and music has been inspiring me to find my best self-version as opposed to a lazy hack that I used to be. 

Good luck with your novel writing endeavours!

11 hours ago, Gloves said:

I'm still waiting for someone to offer to buy this place. So far you've all posted basically nothing worth selling, get to work!

I dunno, the Heritage Auctions thread is pretty epic. So much data mining to be had!

3 minutes ago, RH said:

Not entirely.  I think there’s still the connectedness with something you culturally identify with.  I mean, people have tried to hype and sell over priced SMBs for the Famicom and, frankly, someone like me is interested in those too, however my main blocker for that is cost paired with lack of knowledge.  With a wide language barrier, it’s hard to get specifics in the US.

I also thought I’d mention that I’m also not just interested in first runs. My personal, favorite “grail” is a CIB, black rated E SML2. That varian was printed and sold after 2000. Not only that, but from what we’ve gathered, this was a re-release with SML and maybe another early title or two.  Regardless, these are quite rare (even as carts) and they are a testimony to the longevity of the Game Boy and how good those games were.  They had a print run for over 10 years!

Prior to the WATA/HA cranial infestation, game collectors cared for the words “rare” and “mint”. First prints were rarely talked about simply because those were often mass produced and weren’t rare at all (for the most part)! I think rare print-runs and limited editions were more the fancy rather than first-prints. Sometimes first prints can be rare, so that would then be the obtainable challenge/goal.

It’s a completely different concept to that of comics and other older hobbies, whereby first-prints would mean many decades old, and most would likely be trashed and looking very ugly by present day. Hence those would generally be all rare in nice condition and would be adored by any such collectors.

I’d like to think I was one of the first here to actually use the words “market manipulation”. These were posted  on the official “Heritage Auctions” thread:

On 5/2/2020 at 1:11 AM, GPX said:

I think it needs to be said that there is a difference between natural progression of demand versus natural progression of demand with market manipulation. 

I’m not gullible to think that market manipulation does not exist up until now. However, it’s the manipulation of the market that involves the addition of thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, that is annoying for me as a potential buyer, but I feel more for those who are potentially going to lose big. Good luck to those who have gained from current purchases, but how many will make losses?

On 5/20/2020 at 8:04 PM, GPX said:

I have some disturbing doubts as to the legitimacy of some of these sales when these sorts of end price results. Reasons:

- what kind of speculator would you be for seemingly doing ZERO research on an estimated value, and then chucking away 4 figure dollars?

- in speculating/investing, wouldn’t the aim be to buy low and then sell high? What we’re seeing with the prices is that if the auctions are legit, then the speculation is to spend 5-10 times the previous sales, and then hoping that they will resell for more? 

 

Those thoughts above were me previously suspecting more the people at Heritage Auctions and the buyers being in some sort of collusion. I wasn’t agreeable to all the initial hype and WATA initial delays, but now seeing the full context of behind-the-scenes, it’s freakin’ amazing how they think they’d get away with all the shenanigans like this without rich people not going to be pissed off AND having the power to sue?!

On face value, I would pick either Mario or Castlevania series, as those are the 2 main ones I’ve played the most while completing a fair few of the games within the respective franchises.

On deeper thoughts, I think it would have to be a series with close to unlimited replayability. I think I would personally choose Defense Grid, a tower defense game. This is the type of game I’ve been playing mostly for the past 5 years in short bursts. Have yet to try the 2 sequels on the Xbox One as I don’t own that console. Certainly something I look forward to trying out in the foreseeable future.

I missed out on the N64 era for the most part, but thankfully have tried a few of the top titles and this was one of them. I enjoyed Super Mario Kart on the SNES and this took it one step further with the better gameplay, graphics and depth a la adventure mode. 

I haven’t had the chance to play much of Mario Kart 64 so can’t compare the 2 main N64 kart games. However, I can judge solely on DKR’s own merits and say that this is a fine example of a racing game. It’s also a perfect example of a racer for those who aren’t normally into racing games, worth to give it a spin. 9/10

The circle of life - birth, grow bigger, get weaker, organs malfunction, death. The earlier we can accept this cycle, the more we can value our lives better and the lives of our loved ones. 

On personal reflection, my parents were below average in the parenting arena, having high expectations of me in academics and often emotionally neglected me while doing their own thing with their careers. My dad previously also had serious gambling problems. I used to have a lot of resentment for them as they never took the time to understand my goals and interests.

The present day me is more accepting of life’s positives and negatives and I don’t feel the same level of resentment as I once had for my parents. In fact, both are now with elderly ailments, and I’ve been paying them a lot more visits and can appreciate now how parenting has its own life challenges that you can never fully understand as a child. Nowadays, I let the bygones be bygones and appreciate each day as it comes. 

My life advice for anyone is that you should remind your parents to do regular yearly health checks to better their chance of longevity. Our bodies often start to show a decline in our 40s and it becomes faster and more noticeable by the decades.

I voted Ghostbusters. So freakin’ iconic!

I would like to also suggest this:

(edit: just saw wongojack’s response; Pretty Woman song was absolutely classic retro and it fit the movie perfectly)

31 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Absolutely. And don't even get me started on the Sonic Mania tracks

Tee Lopes man, I'll never stop singing his praises. Genius composer.

Makes me wanna try that game now. Some big semblance of Streets of Rage music with that 90s techno feel.

35 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I've never met anyone claiming Sonic CD is better than any other Sonic game of the period. It's by far the least liked of the classic ones.

I recall the magazines at the time were raving about Sonic CD and its superior graphics and sounds. Something about the gimmick of past and future versions of stages which gives it more depth and a need for exploration more than prior Sonics. 

I’ve only played a stage or two with this game and can’t give it a proper review score. I can see though how this game can divide the fans, as this one favours more the experimenting and explorative nature of a 2D Sonic formula.

On 2/10/2024 at 2:11 AM, RH said:

Well, this is shaping up to be a month of necro-bumps for me, but I'm in need of advice.

Typically I'll buy games that appear in good shape but might need a generous-wipe down and possibly have labels that I can now get off with simple n-Heptane.  However, I just picked up a lot that looked a little dingy but now that it's arrived, eck... these carts are dirty!

These are Game Gear carts, and I'm not afraid of cleaning the plastic parts as I have a good technic for that.  However, these labels have a dried on grime.  I don't think it's stained the labels, but I want to get it off.  The best approach is to probably spray them with some solution that dissolves typical grime that doesn't break down paper or adhesive on the back side.  I'm sure these exists because conservators use this. 

This lot is almost junk to me if I can't clean these.  I've decided to not look for perfection as I collect GG games, but I have my limits.  Has anyone found a good way to clean matte and gloss labels without damaging them?  Note this stuff isn't ink.  They just look like that've sat in a place like a garage workshop, in the open air for ages, but out of sunlight so they aren't faded.  I think they are salvageable with the right tools.

It’s hard to picture the grime/label arrangement to give a proper advice. Maybe pics could help. Have you tried a slightly wet tissue with a gentle rub of the grime?