GPX

23 minutes ago, Bronty said:

The more people the better is probably true, but what’s wrong with that?   Yes, some of the people buying games now hope the value will increase.   That’s no different than it’s ever been.    The part that I think freaks people out is the new breed of buyer is more aggressive in going after it.   Fundamentally though, the behaviour isn’t that different .   It’s more aggressively aimed at items that may increase in value, but that’s the landscape the new buyer is used to.    One where you have to play aggressively to build a  meaningful collection unless already wealthy.   The current buyer is more used to letting growth happen passively.   That’s fine in a fast growing hobby, as time will reward your patience,   but in a mature hobby it doesn’t get the job done and those who get ahead do so by getting after it.  

I know what you’re getting at. But I think a lot of people who are giving opinions, already know the sentiments in the above.

I guess only time will tell which way the direction of games collecting will head towards. For what it’s worth, I actually hope WATA to succeed as I have lots of CIBs which I may consider grading in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, nothing wrong with the feeling of cautiousness. The battle of ‘patience vs rush mode’ - who will come out the victor?

On 11/5/2019 at 9:23 AM, Link said:

‘83 Video game crash: market flooded with crap. High amount of speculation by publishers (“people will buy anything”)

90s comics crash: market flooded with crap; high amount of speculation and investing on new items by individuals (“I have to buy everything”) and publishers obliging

Current video game grading trend: high amount of speculation and investing on vintage items by individuals 

I think it’s important to make a distinction between past speculation (in the above) and current speculation of the present video game market.

Past: collectors/speculators started to collect with origins from the same speculative market, with no structural guidelines. 

Current: speculators jumping in (from other markets) to tell longtime collectors how things should really be. 

It’s bucking the trend of how collecting things should be valued. To me it would seem just as odd if someone on here who collects retro games and going public buying up certain coins and telling coin collectors that these recently purchased coins are “worth bazillions”.

On 11/1/2019 at 11:53 PM, Bronty said:

1) you (as an established collector) are really not whom those articles are pointed at, and there's only so much you can say in one.   You have to dumb it down a bit same way if you were starting out in say coins you'd want things dumbed down a bit too.

2) Personally, I'm really skeptical about the effectiveness of 'articles' anyways.    We've all read these stories.    Cabbage patch kid sells for 1,000 or Coin sells for a million, or elvis' bellybutton hair sells for 100k.    Have ANY of those stories ever resulted in a reaction from you that beyond 'heh would you look at that'?    An article doesn't make someone want to change the entire direction of their collecting energy and use of resources.    If you read an article tomorrow about the skyrocketing prices  of vintage dolls would you really go out and spend everything you had on dolls?   Of course not.    Converting someone from one hobby to another is really difficult.    It takes one on one conversations, and repeated exposures to the material, and more than anything the 'target' has to think of all this is a good idea.   All the articles in the world aren't going to result in new collectors (or not very many).    Its the other stuff that is drawing people in.   The discussions at trade shows, the connections with other collectors, the look at the material and wondering WTF they weren't collecting this already, that kind of stuff.    Without those other more important things an article gets read for 20 seconds and then recycled and completely forgotten about by the next day.

I feel there’s 2 issues here:

- when we’re debating an incident in isolation, it’s hard to determine conclusive faults. What I think a lot of people are saying is more the “sequence of events” which makes things feel uneasy. It’s really all conjectures and opinions, but in a similar vein to the feeling of when there’s potential shill bidding going on in an eBay auction. Can’t prove conclusively, but there’s a natural feeling that can result if certain sequences come about via an eBay auction.

- “you (as a retro game collector) are not really who the article is geared towards” - well I personally think the aim of the article is to hook in as many people as possible: comic collectors, rich bums, gaming geeks and collecting freaks. For click baiting purposes and for future stability of the market values, it is in the involved parties’ interest to have the more people involved the better. 

7 hours ago, MeganJoanne said:

Too many things, nothing world recordly though. Used to have recordings of a lot, but those are long gone. Perhaps it's time to give it yet another go and maybe this time not delete everything. Something I've been thinking about anyway, kick some game ass like I used to. Perhaps I need some motivation, I'd gone from hardcore to lazy over the years.

What were some of the highlights among the “too many things”?

19 hours ago, Nightowljrm said:

Twin Galaxies doesn't have the credibility or significance it used to, but I do have the TG record for Sky Kid on the NES, one of my favorite games. https://www.twingalaxies.com/game/sky-kid/nintendo-entertainment-system/ntsc-points/

When Namco Museum launched on the Switch, I had #1 in the Sky Kid Challenge Mode for a while. Last time I checked, two or three people maxed it out (I guess they put a max score on the challenge mode), and bumped me off. I could go back and max it, but of course if you tie scores, whoever got it first has the highest rank, so that's not very motivating. Lol. I kkinda regret not pushing it further, but I didn't know it had a cap.

Nearly a decade (?!) ago I made it a point to beat as many notoriously hard NES games I can. Ghosts n' Goblins, Battletoads, etc. and I'm still fairly proud of that.

That probably covers it other than various platinum trophies and stuff. Or old RuneScape accomplishments.

Speaking of Ghost n Goblins, 2 of my finest gaming achievements (on a personal level) were completing Ghouls n Ghosts on the Megadrive and Super Ghouls n Ghosts on the SNES. Nostalgia for so many reasons:

- badass bosses

- incredible graphics and atmosphere (for its time)

- hard enough doing it once, but to fully complete the game to reach the final boss, you need to do another run of the levels!

Awesome cabinet, and perfect to house the N64 collection! 

Welcome newbie!

My most recent achievements on actual physical copies would probably be completing both Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, and obtaining all the stars for both games.

Recent years, I've been playing hardcore Geometry Wars and Defense Grid for Xbox Live. With Geometry Wars, I've only been able to crack the top 500 on one of the game modes. With Defense Grid, I've got top 10 on 2 of the levels. So many hours wasted, but so damn addictive!

As per title, what would you say is your current best gaming achievement(s)? Either:

- on a personal level

OR

- on a world ranking achievement

Have you got the skills to reach Guinness proportions? Well here's your chance to boast and tell..

Congrats Bronty! Lovely grail landed after the hefty but low-balling bounty!

Thanks for sharing this epic piece!!

I think it needs to be emphasised that there are 2 separate issues of discussions going on:

1. Is the grading of CIB any good for the hobby? I believe yes, but only in certain demographics of CIBs. For example, any CIB in poor condition should be rejected for grading because it’s wasting everybody’s time - it looks ugly for display and you won’t likely to make any profit when reselling (except maybe extremely rare items).

2. Is the hype and price hike a natural phenomenon or is it artificially made to take money from rich/stupid buggers? Whether right or wrong, here’s my opinion using an analogy: 

Ordinarily, when there’s a promotion of an item, I’d want it to be promoted by a salesman with facts and figures, pros and cons. The current hype and “articles” are seemingly done by cult members who want me to believe their ideologies without any linking with the mainstream thoughts. It just feels like I’m being brainwashed into thinking something rather than to give me the info for me to form an opinion on.

So kind of the feeling of “good salesman” vs “dodgy salesman”. And I’m sure there are plenty of people with this uneasy feeling about this price hike period.

On 10/30/2019 at 7:35 AM, Bronty said:

I like the analogy too but I think its more like this:

Tourist:   I'd like to buy this beachfront property for 100k!   that's crazy cheap compared to back home.

Tourist B:  I'd like to buy this beachfront property for 150k!  that's crazy cheap compared to back home.

 

At some point, when we get to tourist C, D, E or F - it won't look so cheap and it will flatten out.   Nothing cures high prices like high prices.

I can see this vantage point. The world of rich people doing whatever the hell they want, until the top of the crop runs dry on money, or they end up getting bored.

However, I think the majority of opinions are seeing not so much the value of the games increasing, but more the rapid rate of price hikes and the self-promotion of "news articles" which ties in with HA, WATA, and random people with decent dollar. There is a certain level of disingenuous about the whole affair. Then you couple this with the owner of HA buying up a WATA graded item, to then sell WATA graded games, with the addition of a questionable background in business affairs. Altogether, there is a certain level of fishiness that is hard not to imagine, whether it's being realistic or purely delusional.

Yes, it seems wrong in so many ways:

- the box is the hardest part to find in eye-catching condition and also the ONLY part that you see after grading. If it looks below average, it doesn’t deserve to get more than a 5.0 in my opinion.

- it’s only actually “rare” in sealed form, not CIB. People paying ridiculous prices for this stuff are either shill bidding, dumb, or crazy. Can’t comprehend the ridiculousness of this current situation.

On 10/28/2019 at 11:27 AM, JinxtheCat said:

The biggest takeaway for me is the WATA/GoCollect/Hertitage influence brought in a new tranche of people to the hobby.

 

This is a tenuous analogy...hang with me......but the new "comicbook" crowd feel like the rich people from developed countries that travel to a relatively poverty stricken vacation destination.  They bring in their strong foreign currency, spend "lavishly" relative to locals, and only stay at a few choice spots.  Choice spots = high end sealed games.  The economies in those destination cities/towns completely change (sealed and certain CIBs skyrocket) as the locals (old collectors) cater to the new tourist money (comicbros) as prices soar.  The surrounding cities (lesser CIBs, set collectors) in that same country that the tourists don't travel to as much may experience a slight inflation rise (reasoning for so many "nos" on this poll) due to the knock on effects of the influx of new money (workers flocking to beach resorts to work for more pay = wage rise in other cities).  

In the end, some locals are better off (monetizing pieces at record prices), some are not (set collectors, CIBs, non-nintendo pieces), but overall it feels disingenuous.  Outsiders have seriously impacted the economy and the culture and they're doing it because it's cheap holiday (or cheap investment in their eyes) and not because they truly care about the island (or games).  

 

I think that's what bothers me more than prices going up.  If the core sealed collectors for whatever reason just started to get more aggressive, and prices began to rise organically from a group that truly valued the nostalgia - that feels good to me.  Sitting here watching thousands and thousands of dollars dropped on graded games they don't give a frog's fat ass about feels bad man.  

I like the analogy BUT, and this is where I feel some of the hate is being thrown at the current situation..

No matter how rich you are, no matter what foreign land you come across, you would often first ask “what’s the price on this?” Then you would pay that price or barter for that price to come down.

The current price blow out seems more like this analogy:

Tourist: I’ll pay you $100,000 for this item I have a keen interest on.

Local: Are you sure you don’t want to ask for the price first?

Tourist: nahh, I’m good. 

Local: ok then!

Tourist (A) to another tourist (B): got this item cheap for $100,000! So much nostalgia and significance!

Tourist (B): I wish to pay this item for $150,000!

Local: are you sure? We have never sold that amount before.

Tourist (B): nahh it’s ok, Tourist (A) told me the price already and I think I’m offering a fair price.

Local: ok then!

I’m a neutral observer, having graded VGA games but not yet done any WATA grading. From what I can tell WATA provides a service that would be handy in today’s market of repro/scam sellers of CIBs. This was the original necessary selling point of VGA for the sealed games - authentication. 

I believe the original intention by WATA was to provide a useful service for a segment of the collecting community. However, I think somewhere along the way, there seems to be misdirection from their original intent. From a bystander point of view, I’m seeing a lot of backlash from a lot of the WATA consumers in the rates of their service, and at the same time, seeing WATA actively promoting their stuff with links to HA and “news” articles that have them in their interviews. 

What would be best is for them to actually focus more on their actual stated service, and try and complete their rates of return of games and better communication with their consumers. Because currently, it gives a negative perception (at least for me) that they are more into promotion of their services rather than actual performing the service!

Ok I’m still a little bit confused with the current situation and I’m hoping for an explanation. I’m one of those NA members who just goes on randomly and makes random discussions, so I’m not really one to notice all the internal politics of NA since the new owner bought the site. 

Just reading this thread makes me see clearer the angst from a lot of the previous Mods from NA and a fair few of the members from there. So the question I have is: why is NA a forum you no longer want to be associated with? Is it from a privacy/trust issue? Or are there more sinister concerns?

Have you got anymore WWF funny footages to share?

I have to make an honest confession from the outset - I’m from Australia but... I’m not actually a wizard!

In case anyone is wondering, I’m also GPX from NA. My passion is games, whether it’d be CIB, sealed, acrylic’ed, or even Qualified. I also have a fetish for making random threads for random chit chats. 

I like the new look of this forum. Hope it can continue on with the spirit of NA!