Seth

Adam, we have both been online for 20+ years. "I think" is tacit in every post on a discussion board. But if you need it broken down, WATA has graded 237 sealed SMB3s in 42 months (3.5 years). VGA has been in operation for 13 years. Yes, it is possible that in 13 years VGA graded fewer SMB3s than WATA did in 3.5 years—keeping in mind that the WATA data isn't actually 3.5 years, but just as far as they've gotten in their backlog (likely 3 years)—but no collector or investor or reseller should ever, ever, ever make that assumption. You are being deliberately obtuse, but I can't figure out why except that you don't like me. But since this is a site for people making financial decisions, how about we put that aside and speak like adults.

The basic problem in the sealed and graded collecting community is that you have people working off data, market dynamics, and core facts—which doesn't mean they get everything right by any means, but it at least means they're prepared for an adult conversation—and then you have the cultists, who tell us falsehoods like that the number of buyers in the hobby is expanding rapidly (without proof), who tell us that WATA is the only company whose pop reports we were waiting for (sorry VGA and your 13 years of additional data), who tell us that increases in the prices of the top graded copies of a handful of games means growth in the market writ large (sorry basic economics), and more. Then you have folks like Adam, who are smart, not cultists, and sometimes make good points, but it usually ends with a "Who really knows?"—which isn't ultimately helpful or interesting on a discussion board for people making hard purchasing decisions.

I remember how this works (from elementary school): a transient multiplication error in an online forum instantly invalidates anything a person has ever said. Also, a comment about Jonas deeming his anecdotal experience more valuable on the open market than hard data is... somehow related to me offering my opinion for free? Check your math on that one, Adam, I actually think I was proving my own point.

That non-answer was definitely one you'd want to be beaten to.

Huh. So why are there only 10 bidders whenever one comes up for auction? And why are you using the "237" figure when this pop report confirms that 237 (3 years of WATA) is now the floor for how many VGA copies there are from 13 years of VGA grading, so we're talking about a bare minimum of 574 buyers you'd need for the SMB3 market to even be at perfect equilibrium (i.e., everyone who wants one can get one, which would equal a collapsed market)? I think you need to prove that there are 1,500+ avid SMB3 buyers right now to suggest there's a market for the 575 SMB3s out there, though as the number is almost certainly more like 1,000 you'd really need to produce 4,500+ buyers—none of whom can be CIB collectors, mind you! Has to all be sealed collectors. (You'd still have to explain why almost none of these buyers ever show up to auctions, though.) I've been assuming everyone here understands basic market dynamics, but if we need to take a step back to review, lemme know.

It's bizarre that I've been called arrogant but have never considered my opinion the equivalent of hard data in terms of value. You do you, though, Jonas—marking up common NES games by 300% over their proven market value because your buyers don't have access to hard data... only your years of experience in hype. I mean, RETRO readers would never have paid you $1,000 for a 9.2 StarTropics... but now no one will.

Yeah, I like his energy but on video games he's only right as to about 25% of what he says—and I mean even factually speaking. (And I say this as someone who agrees that one should not invest in video games long-term, but should either be a short-term flipper or a bona fide gamer-collector.)

Can someone offer the best possible argument for why the SMB3 market shouldn't collapse today? I'd honestly like to hear the argument from someone willing to acknowledge the facts (e.g., that whopping "237" figure is not the total pop, as we don't yet have VGA games, WATA back-log, CIB games, or the coming years of CIB and sealed SMB3s included; the buyer pool is minuscule and not growing at the same pace as new sealed SMB3s are being graded; and so on) but who is still bullish on SMB3.

Yes. But not good...! I'd rather have Mendel Palace or Puzznic, or a PAL game like Rod Land (which I do have, VGA graded) that WATA has never touched at all.

P.S. I understand this is gauche, but I will only do it once: through midnight tonight, you can get a year of RETRO for $2.90/month (see my pinned tweet at @sethabramson). I mention this because pop reports are not market research, and what folks need now is data on which games that WATA graded came or will come to market (as it's only a fraction of the total—about 33%—that will do so, with the rest staying in private collections, possibly long term). I don't do RETRO for the money, but it takes a lot of work to produce the reams of hard data that have already saved my subscribers an insane amount of money. They knew (and know) which games to avoid and which to buy, and given that we're talking about thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, they feel the cost is more than worth it. Even Tom Curtin, who you've all seen me fight with here, said the cost (even at $5/month rather than $2.90/month) would be "well worth it" even if RETRO only offered market reports rather than everything else it does. So I make this note not because I need money—I don't—but because I want folks here to have access to my research at a cost I know means next to nothing to any of us except as a means of acknowledging my hard work. I've been a professional researcher and games journalist for years now, so I don't work for free any more than any other professional does. Adam W., feel free to attack me now.

The issue with Reserved Investments is that he doesn't understand how to determine when a factory-sealed six-pack exists, so he just declares that one exists whenever he sees a game with a lot of high-grade copies. That's nonsense. The market allows us to tell when factory cases exist. Factory cases of Battletoads (PAL) exist. Factory cases of Legend of Zelda (PAL/ESP) exist. Factory cases of Wild Gunman (PAL/ESP) exist. Factory cases of Batman: Return of the Joker exist. Factory cases of Swords & Serpents exist. Factory cases of Friday the 13th exist. We know this because anyone watching the market can watch these cases being sold (one unit at a time) in real time, and because the market research reveals that all of these games skew wildly—relative to their total population—toward factory-sealed grades. Just because many copies of a game exist and some are in factory-fresh condition does not indicate the existence of a box, let alone future boxes. The hard data at RETRO kept me away from the games above and many others, like Adventures of Dino Riki, Dragon Warrior, Impossible Mission II, Airwolf, Destination Earthstar, Flight of the Intruder, Tetris 2, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Back to the Future, Tiger-Heli, every RoboCop game, Bandai Golf, and more. Zoda's Revenge exists in boxes but I bought one anyway because it was under $300 to get the second-best copy WATA has ever graded. Only suckers (or big fans of these games, as with me and Zoda's Revenge) buy them. RETRO subscribers knew all this months ago because they saw the data. These games exist in boxes. That Dragon Warrior II, Dragon Warrior III, and Dragon Warrior IV—all better and more critically acclaimed games than Dragon Warrior, BTW, especially the last two—are so hard to find in any grade underscores that we can tell when cases exist and when they don't, as no one would sit on those cases in this market, those games did not sell well and do not appear to have had long runs or been a focus of collectors historically (the people who would find and preserve cases), and even the CIB market is super light for these titles (with only 2-7 copies available each). So what Sean fails to acknowledge is that games with boxes move differently in the market than those without. This is also true with Atari 2600 games—which like NES games I specialize in—with many games indicating box existence but some (all evident from the data at RETRO) clearly not extant in boxes.

The VGA Loopz (NES) I was watching last night—$269 and one of the highest-grade copies in the world, but honestly crushed enough in the back that I always stayed away from it because I display my games rather than re-sell them—is now gone. So is the sequel to Wizardry. While we debate old feuds, all the rare NES games on the market are being bought in the most dramatic shift in this market in a while.

P.S. Having said all this, don't worry, Joe, I am not saying that the members of the Good News Cult have to—or will—stop gouging buyers. You and I both know that what the GNC members are counting on is that these pop reports will soon be forgotten, be eclipsed by new reports for other consoles, and be unknown (as to their existence) by the richest foreign buyers and the scattered mega-wealthy domestic buyers. So these reports won't change that much, except for (1) buyers who do their research (a small group) and (2) ethical high-end resellers (also a small group), with the latter now refusing to lie about the rarity of their games in online listings and private negotiations. What none of this will do is expand the hobby. What it will do is ever so slightly contract the market for the games the high-end resellers have been hawking, and ever so slightly increase the tendency of speculators to seek out actually rare games.

Joe, we're both collectors interested in this market, but only one of us is in a "prosperity gospel" cult of Joel Osteen-like proportions. I don't doubt your intelligence at all, only your willingness to "hear" basic facts—which is a feature of any cult and its members. 1. The idea that you have to have personal relationships with grading house employees to understand what that grading house does is so preposterous that it could only be uttered by someone who fails to understand that in a healthy, stable, mature collectibles market almost no one in the market knows anyone at the grading house, but rather it is the grading house that (unlike WATA) has made its processes and ethos transparent to all its consumers. The very fact that the high-end resellers in this market all know the WATA folks confirms how small, sad, and provincial this market is. 2. Don't lecture me about how grading works just because I said that you can't reduce the population of a game to only its 9.8 and 9.6 exemplars. You and your crew have so misunderstood how markets work that it would probably blow your ears off to hear that I own the best WATA copy of a certain desirable NES game in the world... and it's an 8.5. 3. The prices paid in the hobby are exploding. The number of buyers is relatively static. You've been told this repeatedly and just can't hear it. That's what being in a Good News Cult does to a person. 4. So you're saying that the fact that the "vast majority" of video games "come factory sealed" is evidence that... factory sealed NES games are rare? Uh... okay. I guess this is why Heritage Auctions can run a weekly sale of sealed NES games, and why Goldin and ComicConnect and CertifiedLink and now Hake's can run semi-regular video game auctions of sealed NES games decades after the last licensed NES game was produced without ever running out of things to sell. Don't worry—only every fact is against you on this. 5. You persist in ignoring 13 years of VGA data—coming soon—and the fact that (see #4) sealed NES games keep spilling into the market every week and will continue to do so for years and years and years, and you persist in doing this because you are in a Good News Cult. 6. High-end resellers will be killed by this data, because it shows that they missed out on all the actually rare games and that the games they thought would sell for bonkers cash are over-saturated in the market relative to demand. If high-end resellers thought pop reports would make them rich, you and I damn well know they would have been militating for these reports in highly aggressive, orchestrated, public, vocal, personal terms for years and years—especially given their privileged access to and relationships with a couple guys at WATA. They haven't ever done this because this report exposes their ignorance and hype. 7. No one ever "trashed" WATA "employees" and you know that. I have praised WATA for many things, as have many of its critics. A grand total of two WATA executives have been criticized. You conflate two millionaire execs with the workers of a company because you are in a Good News Cult and your values lie with management, not workers, and the ultra-wealthy rather than regular people. S.

Looks like the new high-end reseller/investor talking points are out. 1. Because everyone who grades a game with VGA "crosses over" that game with WATA to resell it under the 25% to 50% WATA premium that exists for... reasons... the WATA pop report data released today effectively takes into account every game graded by VGA in 13 years and can be treated as the "total" population of each sealed NES title out there. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0 2. Only 9.6 and 9.8 grades actually matter, so you can talk about the "rarity" of a title by eliminating all instances of that title that don't have a 9.6 or 9.8 box and pretending that the "total" population of the game is however many 9.6 and 9.8 boxes there are for that game. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0 3. After 15 years of being a niche hobby with about 200 practicing hobbyists, sealed and graded collecting is suddenly going to blow up, which means that there being hundreds of sealed and graded copies of SMB3 is amazingly good news for the hobby and anyone who has a sealed and graded copy of SMB3, as demand for these hundreds of copies will suddenly outstrip supply for the first time ever for... reasons. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0 4. Though everything about the two hobbies is different—from the percentage of all enthusiasts who want sealed and graded copies of the product to how many years grading companies have had to produce sealed and graded copies, from the ease of entry into the hobby based on the cost of the lowest-tier exemplars to the length of time the market for sealed and graded copies of the product has existed in a healthy and stable state—sealed and graded video games can be casually, even flippantly compared to comic books. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0 5. Even though high-end resellers spent years saying that certain NES games only had 5 or 10 sealed and graded copies (and so slapped the "RARE" and "GRAIL" labels on all their eBay listings despite having no data whatsoever to back either claim up), and even though it's now clear that some of those same games have scores of WATA-graded copies out in the world, scores of VGA-graded copies, and a "pace" of appearance on the market in sealed and graded condition that means they'll have many hundreds of copies on the market by 2026 with only (if past is precedent) a dozen or so potential buyers for each, today's pop reports are great news for the premise that you should buy {checks notes} copies of the most popular and readily available games for five figures. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0 6. Even if you think this data is bad news for high-end resellers and investors, this is only NES data, which is misleading and not an indicator of anything because... reasons. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0 7. Forget what the data means, the fact that it was released at all means that every unkind thing ever said about WATA is demonstrably false. Accuracy Rating (out of 10): 0 What am I missing here? What else is the "Video Games to 10 Million!" cult saying now that they started planning to say the second pop reports were announced in early November?

FYI: Third-highest-ever-WATA-graded Dudes with Attitude (NES) is on eBay for $455 OBO.

FYI: Highest-ever-graded WATA copy of Castle of Dragon is on eBay rn for $469. Or you can wait for it to show up on MinusWorlds for $3,750.

Here's the problem: 1. Gaming is the largest entertainment industry in the world. 2. That has absolutely nothing to do with the popularity of collecting sealed and graded games—a wildly niche hobby that has remained niche for 15 years now and is going to remain niche. I can't believe folks still mistake the former fact for the latter. The most-graded WATA games are not rare relative to demand, which is nothing like the demand for comics. Is 500+ sealed-and-graded SMB3s (among both WATA and VGA) a lot? You bet your ass it is. It's a ton—relative to demand. Why is this so hard to understand, when we all watch the HA auctions weekly, which—almost all of them—have only 5-10 bidders? ON EDIT: And for the fortieth time, 36 months of WATA grades are not the whole of what's out there! VGA has been grading for 13 years. Take any pop # you see from WATA and at least double it.

If anyone wants the third-highest-WATA-graded copy of SEICROSS (NES) and doesn't mind a little mold, you can have it for $249 on eBay right now. Three-figure collecting was always where it was at...

Update: The 9.0/A Eliminator Boat Duel ($699) that has been unsold for months on eBay (from Just Press Play) is now gone. It is the third-highest known WATA-graded copy. This is happening fast, folks.

Not judging you either! This is perfect.

You can't understand what I'm saying—no worries. Some miscommunications can't be solved.

Yes, it's one of the 25 markets I track at RETRO. I don't buy sealed games from there.

Whoa whoa whoa—I didn't say cross-overs were a myth. That'd be insane. I said that cross-overs are only a tiny fraction of VGA grades by total number, meaning that we can't say (as the OP did) that most VGA grades—once their pop reports come out—were already reflected in WATA data. That is the myth I was referring to. Don't get it twisted, man.

A few.