Seth

I hear what you're saying, and it's very fair.

LOL! I agree with OptOut. The internet allows multi-layered data-sets via hyperlinking. The incredibly curtailed data package WATA is about to squeeze out like a turd it's been holding onto jealously for a dog's age needn't be—and surely won't be—arrayed in a single, analog-like spreadsheet page. This was never a hard hill for WATA to climb, they just weren't interested in publishing this data until new ownership and a series of public scandals forced them to do so. The three-year delay here (remember, Deniz said they were ready to publish full population reports in June 2018!) has nothing to do with a praxis or programming issue. This was just corporate politics, pure and simple.

I take your point, GPX, but I don't think "misleading" is the right word here, as—albeit that I can only speak for my own published analyses—they are very explicit and transparent about being "availability" analyses, meaning that if a game title is put on the market, bought, and then put on the market again, the analysis deems that it should count twice because it was made available to buyers for purchase via a public market twice. Even putting that aside, because WATA didn't release their pop-report "matrix-reader" app in June 2018 as Deniz explicitly promised WATA customers in a media interview, it is harder than it should be to identify when a unique product is appearing more than once in a marketplace (not impossible, of course, as you can read the entirety of the front and back of a case for distinguishing characteristics if you're looking at a WATA case rather than a VGA case, but no one has the sort of time or resources to do that work for literally tens of thousands of video game titles). As far as whether any human being alive can "track sales directly with their own eyes" across the 13-year period since VGA was founded—absolutely! They can. As to fewer than (say) ten titles out of the thousands and thousands of titles market analyses can capture. Like if a Ninja Gaiden expert tells me he has tracked 25 markets over 13 years to determine how many copies of The Dark Sword of Chaos have entered (1) public markets, (2) private sales, and (3) private not-for-sale collections across those more than two dozen markets over a more than a decade period, and if that collector has kept copious notes of these scores of transactions for over 10 years, and if I trust that person implicitly (because I know they're not a Ninja Gaiden reseller trying to over-hype products they personally own), I will take their word over a market analysis. But I can't imagine any other situation in which I would do so, as the idea that random collectors are tracking literally tens of thousands of transactions better than recorded market analyses is simply preposterous from every angle. I know collectors—me very much included!—like to self-romanticize, especially when it comes to our knowledge base, but that's beyond the pale. Large-scale data-sets are best tracked via large-scale data analyses, not collectors hazily recalling rumors about game titles they aren't personally invested in (which, for all of us, is by volume well over 95% of all video ever games ever released).

Got it. In any way, to answer your question, Double Dribble ranks #160 out of 800+ NES games in market availability, as tracked at my publication. Eight copies have hit the 25 public markets surveyed since December 31, 2018, with five of those copies in the near-mint range or above. Price Charting tallies another five copies on eBay in the decade between 2008 and 2018, with four of those five in the near-mint range or above. So the 13-year tally is 13 copies, 9 in near-mint range or above. This is just the number that have hit public markets; with private sales and games that went into (and stayed in) private collections, the number could certainly be slightly over 20. This said, remember that the forthcoming WATA pop report is WATA-only, so it's more likely to resemble—because WATA began issuing grades in 2018—the post-2018 data at my publication. Hope this helps.

Yikes, sorry Doug, I didn't see the date of your original post. My bad.

What Facebook research do you mean? Can you point me to it?

Great GIF usage here

You're not missing anything!

LOL. I don't publish private emails unless it's to defend myself against public misrepresentations by the other party in the exchange. Hope you understand. If you're thinking that the Chris Cuomo and Shia LaBeouf situations I wrote about previously on Substack reflected some sort of M.O. on my part, they really didn't. It takes an enormous amount of lying and betrayal for me to reveal private correspondence like that, and I don't think either Chris or Shia would disagree that they forced my hand.

They were pretty frosty on my end. I didn't like how Deniz's rep approached me, which was pretty hot (IMO) on the front end. That said, I'm a journalist, so I made additions to my article based on Deniz's representations through his agent. But I did not issue the correction Deniz had demanded, because it would have been journalistically irresponsible.

I just saw that you updated your comment with this. It's appreciated. Look—I don't need the money. I don't mention RETRO because I need the money. I charge $5/month just because the site takes a lot of work and I want there to be a way for that to be nominally reflected. I mention the site here because I earnestly (whether you agree or not) believe it will help people in the community who are buyers/collectors like me (and probably some sellers, too). That said, subscribe or don't subscribe, either is fine and it's no skin off my back. I think people can read (but only if they want to! no hard sell!) what I have written at RETRO to decide if it is sourced and responsible. I'm not afraid to be judged by my work product, and if you've read it and still consider me all the names you called me, I'm sad about that—I want to be liked as much as anyone does—but I have to move on. Again, good luck to you and no hard feelings, I hope. P.S. I will stop bolding text in my posts here. It is done out of habit and not to annoy people. I will cease and desist with that. I will also try to keep references to RETRO to a minimum—only when/if it is clearly relevant to the topic. I love collecting sealed and graded games, I do it avidly (if only at a low-cost level) and I want to be part of this community.

I really appreciate your good-faith feedback here, Inasuma, especially as you added the word "respectfully" just before calling me "pompous", "not earnest", "narrative-hungry", "self-congratulatory", a "conspiracy [theorist]," an "annoying gnat", "walking the line of [being] libel[ous]", and "delusional." In any case, that's water under the bridge. Despite you being a presumptuous aggro prick here—and more importantly, re-enacting exactly how certain people in the community reacted the moment there was criticism from me, Karl Jobst, Pat Contri, Sean at Reserved Investments, or anyone else about how certain people (I guess you feel you're one of them) operate—I'll answer your questions in good faith. 1. As you/we all know, a population report is how many copies of each game title exists in WATA's computer system, and in what condition each title was adjudicated to be as it left WATA to either go to (a) a public market, (b) a private market, or (c) a private collection. A "stop-gap" measure in the absence of such data being released as it should have been, and as too few people militated for it be in activist terms over the last three years, would be an identical data-set—"how many copies of each title exist...and in what condition"—with respect to one of those three end-states, i.e. the public market. I explained this elsewhere and have explained it here, so there is no place you've been where I've been asked this and this answer wasn't given. You disagree with my answer—that's okay. And I'm not going to take your recommendation on how to talk about these market analyses because I won't misrepresent what they are just because you want me to. But that's okay, too—I don't usually take advice from aggro strangers, and you don't really expect me to. 2. I participate in this market as a buyer and collector—as you know. I have used WATA and I have praised WATA—as you know. When I have criticized people in the community, I have said their names and what they did. What happened in your little FB group (which I have seen suspend people's posting privileges for criticizing WATA) was that a lot of people whose names I'd never said, who I didn't know, and who I'd never criticized took criticism of WATA market manipulation as criticism of them. They took criticism of re-sellers hyping big sales to enrich themselves, which everyone agrees has happened, as criticism of them. I can't do anything about people seeing themselves in criticism that wasn't directed at them but at WATA and a small number of re-sellers who I did name, and rightly so, like Tom Curtin and Dave Robbins. I have never said "99% of the folks in the hobby are evil slime-ball suits" and respectfully you sound unhinged when you distort my comments in this way. You're acting like some sort of radical, but I can't tell what you think you're advancing or who/what you're defending, so it's unnerving. 3. You don't have access to my email. You didn't spend days emailing with Deniz's rep about how Deniz feels about your work. Don't tell me what I do and don't know about who did or didn't respond to my work in this way or that way because you don't have any information whatsoever on this score and no basis to talk about it—ever. To claim otherwise is to be a gaslighter. On a side note, your use of the term "product road map" to describe WATA's response to credible allegations of corruption that were reported on domestically and internationally is legit the funniest thing I've ever read on this site. Anyway, thanks for the "respectful" dialogue, and I think we can avoid one another from here on out. Be well, Seth

Got it, sorry!

This is just puerile whining, Adam. If you're getting worked up about typography, the problem is with you. If you don't find the content of my posts helpful, ignore them. That's how discussion boards have worked for the last 25 years.

I wish this had been clear earlier. Not accepting products you don't think will earn $1,000 is fine—though to be clear, you create that sort of policy for you and your bottom line and not for either buyers or sellers; also, you already, in your first auction, sold items that went for under $1,000 elsewhere but didn't go for under $1,000 at Goldin because of your mandatory minimum starting bid—but now you're saying that there will be no minimum bid in your next auction, as "nothing will start at $1,000." That's certainly an acceptable business practice, as it's what Heritage does and they are years ahead of you in terms of being in this market. But if what you're doing here is saying that "nothing will start at $1,000" simply because there will still be a minimum $1,000 bid but someone will have to bid that for an item to not go unsold, that's a pretty lame rhetorical sleight-of-hand, man. I hope you will clarify what you mean.

Are you talking about the first Mega Man? I haven't seen a sealed or CIB Mega Man at Heritage in a long time. I went back and looked, and besides one in July, it's been over half a year since Mega Man (NES) appeared at Heritage in any format. And one of the two prior to six months ago was a sealed 9.4/A+ that went for $144,000.

Adam, that's profoundly unfair. I've been a very active contributor here, and the idea that auctioneers can come here and start entire threads to promote their services but I can't include in a very relevant comment about WATA a link to my website is silly. I mean, talk about misplaced anger! I don't hear you upset about auctions advertising here or people selling games here or even much upset about WATA, but when someone tries to provide a service to help buyers, you complain. It's startling and unwarranted. If you don't want anyone to have access to accurate data so they can save money on sealed and graded games, pretend I and my posts (which on occasion mention my website in passing) don't exist; that's 100% your right. But don't call me out in this way when I've been a very active contributor here. While I certainly don't need a "thank you" from you or anyone for all the journalism I did to try to push WATA to this point—all of which was free—I don't deserve for this bitterness from you to be the replacement for that.

I don't have seal data, but every single NES game is ranked by its availability (sealed and graded) on the market over at RETRO, as well as how many copies in near-mint condition or above are available. The research took scores and scores of hours and is being regularly updated. If there's an NES title whose rarity in sealed and graded format you're wondering about, you can get your questions answered at RETRO. I frankly hope even more folks will check out the data, as it hurts when my head and heart when someone I respect like Greg (from GettheGreg Games) says, as he did on Tuesday, that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (NES) is hard to find sealed and graded. Uh... no.

I may have some insight to offer here. I authored much of the WATA-related investigative journalism that showed up in industry media outlets worldwide and led to repeated conversations between me and Deniz Kahn's rep at Goldin Solutions (the top PR firm WATA retained to defend against allegations in RETRO and in the Jobst Report). Goldin Solutions made clear to me that the top brass at WATA was following my journalism and was very unhappy about it. More specifically, WATA was very, very aware that RETRO was not only a persistent critic of WATA not releasing pop reports but that RETRO had begun releasing extremely popular, widely read "market analyses" intended as a stop-gap until WATA began releasing pop reports. (It was debate over these very analyses that caused me to decide to leave the Unofficial WATA Games Facebook Group, which changed its by-laws to ban any link to these market analyses.) The RETRO market reports that WATA (and its fanboys, many of whom are friends with Deniz) have been so upset about? Guess what they cover? NES games. Box condition only. Feel free to draw your own conclusions from this sequence of events. Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe WATA grades games from many, many, many different consoles, so the decision to release only NES-game pop reports and box-condition-only data is pretty... specific. (FWIW, Deniz also knows I'm a big NES collector personally.) If you think WATA is mature enough to not be vindictive in this way... well, that makes one of you. P.S. A less salacious explanation would be this: WATA knows that the data it's releasing is already public at a high-traffic publication (RETRO)—in fact, it's available there in much more comprehensive form than what we're about to get—so WATA isn't really "losing" anything by publishing this info.

At this point, until Goldin gets off its golden toilet—I mean seriously, talking about its philosophy toward a sealed and graded video game market it entered so recently I have undigested food in my large intestine older than its market presence—it's exclusively for suckers who overpay for games and do so exclusively with the intention of finding other suckers who'll overpay for them. It's a creepy new-money circle-jerk, and the only bright side is that the ultimate suckers are faceless multimillionaires overseas who don't know they've been had. If Heritage doesn't need minimums, neither does Goldin—and anyone at Goldin who thinks games will go unsold over a $500 minimum needs to find another line of work, maybe selling uninflated balloons at a state fair. I'll stick to the markets for serious people who do research before they buy something.

OK, though I have never paid four figures for a sealed-and-graded game and my collection could easily be sold at Goldin. I have many, many premium games—and they did not cost $1,000. I get that you want to goose your revenue but don't tell sealed-and-graded retro game collectors that premium games always cost over $1,000. They don't. That minimum of course works—is fine—for games that you expect will go for $5,000 or over, but you are selling games that on other auction sites are going for $700 to $900 and you're doing so with a $1,000 minimum, which is insulting to those of us who research carefully before spending money on anything. I'm giving you free advice in telling you that you are cutting down on your potential audience and fan club and consumer base by not having a sub-section of games with either no minimum or a $500 minimum. If Heritage Auctions can be a premium auction house with no minimums, I think that Goldin—which has conducted all of *one* video game auction ever—can manage a sub-section of your catalog with $500 mins. Otherwise it looks like you are setting as a *floor* for certain games a price that is above their value. Not a good look for a business that relies on goodwill among a community that shares information fluidly. But in any case, it's good to know that Goldin thinks Heritage—which has no mins—*isn't* a premium auction house.

Good to hear, Jared. There are a lot of non-rich folks who want to get into collecting. They can pay a lot for a game, but not mid-four-figures and above.

Hopefully that $1,000 minimum bid will be axed because it's stupid as hell and feels like icky micromanaging

Only sent the dude to my bio because he said I was pretending to be a journalist. I was actually trying to direct him to the fact that I teach journalism at University of New Hampshire. Had nothing to do with the Dark Citadel in Cambridge. Guy's an a******. Shouldn't have responded. Give a troll an air bubble and he'll dine out for weeks.

scooby wrote: I did read it, you are like some kind of less famous ultra liberal wannabe Ronan Farrow Yep—you got me. Less famous than Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow. Zing! On the bright side, as you saw in my bio, In October 2018, the National Council for the Training of Journalists named Seth, as a freelancer, to its annual roster of the "most-respected journalists" in the United States and the United Kingdom. Voted on by working British journalists, the NCTJ list featured nine freelancers; others honored by the NCTJ in 2018 included Pulitzer Prize winners Bob Woodward and Ronan Farrow and Emmy- and Murrow Award-winning CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour. Politically, I'm actually a pretty middle-of-the-road Democrat, about halfway between the centrists and the far-left wing of the party. OTOH, you did get one thing right: I wish every day I had Ronan's WASPy good looks. I loved my dad beyond measure and still do after his passing, but he would've been the first to agree that he was no Frank Sinatra.