Hello everyone,
I wanted to share some analysis of the CL auction as initial post. I'm a more recent sealed game collector, but I have some experience with CIB and I'm a long-time gamer. In my day job, I work as an investment analyst - so I like numbers. I tried to note the title variance where possible but I could have missed some.
As a starting point, I did a quick comparison across ~50 titles that were sold in both the June and October auction. I like this analysis because its the same auction company, same games, and very often same grade. For those games with a grade different, I show my value adjustment. I definitely a debate input (and I encourage the debate), but the overall conclusion is unchanged: the market as notable softened since the summer. With a different set of grade adjustment you can get a more negative (or positive) picture market, but they account for the minority of the inputs.
In general, I would say that there are 3 ways to slice the data:
1. What did the average decline per game on an equal weighted basis? 14%
2. What did the average decline per game on a dollar weighted (so more expensive games carry more weight) basis? 16%
3. What is the median decline (half the sample did worse, half did better) 25%
This analysis excluded 6 games: the 5 Nintendo GBA classics and SNES Majesco since I don't think they are representative of the market and would bias the sample. The output is attached, however.
Do I have a prediction? Well yes, but its not a strongly held one. My experience with markets leads me to believe that this is a now a momentum driven market and momentum is heading down. You have a lot of people who now own games worth less than market, and they are in it for the money so eventually they'll need to take a loss. Additionally, supply of graded games is likely to increase materially over the next 3-6 months as backlogs clear at Wata and VGA (plus the new entrants).
I think most people know that Pokemon peaked in April-ish and is probably down 50%. I think this analysis shows that its no longer just Pokemon.
I'm trying to work with Wata to scrap their public data base of game sales and create
1. An index of for market prices over time (think something like S&P 500), including sub-index by franchise.
2. A more mathematical analysis of what 1 grade means for prices.
3. A JoneBone like comparison of value by cross-grade between Wata and VGA.
If anyone can help me reach out to the right people at Wata, I'd be very happy.
I hope this post kicks off a good discussion!