Grondorr

Have you tried emailing VGA before submitting your Japanese games? I've found them to be very helpful. I think for anything unusual extra communication is probably called for with any grading company. (Especially if it's in a foreign language.)

I went by the release dates on this page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Twilight_Princess

Typo, I fixed it.

Those of you who have read Wata's blog post on cross grading VGA to WATA, will recognize the chart below. Here's the post if you haven't read it. https://www.watagames.com/learn/blog/post/wata-crossovers/ I have basically taken their chart and extended it into seal conditions below C and grades below 7. I'm wondering if this makes sense to people other than me. As this chart is laid out it implies a few things: 1) No CIBs can be considered higher than an EX+ (assuming a box/manual cart perfect 10) 2) The highest practical condition for CIB would be EX-/VG+ 3) An 8.0/A++ would be equivalent to a pristine CIB. (Both EX+) This would be the equivalent of a VGA 70. (maybe a 75/75+ if you are feeling particularly generous) 4) I don't really know which "no seal" column is the right one. They can't all be right. (I'm leaning towards the column just to the right of C)

Looking at sales data, it appears that TP was the more expensive title, but around Feb of this year sealed and graded copies of WW started selling for more than TP, yet CIB and loose copies of TP sell for more than WW. Has anyone else noticed this change, and have an explanation for it? I have a some theories. 1) WW is older 2) WW had underwhelming sales (rarer). Yet, TP was very popular, and has had four releases. 3) History has been kind to WW. It's now universally considered a GOAT. 4) The TP GCN release technically wasn't the first (Wii came a month earlier)

Bump. (Totally refactored to represent my current collecting focus.)

I read through this whole thread. Been thinking about this a lot as my kids have no interest in collecting, so I have to think about the future. Thoughts: 1) Franchises that live on should remain in-demand (early comic books that feature characters that are still popular are a good analogy) 2) Digital-only shouldn't kill off collecting. (Only have to look towards vintage vinyl to see a possible future.) 3) People aren't thinking about the impact of 30+ years of ADDITIONAL aging on these games. Even if a mint copy of XYZ will be highly in demand, many of the NM/M copies people have in their collections today, will deteriorate, and no longer be NM/M copies, even if encased. 4) Will future generations still have the collecting gene? (Who knows, but I can't imagine that all collecting activity will end.)

For those questioning the Pokemon prices, its just bleedover from the card market. Bear in mind these high grade 1st-print gen-1 Pokemon games might actually be rarer than some of these crazy expensive cards. Anyway even though I don't love live playing Pokemon and am not into the cards, i am totally into the Pokemon "meta game". Gotta catch 'em all! (Talking about collecting all the main series Pokemon video games.) That said, be warned, this can't end well.

Currently for Yellow, all else being equal, white E is worth the most. No E follows a little behind with a bigger dropoff for black E. Things may evolve as condition seems to be the largest factor. (My graded yellow is no E as it seemed to be the rarest.)

VGA isn't going anywhere. They fill a couple spots in the ecosystem. 1) They grade custom sizes, as they make their own cases. (Because of this I love the way my games look in their cases as they "fit" better. and don't look like mini gas pumps.) 2) For the discriminating collector who is the most condition sensitive, VGA is the way to go, as basically 90+, 95, 95+, and 100 will all just cross to a 9.8 A++. It's ok if this becomes a high-end niche. It really always has been as historically most video game collectors avoided graded games. At the end of the day, CGA/VGA is a trusted grading company that does try their best to be a neutral third-party reference grading company and they have a history of doing so. Their grades have meaning and value to anyone who cares about the condition of their sealed games. Also, remember Heritage Auctions does trust CGA, as they consider their grades the gold standard for action figures and toys. The fact that Heritage Auction has created a sales funnel with WATA will not make VGA games worthless, or drive CGA out of business. As best as I can tell, the WATA/HA grading scheme was skewed to make games seem like they are higher grades than they are. They also introduced CIB grades. Both of these seem to be an attempt to create more gradable product for their auctions, in an attempt to expose the hobby to more wealthy collectors. As far as grading goes, I consider them similar but different. Both have their flaws, but at the end of the day their relative grades are mostly reliable. I have chosen to collect VGA, and continue to plan to do so. I can't really envision a likely scenario where I'd switch to collecting WATA, as I really really don't like the looks of their cases, and appreciate the fact they don't make the grades sound better than they are. Does that mean I would never buy a WATA game, or send one in for grading? No it doesn't. If I can get a sealed game I want and it hasn't been available in VGA, I'd certainly consider a high grade WATA as an option. Depending on the set it's part of I'd either keep it WATA or in very rare cases cross it to VGA. I'd also consider sending a game to WATA if for some reason I felt it made more sense to sell it on HA. (Not something I see in my immediate future.)

Have you played through Minish Cap yet? Once you get into it it's really fun. I don't have a lot of time to game these days, but it's one of the few games that kept pulling me back, and I got to the end.

Google isn't helping me today. Looking for a full list.

Updated.

So, my sealed GBA collection is starting to reach a point of getting to the long tail of difficult to grow as it's getting kinda crazy expensive, so I'm thinking about circling back and grading some of my games. (I own over 20 graded games, mostly because I was able to buy graded copies for not that much more than a sealed one would cost, but most of my sealed games are ungraded.) (The full set will almost certainly need to be just a boxed set, which includes a mix of CIB, sealed and graded.) I can't grade all of my sealed games due to space issues. (I have a very space efficient method of storing sealed/cib games, as 22 games in protectors will fit in a large flat rate priority mail box). It would also cost quite a bit, if I graded them all and there are plenty of $10-20 games that it seems it would be a bit silly to grade, since the cost of grading is a large multiple of the value of the game. (Unless I got a huge bulk discount.) I'm trying to come up with some rules of thumb, and a plan which will help me figure out how many of my games to grade, and help me figure out if it's worth getting a VGA membership. Yes, VGA. I decided to go with VGA, since almost all of my graded games are VGA, and that seems to be predominant in the GBA grading scene. I'm not doing this to sell off my collection, but even if I was selling off some of my condition upgrades, it seems that the whole Heritage/WATA thing hasn't really embraced GBA, so I'm probably better off with VGA and forums/ebay. Especially since I personally prefer to collect VGA, as I appreciate the simplicity of their grading system, and greatly prefer the aesthetics of their system. Here is my plan, please share thoughts. 1) grade any popular games that are regularly selling for more than $100 on ebay 2) grade any rare unpopular games that I think are worth more than $200 (e.g. - Gem Smashers, Ninja 5-O, S&S, TTA:SD, Bee Game, DMQ3) 3) Only grade games that I think will grade silver (75) or better (while making a serious effort to guess what they will grade for before sending them in, and compare and see if I can improve my ability to estimate grades.) 4) If any games come in silver (or heaven forbid lower), prioritize getting a higher graded copy, and once upgraded sell the lower graded copy 5) Generally when I get duplicates, make the lower graded copy available for sale, to raise money to buy games I need 6) Regularly review my collection prices to see if any games now meet the #1 and #2 criteria 7) Consider any 85+ copies mostly good enough, but be open to nicer copies (IE: Upgrading silvers is higher priority than upgrading gold) 8.) Stop upgrading when I get to 95 as it's going to be next to impossible to find 95+ and 100 in GBA 9) Don't grade any CIB games at this time (I think I'd be open to grading CIB games if they were worth a lot, and I had them sealed, and there was a healthy trade of GBA on HA/WATA) IE: I don't care to have WATA GBA games in my personal collection, so it would only be if there was a reason/opportunity to sell them

I recently acquired a GBA game with a hole drilled through the UPC. I didn't know what to make of it because the seal is definitely legit (not H-seam, but one of the ones with the geometric patterns of tiny holes) and it was sealed AFTER the UPC hole was made.

Asking again, but this time, I'm thinking remote. (Zoom or such.) Although i have over 250 sealed GBA games, I've narrowed it down to about 60 likely candidates. (Plus a couple GB/GBC and a SNES game.)

1) I am not a fan of lists that will only pick one game from a series. e.g. - I LOVE Metroid Fusion, and consider it my favorite Metroid (I never really got into the 3D metroids), even though nearly every list would rank Zero Mission higher. In your example one of my favorite games on any platform wouldn't even make the top 100 games list. I mean really, if you owned Aria of Sorrow, would you not want to buy Circle of Moon? Would you not want to own BOTH Zero Mission and Fusion? Of course you would! 2) Ninja 5-O is not average. You may not like the genre, but for an arcade action Ninja platformer it's pretty great, and should have sold a ton more copies. (As I understand, it just didn't sell that well, as it was weird and unknown.) 3) If you want to call out lesser know games, maybe make a top 50 hidden gems list or something like that. 4) Thinking about it further. I want to work (with others) to rate all the GBA games that are available in English, and maybe a few JP exclusives that can be played by English speakers. Is anyone working on this? Thinking a curated Google Doc maybe?

I have to see this has been a great thread. As someone who's primarily been collecting GBA for years now, it's interesting to see the system and its library finally getting some respect. I have a small collection of mostly loose SNES games, but they never hooked me the way the GBA did. While i did love the earlier GG and Lynx due to their lit screens and color displays, the GBA SP was really the first handheld that put it all together, a best in class LCD, rechargeable batteries, ultra portability, multiple generations of backwards compatibility, and a huge and fun library. It is still my favorite after all these years, and expect it always will be. Even though i now largely play GBA games as VC injects on my "new" 2DS XL as I'm getting older and appreciate a little larger of a screen. I'm not going to weigh in on favorite libraries, as I'm totally biased, but will say I'm glad I have access to both, even though the only SNES games i have been playing are the GBA ports, well that and Chronotrigger DS. (Don't forget in the heart of every DS/3DS/2DS there lives a GBA, which you can access to play your games natively on the same processing architecture as the GBA, even if you have to jump through some hoops to access it.) To me it's definitely a GOAT handheld and that's something I think more and more people can agree with.

Looks legit. Sadly, no you won't be buffing out those dents. Those old metallic Pokemon boxes had a real knack for picking up creases and dents.

Nintendo can't keep up with production of Switch consoles and games. That's were there focus is, and should be. They aren't going to drop another classic console, and are likely having supply chain issues with their existing classic consoles. Prices are up due to widespread shortages due to these supply chain disruptions, so people are bidding things up, and buying what they can get their hands on. It's logical. Prices on current stuff will certainly settle once they can start keeping things in stock. Prices on the vintage stuff, might cool off and dip, but I'd be surprised it they go to pre-pandemic levels, unless we go through a post-pandemic great depression. (As it looks there will be an initial recovery, but after that who knows?)

Bump.

Bought a couple games. Very smooth. Easy to work with. Would definitely work with again.

I find IF works best in combination with keto. When you are able to do it, it feels great as you have so much energy.

There was an interview somewhere, but a big factor seems to have been the loss of Gamestop overflow. Gamestop used to bulk sell off their less attractive carts, but as they cut back their buying, this supply dried up.

But he said he was getting out of loose retro game sales, because he didn't want to compete with digital downloads. I'd assume that means ebay and pricecharting marketplace too. Actually, I can say for sure he's stopped selling on pricecharting marketplace, because I used to get flooded with announcements for the hundreds of carts for GBA he would regularly list. I haven't seen any since the announcement.