Grondorr

I'm pretty sure he got rid of it. Why would someone want to pay to store a warehouse full of loose games that you aren't in the business of selling? If it was high end sealed stock, I could maybe see hanging onto it for the potential appreciation/collectibility.

Guessing site and inventory where sold off to top seperate groups. Whoever bought the site probably just wanted the web traffic.

Updated

Excellent to deal with. Would happily do business again.

Max Headroom.

I've eaten (or drank) some things that some might consider weird or gross but nothing too crazy: - 1000 year old egg (Chinese delicacy) - Salted duck egg (Chinese delicacy) - Chicken feet (Chinese delicacy) - Stomach soup (Mexican Menudo) - Stomach soup (A variety of Chinese mala hotpot) - Fish eyes (plucked them out from a whole grilled fish) - Some very stinky cheeses - Raw calves liver (Liver sashimi, which is illegal in Japan, but legal in the US if you can find it) - Raw minced pork meat (Known as Mett in Germany) - Korean Stinky fermented cabbage (Kimchi) - SPAM - Vienna sausages - Scrapple - Pig's feet - Himalayan Buttered tea - Sea squirts - Sea cucumbers - Snails - Calf brain - Raw ground beef (tartar) - Raw fish (sushi) - Raw sea urchin gonads (sushi) - Frog legs - Various fungi - Venison - Natto - Alligator - Crawdads (Crayfish) - Various types of fish eggs, including caviar

As always a pleasure to deal with. Very professional, knowledgeable and friendly.

Updated.

Bought a lot of CIB games. All were as described, and came quickly. Would do business again.

Summary: Positive Neutral Negative 5 0 0

Updated.

I have many ungraded GBA games that I am considering sending in for VGA grading, and would love to review the games with someone more experienced with grading. (I also would love to share my collection with someone who would appreciate it.) I'm thinking that I only want to send in games that are likely to grade Gold, but am open to being convinced otherwise. (All of my local collector friends are CIB collectors, so don't really have any thoughts on the matter.) Thanks!

Updated.

I preferred VGA prior to this discovery, and still prefer it now for a number of reasons. (This was the only non-VGA graded game in my collection and I had largely just gotten the one to see what they are like.) 1) more compact 2) stackable 3) simpler to understand grades (gold / silver) 4) more durable 5) no affiliation to gocollect or heritage 6) no grade inflation 7) harder to tamper / swap games 8 ) these games are for my personal collection rather than flipping in auctions

If I have to pay for a full recert, it's definitely not going to WATA. That said, this is in my personal collection, I'll likely only likely send it in if I get a better copy and want to sell this one. IE: I can live with this as when I put the top back on you can't tell anything is wrong with it. (Oh yeah, and as you say, one could just swap out the game in the blister).... hmmm... Combining those two thoughts... sigh..

Am I observing correctly that the WATA cleanly broke open and the VGA remained basically unscathed?

Looks like round 7 group buy currently being organized on Reddit. Edit: or maybe here: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63381

It was a clean "break", as in the parts that I believe are supposed to break when you want to open the case broke (the four corner locking clips.) Other than that no other visible damage, and the game appears intact. Just was a bit surprising because it fell free a very low height, and the top seemed to explode off. I wonder if they are top heavy and have a tendency to land this way? That all said, I could push it back together and tack a few spots of glue to hold it together, and if you didn't know to carefully inspect the locking clips, it would look basically as good as new. Let me know if you need more pics.

Funny you should ask. Two days ago, I was reorganizing my collection, and had a WATA-graded GBA game slip off a 16-inch high surface and hit a wooden floor, and the whole tombstone on top snapped right off. (The internal clips holding the top in place snapped). I was pretty much like shit damn these are more fragile than my fine china. Oh course it's my only WATA graded game, as being a GBA collector VGA games are much more common. For me this is another strike against WATA, as they already don't stack well, and now they are super fragile?

From what I've learned, it's probably not difficult to recognize a mint game with good lighting and patience. It's knowing how perceived imperfections will impact the score and distinguishing between the various NM grades, that I am finding the most challenging. I wouldn't get too hung up on me saying "will grade at 95 or better" and call me delusional while ignoring my statements like "I expect this to take longer than a single lifetime", and "is more of an unattainable goal to constantly work towards". For context, I currently own 23 graded GBA games, and only one has a clean mint score (95), but the rest are all Gold (85+ or higher). The way I look at is that, I'm trying to complete a GBA set, which I expect/hope to do within the next 5 years. Once I've completed the set, I don't want to be done collecting for my favorite console, and plan to continue collecting for the console by upgrading games in my collection when I can. There is no limit to "what is good enough", because I don't ever want to be done collecting GBA games. Another way to say my goal would be to say it is "I am working on a full GBA set, but plan to continually upgrade the condition of individual titles over time, with no real goal to ever stop upgrading them." As I said before, I don't even think a full sealed set of GBA games is likely possible today, so please don't read to much into this.

Updated.

As I stated in another post, I expect this to take longer than a single lifetime, and I'm going to first attempt to complete the set in whatever condition I can. (Which is achievable.) I'll add that when I first added graded games to my collection, my thoughts were as you said, "at least Gold". The lowest bar of a loose+ complete set will probably take less than 5 years. (I hope, but GBA is currently a harder set to complete than NES, because there are some inexpensive rare games that no one is rushing to sell, unlike rare NES games which are constantly hitting auction sites. In addition there are more games in the set.) The idea to upgrade everything to MINT, will keep me occupied for more than a lifetime, and is more of an unattainable goal to constantly work towards. Even just getting everything boxed will be an accomplishment, and just having them all sealed will be near impossible. Who knows, I've only been collecting for about three years, and my goals have changed many times. They may change again. At the moment I'm going for in parallel the following sets (Although I don't consider GBA video to be part of the main set, I include them in these goals.): - A complete loose or better GBA set - A complete boxed GBA set (sealed and graded games count) - A complete sealed GBA set (graded games count) - A complete MINT GBA set (I still haven't sorted out how I'm going to handle grading for common $10 sealed games. I'm indefinitely deferring that for now.) Separately: - A complete set of GBA NFRs I expect that any 3rd party graded games in my collection will all be VGA Gold, and if I get an opportunity to upgrade them from an 85+, 90, 95, or 95+ to anything higher, I will. The key thing I think though is that if I'm going to be collecting so many sealed games, I need to learn to accurately evaluate a game's condition. At the very least, I need to be certain that a game in a certain condition has a chance of grading MINT, and will be certain to grade Gold before even considering sending a game in for a grade. In the meantime, I am trying to find things to read, and sort out what equipment I'll need, like magnifying lamps, loupes and whatnot. P.S. - I've had a number of people tell me I'm crazy for collecting GBA, and even crazier for going for a full set. (from serious graded collectors to people who shun sealed games). I understand that it's not financially wise, as the new thing is to hoard multiple copies sealed and graded "key games", but that's not what I want to do. (That seems more like a business than a hobby.)

I have a reasonably large collection of sealed GBA games, only of which about 10% are graded (as I bought them pregraded). To date I haven't sent any in for grading. I don't have any near term plans to sell my games, so I am not in a rush to grade them for sale purposes. My (very) long term plan is to collect a full GBA set and eventually upgrade them all to Mint copies. (Not M/NM, MINT.) Since my long term goals are to eventually get mint copies of every game, it seems that I should only formally grade copies of games that I believe will grade at 95 or better, or if I am selling a recently upgraded game. (Assuming I learn to grade properly, and factoring in the small variability of individual graders, if I find something that I believe is mint, it should still grade Gold, which isn't the worst outcome, as I'd probably eventually need to grade it to sell it, when I do a condition upgrade.) For this to work, I believe that I need to learn to assess the grades of my games by a methodology that roughly aligns with VGA's. I need to be able to know if something is bronze, silver or gold, and within gold what numerical grade it would probably get. Any locals want to teach me? P.S. - I don't have a fully fleshed out plan for variants, but I do plan to get both the regular and player's choice variants where they exist.

Figured our club is small enough we could do intros if people are up for it. I'll start. I live in an NYC apt, and I've been collecting games for less than 3 years. I started pretty haphazardly and was collecting mostly loose games from a wide variety of systems. Even from the beginning I knew that as an apt dweller, that handheld collecting was probably going to be easier. Pretty early on though I started focusing on GameBoy Advance, because the GBA SP was the first Nintendo system I owned, and really the first Nintendo handheld that I felt was worth a damn. (I know I'm wrong, as there are great games on the GB/GBC, but when I was younger I owned Game Gear and Lynx, because I felt bright color screens were important for enjoyment.) The GBA SP was the first handheld that really ticked all the boxes for me of great screen, nice form factor and decent battery life. It was also the first Nintendo handheld with a rechargeable battery, which at the time was a greatly appreciated change. I mentioned this in another post, but my journey has now evolved to the point where I want to collect a full boxed GBA set in the best condition I can, and would eventually like to upgrade it to a full MINT condition set. Although I plan to get all GBA Video and eReader titles, I don't personally consider them part of the main set. I also am going for the full NFR set. I'm also have a decent collection of loose GB/GBC, but it's not a focus and I don't have any particular goals. Same (to a lesser extent) for interesting CIB and sealed GB/GBC games. For example, I will probably go for all the Pokemon and Zelda games. (GBC and GB are more like acquisitions of opportunity. If I see a nice lot, or someone offers me something nice, I'll probably add it to my collection.) I had a thought that I would focus on collecting GB/GBC once I finished GBA collecting, but with my new goals of having a complete MINT set, I don't think finishing is in the cards. (I guess if I ever hit a wall, maybe I can revisit my goals.)

So, while I agree that this is an individual choice, what people want to collect, I do think that for each system it seems there are things that, whatever we might personally feel fall into two categories.: 1) indisputably in the set 2) arguably in the set I think as someone collecting a set, it's useful to know where that distinction lies, for communicating with other people in our tribe of collectors. e.g. - I'll now say, I am planning to collect a full US retail boxed GBA set, including GBA Video and eReader. This is concise enough that no matter what anyone believes is or isn't a full set, it is clear to others.