ExplodedHamster

No, that’s DefaultGen. Note the form.

If it’s limited to sealed and truly mint CIB, I think it’s perfectly fine tbh. Loose Mario 64 carts haven’t moved one iota, for example. Seems like there’s still room for most everyone.

Bronty. He posted today publicly that he had a higher offer and chose to sell to whom he did because he thought it would be better for exposure. Well, turned out he was right .

What I am talking about specifically is my personal experience buying and selling high end games, and honing in on certain things that I can speak to or can be boiled down to fact or not fact. I am specifically trying to avoid making overarching defenses or claims of certain people or companies, as I do not think I am the one to do it because clearly I have benefitted from the market. Stuff seems to get interpreted that way anyway, but that’s the nature of the beast I suppose lol.

It’s basically PSA times now

Whatever you say, Deepthroat .

I cannot speak to everything in the video, but I can absolutely refute general suggestions he’s made about all big sales being fake or whatever.

It would be pretty easy for Karl to post a screenshot of the actual direct communication if he had it. What we are left with is hearsay from a blacked out third party.

He’s pretty well known in the community, especially amongst convention goers. He’s had a desk set up at conventions for a long while now.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. Jordans are not number 1 value, but their value to population ratios are insane. If there were, say, 10-15 Jordan PSA 10s (instead of 325ish), they might well outsell a single Honus Wagner PSA 10. When populations of games do come out, I believe people will be shocked how low population is for elite grade games. There could be 500 Mario 64, if there are only 5-10 9.8/A++ over time, their value will always destroy a decent sealed copy of Stadium Events. Demand will be much higher amongst the new crowd.

To be fair, this happened well before WATA. NA had devolved into the same old shit of sealed and non-sealed collectors arguing for no good reason over and over. It was a cycle of that and like 3-4 other debates repeating nonstop. Certainly it has gotten worse overall, but that happens in every hobby when the money gets really serious. Inevitably, it ends up a “populist” versus “elitist” debacle. It’s really just a microcosm of society. Edit - I should say the main forum devolved. The other forums were all still pretty good, albeit traffic was way down.

Top condition items of popular franchises/athletes/characters are what sell when hobbies transform into large-scale collectibles (Jordan rookies, Charizards, Turtles, etc). SE and Dinosaur Peak are games basically nobody played and have absolutely no large-scale impact. They are niche. They will still sell fine, as enough old school collectors are around, but the items that will be worth the most will be the highest grade Marios, Zeldas, and Pokemons of the world.

I mean these are for profit businesses, not charities. I would expect them to profit and want to profit. That’s not really evidence.

This is so lazy, I’m sorry. Jone has been a well respected member of the community for many years. If you want to take potshots like this and not address the arguments on their merits, it doesn’t help your position.

I have seen this cited before, but never seen anything about where the lawsuit went. I believe the man who filed it also owed Heritage like half a million from a failed Joint Venture. My guess is nothing came of it or there would be more articles.

Well, the public can never be sure without disclosure from the bidders. No auction company would publicly name bidders, though, so it’s not really a problem that can be solved unfortunately. And no offense taken! As to “fabrication,” I would use that term if it was a legit fake sale. I think you are more opining it is manipulation. But semantics at this point, I suppose. There were definitely legit underbidders on that sticker Mario who had no affiliation to WATA or HA, though. It would have been less messy had they won it tbh.

I don’t think “fabrication” is the right word, I’m sure Bronty was paid and it was a real sale, but I do agree disclosure was certainly lacking. I was talking more about the initial HA auctions and participants. You used plural, so I figured that was what you meant, sorry about that.

I never said payment came through WATA, I was paid through HA as it standard. I know the buyer of the Zelda and that he/she was aggressive on other items as well. I do not know the Mario 64 buyer, so I am hoping that person eventually comes forward. I am pretty confident I know the underbidder, but cannot swear to it.

Sure it is. But there is craziness all around is my point. Collectibles have gone insane.

I mean a baseball card just sold for 6 mil and a multiple football cards have hit 3 mil or so in the past few months. Prior records were like 20% of these values just a couple years ago. Same with shoes, movie items, Pokemon stuff, it’s all across the board. Lots of rich young folk from bitcoin is my theory. Bitcoin is actually pretty similar tbh. It’s an addictive fomo ride.

I don’t know that I’d say “fabricated,” so much as early speculators from other hobbies competing without much knowledge base. Or with some and comparing those believed pops with those in other collectibles. Many of the early buyers were transparent on various forums and well known from other hobbies.

Well, I mean a major suggestion in the video is that they weren’t, and the crux of what he’s saying somewhat relies in it, no? I wish the buyers would come forth tbh.

Again, the “WATA/HA” thing…WATA was just purchased by PSA’s parent company, which owns HA’s competition, Goldin Auctions. In fact, here is a video Goldin just created: I am trying to give you disclosure and transparency regarding some of these sales, and I feel I am in a better position to do so than Karl Jobst. The other stuff and all that, people will all have opinions and that’s fine, but I can assure you my sales were “real,” at least in the sense someone sent in games and got paid. In a larger context, you see what other collectibles go for and it’s really not that crazy anymore. This isn’t 2005, everything has gone nutty.

As a seller of numerous high end items via auction, all I know is I got paid, and I also know at least one of the buyers for a number. This person is a well known collector near the top of the food chain and is definitely NOT Jim Halperin or anyone at HA lol. I feel the suggestion at that with no real evidence was a pretty shitty thing to suggest without more. The thing with Pat and Reserved Investments guy was cringeworthy. Pat is a populist media figure with no real knowledge of sealed games whatsoever and Reserved Investments is assuredly not a “lifelong video game collector who is an expert in the field.” Then their YT channels got pimped. I mean it is what it is, and these kinds of suggestions were inevitable with the market blowing up like this. Not much I can do about it. The death of NA was pretty shitty, though, mostly because all the data was lost. And for what purpose? Blah.

How else would you catch the fever?