ExplodedHamster

2 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

are you this guy?

No, that’s DefaultGen. Note the form.

2 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

Just now, WalterWhiteJr. said:

Right but money and profit isn’t good for the hobby. 

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. 

8 minutes ago, BriGuy82 said:

Who was the seller?

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 .

31 minutes ago, JeremiahJT said:

Can the main defenders of WATA here (vb337, ExplodedHamster, Gulag Joe, B.A. etc.) answer if they think Deniz valuing games is ethical? I think that is the question I would most like answered from the other side. The answer to this question would probably help me see where exactly our biggest divide is.

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 

6 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Oh boy. Not looking to insert myself into internet drama, but I'm the blacked out name on Discord. I sure didn't ask Karl to black me out like a mystery informant. Karl asked on Twitter one night if anyone knew anything about game collecting could join his Discord to talk about recent sales. Karl makes good videos, so I helped him understand a bit because he was literally at square zero (not recognizing for example that two games can be apart by $100k because on is players choice). He was hung up on Jeff and Dain being on the Wata SEC filing, which IIRC definitely came up on NintendoAge, but I obviously don't know the inner workings of Wata so I offered to try to put him in touch with Deniz, who ultimately decided not to reach out. Karl didn't attempt further himself, although I hope there's a follow up video if some of the players are willing to be interviewed. I wasn't involved in any part of part of the video's content besides some talking with Karl about understanding some crazy sales on Heritage.

Whatever you say, Deepthroat .

6 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

I'm thinking that @Jeevanwas probably spot on when he called it out as a Discord, so someone blacking out the name/server of a private Discord when he didn't get a response from the person he was reaching out to is warranted.  I'm still loving how folks keep throwing shit at this guy's motivations and what he shoulda/woulda/coulda but cannot factually refute any of the evidence he documented and provided, nor provide any facts that would show what the facts provided exposed in a different or better light.

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.

4 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

No way to be 100% factually certain without more information, but based on the documenation the guy presented when building his case, then the presentation of the screenshot when doubts were raised (obscuring the name/details of the folks who DID respond, presumably to respect their privacy on something that isn't on the public record), I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

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.

42 minutes ago, Pendragonx said:

"Matt McClellan" ? Never heard of the guy...

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.

20 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

10 minutes ago, JeremiahJT said:

If popularity is the driving force for collectibles then why is the most expensive card of a baseball player nobody alive has seen play? Shouldn't it be a Jordan or James card?

I cannot comment on Pokemon or Turtles (as in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?), but comics also does not follow this perfectly. Spider-Man is by far more popular than Superman, but Action Comics #1 is number one. One of the two main reasons is its rarity.

It seems video games is an outlier where popularity (or opportunity for more exploitation) trumps rarity. Trumps it by an order of magnitude at that.

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. 

43 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

 

Bottom line for me is even taking this video aside, folks may have "gained" value on their games, but community was lost at the expense. All of this creates tension, cliques, friction. People get jealous, backdoor, engage in shitty practices. I used to engage in some of the FB groups, but the toxicity turned me off big time. VGS and NA have always felt "authentic" and welcoming. Back to my CIB and loose cart only collecting. The community brings me joy and peace of mind, neither of which you can pump up with money.

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.

3 hours ago, JeremiahJT said:

Has WATA and Heritage Auctions made the news with copies of Stadium Events, Little Samson, or The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak? All the games that have broke these records have been common mass produced games. Sure some have been rarer variants, but all the games have been common. This to me points to manipulation.

If they make the news for a $2,000,000 Stadium Events they do not make any more money outside of that one copy. There are no more sealed copies for people to send in. They make the news with a Super Mario 64 or a Legend of Zelda then every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a sealed copy of those (of which there are still plenty out there) send in their copy of those games and they pay for them to be graded at a value of what just sold (taking into account condition and variant). And remember WATA charges based on the value of the game.

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. 

3 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

And how much did WATA and Heritage get paid?

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

11 minutes ago, Laseki said:

Someone vehemently defending wata while their ebay page is full of wata graded games

hmm

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. 

15 minutes ago, Foxhack said:

You mean the same shady shit they've been accused of before?

https://twitter.com/CatDeSpira/status/1414440756924751873

The Tweet doesn't want to embed for some reason.

Blog post about it from 2009: https://www.originalprop.com/blog/2009/10/27/heritage-auction-galleries-lawsuit-in-the-news-claims-of-fake-bidder-n-p-gresham-auction-manipulation/

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.

15 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

Sorry, I meant HA--payment through the auction house, not the grading company.  As for knowing the bidders, no offense intended, but with all the accusations of shady dealings going on based on hard facts publicly available, without direct disclosure from HA about who the buyers/highest bidders are, how do we know for sure?

I believe the ending price was absolutely fabricated.  The seller got paid, the item changed hands, but the price was manipulated up to the point where WATA/HA wanted it to be, and thus fabricated--not legitimate of what the actual market was willing to bear at that time.  Deniz had been saying it for a while, so they made it happen, solidifying WATA as being experts in the field (both in regard to grading, but predicting/assigning value as well), helping spark off the huge ballooning we've seen in the past year or two.

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.

12 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

The heads of WATA and HA teaming up to buy the record breaking item, specifically for record breaking money, then leaving out those details when going on and on about it to the media absolutely SCREAMS fabrication.  There might have been other early speculators who weren't sure about what values might or ought to be, but they weren't the ones setting the bar where it ended up--the people creating and/or controlling the market saw to that.

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.

Just now, darkchylde28 said:

Bingo.  There's being naive and believing you're doing good at the beginning, but I have serious issues believing anybody is so naive that in 4 years of operation they never figured out how the sausage was being made and what part they were playing in it.  At some point, if you weren't intentionally complicit in the beginning, what's really going on dawns on you and if you continue on, you're absolutely complicit with the shadiness afoot.

The facts and examples laid down in the video make an awfully solid case for market manipulation.  The WATA/HA guys teaming up to buy that first "record breaker" and thus guaranteeing his predictions coming true should have been the canary in the coal mine for him and is absolutely market manipulation.

At some point these things cross over, as they're both fueling one another.  Knowingly allowing members of WATA to grade then sell off their own stuff via the machine they created, despite the supposedly set in stone policy specifically disallowing that...there's absolutely no way anyone is that naive, at least not for that long.

Uhh...no.  If you can show how my existing on the old site and continuing to quietly pick up video games here and there without really discussing it with anybody on that site or who was part of that site somehow fueled all of this, lay it on me.  And I imagine there are more than a few others with the same/similar stories.  If you're talking about folks specifically in the buy/sell/trade/discuss/analyze/etc. sealed games arena, then...maybe, or at least you'd be a lot closer to correct in your assumption.  But not EVERYONE had anything to do with this, not even a little bit.

And people are supposed to forget about all of the shady stuff that's gone on between those two companies, and the market they essentially created (rapidly ballooned, anyway), just because one of the two parties is now owned by someone else?  Who's to say that the issues of lack of transparency and potential (likely?) corruption won't spread?  The research shown in the video at the core of this newly reignited discussion shows how Halperin and the original coin slabbing company got caught out for the type of things folks are discussing and complaining about right now, and then how two other, technically unrelated companies came along a few years afterward to continue the work that Halperin's original slabbing company began.

As for your sales, you're able to show transparency insofar as you sold your stuff and didn't buy it back from yourself.  Was it ever actually, officially, certifiably revealed to you who your buyers were?  I thought I remember in the thread about the Mario N64 you saying something about how payment came through WATA and all they told you was that they were very confident with the buyer, leaving you in the dark as to who they specifically were.  Even if that information was available via WATA at the time of the auction's close (versus someone reaching out afterward to say, "Oh, hey, that was me, thanks," because honestly, who knows for certain whether that would be true or if there was some passing of the proverbial football in between), I'm nearly certain that you wouldn't/didn't have visibility on the identities of all of the bidders from start to finish, leaving the question of whether there was shill bidding in the mix or not still up in the air.  Seeing as there was specifically a payout from HA to someone accusing them of exactly that, I'm looking at that particular currently unproven accusation as "where there's smoke, there's fire."

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. 
 

Just now, WalterWhiteJr. said:

I’m sorry but there’s nothing you can do to convince me that a Mario 64 going from $10/20k to $1.6M in 7 months is not crazy. Agree to disagree. 

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

4 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

No. It IS that crazy dude. Couldn’t disagree more. 

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.

12 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

I don’t think they are saying all the sales are fake and that is certainly not what I’m saying. I believe the video points out that the sales that started the prices going up exponentially were fabricated. 
 

WATA being bought by another company would not exonerate them from past unethical behavior. I’m not even saying there has been unethical behavior, I’m just saying there is some very convincing evidence that has been presented and a number of people agree. 
 

Edit: I think all that can be said has and I will reply if anyone asks me direct questions but I think this horse has been beaten dead for me. 

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.

Just now, WalterWhiteJr. said:

I am sure your sales are real. And congratulations for making all the money you did off or your games. None of that changes anything. 

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. 

8 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

@jonebone I absolutely respect your opinion as a pillar of the community and someone well versed in graded game collecting. I am curious to know though, if WATA/HA had to conform to the same rules as a publicly traded company, would anything presented arise suspicion for you?

Can it be said that because they deal in collectibles, they have slipped through the cracks in regards to accountability, which Jim Halperin has experience with? Do you also feel that the positive marketing they have received has also irresponsibility left out some details about the relationships?

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:

10 minutes ago, WalterWhiteJr. said:

The whole thing is just disappointing and its all about money. Who knows if anything will come out of this. At the very least, more people will now be more informed about the relationships of the "players" involved. I am all for disclosure and transparency. The people that profited greatly and continue to engage in the game will defend all the bs going on and poke holes in the story. That's fine. We are all entitled to our own opinion. People looking to get into this crap for investing purposes just need to be careful.

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.

On 7/27/2021 at 9:39 PM, DefaultGen said:

$23k for Pokepark Wii. Pokemon is a disease. 

How else would you catch the fever?