ExplodedHamster

The SMB was not auctioned, it was a direct purchase from well known collector and NA member Bronty.

That’s the point lol

See, this is something that came up years ago I have a fundamental disagreement with. Advisory board members are not employees. It is common in business, particularly with startups, to have advisory board members who are business partners and participate in the business. Mark Cuban, for example, can be an advisory board member for items he sells in his sports arena, and be a large customer of those businesses. That’s totally normal. This is kind of where a grading company is a bit unique. So much can be subjectively construed as biased that it’s probably best to just not have official advisory boards.

Oh God, talk about a suspect grading company (IGS)…

Curious which parts, specifically, you think would break regulations? Investors can utilize the service, provided they aren’t on the floor grading or overseeing it, I’d think. The Pawn Stars thing I highly doubt breaks any regulations, no matter one’s opinion. Board members participating and promoting their businesses in conjunction with another company is pretty standard stuff. I suppose it’s difficult if we can’t find the regulations lol. But put it this way: We know live in a world where one parent company owns two of the biggest grading companies in the world (PSA and WATA), and one of the biggest auction companies in the world (Goldin). How strict can these things be?

You are correct, it’s a logistical nightmare with a lot of hurdles. On top of that, you have insane legal expenses and gotta prove damages. Not worth it unless you have FU money to burn and want to make a point. I thought Slander would apply since he spoke them on a medium, but I am not sure of it at all. I would assume you are correct. But he left open to interpretation and arguably suggested that Dain was associated with WATA in 2019, when his then-former games were graded, which is demonstrably false and such info was readily available. He should correct it for numerous reasons.

Oh Jesus. I think there’s a four pronged test to determine if someone is a public figure? Lol taking me back a decade. NYT V Sullivan, I think.

Yeah and my point if Dain was not an employee when someone else 2 years later graded games they bought from Dain, maybe people should pump the brakes a bit where Dain is concerned. That’s all.

What the hell dude? It’s stupid ad hominem class warfare like this that ruins shit and devolves conversations. I have been a member 9-10 years between NA and here, well before I ever bought a sealed and graded game. I’m not here to say I am better than anyone, but I should be allowed to have an opinion, I’d say. To the point, the clear suggestion was Dain was part of some conspiracy with the Carolina Collection and schemed with WATA to destroy NA, and the timeline does not support. Forgive me if I have a different opinion.

I would say more that I independent thoughts and opinions that differ from yours, which is totally fine. It’s not personal to me, but I am upset for Dain if he was misrepresented and Karl’s word is just taken as gospel. Look above, all that is public, Dain’s name is 2017. NA sale/Carolina Collection was 2019. It does piss me off a bit Karl could not either discover this on his own or at least reach out and ask. I also benefitted hugely from NA and am appreciative if the forum Dain designed and maintained for us for a long while. Now people are dumping on him based on bad info and I don’t like it one bit if I’m being honest. I’m sorry if I take a tone with you over it, it’s not personal towards you.

No, long gone. But if your point is I have graded items and have profited, I’m not hiding it. I have even said I am in some ways the wrong person to speak on certain parts of this. I am just trying to spare Dain a bit if information was wrongly reported about him. I think that’s only fair.

He said he didn’t join WATA at the end of his message, though he could have been a bit more clear overall. I read that as he initially decided he would participate, paperwork was filed, he changed his mind and never worked for or with WATA, and then the paperwork was amended to reflect that.

Yes, and the video appears to have left out that Dain never actually took that role with WATA and the SEC filing Karl cited was later amended to reflect that. It’s right in the post you quoted above where you suggested he should have kept his mouth shut. I believe the amended filings were found and discussed on NA in threads right after the sale in 2019, but somehow Karl missed that and broadcasted out bad information. As for the games, they were graded after Jeff bought them, at least by WATA. I think most were VGA beforehand?

AtariAge still exists, while SegaAge swims with the fishes

My take is there was no malice, but he’s loaded, indifferent, and got distracted by something else. Or he took a look at what it would take to moderate and was like “lol jk!” .

Jeff is one thing, but it appears Dain has been legitimately/legally slandered. It could not have taken too much effort to get that SEC info straight before broadcasting it to the world (he could have, I dunno, asked Dain?), but now Pandora’s Box is open. Dain certainly did not give a shit anymore towards the end, but I do not blame him for that part. Regarding the sale, I doubt he thought Jeff was going to basically nuke the site and data, but it’s also quite possible he didn’t know/care and wanted to move on with his life. Tbh, VGS was probably the best outcome for current and future, though that data never should have been lost. That was the real gut punch.

Hey man, you’re not the one with a blue journalist check mark. Nobody has time to research everything in life, and there’s nothing to apologize for. It’s rough watching simple stuff like that get twisted by so-called “experts,” but I mean welcome to the age of social media .

Good, though in the long run there will be the problem of the same games being counted multiple times due to crossovers. Still, they should paint a fairly accurate picture and it’s far better the numbers are out there at, say, 90% accuracy than having nothing at all.

WATA just changed cases recently to color code mold. It’s a change a number of people had requested. I suspect more similar changes will come over time with labels (Sealed vs CIB, prototypes, autographs, etc). The EB case is an old one, the Alpha Mission is a new one. It’s as simple as that.

It’s gotten so much worse than in, say, 2019. That doesn’t surprise me, so much as general acceptance of the practice within certain communities. It’s a pretty big turnoff to the practice of chasing shit down, though.

I don't think he got banned? But he definitely got ostracized and a crazy amount of weird hate.

I forget lol, I just remember being like "oh, this is pretty interesting," then seeing the insane amount of emotion and crazy it brought about and was like "ok bye" lol.

I hear ya, but good news is it can't last because grading CIB is like $175+ now and low to mid grade CIBs don't sell well anyway. The large majority of stuff out there should be affected very little to nothing, though there will be some exceptions. I don't believe there has been too much movement in the CIB market, outside of the black box stuff and the NES Marios. I could be wrong, but I think a lot of titles like Rescue Rangers/Duck Tales, etc., had been on the rise for a decade or so.

Dude, NA was overrun with garbage "sealed versus true collector" threads well before WATA existed. People arguing about Tim Atwood or Bucky or whomever else. My comment wasn't about this surge, but the idea of people being able to collect whatever they want and people going out of their way to shit on others who chose to do it another way. I have a lot more sympathy for someone like WalterWhiteJr, who is actually affected. But it's usually that 99+% of people who claimed they were affected really were not and it was just a giant waste of time and negativity.

I am trying to understand why it would matter to people who never bought or cared about sealed games to begin with (I am talking well before WATA and this surge). I have seen people rail on this for a decade, well before I ever bought a sealed game, and I have never understood it. Why do people who love games so much spend so much time crapping on people who do something different with their time instead of playing the games they love? We are mortal, time is finite. There’s just always been a lot of what I would consider unnecessary negativity.