Dumars2001

The 2nd part (water down) of Heritage Auctions is ending in about 3 hours. Any guesses what will do well? I predict the Nes Super Maro Bros 9.0 A white seal goes for the highest amount, but I think the Double Dragon 2 & 3, Bionic Commando, Double Dribble, Snes Zombies ate my Neighbors, and of course the N64 Zelda go for a decent amount.

Great post and very articulate writing! I laughed out loud reading the average girl analogy:). This also gave me a pretty good chuckle that you wrote below in one of your previous posts: "I don't know why so many people think their ideal buyer is a Saudi prince who's read about Super Mario Bros. in PEOPLE or a reseller hoping to create a supply chain from their man cave to the corporate offices of a Chinese billionaire." On a side note, I personally collect a little bit of everything from box only to low/high end graded games.

As always, you nailed it with your assessment and thoughts! Overall, I still think that the sealed market is pretty healthy and that people/collectors (myself included) kept thinking records were going to be broken with each passing auction and kind of "got used to/expected" prices to continue to shoot higher and higher. That being said, there were still numerous 5 and 6 figure sales (unheard of just a couple of years ago), so the sky definitely isn't falling, but it appears that the Mario 64 is going to be the new Atari 2600 Spiderman, but on a much larger financial scale. I think the biggest winners (very happy cosigners) were: Nes Super Mario Bros 2 first print 9.8 A+ seal selling for $324,000 Nes Mike Tyson's Punchout later print 9.8 A++ selling for $312,000 Biggest loser of the night, is obviously the Mario 64 9.6 A++ selling for $102,000 (I bet the cosigner of that game was in shock with the final amount) I also couldn't believe the $80,000 dollar difference between these two Zelda 2's over a 0.2 in the grade?! Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Wata 9.8 A+ Sealed [Rev-A, Round SOQ, Early Production], NES Nintendo 1988 USA.... Auction 7263 | Lot: 28091 | Oct 29, 2021 Sold For: $102,000.00 Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Wata 9.6 A+ Sealed [Rev-A, Round SOQ, Early Production], NES Nintendo 1988 USA.... Auction 7263 | Lot: 28092 | Oct 29, 2021 Sold For: $22,800.00

The 9.6 that sold tonight was also an A++ seal.

Well the higher Sonic 9.6 underselling the 9.4 that sold for $438,000 just a little over month ago by $126,000 is pretty brutal!

An absolute unreal drop in price for Super Mario 64 is all that I can say. Shawn from Reserved Investments called it!! To basically lose $1,400,000 dollars in the span of 3 months, is absolutely unbelievable! I would be suicidal, lol!

Wow, the N64 Mario 9.8 A++ that Sold for $1,560,000 3 short months ago and today A N64 Mario 9.6 A++ Sold for $102,000. 0.2 made a $1,458,000 dollar difference. If you are the buyer of that 9.8, you probably are not feeling too good right now. Talk about taking a bath!!

I feel that the all the Nes Super Mario Bros underwhelmed. I can't believe that I am even saying that with their ending prices at $492.000, $150,000, $84,000 (I thought they would go for around $800K for the hangtag black seal , $400K for the black seal and 150K for the white seal). I also think that the Snes Super Mario World underwhelmed at $144,000. And to think, it was only 2 years ago, when the hobby had its first $100,000 game. Collectors got spoiled/numb with all the record breaking sales in the last Signature Auction, Goldin Auctions, private sales, that today's ending prices feel much lower, but yet, they are still selling for incredible prices, if you look at it in the proper perspective. Expectations were just too high for this auction. The low prices at the recent CertifiedLink auction should have been a premonition of what was possibly going to happen today. I agree with Exploded Hamster that things went haywire too quickly and this auction is showing the market is definitely correcting itself for the most part today. The up-coming Sonic first print will be very telling in where things stand right now for me. If it sells for less than the 9.4, you can definitely say that prices are down across the board for the most part.

You did call it!!

I just can't believe that the SM2 9.8 beat the SM2 9.2 by a whopping $280,800 dollars! Unreal amount for a 0.6 upgrade! (9.8 ends at $324,000 and the 9.2 ends at $43,200)

Almost every big title game graded 9.8 are going high!

Wow! Mike Tyson rules!!

So far, it seems like the market is correcting itself. Don't get me wrong, we still have 5 and 6 figures, but everything seems lower than what was expected.

I agree with you 100%. You're seeing it happen right now with all the games that you mention above and many other sports titles (Kobe, Madden, Lakers vs Celtics, WWF titles, Tonk Hawk, RBI Baseball, etc.). I am still saying that a nice copy of a sealed Sega Genesis USA Basketball (the greatest team EVER assembled in sports history) coming to the market, would bring in a ton of money. Another big one would be a high grade SNES Michael Jordan Chaos in the Windy City. It will be very interesting to see where that Nes first print Track & Field ends tonight on Heritage. (It is at a whopping $25,200 right now)

Awesome! Can't wait to see it!

I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing non-USA released games also start going way up in price. I am sure that they have went up already, but nothing compared to the NTSC boom, but I can see collectors going after a lot of the Japanese versions of Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc. It will be interesting to watch that market. Congrats on your awesome PAL N64 collection!

Thanks for sharing that information. Good to know that another one of these high end sales is legit. Should have known it would be a "Whale" sports card collector who won/paid for that 9.4 Sonic first print, considering that it was being sold on Goldin Auctions, who just happens to be the the biggest sports card auctioneers in the industry. (Goldin has sold more than $500 million worth of sports collectibles this year, a record for the company, and has emerged as the leading auction house in an exploding market.) No wonder why that Kobe, Double Dribble and other sports titles went for so high. Everybody better get your sports titles now(sports card collectors are coming aboard the video game hobby, just like comic collectors a couple of years ago) before it is too late, lol! We are already seeing sports titles go way up.

I feel your pain! It really seems like everything is going up in price. Just try to collect what makes you happy and what you can afford:). That is my approach these days. It is just unreal what has happened to just about every hobby. Get ready for "The Show, aka Heritage Auction's Signature" to begin in a few hours!

Things are going up in price across all spectrums of collectibles (especially sealed & graded) these days. Take a look at some of the ending prices of graded VHS sealed movies in LCG's latest auction that ended a couple days ago. One example is a graded VHS Return of the Jedi video selling for $14,656! Crazy crazy times in the world of collecting for just about anything, especially pop culture. https://auction.lcgauctions.com/Lots/Gallery

The Genie is out of the video game collecting bottle. I honestly am starting to think that we are just in the beginning stages of these exuberant prices being fetched these days on the name brand titles (Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, etc), comic related titles, (Spiderman, Marvel, etc.) sport titles, (Jordan vs Bird, TecmoBowl, etc) and the crowd that loves popular fighting/RPG games. The big Heritage Auction that ends in 2 days is going to be a feeding frenzy of cash being spent. Of course there will still be instances like the Atari 2600 Spiderman but most of these games, especially sealed are just not easy to find. We have comic collectors, card collectors, action figure collectors and so much new blood coming into the hobby now from every possible direction. When I first started collecting, there were zero grading companies, now there are 5 or 6. The nostalgia for videogames is what has grabbed all these new collectors into the hobby. Everyone in the world has played video games and most people have very fond memories growing up playing games with their friends, getting a game for their birthday/Christmas, etc. Most of these people didn't even know that people collected video games but now that it has become a main stream hobby, loads of people are jumping in. The numbers/prices don't lie. I used to be more skeptical about it all (prices skyrocketing) but I see stuff selling for thousands every day now on Ebay and FB groups, various auction houses, private sales, etc) It seems the hobby is really split in 2 halves now for whatever reason and I am afraid that is just how it is going to be going forward. I don't ever see prices coming down for the vast majority of this stuff but I can still see stuff going much higher in price/value. I would love for every type of collector to get along/respect other collectors, but it obviously isn't going to happen anytime soon. I see alot of the same stuff (bickering between collectors)on the sports card and action figure forums that I am also a member on, so I am used to it but it still is sad to see. Just my humble opinion. Happy collecting to all of you!

The perfect choice! Congrats to him and CGC!

Yeah, I also think that some prices have been slowly coming down lately but the "Big Name Titles" continue to go for premium/high prices. I think the reason prices on CertifiedLink went lower than expected was because some collectors are getting ready to go all in on Heritage. Next weekends Heritage Signature Auction should give a solid indication as to where things are in the market with sealed/CIB's for the big name titles. My hot take is that some records will be broken!

True. A WATA 9.4 did sell on Hertiage for i think $144,000 though. Yeah, you are right though.

A WATA 8.0 (C+ Seal) N64 Super Smash Bros sold for $30,000 on Ebay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/255164263856?hash=item3b68f9adb0:g:b9MAAOSwOJ1hW~Js

Yeah, the grades can really differentiate when cross grading from VGA to WATA (and I would imagine vice-versa), but JoneBone's crossover guide is the most accurate reference available. I have cross graded 75's that came back 8.5 or a 9.0, VGA 80's that came back 9.2 or 9.0, 85's that came back 9.2, 9.4 and once a 9.6, so it really is a crap shoot with any crossover that you attempt between VGA and WATA. I honestly think that you probably could/would receive a higher grade, if you cracked the game out of the VGA case by yourself and then sent it to WATA raw to be graded by them..