Bronty

You know it’s high when 2% of his ask would be a pretty good offer.

Yes but ultimately how many were made doesn’t really matter though, it’s how many survive. Survival rates were by far highest on late run copies of titles because sealed games are just unsold inventory. Given that no copies were made post 90, it’s not hard to see why fewer white seal Tyson’s are around than other titles of similar stature (white seal Zeldas etc) as those other titles would have had a later production cutoff

Only three holes not 18!

“Publicity stunt” usually means something done only for the publicity. While there is no doubt there was a publicity angle to it, remember that the vendor actually turned down a slightly higher offer for qualitative reasons . In other words, it was getting sold for six figures no matter what; it was just a question of to whom. So I wouldn’t call it a stunt, just marketing, similar to what Tom said

Vga has been like 3% of the discussion and only brought up in passing ? Personally I love the guys at vga and I still use them for some material. I also have no issue with wata. They are both credible graders. I do like the outreach wata has done but opinions on that are clearly mixed

Great post. There’s great material at very price point but you have to be realistic; nobody is selling you the wild guns cover for 500 or something. A sealed copy of the game is worth several times that, no one in their right mind is selling the original for the price a sealed copy goes for on any title really. And that’s a good rule of thumb; if a sealed mint copy is expensive the art is going to be in all likelihood quite a bit more expensive than the best copy of the game that you could dream up. Ad paintings and or preliminary drawings for covers are both quite reasonable most of the time . Collectors are still buying very nice material for a couple grand a pop (a decent ad painting, a decent prelim drawing, a lower end cover for say sega game gear, etc)

That’s one point of view.

It’s definitely tough once you fall behind. Don’t communicate and people are upset. Communicate and people say you should be spending that time clearing the backlog. The only way to win is to not fall behind. Part of that is managing expectations.

Well, I do find I'm careful not to spill any drinks LOL

I didn't get that impression, that Deniz was thinking of that, but I'm with you. I think his own best shot at making a lot of money is to have heritage buy his grading company one day.

I don't know. Risky venture. Limited upside. IMO. But, as I said, I have no real knowledge of it. Let's say you had 500k to invest pre wata. Would you have done better by buying 500k worth of games? Or by investing 500k in wata itself? I'm guessing you would have already tripled your money if you did the former. And you're probably five years away from getting paid back if you did the latter (*time frame pulled squarely out of my butt).

From what I’ve heard the comic grading people lost money for a good number of years but make good profits now. Don’t know if that’s accurate but that’s a lot of effort for mixed success no?

Sure, although I’m stating my ‘means to an end’ bit more in the context of those other hobbies. Games as you say are quantity limited but you get enough people interested and then it becomes more worthwhile to grade crappier stuff I guess

Yeah. Right. I mean I really don’t know, but I always interpreted the fact that some of the grading COs were started by auction houses meant the grading co’s were a means to an end. The end being all that consignment revenue from all the high dollar value items that now flow through auction houses instead of eBay and private dealers. For example, if someone pays a $1k fee to grade an action 1 and the auction houses cut of the actual sale is 100k, what are they really interested in, the consignment fee of 100k or the grading service fee of 1k that made the consignment possible by turning condition into a number? Deniz disagreed on that at the time; I’m just speculating and don’t know but that’s how I look at it.... that grading exists to stratify condition to enable sale. I don’t think that’s a reach. The question is , is the money made enabling the sale or on the sale itself? I’d argue it’s the latter and that it’s probably not even close.

I'm not sure there's any money in grading services period. I was approached when wata started to be a possible investor. A) I didn't have the money; and B) looking at the plan, I didn't see where any money was going to be made. Sure, you get 40 bucks or whatever for a grade that takes you three seconds but its all the other time spent that kills your margin. You open a box. you unpack it. You put it in a queue. Damn, the customer never filled out the submission form. Call them. Cant reach them. They call you back three days later. You grade them. Customer didn't specify how they want it shipped. One of the games has to be rejected. Have to explain that to the customer. They fight you on it, they don't think its a reseal. There are just so many potential time sinks. Just unpacking, getting the order sorted out, casing, and repacking and shipping is a PITA. You need a lot of volume to make it work. Maybe they have that now, but it was far from a sure thing IMO

I'll see what I can do lol

Not my place to give specifics, and its probably neither here nor there, but the start up costs were waaay in excess of that from what I've heard.

Pretty good summary.

Excuse the tangent (its my favorite tangent) but just to clarify that a bit more. We aren't sitting around in smoking jackets looking at the framed pictures on the wall gooing over the images. (That's on Tuesdays). Sure, sometimes we are in awe of the images (as I said, in person) but sometimes a piece isn't that great or is even kinda awful. I still want that awful piece. I still want that cover to Mega Man 1 (and would pay a lot to get it). It isn't purely about art appreciation (and if it was, the market price for an artist to 'redo' a piece would be the same as for the actual published piece. Let's say Bob Wakelin was still alive and he was willing to paint contra covers for 1000 bucks a pop. That's what the 'art' part is worth, or would be worth. The other 199k is because its not just 'a' pretty picture with contra, its THE original contra painting. The one which all the boxes out there were made from. In other words, most of the price is a function of collectability not image. The quality of image definitely is a pricing factor but the most relevant factor is the quality/desirability of the title itself. If I think the painting on the cover of Bandit Kings of Ancient China is the best painting on an NES game, I'll still paying more for the hokey painting on the cover of mega man. In other words, it may feel a little alien for those not interested in 'fine art' to hear about art collecting but collecting 'illustration' is a completely different market and there, what you're really valuing and prizing is the rarest and most aesthetically beautiful artifact associated with any given title. As an example from comics, Herb Trimpe illustrated the first page that wolverine appeared on. He's widely recognized as being, well, sub-par. The page still went for 700k - not because he's a great artist but because its the first appearance of that character. He could have redrawn the page for somebody and all that would be worth is the time spent ($1000? not $700,000) because its not the exact page that went to print. The $1000 version the artist can crank out one a day for the rest of his life if he wants to. The $700,000 version... there's only one of those, and there will only be one of those, and it was created at the time not after the fact.

Oh that’s fine, zero Offense taken. I remember as a teen collecting comics and wondering WTF anyone would do with comic art (‘I’m going to have a single page on the wall? Bizarre). But you start taking part in some of the discussions and you get a little interested and whatnot and then I got my first game cover in the mail and in the half second I saw it I knew I’d be collecting that instead. Tell you what if you’re ever in southern Ontario I’ll show you some and maybe and you can decide for yourself. Cheers.

I see this thread's still chugging along. On your other point: its not for everybody, but the short answer is: because its awesome. Once you've seen say, a high quality cover illustration for a game you like - in person, not as a jpg - nothing else comes close. Price is a function of supply and demand. If there are people that really like them, but almost none exist, price ramps up quick.

Interesting and news to me. You know, I used to feel the same way as you guys about stuff like this because the same relationships exist in comics, ie, the auction house principals own at least a chunk of the grading company and they are perfectly on record and transparent about that. At this point in time, I could care less. I've never seen anything but professional conduct. I don't always agree with the decisions, but I've never seen anything shady in the least, and the existence of those relationships has never affected my bidding. I doubt it will affect the bidding of anyone here either. That's all for now. Too much shit to do today.

They were old cartoons for sure but there was a small push around felix in the early 90s. The movie was released in the US on VHS in 91 and some other vhs felix tapes in that early 90s time frame and then a tv cartoon in 1995 or so. It wasn't much, but it was something, and I would guess the game was there to support that.

all the koei games

Oh Sega! That one doesn't look so promising. The mario movie is by the Illumination people though. They make A+ movies.