retro.magnus

A shit ton more than that the ways things have been looking recently haha. Those are only a select few. He had all the original Mega Mans CIB, CIB copies of all Pokemon CIB, Ninja Five O CIB, Car Battler Joe CIB, etc, etc. We didn't even talk in any detail about the DS stuff. But if you imagine everything else that was there, I assume a lot of DS heavy hitters were in boxes somewhere.

Finds are for sure out there. But he has been buying units for years, and this one was a once in a lifetime find. It looked like someone had a store that closed and the whole Gameboy inventory was put into a unit that someone stopped paying for.

I have a hugeeee lot that I let get away a couple years ago. A friend of a friend of a friend bought a storage unit absolutely packed full of GB, GBC, GBA, & DS games/consoles. Loose, CIB, Sealed. This was one pic of the heavy hitters. All sealed lol. https://imgur.com/a/0HbVsEv

My two orders from over a year ago have finally moved into grading/post grading. Literally a week or so after they made the change haha. Would've loved to see the grades. Especially before they send the email (that I know I'm going to get) asking for more money. Values for games have skyrocketed in the past year. Smh.

Buy Bestine and save money. No need to pay for WATA to do what you can do very easily. Wet a cotton swap or Q tip with Bestine, rub the glue, easy as that. I'd feel much more comfortable taking anything sticky off myself rather than leaving it up to someone to potentially screw up on.

Got my other order from last June moved to Grading. The two orders (both Select) were placed/shipped 5 days apart and there are 53 orders between my two order numbers. My first one that went into grading 3~ weeks ago is still in grading. Will update once either goes into post grading. Hopefully this is helpful for anyone still waiting on orders placed a while ago. EDIT: The order that went into grading earlier today is now in post grading. Not sure how that one went to post grading in a day and the first still hasn't moved out of grading. lol

Deniz just said on a livestream on IG with withotis that grading companies don't release pop reports until they've been around 5 years and hit a critical mass. He said WATA would be doing a disservice until they hit critical mass or when they determine is best. He made it seem like they only release once & it has to perfectly give an idea into how many games are physically in the wild vs just what they've graded. Why can't they release their pop report every 6 months, 1 year etc..

Holy shit. You really aren't joking. It's legit a house. Why in the world would I send things that have so much value to a random house in LA? On top of their website being absolutely horrid. It's so crazy to me we have all these companies/people trying to get into this collectible space but none of them spend the time/money to build a halfway decent brand or website..

I haven't experienced this, but have quite a few that the glue they use on the bottom seemed to seep out and they wiped it off. The plastic is a little cloudy where it was wiped, very similar to what super glue does to plastic. I also hate the bubbles in the glue on the bottom.

Bahaha what a joke. Here I was starting to get a little excited that I'll finally be getting my shit back. It's so shady that they hold peoples stuff hostage for over a year, values keep going up & up, then they ask for more money bc values went up bc they were so backed up & seemingly didn't do anything about it until recently.

Finally got my order from last June moved into grading. Really hoping I don't get the dreaded email asking for more money. If I do, I won't be a happy camper after waiting over a year. The valuations of the games were accurate for when I submitted, but as we all know, prices have skyrocketed on a bunch of games in the past year lol.

The new label is a lot better. Good stuff. I'd still suggest using a different font that you're currently using for all of the black copy. It might be worth looking for a non default font and potentially spending some money on a unique but legible font.

Coming from someone with a degree in Graphic Design, I can almost guarantee no one sane will pay to get games graded with your labels looking like they do now. Even if they do, they'd sell for less. imo.. At a minimum go to one of the many online sites that connect you to a designer and pay someone. Think of it this way, if you have a label that is at least on par with WATA, how much business do you think you'll get? Then compare that to how much business you think you'd get with the current label. That's the value of design that not everyone realizes. You casually asking people in this thread for ideas is a really shitty look, and immediately turns people off without ever using your service. Just my two cents...

AFAIK she isn't with them anymore, so I'd take anything you heard from her with a grain of salt.

I feel like WATA's connection/partnership to HA will forever stop them from releasing any sort of report. It helps consumers but hurts their business. Sucks.. I'd love to be wrong though.

One order I placed/shipped early June last year & another that I placed/shipped the end of June. I'm not going to pay extra, especially after hearing your experience. They say 35 business day turnaround if I pay, but there is literally nothing that makes me believe they would actually live up to that.

Yeah I've got no rush to sell - most are for my collection & a few I'll sell to recoup the grading costs. Don't really see the value dropping on what I want to sell so I'm going to keep waiting. While $10 a piece isn't that much, $400 total isn't a small amount of money to blindly throw at a company who can't keep up with any estimate they give... I'm just trying to share as much info as I can on my situation because I know there are so many others that are in a similar situation and there's nowhere else to go (afaik) where people are sharing these experiences. Hopefully it's helpful to others!

Got an update from WATA. $10 per game for a 35 business day turnaround, and I don't have a good estimate for the Select tier right now. We have tripled our grading team to get everything caught up, but we don't know how fast they can do it yet. I would guess more than a few months. Whoever is answering emails recently seems to be doing a lot better than right after Megan left. Not sure if I want to upgrade or not. Got two orders with 20 games in each and I paid the $35 for select before they bumped the price up. Part of me just wants to keep waiting since I'd like to think I'm one of the older Select orders they have.

I have never heard this, I am not sure if WATA/VGA even have this info on stickers that were originally added.

I'd try emailing them again. They came out & said some emails got lost & they fixed whatever the issue was. (I think it's bc Megan left and no one was even checking their email lol). I didn't get a reply on a few emails and they finally replied last week. But I agree, with them being not great compared to VGA. Which is unfortunate bc I prefer their cases a lot more. I've been contemplating just giving up on WATA and sending a bunch of what I have to VGA..

More serious reply, I actually like to keep as many original stickers on my sealed games as possible. I have heard of stickers slightly affecting a grade if they are covering the title/main part of cover art. But not sure if that's true or not. I love the stickers from stores that aren't in business anymore, such a neat part of history imo. If you do need something to remove stickers, look up Bestine.

This is the 3rd time they've told me that things are improving & to check back in later. I'm sensing a pattern

I got a reply from them on my orders from June 2020 (lol). I have been trying to get some estimate, even if they say it won't be until next year or something crazy. They replied with the following "Actually, we've got a bunch more graders, and they're coming up to speed, so we don't have good estimates right now, but we're just starting to make some real progress. If you can check back in a few weeks, I might have a good answer for you." Probably taking it with a grain of salt, but who knows.

I haven't sent any Game boy in for grading, but I'm 99.99% sure that won't lower a grade. A loose genesis clamshell or disc based game on the other hand, not sure. WATA actually has a Saturn game of mine that has a loose disc so we'll see what they say on that one if I ever get it back lol.

It's pretty common for GB, GBC, GBA games to move when you turn the box since they aren't secured by anything. The carts just sit in a bracket in the box or the cardboard holder.