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Rich aka Rareusgoldon Pawn Stars


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11 hours ago, Tdub21 said:

I thought that my understanding was that guy who brought it in to "sell" was one of the 3 investors who brought the 100K one earlier in the year, and one of them is a founder or owner of Heritage Auctions? And Heritage Auctions works with Wata games?

correct me if i'm wrong

but seems like a ploy to try pump up their investment, with the notion to bring more exposure to Hertiage and Wata?

That's my take on it. 

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On 11/21/2019 at 8:55 PM, Tanooki said:

... and set new all time high starting values on games to let them soar. 

11 hours ago, MiamiSlice said:

It's definitely not "the market setting the price."

 

Tanooki mentioned HA/WATA was setting high starting values.  If people are willing to pay that much, it gets bid on, that is the market setting the price. I don't know all the details of the WATA and HA relationships.  Are they trying to manipulate the market, maybe.  Without knowing all the details I won't comment on that.  However, setting high starting values isn't market manipulation.

Edited by kell
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5 hours ago, jonebone said:

My main contention would be that word of mouth offers aren't worth much.  For one, you don't know if it was real.  We saw this on a FB thread not even two days ago.  A buyer claiming Mega Man would go at least $90k and that he and someone else were already going to drop $100k+ bids.  Then his "cc didn't go through" or whatever BS and that item closed at $60k with a buyer premium of $75k.  End of day I don't believe anything second hand as anything more than gossip. 

I wouldn't be surprised if the buyer that claimed he was going to drop $100k+ bids was a friend of the seller trying to hype up the item. 

For the record, this kind of manipulation exists on eBay too. You can "sell" something to a friend, then cancel the order, and it will still show up as a successful sale in eBay's sold listings. Or you can have a friend shill-bid your auction just to try and bait the other bidders into offering more. Or you could do a sale, then refund your buyer some money, just to have a higher sale price. Etc. etc. 

None of this matters when game collecting is just a niche hobby and people are just looking to buy stuff to have or to play. People who are in it for the long term can be patient enough to wait for the right deal, or do the legwork to try and get stuff for below market value. But once the comic book / trading card hype cycle begins, casuals will come along looking at this as a chance to make money, and they will feel pressured to chase prices or miss out on the money making opportunities by supposed "authorities" who aren't disclosing their conflicts of interest. Then we will get a hype cycle (like beanie babies, remember that?) - which is fine, because people are free to spend their money however they want - no one is holding a gun to their heads forcing them to shell out tens of thousands. But eventually this hype cycle will crash, because the demand is inflated. Once the people who are in it for the money run out of people to sell to, and realize they won't be making money, but rather losing money, on their "investment," the party will be over, and it won't be fun anymore. 

Anyway, make money while you can, you are early!

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My comment was more centric around the direct ownership/board member overlap between WATA and HA.  It just seems to be setup in a way to be self enriching where someone can grade then sell the graded item to maximize profit.  I'm not saying they're shady and puffing up scores, but the conflict of interest is pretty clear there if you have the grader basically also selling the then freshly graded goods.  That's all.

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On 11/23/2019 at 8:09 AM, Californication said:

The worst line for me was, "it's a piece of history, it would be hard for me to part with it, but I would do it for a million dollars."

Why is it hard for you to part with something you bought as an investment? Your goal is to sell it

ROFL no shit,  these guys are such frauds.

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That's it, fraud, and if it's not they're doing the best at making it have the appearance of it.  To me just too much lines up of self interest and cooperative behavior to help both the grader and auction house that conveniently peddles the high graded goods to make as much profit as possible, and twice no less.  So any comment made to puff up an item the graded so they can turn around and sell it at their own auction seems shady and corrupt given the huge amount of self interest luring in someone to get paid to grade, then paid again on a much fatter margin on auction fees and percentages off the outcome.  So, yes, to me having this pop up on pawn stars and play the 'well I don't want to sell it but...' card and then having the self interested entity dip their two cents into it just came off as smelling less than roses.  We could all be wrong, but damn does it not come off as such.

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58 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

That's it, fraud, and if it's not they're doing the best at making it have the appearance of it.  To me just too much lines up of self interest and cooperative behavior to help both the grader and auction house that conveniently peddles the high graded goods to make as much profit as possible, and twice no less.  So any comment made to puff up an item the graded so they can turn around and sell it at their own auction seems shady and corrupt given the huge amount of self interest luring in someone to get paid to grade, then paid again on a much fatter margin on auction fees and percentages off the outcome.  So, yes, to me having this pop up on pawn stars and play the 'well I don't want to sell it but...' card and then having the self interested entity dip their two cents into it just came off as smelling less than roses.  We could all be wrong, but damn does it not come off as such.

100%

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On 11/25/2019 at 11:27 PM, jonebone said:

To be fair, as someone with absolutely no stake in that game, I'd say it "feels like" $250k+ just based on current hype / speculation / rarity / new money in the scene, etc.  I understand some people not liking how it was portrayed, but I don't think the estimate was egregiously high or biased.

My main contention would be that word of mouth offers aren't worth much.  For one, you don't know if it was real.  We saw this on a FB thread not even two days ago.  A buyer claiming Mega Man would go at least $90k and that he and someone else were already going to drop $100k+ bids.  Then his "cc didn't go through" or whatever BS and that item closed at $60k with a buyer premium of $75k.  End of day I don't believe anything second hand as anything more than gossip.

Other point, you don't know terms.  Was it a payment plan?  Was it 10 guys going in together?  Was it someone trading a comic "worth" $300k?  The details absolutely matter.  People are a lot more loose with trades than with cold hard cash.  And when you get to trades of that magnitude, the values are practically made up as the sales data is either so sparse or so infrequent that it is more based on buyer / seller "feel" than data. 

I just find it odd how an offer is known to Deniz but not mentioned by the seller. That to me smells a non-legit offer. And I agree with you that verbal offers need to be mentioned in context, because there is a genuine difference between an actual offer to be carried through, and an offer which then turns out to be “oh sorry, I changed my mind”. 

Regarding your “it feels like $250,000”, I think this is why a lot of people are feeling frustrated with the situation. Anyone throwing in their opinion on the current value of the Mario-graded game in this topic, are all basing their opinions from the small group of people all known to each other, who are dictating arbitrary numbers.

Personally, I think it feels like $50,000-$75,000. I’m taking into account that it took 3 people to pay the $100,000.

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On 11/25/2019 at 8:53 PM, Tanooki said:

My comment was more centric around the direct ownership/board member overlap between WATA and HA.  It just seems to be setup in a way to be self enriching where someone can grade then sell the graded item to maximize profit.  I'm not saying they're shady and puffing up scores, but the conflict of interest is pretty clear there if you have the grader basically also selling the then freshly graded goods.  That's all.

WATA and HA are separate companies, HA is not grading the games. So what if one guy is on an advisory board, they have mutual interest in using one another to profit and WATA wanted to tailor to comic collectors, so who better to ask? Companies do this all the time. 

This episode of Pawn Stars was obviously a staged advertisement for everyone involved, but that’s what Pawn Stars is. I think that’s pretty clear to anyone who’s ever seen the show.

Edited by ExplodedHamster
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I never said they weren't separate or that HA was grading.  The problem is there is overlap so it is what I said before, no need to re-write that.  It's just shady to me, not everyone will agree but it just stinks and I wouldn't trust their word when it came to rarity or anything of the sort when they get one entity to grade stuff, then have people at both, who then sell on the other end.  Just smells of collusion.

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“If you have the grader selling the freshly graded goods.”

There no other way to read that, brother.

And if overlap is two companies working together to promote one another, yes. But that’s quite normal. The only way it’s not is if you suspect two long-time well-respected members of the community here are cooking grades to benefit HA. On the one hand, you claim you aren’t doing that, while on the other you basically are. 

Edited by ExplodedHamster
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22 hours ago, GPX said:

I just find it odd how an offer is known to Deniz but not mentioned by the seller. That to me smells a non-legit offer. And I agree with you that verbal offers need to be mentioned in context, because there is a genuine difference between an actual offer to be carried through, and an offer which then turns out to be “oh sorry, I changed my mind”. 

Regarding your “it feels like $250,000”, I think this is why a lot of people are feeling frustrated with the situation. Anyone throwing in their opinion on the current value of the Mario-graded game in this topic, are all basing their opinions from the small group of people all known to each other, who are dictating arbitrary numbers.

Personally, I think it feels like $50,000-$75,000. I’m taking into account that it took 3 people to pay the $100,000.

You're forgetting that there was an outside of Heritage offer higher than 100k.

 

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22 hours ago, GPX said:

I just find it odd how an offer is known to Deniz but not mentioned by the seller. That to me smells a non-legit offer. And I agree with you that verbal offers need to be mentioned in context, because there is a genuine difference between an actual offer to be carried through, and an offer which then turns out to be “oh sorry, I changed my mind”. 

Regarding your “it feels like $250,000”, I think this is why a lot of people are feeling frustrated with the situation. Anyone throwing in their opinion on the current value of the Mario-graded game in this topic, are all basing their opinions from the small group of people all known to each other, who are dictating arbitrary numbers.

Personally, I think it feels like $50,000-$75,000. I’m taking into account that it took 3 people to pay the $100,000.

50-75k???

No offense, but anyone who says that is ignorant of the current market and the amount of new money that has entered into it. A sealed Megaman just went for over 75k this past weekend and I know for a fact that there has been an offer of 250k+ on the SMB since the sale. It’s not my place to out the person who offered it, but I know it’s happened. I believe there have been multiple in that range and above, actually.

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6 minutes ago, captmorgandrinker said:

You're forgetting that there was an outside of Heritage offer higher than 100k.

 

Supposedly. There is no proof that I can see/read of a higher offer.

My thinking is that as of present, I doubt if anyone will throw $100,000 on it. I might be wrong, but there won’t be many serious/rich collectors willing to throw this much money on a video game despite all recent hype. 

Regarding the “300K offer”, it does not seem right to spike so much in such a short time. If I actually had the money, why wouldn’t I offer 125-150K? Anyway, I’m just sharing my thoughts out loud, I could be completely wrong and would be happy to call myself an idiot if evidence tells me I’m wrong.

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3 minutes ago, ExplodedHamster said:

50-75k???

No offense, but anyone who says that is ignorant of the current market and the amount of new money that has entered into it. A sealed Megaman just went for over 75k this past weekend and I know for a fact that there has been an offer of 250k+ on the SMB since the sale. It’s not my place to out the person who offered it, but I know it’s happened. I believe there have been multiple in that range and above, actually.

I simply don’t believe everything I read/hear until I get facts. And I mean “buyer”, not people who “makes offers”. And as far as I know, no one (single person) has spent more than 100K on a game.

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3 hours ago, ExplodedHamster said:

WATA and HA are separate companies, HA is not grading the games. So what if one guy is on an advisory board, they have mutual interest in using one another to profit and WATA wanted to tailor to comic collectors, so who better to ask? Companies do this all the time. 

This episode of Pawn Stars was obviously a staged advertisement for everyone involved, but that’s what Pawn Stars is. I think that’s pretty clear to anyone who’s ever seen the show.

Is Jim Halperin an investor in wata?  
 

And Hamster man...   How do u know they were offered $250+ for a fact? 

Edited by Rman
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I have received a very real, genuine, no questions asked, no bs or drama offer of 75k for my copy (and many others in that range) which is not near the condition, 4th print (one code) hangtab that was on the show.  I have zero reason to try and inflate the cost/hype of the game as those that know me and my collecting habits know I only sell when an upgrade is possible and simply don’t want the money more than the game.  There has been a substantial increase and interest in games, particularly high profile sealed copies of franchise titles in the past 12 months.  I would pay a hefty price (not near 1million but more than what it sold for) and it isn’t even close to what it would take to land such a title. The collecting video game market is profoundly different than even 2-3 years ago.  Sad but true.

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12 minutes ago, 1upped said:

I have received a very real, genuine, no questions asked, no bs or drama offer of 75k for my copy (and many others in that range) which is not near the condition, 4th print (one code) hangtab that was on the show.  I have zero reason to try and inflate the cost/hype of the game as those that know me and my collecting habits know I only sell when an upgrade is possible and simply don’t want the money more than the game.  There has been a substantial increase and interest in games, particularly high profile sealed copies of franchise titles in the past 12 months.  I would pay a hefty price (not near 1million but more than what it sold for) and it isn’t even close to what it would take to land such a title. The collecting video game market is profoundly different than even 2-3 years ago.  Sad but true.

This gives me a better indication of the markets. I still have strong reservations of 250-300K offers though. It just seems way out of proportion and too much of a risk as an investment at that price.

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