What did WATA do differently than VGA to gain all this interest? I don't want another thread about WATA just curious why this didn't all pick up steam with the comic community when VGA came around for games. Was the partnership with HA that influential? GoCollect as well?
I think they avoid grading resealed games to start...
This article was very well written but at the same time I think some of these comic investors are busting a nut much too quickly on evaluations.
You are right, I was a little off point, fast growth and FOMO are not new. The difference is that the 2010-2016 explosion was fueled by collectors who wanted the games and resellers that wanted to benefit from those collectors. Now we have serious businesses trying pump up the prices as fast as possible. I'm not complaining or criticizing anyone; I am just legitimately interested in where this will end up.
I don't know much about the history of comic collecting, so my question to anyone knowledgeable is Did comic grading and high end collecting grow organically or was it pushed in that direction?
It seems to me that high end game collecting grew slowly and naturally until WATA. Now it seems to be pushed to grow as fast as possible. In the past collectors encouraged each other to be patient and understand the market. Now FOMO is the rule and you should buy at any price. It seems to me that in any aspect of life or business, if something grows too fast there will be problems.
Before CGC, vintage comic book sales went through a bit of a lull in the mid to late 90s and from what I remember were pretty flat for about 5 years. Back then Action 1s were still "worth" $40-50k maybe but good luck finding someone actually looking to spend the money to buy one.
In the immediate aftermath of CGC there was a debate about whether or not comic books are something that should be slabbed. (After all they were made to be read) Some dealers were very aggressively pushing the idea of certification and some dealers/collectors held out against encapsulation for years. I wouldn't say that people were pushing the hobby to grow as quickly as possible, the hobby was already pretty big at that point. Video games today are still a much smaller hobby than comics were in 2000, at least when it comes to the collecting side. But depending on where you stood on the issue of certification people would push their own agendas/views. Very quickly after CGC opened certain books that used to sell for $100 started selling for $1000. (there were also books submitted that didn't turn out to be worth the certification costs) Some of that was the result of the legitimacy that professional grading brought to comic books but sometimes it was some one off where an unimportant book sold for a crazy number because some collector had to get it because at the time it was 1 of 1 graded in 9.8. What followed after that was a period of price discovery where certain books kept climbing higher and other people discovered that they overpaid for books that were more common than they realized. People buying in 2000 and selling in 2002, some did great, others did not do so well. Then in 2002, GPA came along and started recording all graded eBay/Heritage etc sales and prices started to stabilize and start steadily climbing on most "key" issues. Then around 2010 the first comic book sold for $1,000,000. At that point the truly rare/desirable stuff started increasing in value very rapidly and for the most part still haven't stopped.
In the very early days, CGC tried to convince as many dealers to use their product as possible. After a while they didn't really need to anymore because it eventually became understood that you needed to have your books graded by a third party in order to get the highest prices for them. I don't know how closely what's going on here will parallel what happened in comics, but IF things were to unfold exactly the same way, anyone buying at today's prices looking to flip something in six months should be careful and do their homework, but anyone planning to buy and hold for 10 years should also do their homework but would do better making sure they are buying quality than worrying about what they are paying in relation to today's market. (again that's IF things unfold exactly the same, and that's assuming we know what video games will be considered "quality" in 10 years from now. In comics it was a little easier to tell because comics were already 65 years old and people had already been collecting for 40+ years)
What did WATA do differently than VGA to gain all this interest? I don't want another thread about WATA just curious why this didn't all pick up steam with the comic community when VGA came around for games. Was the partnership with HA that influential? GoCollect as well?
I think this is a great question that probably does deserve it's own article. As a comic dealer who is buying games now I'm happy to give my personal opinion with the warning that I am NOT an expert on games. A large portion of my childhood was spent reading comic books and playing nintendo games. I started collecting comic books 20-30 years ago and at the time there wasn't really a way to "collect" nintendo games. I'd been thinking about starting a nintendo collection for maybe 5 years now but never got around to it. For me the $100k mario sale, the creation of WATA, and the inclusion of video games into Heritage auctions didn't really make me want to start collecting nintendo so much as it changed the urgency at which I felt I needed to start. Like someone else said, WATA's black box guide was fantastic. It gave somebody like me who knew nothing about how to start collecting games a place to start. As far as why WATA and not VGA, this is nothing against VGA (I've used their services before and have never had a bad experience) but I know all the people on the WATA advisory board from my time in comics, and I've had a chance to meet Deniz/Kenneth. I've seen their passion for this hobby. Their grading scale makes a lot more sense to me because it more closely mirrors the grading scale I am used to from comic books. And the way they separated out the different prints on their label made it easier to understand and get comfortable with what I was buying more quickly.
I started by buying something simple (A sealed oval SMB) and when I got it in hand I felt more nostalgia than I do when I buy an Amazing Fantasy 15 (the comic book with the first appearance of Spider-man) Which got me wondering why am I paying $50,000 to buy the 677th best copy out of 3200 graded Amazing Fantasy 15s when instead I can spend a couple thousand on a nice SMB sealed where there are maybe 3-5% of the total overall graded copies? And have more fun doing it?
I get that WATA has become a hit with so much publicity of late, but my question is this:
if a game is perfect mint, then as a genuine collector, would it matter if it’s a VGA 100 or a WATA 10.0? Or VGA 95+ versus WATA 9.8?
That's the thing about grading, there is the scale for different companies and also the discretion of the person grading. From what people have said in this thread the WATA 10 may carry more weight that the VGA 10 simply because of recent fame.
I'll add this point of view. The best way to have a collection of anything is to buy and sell into trends to make your collections free or as cheap as possible. If you hold on to everything hopoing to retire early it'll never work out.
Great posts Adam; well written and summarize exactly what was going on in comics.
As for what wata did differently, it was IMO the outreach. Hitting the shows and talking to people one at a time for sure, but it started before that even when they were trying to raise the money to start wata up. Anyone who thinks it's easy to convert people from collecting one thing to collecting another.... it's not. There are so many examples where that's been tried and it failed miserably. You have to, as was noted, be a good salesman and pour a ton of into it for it to work and even then, no guarantees. They've done everything they can to outreach for at least a couple years.
It's also worth nothing that cgc (the comic grading company ) was started by coin dealers (the owners of heritage). It commoditized the books and packaged them neatly for auction. Here again we have people from an older hobby getting a new one going; some parallels there.
I subscribe to this point of view. Games are interactive art, not passive.
A game can be copied digitally infinitely. The physical product will never be manufactered the same way as it was originally. Do you see the difference here? Games are not being lost when physically preserved, their history is being retained while anyone can go on and play a copy.
Playing a rom is never the same experience as putting a cart in the system, reading the manual and the box, etc. But these people buying wouldn't know that anyway.
Playing a rom is never the same experience as putting a cart in the system, reading the manual and the box, etc. But these people buying wouldn't know that anyway.
I know right! I always laugh at these fools who have posters or prints of famous paintings. Dont they know that unless you have the million dollar original, its not worth looking at!
To be fair, if the insane prices are first prints only, then a gamer should still be able to find a later print copy to play at a fair price.
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
Playing a rom is never the same experience as putting a cart in the system, reading the manual and the box, etc. But these people buying wouldn't know that anyway.
I know right! I always laugh at these fools who have posters or prints of famous paintings. Dont they know that unless you have the million dollar original, its not worth looking at!
Honestly, I can see both points of view on that. Having a print of some van gogh has some decorative value and it can spruce up a room or whatever, but at the same time, its such a poor reflection of what the original is, and while it has decorative value it has zero collector value.
So... if you like prints, collect them and spruce up your room, but not the same thing.
And if you're playing SMB, great, but its a different experience from having a sealed copy.
I'm not sure which point you're arguing for or against tbh, but those are my thoughts.
To be fair, if the insane prices are first prints only, then a gamer should still be able to find a later print copy to play at a fair price.
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
It rarely is. The fact that completely beat to fuck black box lot went for $800+ is proof of that.
It's good for sellers though. Stupid money or smart money all spends the same.
To be fair, if the insane prices are first prints only, then a gamer should still be able to find a later print copy to play at a fair price.
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
It rarely is. The fact that completely beat to fuck black box lot went for $800+ is proof of that.
It's good for sellers though. Stupid money or smart money all spends the same.
Definitely a good time to be a seller of early black box games. Conversation in this thread is excellent after catching up on the posts. A lot of good thoughts and thanks to everyone who answered my WATA vs VGA question neutrally. To me it just sounds like the guys at WATA have strong connections to the game collecting community that VGA didn’t and that is advancing them over VGA at a very fast pace of not already.
Edit: the WATA black box guide is a fantastic read and resource.
Agree with many of the points above^^^--the CIB boxes games have certainly taken a large jump--which is good for the hobby--but just give it a little time--when collectors begins to learn about the separation from CB/CIB to Sealed, look out. I suppose it already happened to an extent w/Dans Sealed Mario....I speculate that is closer to 3-5X that price now. And if one does enough research, there are still some damn insane tough Sealed games out there that can be picked up at a fairly reasonable price. No, they don't have NEAR the amount of history of Mario, but once this hobby is truly established, and the Sealed Mario/Metroid are gone, other series that were great/nostalgic in their own right will pick up significant ground.....in all the realms...complete box, CIB and Sealed...especially because all of those different mediums can be measured with a grade.
Doubt the large majority of the new money here is dumb money. The people spending now made it big in other hobbies and are attracting people from the hobbies they've made money in. Not many people who spent early in comics, coins, Magic, etc. regret it...
The base amount on a lot of these items has been so low the past 8 months until now that there’s really not much risk anyway.
One last thought, and probably a little more centered towards the thread. I really don't have a preference on which medium to have them graded (VGA/WATA) since I don't really sell much, however, with certain games....black box and first appearances....there is an appeal to having it noted which version and which character(s) are inside the graded case. I actually think WATA could notch that up as I've seen a few games that should recognize a first appearance (think series of a game) and it's not noted.
Good article, and agree with a lot of other thoughts brought up here! i.e. how WATA has been successful in gaining interest in video game grading.... the attention to variant detail reporting on the cases, the industry connections within the people behind it, the HA connection, etc. So far I have only used VGA's service. I am still a WATA noob, and still learning the grading scales. I have nothing against them and hope to use them one day.
As far as the sealed stuff, some stuff has so few examples that historically it didn't really matter what edition (they were all rare enough as it is). So I agree with the article's example for an obscure game, if you were lucky enough to get it, you'd probably just check the box and move on, thankful you finally got one. Variant knowledge was sorta known, but not front and center like it is today in other words.
Anyway, time will tell how this pans out. But definitely an exciting time for now.
To be fair, if the insane prices are first prints only, then a gamer should still be able to find a later print copy to play at a fair price.
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
I actually think this is a great response and worthy of it's own topic. If you write that article I will be one of the first ones to read it. I definitely consider myself new money / dumb money in this hobby right now. I'd be really interested in hearing generally (or specifically) what types of purchases you think might be good long term vs bad. (Without naming names, although in my case feel free to name/shame away) I think sometimes old school game people are hesitant to crap on someone's "bad" purchase, but I know in my case I've seen a few times a reaction when I tell someone how much I paid for a game where they almost wince before telling me congrats
I am definitely guilty of referencing one datapoint when discussing prices. Not because I want to but because GVN is incomplete / inaccurate, most rare games seem to sell privately, and even eBay's search history isn't pulling up most results for me anymore for some reason. So I'm often referencing one data point out of necessity.
I'd also be really interested if you could expand on your last point that graded supply has nowhere to go but up. Picking a game at random, if VGA's census says they have graded 50 sealed Chrono triggers since they started, to you does that represent a significant percentage of sealed copies really out there? Or do you think this is still so new that it's like people buying that first CGC 9.8 in 2001? Where in most cases even what's rare today isn't actually rare and someday we'll all be laughing at the fact that in 2019 someone thought there were only 50-150 sealed Chronos in the world?
I'd love to see a topic or an article at some point written from the viewpoint of the oldschool collectors on what specifically new money in this hobby is doing right/wrong. In my experience it is very difficult to find the information needed to make informed purchasing decisions on many of these games... and it's not from a lack of trying! Sometimes it feel like there is this push/pull going on right now where comic book people entering the hobby don't fully appreciate how fast some of these prices have gone up, exactly how much of a premium they are paying compared to a couple years ago, or how rare/common some of these games are, vs I don't think the oldschool video game collectors completely appreciate how much money comic people could move into the hobby if they choose to. Only a small sub-set of comic collectors deal in Original comic art, and HA sells $100mil a year in comic OA easily. If one weekend worth of original art buying (literally one section of one auction from one small subset of comic collectors) moves into video games and suddenly comic people are dropping $20mil a year on games, is there enough supply to absorb that? Or would all the best stuff just immediately disappear from public view? That's where my FOMO comes from and there is a constant inner struggle of feeling like I want to wait for more information/sales data before making a purchase vs not wanting to miss out and not get my copy. Most of the time I justify the purchase in my head because I'm planning to hold these for a long time and if I could go back to 2001 and buy comics or art at 2006 prices, I'd still be doing VERY well today. But sometimes I think new buyers trying to make perfect parellels between comics and games do so at their own risk.
Playing a rom is never the same experience as putting a cart in the system, reading the manual and the box, etc. But these people buying wouldn't know that anyway.
There is a lot of speculating going on right now. A lot of new people coming into the hobby are doing so in part because they see dollar signs. But it would be a mistake to think that a lot of these people coming over aren't also gamers. I grew up reading comics and playing video games. I'm sure a lot of people my age that grew up reading comics also played video games. (Maybe the generation before me not so much) I think that's why WATA reached out to comic collectors first, because there is a lot of crossover. I have my sealed copies on display in my office and I play them on my NES classic. (Or I'll buy a loose cart to play on my original nintendo) I actually prefer the roms/emulators at this point. no blowing into carts, dealing with that blinking grey screen etc.
But I think you're missing part of the picture if you assume everyone coming in from comics is doing so with no attachment whatsoever to the games they are buying.
Filter81, even with the few purchases that made you wince....you've done pretty good. There isn't much of a different way to get what you need at any given time. I passed up on about 5-10 items and have never seen another...so timing is critical, and sometimes you have to pay. Nothing more rewarding than scoring one of your "must haves" even when you pay a little too much....you make it back in the long run. I think what some reference in terms of good purchase vs. questionable are the CIB prices seem way overvalued IMO. Some of these games are in great abundance, regardless of the print....but, the market is where it is.
^great points Adam and i tend to agree with everything you said. It's interesting to get insights from someone who just recently crossed from comics to video games. It helps put things in perspective...
Regarding supply: when i look at HA auctions on some rare/desirable comics, it feels like there are always dozens and even hundreds at the same grade or above. I have yet to get a sealed population report of video games that break 100. Even on n64 games we're pretty damn far from that type of volume. So yeah supply will go up, but even if it doubles in the next 10 years it certainly feels that if the current trend persists the demand will keep up and even overwhelm new supply... this is all title dependent obviously but i just dont think we will see a flood of sealed games anytime soon across the whole market.
Yes some people are sitting on piles of cases but even accounting for those im not too worried. If they have their financial interests at hearth they wont sell all at once, and even if they do it then im sure people will line up to get 9.6-9.8 A++ copies for their collections.
To draw another parrallel to comics, if we are to reach comics type populations for a given title, it will absolutely be including graded cibs.... which by nature should force sealed copies to trade at a premium (we'll see on that but this is pretty much a given).
Interesting times indeed.
Oh and lol @ people thinking comic collectors didnt grow up with video games... im willing to bet almost anyone born in 75 or later had interactions with a nintendo console during their childhood... so yeah even though they collect comics that doesnt mean they grew up ONLY reading comics.
Just for reference my comments apply to nes / snes and to a certain extent n64. I dont know much nor care about any other systems. And i certainly hope the new money coming in slows down because i have ways to go before getting everything i aspire since i started collecting sealed only this year (not coming from comics just loose collector moving on to sealed)
Comments
Originally posted by: a3quit4s
What did WATA do differently than VGA to gain all this interest? I don't want another thread about WATA just curious why this didn't all pick up steam with the comic community when VGA came around for games. Was the partnership with HA that influential? GoCollect as well?
I think they avoid grading resealed games to start...
This article was very well written but at the same time I think some of these comic investors are busting a nut much too quickly on evaluations.
I don't know much about the history of comic collecting, so my question to anyone knowledgeable is Did comic grading and high end collecting grow organically or was it pushed in that direction?
It seems to me that high end game collecting grew slowly and naturally until WATA. Now it seems to be pushed to grow as fast as possible. In the past collectors encouraged each other to be patient and understand the market. Now FOMO is the rule and you should buy at any price. It seems to me that in any aspect of life or business, if something grows too fast there will be problems.
Before CGC, vintage comic book sales went through a bit of a lull in the mid to late 90s and from what I remember were pretty flat for about 5 years. Back then Action 1s were still "worth" $40-50k maybe but good luck finding someone actually looking to spend the money to buy one.
In the immediate aftermath of CGC there was a debate about whether or not comic books are something that should be slabbed. (After all they were made to be read) Some dealers were very aggressively pushing the idea of certification and some dealers/collectors held out against encapsulation for years. I wouldn't say that people were pushing the hobby to grow as quickly as possible, the hobby was already pretty big at that point. Video games today are still a much smaller hobby than comics were in 2000, at least when it comes to the collecting side. But depending on where you stood on the issue of certification people would push their own agendas/views. Very quickly after CGC opened certain books that used to sell for $100 started selling for $1000. (there were also books submitted that didn't turn out to be worth the certification costs) Some of that was the result of the legitimacy that professional grading brought to comic books but sometimes it was some one off where an unimportant book sold for a crazy number because some collector had to get it because at the time it was 1 of 1 graded in 9.8. What followed after that was a period of price discovery where certain books kept climbing higher and other people discovered that they overpaid for books that were more common than they realized. People buying in 2000 and selling in 2002, some did great, others did not do so well. Then in 2002, GPA came along and started recording all graded eBay/Heritage etc sales and prices started to stabilize and start steadily climbing on most "key" issues. Then around 2010 the first comic book sold for $1,000,000. At that point the truly rare/desirable stuff started increasing in value very rapidly and for the most part still haven't stopped.
In the very early days, CGC tried to convince as many dealers to use their product as possible. After a while they didn't really need to anymore because it eventually became understood that you needed to have your books graded by a third party in order to get the highest prices for them. I don't know how closely what's going on here will parallel what happened in comics, but IF things were to unfold exactly the same way, anyone buying at today's prices looking to flip something in six months should be careful and do their homework, but anyone planning to buy and hold for 10 years should also do their homework but would do better making sure they are buying quality than worrying about what they are paying in relation to today's market. (again that's IF things unfold exactly the same, and that's assuming we know what video games will be considered "quality" in 10 years from now. In comics it was a little easier to tell because comics were already 65 years old and people had already been collecting for 40+ years)
What did WATA do differently than VGA to gain all this interest? I don't want another thread about WATA just curious why this didn't all pick up steam with the comic community when VGA came around for games. Was the partnership with HA that influential? GoCollect as well?
I think this is a great question that probably does deserve it's own article. As a comic dealer who is buying games now I'm happy to give my personal opinion with the warning that I am NOT an expert on games. A large portion of my childhood was spent reading comic books and playing nintendo games. I started collecting comic books 20-30 years ago and at the time there wasn't really a way to "collect" nintendo games. I'd been thinking about starting a nintendo collection for maybe 5 years now but never got around to it. For me the $100k mario sale, the creation of WATA, and the inclusion of video games into Heritage auctions didn't really make me want to start collecting nintendo so much as it changed the urgency at which I felt I needed to start. Like someone else said, WATA's black box guide was fantastic. It gave somebody like me who knew nothing about how to start collecting games a place to start. As far as why WATA and not VGA, this is nothing against VGA (I've used their services before and have never had a bad experience) but I know all the people on the WATA advisory board from my time in comics, and I've had a chance to meet Deniz/Kenneth. I've seen their passion for this hobby. Their grading scale makes a lot more sense to me because it more closely mirrors the grading scale I am used to from comic books. And the way they separated out the different prints on their label made it easier to understand and get comfortable with what I was buying more quickly.
I started by buying something simple (A sealed oval SMB) and when I got it in hand I felt more nostalgia than I do when I buy an Amazing Fantasy 15 (the comic book with the first appearance of Spider-man) Which got me wondering why am I paying $50,000 to buy the 677th best copy out of 3200 graded Amazing Fantasy 15s when instead I can spend a couple thousand on a nice SMB sealed where there are maybe 3-5% of the total overall graded copies? And have more fun doing it?
I get that WATA has become a hit with so much publicity of late, but my question is this:
if a game is perfect mint, then as a genuine collector, would it matter if it’s a VGA 100 or a WATA 10.0? Or VGA 95+ versus WATA 9.8?
Games should be played!
I subscribe to this point of view.
Games are interactive art, not passive.
As for what wata did differently, it was IMO the outreach. Hitting the shows and talking to people one at a time for sure, but it started before that even when they were trying to raise the money to start wata up. Anyone who thinks it's easy to convert people from collecting one thing to collecting another.... it's not. There are so many examples where that's been tried and it failed miserably. You have to, as was noted, be a good salesman and pour a ton of into it for it to work and even then, no guarantees. They've done everything they can to outreach for at least a couple years.
It's also worth nothing that cgc (the comic grading company ) was started by coin dealers (the owners of heritage). It commoditized the books and packaged them neatly for auction. Here again we have people from an older hobby getting a new one going; some parallels there.
Games should be played!
I subscribe to this point of view.
Games are interactive art, not passive.
A game can be copied digitally infinitely. The physical product will never be manufactered the same way as it was originally. Do you see the difference here? Games are not being lost when physically preserved, their history is being retained while anyone can go on and play a copy.
Playing a rom is never the same experience as putting a cart in the system, reading the manual and the box, etc. But these people buying wouldn't know that anyway.
I know right! I always laugh at these fools who have posters or prints of famous paintings. Dont they know that unless you have the million dollar original, its not worth looking at!
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
Playing a rom is never the same experience as putting a cart in the system, reading the manual and the box, etc. But these people buying wouldn't know that anyway.
I know right! I always laugh at these fools who have posters or prints of famous paintings. Dont they know that unless you have the million dollar original, its not worth looking at!
Honestly, I can see both points of view on that. Having a print of some van gogh has some decorative value and it can spruce up a room or whatever, but at the same time, its such a poor reflection of what the original is, and while it has decorative value it has zero collector value.
So... if you like prints, collect them and spruce up your room, but not the same thing.
And if you're playing SMB, great, but its a different experience from having a sealed copy.
I'm not sure which point you're arguing for or against tbh, but those are my thoughts.
To be fair, if the insane prices are first prints only, then a gamer should still be able to find a later print copy to play at a fair price.
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
It rarely is. The fact that completely beat to fuck black box lot went for $800+ is proof of that.
It's good for sellers though. Stupid money or smart money all spends the same.
To be fair, if the insane prices are first prints only, then a gamer should still be able to find a later print copy to play at a fair price.
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
It rarely is. The fact that completely beat to fuck black box lot went for $800+ is proof of that.
It's good for sellers though. Stupid money or smart money all spends the same.
Definitely a good time to be a seller of early black box games. Conversation in this thread is excellent after catching up on the posts. A lot of good thoughts and thanks to everyone who answered my WATA vs VGA question neutrally. To me it just sounds like the guys at WATA have strong connections to the game collecting community that VGA didn’t and that is advancing them over VGA at a very fast pace of not already.
Edit: the WATA black box guide is a fantastic read and resource.
The base amount on a lot of these items has been so low the past 8 months until now that there’s really not much risk anyway.
As far as the sealed stuff, some stuff has so few examples that historically it didn't really matter what edition (they were all rare enough as it is). So I agree with the article's example for an obscure game, if you were lucky enough to get it, you'd probably just check the box and move on, thankful you finally got one. Variant knowledge was sorta known, but not front and center like it is today in other words.
Anyway, time will tell how this pans out. But definitely an exciting time for now.
To be fair, if the insane prices are first prints only, then a gamer should still be able to find a later print copy to play at a fair price.
I'd love to write an article from the other point of view though. I was at that game show, I've sold to plenty of comic folks and I can draw my own conclusions from collecting 10+ years and being in other hobbies too.
My bottom line point is this, new money is not always smart money. Some purchases will be good but a lot will be bad too, fueled on speculative FOMO. An auction sale is just but one data point and seasoned collectors have natural intuition into whether it went higher than expected, about fair, or lower than expected. I'm not seeing that with a lot of the new folks. They cite the sales price as literal fact, and are willing to pay around that for a copy or conversely expect that price when selling a similar one. As supply increases, which graded supply has nowhere to go but up, people will find out which prices are make believe and which ones have true staying power.
I actually think this is a great response and worthy of it's own topic. If you write that article I will be one of the first ones to read it. I definitely consider myself new money / dumb money in this hobby right now. I'd be really interested in hearing generally (or specifically) what types of purchases you think might be good long term vs bad. (Without naming names, although in my case feel free to name/shame away) I think sometimes old school game people are hesitant to crap on someone's "bad" purchase, but I know in my case I've seen a few times a reaction when I tell someone how much I paid for a game where they almost wince before telling me congrats
I am definitely guilty of referencing one datapoint when discussing prices. Not because I want to but because GVN is incomplete / inaccurate, most rare games seem to sell privately, and even eBay's search history isn't pulling up most results for me anymore for some reason. So I'm often referencing one data point out of necessity.
I'd also be really interested if you could expand on your last point that graded supply has nowhere to go but up. Picking a game at random, if VGA's census says they have graded 50 sealed Chrono triggers since they started, to you does that represent a significant percentage of sealed copies really out there? Or do you think this is still so new that it's like people buying that first CGC 9.8 in 2001? Where in most cases even what's rare today isn't actually rare and someday we'll all be laughing at the fact that in 2019 someone thought there were only 50-150 sealed Chronos in the world?
I'd love to see a topic or an article at some point written from the viewpoint of the oldschool collectors on what specifically new money in this hobby is doing right/wrong. In my experience it is very difficult to find the information needed to make informed purchasing decisions on many of these games... and it's not from a lack of trying! Sometimes it feel like there is this push/pull going on right now where comic book people entering the hobby don't fully appreciate how fast some of these prices have gone up, exactly how much of a premium they are paying compared to a couple years ago, or how rare/common some of these games are, vs I don't think the oldschool video game collectors completely appreciate how much money comic people could move into the hobby if they choose to. Only a small sub-set of comic collectors deal in Original comic art, and HA sells $100mil a year in comic OA easily. If one weekend worth of original art buying (literally one section of one auction from one small subset of comic collectors) moves into video games and suddenly comic people are dropping $20mil a year on games, is there enough supply to absorb that? Or would all the best stuff just immediately disappear from public view? That's where my FOMO comes from and there is a constant inner struggle of feeling like I want to wait for more information/sales data before making a purchase vs not wanting to miss out and not get my copy. Most of the time I justify the purchase in my head because I'm planning to hold these for a long time and if I could go back to 2001 and buy comics or art at 2006 prices, I'd still be doing VERY well today. But sometimes I think new buyers trying to make perfect parellels between comics and games do so at their own risk.
Playing a rom is never the same experience as putting a cart in the system, reading the manual and the box, etc. But these people buying wouldn't know that anyway.
There is a lot of speculating going on right now. A lot of new people coming into the hobby are doing so in part because they see dollar signs. But it would be a mistake to think that a lot of these people coming over aren't also gamers. I grew up reading comics and playing video games. I'm sure a lot of people my age that grew up reading comics also played video games. (Maybe the generation before me not so much) I think that's why WATA reached out to comic collectors first, because there is a lot of crossover. I have my sealed copies on display in my office and I play them on my NES classic. (Or I'll buy a loose cart to play on my original nintendo) I actually prefer the roms/emulators at this point. no blowing into carts, dealing with that blinking grey screen etc.
But I think you're missing part of the picture if you assume everyone coming in from comics is doing so with no attachment whatsoever to the games they are buying.
Regarding supply: when i look at HA auctions on some rare/desirable comics, it feels like there are always dozens and even hundreds at the same grade or above. I have yet to get a sealed population report of video games that break 100. Even on n64 games we're pretty damn far from that type of volume. So yeah supply will go up, but even if it doubles in the next 10 years it certainly feels that if the current trend persists the demand will keep up and even overwhelm new supply... this is all title dependent obviously but i just dont think we will see a flood of sealed games anytime soon across the whole market.
Yes some people are sitting on piles of cases but even accounting for those im not too worried. If they have their financial interests at hearth they wont sell all at once, and even if they do it then im sure people will line up to get 9.6-9.8 A++ copies for their collections.
To draw another parrallel to comics, if we are to reach comics type populations for a given title, it will absolutely be including graded cibs.... which by nature should force sealed copies to trade at a premium (we'll see on that but this is pretty much a given).
Interesting times indeed.
Oh and lol @ people thinking comic collectors didnt grow up with video games... im willing to bet almost anyone born in 75 or later had interactions with a nintendo console during their childhood... so yeah even though they collect comics that doesnt mean they grew up ONLY reading comics.
Just for reference my comments apply to nes / snes and to a certain extent n64. I dont know much nor care about any other systems. And i certainly hope the new money coming in slows down because i have ways to go before getting everything i aspire since i started collecting sealed only this year (not coming from comics just loose collector moving on to sealed)