MatterEaterLad

You're really, really, really grasping at anything to discredit what is a clear-cut conflict of interest. Pretend the Pawn Star thing didn't happen. WATA still promoted this record breaking sale, sent out press releases saying the buyer was Joe Collector, this becomes huge news in the collecting world, sends prices surging, and they purposely hid he was a WATA founder. I'm on the board of an art museum. I can't buy a piece at a record price, pretend I'm just an unaffiliated collector, tell people in the national press that it's real value is 10x what I paid for it, and then sell it at the same museum. It's a conflict. If you don't see it, you don't want to see it.

A WATA founder (with others) bought your game for a record price, promoted it as evidence of a booming market, went on TV and posed as an ordinary collector, not disclosing he's actually a founder of the grading company that graded the game he's holding in his hand, has a discussion with the president of the the grading company he helped found, they pretend they don't know each other while talking about the million dollar value of the game. If you don't see it, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to explain it in terms you would accept. Though you sure seemed surprised.

I got married on 08/08/08 and still forget my anniversary.

Jobst makes his argument in the same medium (YouTube) that others use to declare that the Earth is flat. So he's already operating at a disadvantage. Abramson is a gamer with a law degree from Harvard. People can hate his politics and his gonzo style, but he's digging, quoting, and documenting. Whether what he's finding is illegal or not remains to be seen. There are so many business practices that fall into a gray area of legality and are allowed to keep happening until enough people legally compel them to change. WATA juicing the marketplace and Halperin mega-shilling his own auctions--that stuff being dragged into the light of day, to me, is a good thing for collectors who want a legitimate marketplace, not one with massive price manipulation.

You can call the maker of the video a crank, but there are other people digging into this. Seth Abramson has apparently tried contacted everyone involved (Hey Bronty, has he contacted you?). Abramson has been updating his posts as statements come in. I do think Jobst points to a lot of smoke and declares there must be fire, which may not be accurate. Abramson, I think, does a better job of showing how WATA founders actively promoted this "record breaking sale" without disclosing they were the buyers.

I'm all for discussing whether it's ethical/legal for auction houses and grading companies to buy collectibles at record prices and then promote them as evidence of a booming market. And whether it's ethical/legal for grading company owners to grade their own collectibles and sell them through third parties. I mean, we hammered PGX for doing it, why does WATA get a pass?

At the end of the day, this is where we're going to end up.

There are two kind of people. There's @kav and there's @greggy

There are people with opinions. Then there are people with opinions and direct involvement. They're called material witnesses.

If he's named in the articles and shows up here and says, "This video that I did not watch is garbage," that's naturally going to get some responses. He put himself and his opinions in this discussion.

He literally owned THE game at the center of this controversy, knows all the players, was there at the beginning of WATA, and is mentioned in a lot of the news articles. And that's irrelevant to this discussion?

This is how I feel as well. I just want an honest collecting ecosystem. There will always be low level scammers, but when the gatekeepers like grading houses and auction houses are scamming, it can hurt a lot of people and completely distort the marketplace. I hate seeing others jump into the hobby and get burned. If it's from their own inexperience, that's a tough part of the learning curve, we've all been there. But if it's because they bought a collectible that was shilled up by Heritage and WATA, that's messed up.

Yeah, the excuses of "everyone does it" and "everyone knows it" doesn't mean everyone should accept it. Some do. Good for them. I don't.

This story is of interest to me because I've said for years that it's a conflict of interest for owners of Heritage to be in bed with CGC, and a conflict of interest (and fraud) for owners of Heritage to buy their own comics at record prices and then promote that as evidence of a booming market. WATA got caught, but this mega-shilling also exists in the comic world.

Didn't he own the game in question? Funny how he never mentions that in his posts condemning the video.

Great looking book. I'd say about 5.5.

...sold by Heritage, owned by Halperin, who has a stake in WATA. It's wildly unethical for WATA and Heritage to promote this BOOMING GAME MARKET without disclosing the record sales were all by people with ownership positions in the grading company and the auction house. And you can try and discount the maker of the video, but he's not the only one making these claims. There are actual journalists, like the one I mentioned earlier, digging into WATAs data leak. .

I left out the part where the collection was sold by a Director of WATA to another Director.

Fantastic Four. They were the first comics I bought with my own money as a kid.

To put the WATA mess in comic terms, this would be like two of the owners of CGC buying a collection, having it generously graded, giving it pedigree status, promoting it through proxies, then selling it at auction and having another CGC employee "buy" it at record prices. Then using that as evidence of a booming market, sending out press releases and doing interviews without disclosing that they were hyping their own books. They sell the comics again for even higher prices and ride out the avalanche of business created by the hype, that they created.

@comicwiz Oh, I'm very interested and watching with both eyes open. Journalist, Seth Abramson, has been banging this drum as well.