COI

This is an interesting point. Taking the focus off of graded games, which is the most niche of the collectibles currently seeing what appears to be hyperbolic growth, and just looking at the collectibles boom generally, I think it really depends on what is actually happening. Because the possibilities are a ton of average Joe buyers borrowing cheap money and throwing it into the market recklessly due to FOMO or whatever, a bunch of hedge fund/crypto/influencer types flowing in to move money around in an unregulated market, or you have a small groups of well funded/informed/connected individuals manipulating the market. Of course, all of these types exist and are active with overlap, but it's a matter of proportion I think. Because ironically, the market manipulator types and the hedge fund/crypto types, to the extent they exist, would actually operate as a perverse sort of regulation if they're selling stuff back and forth to each other to bolster prices. If they're all in on it, you wouldn't get the precipitous falls in price that would get the majority to panic, cash out, and crash the market, because if manipulation is happening and the top end prices aren't all real, you wouldn't expect a 'real' correction either. It's not technically unrestrained capitalism if manipulation constitutes a large part of the market activity, it's just a perverse sort of regulation where the controls are there, but are aligned with the best interests of those pulling the strings. As opposed to the situation you're describing with a bunch of individual, uncoordinated buyers risking their bankrolls due to hype. I have no clue what the heck is going on, but it's super interesting to watch and try to think through.

To be clear, the 'like' was for your handsome pup.

To make the point about why he doesn't see it as a smoking gun. Disagree with him, fine; maybe he's wrong. But once again a standard is being applied to Dan's casual posting that isn't even being applied to Professor Game Collector's reporting. That's my point. Wish you guys picked apart Abramson's articles with the same zeal.

You don't get it. He found a sticky note. A STICKY NOTE! He needs to put it down exactly where he found it and get on the horn with the FTC immediately! Never tamper with a crime scene.

WHAT?!?!? WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? YOU CAN'T JUST EXIT A CASUAL CONVERSATION ON A MESSAGE BOARD TO DO LIFE!!!!

I wasn't the one asking about the W2. I don't think Haspel's involvement is a good look at all, for what it's worth. Optics are bad, but I'm waiting for the bodies. Abramson is certain the financial future of America is at stake, so I'm holding my outrage until the evidence is clear and the arguments are tight.

How does that invalidate what I just said about the motivated reasoning around here? And he didn't try to say Hapel wasn't employed by WATA, he ASKED whether or not Haspel drew a W2. He was drilling down specifically into the words being used and whether the evidence warranted those words. I know you want to wave this stuff away, but it matters. It's the different between good and bad evidence/weak and strong arguments. So give ME a break.

Because this isn't all about nostalgia, just like in comics. I thought we mostly agreed that there's lots of speculation going on here, and this isn't real collector demand? So the games that are going to hit the stratosphere are the games that people with money speculate will hit the stratosphere and hold up as "blue chip", so the things I've mentioned become relevant. Even just on the collector side, I grew up in the '80s and early '90s, but ended up collecting SA comics. This is often the case in collecting; people start where they start, then go into the history.

It depends on what the claim is. If the claim, broadly, is that auction houses and grading companies play all sorts of games, then I'm convinced. I was convinced before this thread, and I remain convinced. When you get into words like "fraud", and you want to make the argument that some new asset class or financial instrument is being created that threatens to undermine the American economy, akin to the 2008 financial crisis, then, to put it lightly, the standard of evidence goes up.

I think the reason for this is the ongoing relevance of Nintendo and Mario games in modern gaming, combined with a sort of happenstance when it comes to the tech and what types of games age well and what types don't. For example, I think 2D games from the Nintendo and Super Nintendo/8-16 bit era are aging better than Atari, based on the technical limits of the Atari and how "playable" they are by today's standards. But I also think the 8 and 16 bit era is aging better than most PS1/N64 games, because that era was where we got those first awkward steps into 3D, which in many cases both look and play really rough today. I grew up with the NES, but I'm one of those who likes playing modern games way more than retro games. I'm more interested in where the hobby is going than where it has been, and as a result I've become more attached to Playstation and even XBox than I ever was to Nintendo. Even still, I can see how much more playable the best 8 and 16 bit era games are today than are those early 3D games.

Most of the people here are doing the exact same type of motivated reasoning. Quick to point out the reasoning flaws in anyone holding the opposing view, then all is silent when the tables are turned. Tons of reasoning errors, leaps in logic and clear exaggerations have been pointed out in both the video and Abramson's writing throughout this thread; they are the ones making claims and accusations; the burden of proof is on them, not Dan who's on vacation with his kid. Why not scan the video and Abramson's substack for logical fallacies too, because I can assure you, you'll find tons.

Appreciate the response. To me, the trickle-down argument is a bit of a leap. Karl attempts to make a similar argument in the video, citing people trying to sell Mario 64 carts for massively inflated prices as a direct result of the record sale. I fail to see how this is any more manipulative than the thousands and thousands of "MOVIE SOON!" "NETFLIX SHOW"! key word tactics being employed in comics to push record-breaking prices even the most minor keys, at all price/grading levels. And as soon as one buyer hits that inflated 'buy it now', every seller who has a similar item immediately wants to hit that new threshold. This is happening right now, and has been happening for years in comics. It's a standard practice. I don't think it's a good practice, but at the same time I'm not feeling sorry for the dude who saw some random article about the exploding prices in comics (plenty of those exist too) and decided to overpay. Similarly, no seasoned collector pities the guy who paid some GPA record high set 2 years ago for book XYZ. So why is this reporting so focused on constructing a narrative where this type of behavior at the very top end of the game...game is portrayed as some sort of ultra-corrupt anomaly, threatening to "lead America into financial ruin"? To be clear, this type of hucksterism isn't good and I'm not defending it, but it's also nothing new, and portraying it as some sort of fresh spawn of satan casting a never-before-seen blight on the video game hobby - and by extension the American economy!!! - is in itself a manipulation. And with that, I think I'm going to bow out. I've made my points and am probably repeating myself way too much. It was fun, and I appreciated the conversation.

"Here’s hoping that Americans come to appreciate the critical role of independent journalism in protecting America before this new cadre of rapacious mavens again leads America into financial ruin."

The 2008 housing bubble created what is now known as the Great Recession. U.S. media missed the big story then, and government did almost nothing to protect Americans thereafter. Now a new bubble is being created, and again legacy media and the federal government are absent. Here’s hoping that Americans come to appreciate the critical role of independent journalism in protecting America before this new cadre of rapacious mavens again leads America into financial ruin. With both a global pandemic and a domestic insurgency ongoing, America can ill afford to let this new, inorganic collectible market spiral further out of control. It’s already hit a level of volatility—and is defined by a level of misconduct— that marks it as a potentially serious threat to many, many Americans going forward. While of course video games are not homes, when a nation is in the midst of three things simultaneously—a public health crisis; a political crisis; and an economic crisis—the likelihood that many people move into new asset-class markets and submarkets to take risky bets on their own financial futures increases, as older models of wealth development suddenly seem particularly fraught. Media plays a significant role in this; if, as is happening now, a network like CNN is recklessly publishing articles with headlines like “Why Your Old Video Games May Be Worth Millions”, it entices many regular folks into a market they don’t understand but that seems fabulously lucrative—when in fact it might be largely artificial. Because video gaming is now “the largest and most expansive industry in the world of entertainment”, it has the capacity to attract a volume of investors and hobbyists that is larger than any other entertainment sub-sector. But it was only recently that a large, seemingly welcoming front door was put right at the front of that sub-sector: collecting graded video games as a long-term investment. This part made my eyes roll back so far, they did a full 360 and I got a quick visual tour of the back of my skull. It was dark and kind of empty. The article establishes a bunch of connections between people supposedly rigging the high end of an ultra niche game that 7 people are playing on the basis that "America can ill afford to let this new, inorganic collectible market spiral further out of control." Holy moly!!!! THIS is not the America I know!

A genuine question here, and please just take the question at face value: who is the victim of this "alternative asset class" creation if, going by the video and the substack, this is a group of wealthy guys getting richer off of another group of wealthy guys who no one has heard from and who, it is somehow assumed, are being bamboozled, despite the fact that this information was already out there for the gathering? Either there is a group - let's call the the "underbidders" - who are being "manipulated" into bidding high prices for expensive games, or this is all a smokescreen, the sales are fake, in which case....no one is being taken, financially, by this slabbed theater. Why is this question important? Because I can point to clear incentives to act unethically on the content creation side of "gaming journalism" who think the ends justify the means, and going after this "alternate asset class" creation is akin to exposing the real estate bubble pre-2008, where the victims were clear. So for those of you who find the video compelling, where are the bodies?

The funny thing is, on my side of things, I was purposely going out of my way to point something out WITHOUT making it personal. I also don't understand this obsession with keeping every post on topic. That's not how casual conversations work, and casual conversations are the entire point of having message boards. Newsflash, you can gloss over/skip posts you don't care about, you can ignore people you don't like, etc, but it's impossible to control the flow of a group of people talking, and it's a little gross to actually WANT to control it to such a degree. Not to mention the feedback loops that come with socializing with other people. You're supposed to take cues from the people around you to understand how you're coming across to and affecting others, and then, if you're even remotely socialized, calibrate your behavior accordingly. As you just said Shawn, when posts are deleted, you're interfering with that feedback loop, meaning that the people involved don't have to actually confront their own errors and how the content or the style of their posts are coming off to everyone else. The irony being that the mods are making more work for themselves by not letting people have to deal with the social consequences of their behavior, and so the patterns repeat over and over. I mean, not my forum, not my rules, got it, but anyone who has been here for a decade or more likely sees how things have changed based on the way this place is moderated. I was poking Kav about recommending some literature on logical reasoning; hey MODS, can I recommend some social psychology?

Well thank God for them, because we all know harmless banter and reasonably good-natured ribbing is bad for social cohesion and comradery. Keep fighting the good fight, team.

I guess my lessons in logic were out of line. Mods scrubbing logical reasoning off of the forum. Totally checks out.

So I agree with your points, but imagine this scenario: For whatever reason, someone decides to start collecting Lego and they buy a used collection of Lego... playsets?(not sure if that's what they're called) from this 2012 period you mention. They use the sets to play with their kids, and stuff starts breaking. They make a video about this brittle Lego that goes viral, making all sorts of claims about how poorly made Legos are, using his experience as evidence, and a whole bunch of people are like 'wow, I thought Lego was cool, didn't realize they were such a trash company', and so on. The guy made the video in earnest, but his lack of experience and perspective on Lego across the decades, and lack of context about the factors that contributed to 2012-ish Legos caused him to take truths about his experience and a fact pattern with a limited scope and turn that into a narrative that, while based in truth, doesn't paint a fair or complete picture of Legos. Not a perfect analogy, but similar to what I see with Karl's video.

The combination of these points encapsulates my biggest problem with the video and the reactions it garnered here among seasoned collectors, provoking me to crawl out from under my rock. None of it has to do with a denial that there are conflicts of interest, and none of it constitutes a defense of Halperin, Heritage, or any of the market tactics being discussed. It goes back to what I said about the target audience for the video. It's a video from someone with no experience with graded collectibles, for an audience with no experience with graded collectibles. And before anyone goes nuts, that not some sort of ad hominem or appeal to authority, because I did take the time to watch the video with an open mind and I did evaluate the arguments being made on their own merits. I'll say it again: Karl did a great job, particularly for an "outsider", of gathering data. But the very fact that he COULD, as an "outsider", get that data actually weakens his argument, because it makes it far less likely that people spending 10s and 100s of thousands of dollars are having the wool pulled over their eyes in the way that he tries to prove. Which, in turn, makes it hard for me to understand what the purpose of this video is, other than feeding the outrage machine that is the internet, nor does it make a great case for why the ends justify the means when there are ethical issues with this kind of "journalism" in itself.

Agreed. A collectible hitting the million dollar mark in a public sale, while impressive, is an arbitrary landmark. An Action 1 or Detective 27 could have, theoretically, hit that mark a decade or two earlier under the right circumstances. And that's before the internet and certified grading, which accelerated the cycle.

Is this dissimilar from how CGC got started? That's a genuine question, not rhetorical. Weren't there a bunch of dealers circling CGC as consultants in its earliest days?

Really? So putting aside the contradictory idea that you can be involved in manipulating something and at the same time not think there's manipulation going on, the two possible positions are, you either believe there is manipulation or you're in on it? There's no other possibilities? I'm with you guys that the prices are bonkers, and I can't wrap my head around what we've been seeing across various collectible markets in the last 18-24 months. I'm also skeptical about a lot of the records as well, and some degree of manipulation wouldn't shock me. But to simply assume that because Action 1 took decades to hit the 1 million mark, any other collectible would need decades to hit a million legitimately, is a bit silly because it doesn't take into account the myriad at factors at play today that were not at play during Action 1's lifecycle as a collectible. You know, small things like the internet, e-commerce, digital capital, grading companies, etc.

It's up to $5000 within Canada, $1000 international. I haven't sold much for years. When I was actively selling, I either didn't know about easypost, or it wasn't a thing yet. Not sure. I do know that I got comfortable sending, let's say, a $5000 item with only $1000 insurance. Maybe not the smartest thing, but I did it a lot.

You guys asked about his thought process, he explained it, it doesn't match what you would've done in a similar situation; fine, fair enough. Different people, different circumstances, and Dan might handle it differently today. I can vouch for this. We don't have the insurance options you guys have, and being that we have to do most of our business outside of our own borders, our risk threshold might be a little different. Last I checked, we don't have the equivalent of CIA here, but that was years ago so maybe something has emerged since. I've taken some fairly big risks with packages myself; not at this level, but big enough.