CGC Video Game Grading? 1 1

[Jo Seph]

1 hour ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

I'm guessing that you laughed because you didn't realize the massive difference between a comic book and a video game?

Difference between graded comics and video games that cant be read or played? Nope

People can grade and conserve things they like. Kids from the 90s and above won't care about comics too much.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Jo Seph

[theCapraAegagrus]

3 minutes ago, Jo Seph said:

Difference between graded comics and video games that cant be read or played? Nope

So you did forget that a comic book can be utilized immediately after being cracked. Got it.

[Bronty]

1 hour ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

So you did forget that a comic book can be utilized immediately after being cracked. Got it.

You’re  paying 10x as much for a 9.8 over a 9.0 because the 9.8 reads so much better?  
 

And the guy paying 1m for a rookie card is paying for the  photo and the stats on the back??
 

Collectibles past a certain price point have very little to do with their intended function at the time of retail sale.     You’re not going to mail a collectible stamp or spend a collectible coin or put a Gretzky rookie in the spokes of your bicycle wheel

Edited July 13, 2021 by Bronty

[theCapraAegagrus]

2 minutes ago, Bronty said:

You’re  paying 10x as much for a 9.8 over a 9.0 because the 9.8 reads so much better?  
 

And the guy paying 1m for a rookie card is paying for the  photo and the stats on the back??
 

Collectibles past a certain price point have very little to do with their intended function at the time of retail sale.     

I am not doing that.

[Bronty]

Cool 

Edited July 13, 2021 by Bronty

[Broke as a Joke]

Does a GPA type website exist for the video game market currently?  

[october]

Anyone know if WATA is planning to introduce a census? For video game collectors who have been around for 10+ years, they might be able to estimate the number of sealed copies left with some degree of accuracy, but for newbies? I would be terrified someone found unopened cases of this stuff, and are rationing them out over a period of months/years. No transparency as to pop numbers right now. 

[Bronty]

55 minutes ago, october said:

Anyone know if WATA is planning to introduce a census? For video game collectors who have been around for 10+ years, they might be able to estimate the number of sealed copies left with some degree of accuracy, but for newbies? I would be terrified someone found unopened cases of this stuff, and are rationing them out over a period of months/years. No transparency as to pop numbers right now. 

They’ve been planning several things including a census for a while.    Trouble is they can’t keep up with the explosive growth so all these side projects have ended up on the back burner .   
 

Ling term collectors know what’s out there and what isn’t.   Some have recorded snapshots of vga’s census which is imperfect but some source of info anyways. There are 30 copies of SM64 at 90 or better on vgas census, but n64 doesn’t always cross  well to the wata scale.   I am hearing more than one 90+ Mario 64 recently crossed only to 9.4 .  
 

Conversely maybe the right 85+ would get a 9.6 or 9.8.   The criteria are just so different .

Edited July 13, 2021 by Bronty

[carcrawfordfan]

9 hours ago, Domo Arigato said:

This is a game I've been following for a while......and as you mentioned.....you definitely should have kept that copy.  The PS1 market is heating up quickly, and the first Tomb Raider game for it in high grade is not an easy one to find. 

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that it didn't happen sooner.  I know everyone is all about the Nintendo's.......and the Mario's.......and the PokeYerMoms.......etc. etc etc. until I want to puke........but the PlayStation consoles have always been massive sellers.  On the top five list of best-selling game consoles......the PS2 holds the number one spot......the PS4 is number four.....and the PS1 is number five. 

If you narrow that list down to just Home Game Consoles (no handhelds, etc).....the list looks like this:

1. PS2
2. PS4
3. PS1
4. Wii
5. PS3

I also see people on Facebook all the time that keep wondering why Tomb Raider sells for any kind of money......and I keep wondering why they keep wondering why.  It's a MASSIVE franchise and this game started it all.  The Tomb Raider game was a huge hit when it came out in 1996, and they've released 12 main title games since then (not counting mobile, etc) on multiple systems, and the franchise is still going strong today, 25 years later.  It's had several big budget movies based off of it, and another one is in the works now.  And that's not even taking into account all the toys, action figures, statues, lunch boxes, t-shirts, comic books, graphic novels,  etc. that have been based off of it.

So, frankly, Mario can suck it. 

Here are the sales I've tracked for the sealed or graded PS1 Tomb Raider game over the last year or so:

On 11-2-2020........Tomb Raider (sealed but ungraded and with a huge price sticker on the front) sold for $3,250 on eBay

On 11-4-2020........Tomb Raider in 8.5 (A++) Wata grade sold for $3,350 on eBay

On 2-1-2021..........Tomb Raider in 9.2 (A+) Wata grade listed for starting bid of $7,000 on eBay and one smart bidder sniped it at the end.

On 3-8-2021...........Tomb Raider in 9.4 (A) Wata grade listed for $12,995 buy-it-now on eBay and was quickly pulled before it sold.  I suspect this might have been the one that just sold in the Heritage auction, but I don't know for sure.

On 3-16-2021..........CIB (opened but complete in box) Tomb Raider in 9.4 Wata grade sold for $1,725 on eBay

At this point, people seemed to realize that eBay wasn't the best place to sell this type of game, and listings/sales dried up completely there (I think the Heritage sales that followed showed that they were correct).

On 4-2-2021........... Tomb Raider in 8.0 (A) Wata grade sold on Heritage for $26,400

on 7-11-2021............Tomb Rider in 9.4 (A) Wata grade sold on Heritage for $144,000

So......in the last nine months of watching eBay and all of the major auction houses for listings of this game......I've seen one sealed ungraded copy........one opened (CIB) graded copy......one 8.0 graded copy........one 8.5 graded copy...........one 9.2 graded copy..........and one 9.4 graded copy.

(Almost forgot......Metropolis has a 6.5 graded copy listed for sale on their website right now for $20,000).

It may not stay that way......and the recent Heritage sales may start shaking more loose......but for right now, it's just not an easy game to find in high grade condition (Wata 9.0/VGA 85 or higher).  Especially when you compare it to a lot of other popular franchises that have dozens or hundreds of high grade copies that still sell for huge amounts.

Another thing people will have to consider if they have a high grade raw or VGA copy of this game they want to sell on Heritage.  First, they're going to have to get it graded by Wata (Heritage does not sell raw or VGA graded games).  And now that these recent sales have happened, they are going to have to use either the Speed Run or Warp Zone grading tier with Wata......which includes a 2% charge of the games value in addition to the grading fee for any game valued over $2,500.  Which means getting high grade copies of this game slabbed by Wata is no longer going to be inexpensive.

 

Yeah, I feel like a real insufficiently_thoughtful_person for some of the stuff I sold years ago. I was doing a pretty good job finding sealed copies of rarities and flipping them graded for 20-50x what I paid, but I can see the market has really matured in the last few years. I still have 8 or 9 long boxes of sealed games that are mostly not graded, but most of them are Xbox/Ps2 era and up with only 1 or 2 long boxes of older type stuff. I currently have a decent 20 game package at VGA with Assassins creed first print for Xbox and PS3, a few early CODs, Bioshock 1s, Halo GOTYs, Uncharted 1s, Dead Space 1s, Shadow of the Colossus, NBA Jam 1st for Genesis, Bill and Teds for NES and some other random stuff. I will have to go through and see what I have that needs to be graded. I hope CGC designs a good case and the value is there. That can only help alleviate all this backlog everywhere. 

[darkstar]

13 hours ago, carcrawfordfan said:

That is the craziest sale imo. I sold a VGA graded copy 5-6 years ago. IIRC it was an 85 or 90 and it probably sold for 2k or so. I will probably go jump off a bridge soon as a result. 10K I could believe, 100k+ is staggering. 

You could buy sealed, non-graded copies on eBay for 300 bucks or less up until 2 years ago, although they were rarely listed. The greatest hits version was 20 bucks. Pretty sure a good portion of those recent Heritage wins were bought from people outside the world of video game collecting. You can forget ballpark, the results aren't even on the same planet from earlier sales data. Moving the decimal over 2 places from any previous sale is incomprehensible. 

[darkstar]

7 hours ago, Bronty said:

Domo:

I’ve been collecting for 20 years.   There just aren’t that many sealed TR 1s.   That price could hold up.

FF7 error NOT first print for the same money seems really stupid.   I’m not confident that’s repeatable. The only reason that used to be the desired version is because people used to think incorrectly that it was the first print. 
 

But we will see, who the hell knows with any of it anymore. 

The video game market does a very bad job at separating printings or variants or errors from one another and being able to recognize and assign diffrerent values as a result. Look at eBay sold listings for any Grand Theft Auto game on PS2. The reprints were selling for stupid money for awhile because the market wasn't differentiating between the printings. Same thing continues to happen with the Game Quest Direct reprints and countless other titles. 

[darkstar]

4 hours ago, Broke as a Joke said:

Does a GPA type website exist for the video game market currently?  

An accurate one? No. 

[darkstar]

4 hours ago, october said:

Anyone know if WATA is planning to introduce a census? For video game collectors who have been around for 10+ years, they might be able to estimate the number of sealed copies left with some degree of accuracy, but for newbies? I would be terrified someone found unopened cases of this stuff, and are rationing them out over a period of months/years. No transparency as to pop numbers right now. 

The running theory is that they aren't going to have a census anytime soon for two reasons. One, they don't want a population report out there during what is effectively the infancy of grading because it could easily destroy the market's current expectations regarding rarity. The other is that a census is a significant feature/improvement that could be introduced at a later date and used as an excuse to raise WATA prices. 

[Bronty]

13 minutes ago, darkstar said:

The video game market does a very bad job at separating printings or variants or errors from one another and being able to recognize and assign diffrerent values as a result. Look at eBay sold listings for any Grand Theft Auto game on PS2. The reprints were selling for stupid money for awhile because the market wasn't differentiating between the printings. Same thing continues to happen with the Game Quest Direct reprints and countless other titles. 

the truth is we continue to discover facts and new variants all the time.    Its been an ongoing puzzle for many years.    Comic books say 'second printing'; its easy.   Games just have what are often the slightest changes to packaging over the production runs, much much harder and different for every title.    Great strides have been made.    Originally, no one understood why different variants existed nor was there any price difference on different variants.    That has changed hugely.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Bronty

[Bronty]

20 minutes ago, darkstar said:

You could buy sealed, non-graded copies on eBay for 300 bucks or less up until 2 years ago, although they were rarely listed. The greatest hits version was 20 bucks. Pretty sure a good portion of those recent Heritage wins were bought from people outside the world of video game collecting. You can forget ballpark, the results aren't even on the same planet from earlier sales data. Moving the decimal over 2 places from any previous sale is incomprehensible. 

In the six months leading up to this sale, a couple of friends of mine that have VGA 95 copies could have had 200-250k for their copies each, and turned it down.   There was private heat happening and I did expect a big result (500k?).    Sure didn't expect 1.5m.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Bronty

[Jo Seph]

2 hours ago, Bronty said:

a couple of friends of mine that have VGA 95 copies

I think there’s only 2-3 95s on the VGA census. Cool that your friends own the only ones haha

[Bronty]

Just now, Jo Seph said:

I think there’s only 2-3 95s on the VGA census. Cool that your friends own the only ones haha

I think there's more like 5 or 6  IIRC.

[Domo Arigato]

 

1 hour ago, darkstar said:

15 hours ago, carcrawfordfan said:

16 hours ago, darkstar said:

The important thing to note here is what the other titles sold for across all platforms, especially the ones that weren't 9.8s. Like the original Tomb Raider for Playstation selling for close to 150k. 

That is the craziest sale imo. I sold a VGA graded copy 5-6 years ago. IIRC it was an 85 or 90 and it probably sold for 2k or so. I will probably go jump off a bridge soon as a result. 10K I could believe, 100k+ is staggering. 

You could buy sealed, non-graded copies on eBay for 300 bucks or less up until 2 years ago, although they were rarely listed. The greatest hits version was 20 bucks. Pretty sure a good portion of those recent Heritage wins were bought from people outside the world of video game collecting. You can forget ballpark, the results aren't even on the same planet from earlier sales data. Moving the decimal over 2 places from any previous sale is incomprehensible. 

This.  The market has definitely changed over the last 2 years.....and especially over the last 6 months or so.  

A year ago in July of 2020, the world record (publicly known) sale for a video game was $114,000.

In November 2020 it was $156,000.

In April 2021 it was $660,000.

On July 9th, 2021 it was $870,000..

And finally on July 11th it's $1,560,000.

Granted, those games were highly desirable, early production sealed copies, and extremely rare (for the most part) in high grade.  But now a ton of games that were cheap to buy just a year or two ago no longer are.  And many have increased in price drastically. 

The Facebook game collector groups I belong to have a lot of long time collectors in them......and many of them have been chiming in about the games they've been buying at these auctions (and some of them appear to have deep pockets).  I'm sure there are buyers outside the world of video game collecting driving some of this.......I just don't know how much.  And are they driving up prices directly at all levels or just at the uppermost ones (which could, in turn, indirectly drive prices up at the lower levels)?  Who knows?

 

[Bronty]

8 minutes ago, Domo Arigato said:

 

This.  The market has definitely changed over the last 2 years.....and especially over the last 6 months or so.  

A year ago in July of 2020, the world record (publicly known) sale for a video game was $114,000.

In November 2020 it was $156,000.

In April 2021 it was $660,000.

On July 9th, 2021 it was $870,000..

And finally on July 11th it's $1,560,000.

 

 

you're right, good summary

[AJLewandoski]

5 minutes ago, Bronty said:

I think there's more like 5 or 6  IIRC.

Bronty where do all the old Nintendo Age guys hang out? I miss seeing your box art collection, the Nolans and their protos, and the myriad of other shenanigans that went along with those boards.