Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION - A Must Watch! 18 18

[kav]

On 8/25/2021 at 3:05 PM, valiantman said:

I get no thrill from owning company stocks either.  
But, if I owned a small fraction of Action Comics #1, 
I'd smile when I walked past the poster in my game room.
I'd smile when I saw a news article with Action #1.
Ultimately, isn't life itself really just a tally of smiles vs. frowns? 

If you want to own a fraction of action-this is the way to go!

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 8/25/2021 at 5:01 PM, Bronty said:

a) it was not a record for a game sale, if you interpret his statement to mean all games.

b) it was not a record for a super mario bros, if you interpret his statement to mean all super marios bros.

c) it was not the same copy of super mario, if you interpret his statement as that specific copy.

Any which way you interpret it, he's wrong.

Goodbye.

This attempt to discredit the video (which you didn’t even watch) makes you sound like an invested apologist....

[MatterEaterLad]

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. 

 

[Namtak]

[kav]

Seems to be 2 camps here:
What they are doing is wrong.
What they are doing isnt wrong because everyone else is doing it and grow up.

Edited August 25, 2021 by kav

[comicwiz]

On 8/25/2021 at 6:41 PM, MatterEaterLad said:

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. 

 

Meyer apparently stated he resigned in January from his position from the above tweet screenshot, perhaps in a desperate attempt to make what he did seem less of an issue. But in actual fact, he sold 355 games at Heritage between Nov 2019 through to Nov 2020.

30 other games sold after Feb 2021, through to July 2021.

So out of the 385 listings (not sure if any are relists of the same games listed over 3 years), he sold the majority of the games while he held the position of Director.

Regardless, these all would have needed to have been graded prior to them appearing for sale, so that would place them being graded while he was still with WATA.

[innocuous]

On 8/25/2021 at 3:41 PM, MatterEaterLad said:

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. 

 

This could never happen in comics, I PROMISE.

[Namtak]

On 8/25/2021 at 7:03 PM, kav said:

Seems to be 2 camps here:
What they are doing is wrong.
What they are doing isnt wrong because everyone else is doing it and grow up.

 

[MatterEaterLad]

On 8/25/2021 at 5:06 PM, comicwiz said:

Meyer apparently stated he resigned in January from his position from the above tweet screenshot, perhaps in a desperate attempt to make what he did seem less of an issue. But in actual fact, he sold 355 games at Heritage between Nov 2019 through to Nov 2020.

30 other games sold after Feb 2021, through to July 2021.

So out of the 385 listings (not sure if any are relists of the same games listed over 3 years), he sold the majority of the games while he held the position of Director.

Regardless, these all would have needed to have been graded prior to them appearing for sale, so that would place them being graded while he was still with WATA.

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

[WolverineX]

On 8/25/2021 at 6:33 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

This attempt to discredit the video (which you didn’t even watch) makes you sound like an invested apologist....

Agreed. It's hard to take any of the boardies seriously that says they only watch a short segment of it and then proceeds to immediately discredit it.  

[MasterChief]

On 8/25/2021 at 11:14 AM, Bronty said:

They want attention and if they get sued in the process perhaps it would serve them right.

Maybe that's exactly what needs to happen. They say the discovery phase is a hell of a thing.

Tin foil hat conspiracy theorists for years accused Bill Mastro of shilling his own Mastro Auctions and selling altered and restored baseball cards without disclosure. To anyone who would listen, he vehemently denied all of it, every single time. Many of his supporters and customers believed him and in his company. Yet the Feds got involved and Mastro was convicted of the very same thing he was denying, including admitting under oath that he himself trimmed the Gretzky Honus Wagner card to increase its value and prevent it from looking like it had aged.

At this point, perhaps what we need are new conspiracy theories because all the old conspiracy theories have come true.

[WolverineX]

On 8/25/2021 at 7:30 PM, MasterChief said:

Maybe that's exactly what needs to happen. They say the discovery phase is a hell of a thing.

Tin foil hat conspiracy theorists for years accused Bill Mastro of shilling his own Mastro Auctions and selling altered and restored baseball cards without disclosure. To anyone who would listen, he vehemently denied all of it, every single time. Many of his supporters and customers believed him and in his company. Yet the Feds got involved and Mastro was convicted of the very same thing he was denying, including admitting under oath that he himself trimmed the Gretzky Honus Wagner card to increase its value and prevent it from looking like it had aged.

At this point, perhaps what we need are new conspiracy theories because all the old conspiracy theories have come true.

Yes it's always easy to dismiss something as conspiracy theory when in reality it turns out to be the actual truth.

[djzombi]

On 8/25/2021 at 7:10 PM, innocuous said:

This could never happen in comics, I PROMISE.

I see what you did there

[Domo Arigato]

You guys can keep making all the excuses you want........but this is exactly like CGC shooting the Dentist and stealing all of his books.  Then giving them all CGC 11.0 grades......putting them up for auction.....and then buying them all back at super inflated prices.  Then taking those books to a convention and forcing people at knife point to buy them all at double the current prices.  And then kicking some puppies...........and I don't mean like 2 or 3 puppies........I'm talking like 9 puppies.

Oh.....and prostitutes.  Having a bunch of sex on piles of money with prostitutes to celebrate.

It's exactly like that. 

(Yes, I may be exaggerating a bit on the puppies, since they may not be able to find 9 before their puppy kicking desires wane.....but the rest is spot on.)

 

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

What a Good Place we have here..

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 8/25/2021 at 6:05 PM, valiantman said:

I get no thrill from owning company stocks either.  
But, if I owned a small fraction of Action Comics #1, 
I'd smile when I walked past the poster in my game room.
I'd smile when I saw a news article with Action #1.
Ultimately, isn't life itself really just a tally of smiles vs. frowns? 

I wouldn't dream of telling you not to feel that way.  I'm just telling you that a lot of people wouldn't feel that way, including me.

I get a tremendous number of smiles out of this hobby -- I would want to own the books I own regardless of whether I (or more likely my heirs) could make money on them as investments.  So you can imagine how much I'm enjoying the books knowing that they keep appreciating in value and make up a legitimately significant portion of my overall investment portfolio.  But the whole point of collecting is to actually collect ... I don't think a reasonable person would call what RallyD is offering as a chance to collect, merely a chance to speculate in its purest form.

[COI]

There is a middle ground between tin-foil-hat-squad conspiracy theorist, and cutting edge investigative journalism. 

I said this in the other thread, but I'll give Karl the benefit of the doubt and say that he did a reasonable job with the information he has, attempting to understand a market that is nearly inscrutable even to veteran collectors. And he does present a lot of facts, pointing to potential red flags, conflicts of interest, etc. The problem is, he strings these facts together to construct an argument using bubble gum and melted cheese.

At about 10 minutes in, he starts to lose me. He points to the launch site of WATA highlighting an established relationship between WATA and Heritage; more specifically, that WATA games will be featured in an upcoming Heritage auction. He then says :"this doesn't make sense. The entire point of certification is to guarantee authenticity and quality, but a guarantee is worthless if you haven't established a history of accurate work...why would Heritage auctions trust a business who hasn't done any business to begin with?" Ignoring the obvious reasoning error here, he's constructing the narrative that WATA's existence and relationship with Heritage is primarily market manipulation, based on the fact that Halperin is an advisor and that no similar relationship with VGA, a company that has been grading games far longer, exists. Through this lens, he characterizes all of the articles/interviews featuring the owner of WATA as being part of an orchestrated campaign of market manipulation.

He actually flashes the phrase "MARKET MANIPULATION ALERT" in red letters, to make sure the viewer interprets everything the WATA owner says in the least charitable way possible. Timestamps: 12:15, 13:02, 13:15, 15:00, and so on. And I'll save you the trouble; the "manipulation" at those timestamps is the founder of WATA essentially saying 'hey, games are awesome, graded games are desirable, they're only going to go up in price, they'll hit millions of dollars, etc'. So the guy who starts a grading company believes in the viability of the games he's grading as long term investments, and wants to encourage the collecting community to embrace WATA and send games his way. SHOCKING.

Then he points to the SHEER AUDACITY of the WATA founder making multiple appearances on Pawn Starts to promote games and his company. At 14:15 he says

"the point is that there was a very large, very effective campaign to establish WATA as the authority in video games, despite having only been created. It was critical that WATA be seen as the be-all, end-all in video game grading, because then the words of its CEO...would be more effective in increasing the value of games".

Then he says

"Kahn would continue to ABUSE his authority as the head of WATA games for the next few years, appearing in countless articles and interviews, always pumping up the price."

Abusing authority? What does that mean? Who is he abusing? Isn't he just promoting his business? What does VGAs existence 10 years prior have to do with the legitimacy or trustworthiness of WATA? The reason this guy has a relationship with Heritage, multiple appearances on Pawn Stars, and is included in articles written about these record sales, is that he's trying to market his business. Can the guy who made this video clearly articulate the difference between marketing and market manipulation? Oh he's on PAWN STARS! Not PAWN STARS!!! My world is shaken.

This is just the first 15-25 minutes of the video. I could keep going, because the rest of the video unfolds similarly. He presents a lot of interesting facts and reasonable questions, which he then rolls up in a messy, sloppy spit-ball of an argument. People are conflating the thoroughness of his fact-finding with the strength of his overall argument. He talks about the subjective nature of grading, pedigree collection designations, "true collectors" vs speculators, and all kinds of stuff that seasoned collectors of cards, comics, games and toys already understand, and present them in the context of video games as somehow exemplifying WATA market manipulation. And he uses lots of evocative language to make fairly serious claims that neither the facts or his underlying argument warrant. 

Again, great job on the fact-finding, but facts don't constitute evidence unless they're wrapped up in a solid argument, and the arguments here are swiss cheese.

[Domo Arigato]

On 8/25/2021 at 6:16 PM, MatterEaterLad said:

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

 

On 8/25/2021 at 3:59 PM, Bronty said:

Dain was GOING to be involved with wata as the IT head.   He LOST INTEREST in games, and didn't want to move to Colorado with his family in the end, and therefore, to my knowledge, never did sweet diddly bupkis with wata except be listed as a director prior to his very-close-to-immediate exit.

 

 

[jaybuck43]

I go away for a few months to deal with work related stuff and I come back to this fun.  Y'all looking for some tin foil?  Well, grab a Costco size amount for what I'm about to lay out.  

November 2018 WATA and Heritage announce a partnership.  WATA will grade games for heritage and heritage will exclusively sell WATA certified games in their upcoming auctions, finally entering the video game market.  https://scoop.previewsworld.com/Home/4/1/73/1014?articleID=221058

January 16th 2019 Heritage enters the graded video game business, selling 25 graded Wata Games.  Their big sale?  $3,360 for a 9.4 collectors choice Legend of Zelda.  Cool.  Everything else sells for significantly less (300s or so) https://comics.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news/certified-vintage-video-games-make-big-debut-at-heritage-auctions.s?releaseId=3570

A month later?  A "private" seller (It's not hard to find out who this person is) sets a record transaction for the largest single game sale in history.  $100,150 for a sealed copy of Super Mario Brothers https://kotaku.com/sealed-copy-of-super-mario-bros-sells-for-a-record-bre-1832635737 The buyer?  Jim Halperin, Rich Lecee, and Zac Gieg.  Does that first name mean anything?  Of course it does! The founder and co-chairman of Heritage bought the game that they then used to announce the fact that they are selling video games!  So Heritage is buying a game and setting an all time record and signaling that this is a huge area to invest in.  Not to mention, the release was one week before the first signature auction featuring video games at a Heritage auction https://www.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news/copy-of-super-mario-bros.-video-game-sets-world-record-price-of-100-150.s?releaseId=3583 

Now remember, HA OWNS this copy.  As soon as this happens, well guess what games start coming out of the woodwork. Heritage auctions off an 8.0 hangtag for $40,000 (not worth anywhere near that amount prior to the announcement https://comics.ha.com/itm/video-games/nintendo/super-mario-bros-hangtab-3-code-mid-production-wata-80-a-sealed-nes-nintendo-1985-usa/a/7229-93029.s?ic16=ViewItem-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-PreviousPricesHeritage-081514.  And don't forget, HA takes 29% of that sale (19% BP and 10% seller fee)  A month later?  They sell a hangtag 9.4 for $114,000 https://kotaku.com/super-mario-bros-sells-at-auction-for-record-breaking-1844365096.  Now mind you, this is a "newer" copy then the record breaker they bought in February 2019, yet the record has ALREADY been broken  in about a year.  So January 2019 the best game out there can barely break 100 grand and suddenly under copies are going for more than that. Six months later? February 2021 and Heritage again breaks the record, this time selling a 9.6 Early production for $660,000 https://comics.ha.com/itm/video-games/super-mario-bros-wata-96-a-sealed-hangtab-1-code-mid-production-nes-nintendo-1985-usa/a/7242-93028.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515 

So where were these buyers?  Someone was willing to pay $660,000 but they couldn't contact the private seller 2 years earlier to buy that copy for $100,000? (that copy, though lower graded at 9.4 is an older version and therefore more desirable) They suddenly decided to jump into the market at 6 figures without being involved in this earlier?  O and it just so happens that Heritage sets the initial record and then starts breaking record after record where they take 30%.  Mind you their $33,000 investment into that first SMB has paid off massive dividends in that it brought other games out of the woodworks and got people buying (the $180,000 BP+commission on the latest SMB record breaker more than covers their investment in buying the first copy).  So, Heritage pumps up the value of a market (no game ever broke $100,000 before Heritage paid it), immediately enters said market, and profits off of the higher BPs it now sees.  

Flame away.  

[Domo Arigato]

On 8/25/2021 at 7:44 PM, jaybuck43 said:

So where were these buyers? 

The same place as all the other buyers that have been setting records in cards, comics, coins, etc, etc, etc all over the world in numerous auctions conducted by various auction houses?