SHOULD THERE BE A GRADING SYSTEM FOR FACTORY SEALED GAMES??

[dj_spryte]

I've been looking around, and noticed there's grading systems for sports cards, Magic cards, action figures, Transformers and such. What I want to discuss is, should there be one for factory sealed games? With prices for sealed NES or SNES games increasing and becoming more of a collectable, i wish somone would come up with a grading system so that collector's could get their games inspected, checked for signs of reseals and even weighed. I know there are some people out there that think collecting sealed games is stupid blah blah blah but then why not open up 1960 GI Joe action figure and play it? Same thing I find.

I mean, if you could grade Transformer boxes and Magic Cards, i'm sure it wouldn't be so much different for Vintage video games. Could it?

[Bronty-2]

Video games aren't big enough yet. It'll happen but not yet. You would be hard pressed to find sealed individual NES and SNES sales over $1000. They happen but are rare.

Comics didn't get a grading system until certain comics were worth over a quarter mil.

Cards like magic you can't really count. Only reason they are graded is because it's just like grading baseball cards... if it wasn't for sports cards I guarantee you there would be no grading system for magic.

Toys I can't really speak to, I think it's a smaller market than comics or cards but still a lot bigger than games, at least for now.

There would be a ton of problems inherent in grading games. It wouldn't be a simple task. (the games are all different sizes, all sealed different ways, would need a way to incorporate non-sealed games into the grading, etc). So there have to be some big league cash sales before it ever happens. $1000 sales and maybe $5k to $10k grails like nwc and kizuna are not going to cut it.

Even more importantly, the big $ collector pool is way too shallow right now. Needs another 10 years. The average collector is far too young and doesn't earn nearly enough money yet.

[CosmicMonkey]

We really don't need anything like the AFA (action fig grading) in the gaming world.

[Bronty-2]

May not need it but it will eventually happen anyway. Just watch.

[GrandAmChandler]

We just started talking about this not even a month ago, please comment here:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=84159&highlight=grading

Locked due to discussion in progress