It begins.... Video game grading

[Ed Oscuro]

Actually, you can still have reseals - but they'll have to have a game inside.

Hard to say what the game actually will be, though - I didn't think X-Ray machines could resolve print on a label, after all. Sure, you can see the board internals, but usually that should only just narrow down which game it could be, as opposed to providing a definite ID.

[Sosage]

Actually, we're just pissed that they haven't started grading sealed food, the greatest collectible of all.

You can keep your sealed food. I buy food for eating, not storing. If there is any justice, your slabbed food is going to drive down the prices of my loose food.

...don't tell me neogamer is behind this.

[Icarus Moonsight]

Oh my! boatofcar is drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid! DON'T GIVE THEM A FOOTHOLD!

I think we sorta killed the messenger with neogamer... but, he was wanting in on it so, after all, he had it coming.

I'm gonna slab my house, cars, dogs and, hell why not, the wife! All that is mine and I love must be preserved and validated by an impartial 3rd party! It's only rational. Hell, I'm going to amend my Will to state that my cremated remains MUST be slabbed and graded too! Before my natural demise if possible! Can you contract a hit on yourself? Screw it, I'll just swan dive into the incinerator! FUN!

Pass the Kool-Aid! I brought some Everclear! I may even quit my job and slab my last paycheck! I'm sane... I swear. Don't touch my slabs! Itchy... Tasty.... SLABBS!!!!! BWAWWBWJFNEOPIUBPEONPON

[smork]

I've already sent my consoles off to be graded. I need my Vectrex in a slab, stat!

[Kevincal]

I'm curious as to what kind of people are grading the games at VGA... Can they even tell a reseal from an original!? It looks like people are paying big bucks for this stuff on eBay...

[Cinder6]

Just curious if you or anyone knows offhand because I'm too lazy to figure it out... How expensive does a book/coin have to be for it to be worthwhile? I guess I'm asking how much the grading costs.

This was sort of answered already, but I'll go into more detail. With coins, at least, it can be a sliding scale, based on the value of the coin, whether you want them to check the variant, whether it's an error coin, etc. PCGS is the main grader, though there are a few others (ICG, ANACS, etc.). The "regular" price is $30 for a single coin, and you have to either be a club member, or take it to an authorized dealer. Ultra-rare coins cost $500, and there's a scale in between. Mint errors are $40, variety attribution is an extra $20 on top of the normal grading fee.

For coins under $300, it's less than the regular price. Here's more info:

http://www.pcgs.com/grading_list.chtml

What was fun was getting a whole bunch of slabbed coins for $5 each I have no idea why somebody would slab a non-key date for a non-rare coin. It's just a waste of money at that point.

[demolition]

One other thing I was trying to bring up in another post is that the market for AFA graded toys is very manipulated. Most of the high end stuff is never sold at auction, only at fixed prices in Ebay stores by a few big dealers. I've sold a bunch of sealed 80's GI Joe figures on Ebay for a friend. Some we had AFA graded and some we did not. The really good stuff sold for around $500-$800 each whether they were graded or not but if you look in people's Ebay stores the same figures are $2000-$3000.

Hello all, new poster here, picked up the story on gamesniped and worked my way here. As an action figure collector, I share y-bot's concern about the market for AFA graded product. Indeed many AFA graded items never see the auction block and are instead offered at inflated prices in Ebay stores or fixed priced listings. Even if the item does not sell (which is often the case), the high prices create perceived value reinforcing the idea that AFA items sell for more.

Of greater concern is the relationship between AFA and the larger action figure dealers. Its no secret that Cloud City Collectibles popularized AFA grading. Its a little bit less clear the relationship between their former owner, Tom Derby and AFA. His name appears on a 2002 Certificate of Incorporation for AFA, available publicly from the state of Georgia here:

http://corp.sos.state.ga.us/imaging/12990948.pdf

I'm not going to speculate as to the extent of his involvement, but its fairly obvious he maintained some relationship with AFA beyond customer while at the same time a principal in Cloud City.

Of interest to video game collectors is that Tom Derby and Brian's Toys have teamed to under the banner of Premier Collectible Auctions. Their first live sale will take place July 25 & 26th in San Diego, CA and will include over 40 lots of sealed, graded video games. The auction catalog is available here -

http://www.premiercollect.com/catalog/full.zip

Given Derby's previous relationship with AFA, I wonder if his and Brian's Toys' entry into the game market might have influenced AFA's decision to begin grading video games.

DEMOLITION

[Bojay1997]

I doubt it. The parent company of VGA is AFA, the largest action figure grading company. They probably use the same guys to grade video games.

As far as detecting reseals, You can buy an x-ray machine that can see right through the cardboard. I wouldn't be surprised if they have one ready to go. I'm pretty sure Beckett grading services use them to grade unopened packs of cards.

I'm going to take the unpopular position on this one folks. I see this as a win-win for collectors and gamers. Collectors who collect sealed games can buy them on ebay without worrying that they're reseals, and gamers can still buy the games that they want to play. The only people who lose out here are gamers who only buy sealed games to open them. But hey, you can't please everybody.

I disagree that this is a win-win. When this happened in comic books, prices on the slabbed versions increased as did the prices on high grade copies as people snapped them up in the hopes of having them slabbed and making a profit with their flip. Over time, things stabilized a little, but my hopes that it would raise the profile of the hobby and result in rare items being found and sold for cheaper prices as supply increased never panned out. I don't think the impact will be as profound in video games as comics had already been popular collectibles for over 25 years at the time slabbing came into being, but the fact that videogames are a massive business could accelerate the whole timeframe.

[y-bot]

Hello all, new poster here, picked up the story on gamesniped and worked my way here. As an action figure collector, I share y-bot's concern about the market for AFA graded product. Indeed many AFA graded items never see the auction block and are instead offered at inflated prices in Ebay stores or fixed priced listings. Even if the item does not sell (which is often the case), the high prices create perceived value reinforcing the idea that AFA items sell for more.

Of greater concern is the relationship between AFA and the larger action figure dealers. Its no secret that Cloud City Collectibles popularized AFA grading. Its a little bit less clear the relationship between their former owner, Tom Derby and AFA. His name appears on a 2002 Certificate of Incorporation for AFA, available publicly from the state of Georgia here:

http://corp.sos.state.ga.us/imaging/12990948.pdf

I'm not going to speculate as to the extent of his involvement, but its fairly obvious he maintained some relationship with AFA beyond customer while at the same time a principal in Cloud City.

Of interest to video game collectors is that Tom Derby and Brian's Toys have teamed to under the banner of Premier Collectible Auctions. Their first live sale will take place July 25 & 26th in San Diego, CA and will include over 40 lots of sealed, graded video games. The auction catalog is available here -

http://www.premiercollect.com/catalog/full.zip

Given Derby's previous relationship with AFA, I wonder if his and Brian's Toys' entry into the game market might have influenced AFA's decision to begin grading video games.

DEMOLITION

I knew Cloud City and Brian's Toys would have some AFA connection. I posted about that auction the other day but since you have to sign up to get the pdf catalog I don't think anyone really looked at it. One thing that I think is going to change with sealed game values is an increase in price of non-Nintendo stuff. Right now sealed NES and SNES games can be worth way more than a mint boxed copy but with Atari 2600, Intellivision, Genesis, etc. there is much less difference in price between mint boxed and sealed. I feel like that's going to change real soon. I'll be interested to see how the stuff in that auction does. Also I think that catalog says that stuff is a "collection", yeah right.

y-bot

[kainemaxwell]

Considering someone is actually dumb enough to do this, they may not even be able to tell a real-seal from an original one.

Be great if someone discovered many of them were reseals...and then the ones behind this whine and try to dispute the facts with actual collectors.

[TonyTheTiger]

I have my own problems with the grading of anything as a sign of value. That mostly deals with the arbitrary nature of what I find is a market tolerated scam. But besides that, I'm wondering if this could be bad for the industry as a whole. At least in the short term.

Imagine a scenario similar to what happened to Marvel Comics a decade or so ago.

People start to see that graded games are fetching absurd prices. A lot of people then decide to become half-assed Sunday afternoon speculators. They start buying up new copies of games in hopes of getting very high grades and reselling for profit. Not a big deal, right? So a few speculators get burned.

But here's the problem. Imagine a smaller company like NIS or Atlus. If all of a sudden there's a huge spike in sales they'll start printing more copies to match the increased demand. So the next title gets 100,000 (random number) copies printed, the one after that gets 250,000, the one after that...350,000 and so on. Now what do you think is going to happen when all of these Sunday afternoon speculators find they're not making the killing they thought they would? They stop buying almost immediately. Now Atlus or NIS goes to release another title with a print run of 400,000 but lo and behold, there aren't thousands of people there to buy 3 or 4 copies of the same game. The publisher finds itself sitting on a grotesquely large supply of unsellable merchandise. That could drive a small publisher bankrupt.

[Slate]

And he wants $8.00 for a Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge, not even slabbed!. It does have that black Nintendo sleeve though.

I'd be freaking rich if I could get $8 per SMB/DH cart.

[guitargary75]

I don't know.

[Sotenga]

Y'know, my dummy self didn't even know what the big deal was with this entire racket at first glance. Then... my eyes caught the price of SMB3. I did a spit take without even drinking any water first. Yeah, eww. X_X

[Poofta!]

im with all of you this. i hate neo-gamer (if he had anything to do with this) and whoever did it.

cant wait till flop. i automatically hate everyone collecting 10s. freaking lame.


thing im afraid of is it will raise prices of non graded games since pple will be looking for mint copies to send to be graded. f--k f--k!@!!!!


worst thing to happen to our hobby yet.

[Icarus Moonsight]

It's only been about a week and already some people are looking at this whole situation in the most wrong way possible. A quote from a commenter @ Kotaku;

Maybe I should dig up my sealed Combat for the Atari 2600.

It has begun indeed. Better get in line now for your slabbed common as dirt and worth-less-than-the-$25-fee games! Whoopee!

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Icarus Moonsight]

In the context, yes, I'd say so. But, you know it's going to happen... a lot if not too much. Most expecting something they will never receive. I hope it all ends with that.

[Haoie]

Being non American, Ebay doesn't really affect me.

This doesn't happen on local auction sites, for the record.

[Vectorman0]

I believe Bronty-2 gave his support in getting this started, as far as the verification of sealed games. If I'm not mistaken he believed this was the inevitable and it's my assumption that if it was going to happen, he wanted to see it done right.

Bronty-2, if I'm mistaken, please correct me. I'd also like to hear your thoughts on the matter.



As far as my thoughts on the matter, I'm very disappointed to see this grading start, but I think this was going to happen sooner or later so I am trying to be at ease about it. I can only hope this fails miserably, as the last thing I want to see are good condition video games out of my reach because the prices have been inflated too high by profiteers.