OK is it really worth getting the VGA GRADING ?

[gbpxl]

I would question their ability to truly tell the difference. There are plenty of people who have access to sealing hardware, and if it came down to making hundreds of dollars by resealing rare boxes with a big rock inside, I think there are people who could pull one over on them. Of course, the buyer will never open the thing and so will be forever in the dark about it, and no one will be there to call out VGA or WATA on their errors.

--Zero

Has that ever actually happened though? I imagine VGA is extremely meticulous with verifying fakes

and your point made me remember something Ive done on my Youtube channel where I weigh legitimate cartridges so you have an ides of what a legit game should be. they should do that with sealed games so as that its one more way to verify authenticity

I used to watch Pawn Stars a lot and people would bring in documents from former presidents and what not and some of it would turn out to be fake. very easy to fake these things. its even worse in the coin collecting hobby. lots of scumbags out there

[ianoid]

I would question their ability to truly tell the difference. There are plenty of people who have access to sealing hardware, and if it came down to making hundreds of dollars by resealing rare boxes with a big rock inside, I think there are people who could pull one over on them. Of course, the buyer will never open the thing and so will be forever in the dark about it, and no one will be there to call out VGA or WATA on their errors.

--Zero

This is absolutely a thing for all grading companies. Grading and slabbing is a matter of trust. We have to trust in the veracity of their validation process. They are not infallible.

VGA cut their teeth on comics and toys. Expanding into video games is not a big reach. WATA is a new company, but I wouldn't necessarily expect them to make more errors.

There are some things that will be easier to grade as sealed confidently side they are harder to fake, like H-seams for Nintendo stuff. They do better with items they have seen before. If you are the first to send them something to grade, it's easier to fake. They use previous items as reference points. I'm sure both companies keep a database for their graders (of which there are probably less than 10 in the world).

I have sent stuff in that has been returned as not original seal, and I agreed with their call. I learned from that loss. Glue seal is the main problem. Often people reseal with double sided tape, which was what they detected and I hadn't thought about.

I believe WATA keeps better records (more public at least), which could matter if a large lot is found to be fake, but I think that's a theoretical advantage.

As most of you probably know, the graded market has accelerated in the last year or two with WATA coming on the scene and more aggressively courting the commodity comic buyers.

I continue to have stuff graded for myself, but I can't use WATA because nearly everything I send in is not a standard size, since I'm grading software in non-standard packaging. I try not to end up with spare graded stuff because outside of Nintendo and Sega, there isn't much of a market for it.

[gbpxl]

I would question their ability to truly tell the difference. There are plenty of people who have access to sealing hardware, and if it came down to making hundreds of dollars by resealing rare boxes with a big rock inside, I think there are people who could pull one over on them. Of course, the buyer will never open the thing and so will be forever in the dark about it, and no one will be there to call out VGA or WATA on their errors.

--Zero

I dont know if i replied this or not but this is where knowing weights comes in handy. coins get faked all the time too but if you know what the exact weight is supposed to be its gonna be too much effort for a counterfeiter to spend all day going through his rock garden looking for the perfect rock thatll weigh exactly the same the contents of a sealed game

[Ryudo]

I want to break open every fucking case of these graded games. Games are meant to be played. Fuck this shit.

[Niku-Sama]

well ok i get that games are meant to be played thing how ever...

When you have a game that your pretty sure there were more made than the number of consoles the game was made for i think its ok to slab a few.

as an example:
I have a sealed copy of pole position for the 2600. Whos going to complain that i put that crap ass game in a plastic box? i'm fairly certain there are thousands more out there that are perfectly playable, more than i can say for the amount of playable ataris systems out there.