So I'm going to have to buy THEM out to put a stop to this madness? Greeeaaaaaaat.....

Wow… that is so friggin’ shady.

And they bought Goldin Auctions too....so many fees to collect from unsuspecting timmys, so little time

quote from www.obscuregamers.com/threads/video-game-grading-do-you-think-its-a-scam.2683/ Then we have the PAWNSTARS scam in which a rare copy of MARIO was brought in which had been sold to a private group of investors. In comes WATA trying to advertise. Low and behold weeks later it appeared on Heritage Auctions and two weeks after that they started selling WATA graded games. The issue? Jim Halperin, founder and co-chairman of Heritage Auctions is one of the investors of the MARIO cart meaning they're using this to fleece customers into paying for a fancy shiny box. Oh did I mention the investor on TV is involved in WATA? yep the dude on PAWNSTARS trying to sell had WATA come in and he was already working for/with them and then magically the other party that invested happens to own Hertitage Auctions and is staff at WATA. This whole Super Mario Bros sticker seal is the biggest scam in game collecting. It’s a pump and dump hype show. The game was originally sold privately to a group of investors, one of which was Richard Lecce, who I assume is the guy shown here trying to “sell” this game for $1M. Another person in the investor group was Jim Halperin, founder and co-chairman of Heritage Auctions. Wouldn’t you know it, this game was purchased on February 6th, setting the world record for a graded game when it sold for just over $100k. I have no doubt you heard about it because the press was all over it. Whoa, what a coincidence, Jim Halperin’s auction house was also set to start auctioning Wata graded and slabbed video games two weeks later on February 21st! Serendipity, baby! This Deniz Kahn guy, President of Wata Games, has also been closely involved in ensuring the public was aware of this amazing WATA GRADED game. Nearly every article about the game mentions him and here he is, on Pawn Stars, giving his unbiased professional opinion. So what does Deniz Kahn get out of this? I’m glad you asked! His company, Wata, that meticulously graded this hype train video game, was just starting out. VGA has been grading games for quite some time already, but in came Wata as the newcomer and what better way to make a name for yourself than being the company that graded the most valuable video game to date?! Oh, and remember our buddy, Jim Halperin of Heritage Auctions? Well, it just so happens that he’s also a member of the Wata advisory board! Neat! Interestingly, con Kahn knew that if he were involved in the record-breaking transaction, it would raise eyebrows. He even says so in this article: “I would have loved nothing more than to be a part-owner, and even though this game was already certified, I didn't want the remote perception of any conflict of interest due to my position at Wata.” Well you don’t say! So how is this any different than a member of your board of advisors being a part-owner? Oh, and shouldn’t it be made apparent that the original seller was also an advisor to Wata? “Wata had no part of the transaction, Kahn said. The seller, a collector who has occasionally advised Wata in a volunteer capacity...” Ok, Kahn. So you’re telling me that Wata had nothing to do with the private transaction that occurred between a seller, who has been a Wata advisor, and buyers (investors), one of which is listed on the Wata website as a member of the board of advisors. I wouldn’t be surprised if the seller is listed there too, but I can’t tell because their name is being withheld due to “privacy concerns.” Yeah... ok. Wata has everything to gain from this propaganda and it also has Wata’s fingerprints all over it. Kahn seems to think that because he personally didn’t put his personal money into the transaction, it somehow washes his hands of involvement. Yeah, no. So yeah, going back to our boy Richard here... you know, Investor #2. Well, he knew he wasn’t going to get $1M for this game. In fact, Richard was never going to sell this game at all. You see, Pawn Stars is a scripted show (GASP!) and the items brought in have already been selected to be featured and prepped. This was Richard and Deniz going on a publicity/marketing tour... and it worked, at least within the community, because everyone is talking about it. He’s artificially inflating the “value” of the game by talking about it. Unbiased Deniz also achieves the pump by stating he knows of offers as high as $300k that have been turned down. Sorry Deniz, private offers from other advisors to Wata don’t count! How convenient is it that Richard Lecce invested his money into the pot to complete a private transaction between people heavily involved with Wata and now he’s hyping up the value! I wonder if he will eventually try to sell this priceless artifact at a highly inflated price than the pittance he initially put in to purchase it? Man, he might even stand to make money off this dog and pony show!

@@stephanel6637 Well, aren't you going to distribute this evidence to anti-scam sites or whoever? Who knows, you could be known as the guy who brought down one of the biggest scams in history.

PatMath 😂

If you think a sealed mario 64 is more valuable than a GOLD NWC, congratulations, you drank the kool aid, the scam worked on you

@@supyo1 he has some.

Well said.

This ain't even a bubble. It's some sort of insiders scheme between Heritage and WATA. Not sure if they're owned by the same people or what?!

I think for the people that collected before the “sealed craze”, games like Little Samson and Stadium Events will still be expensive, loose or cib. But the common games that are sealed (like Mario 64 and Zelda) will definitely plummet in value. Spider-Man for Atari was a small example of that. Watch it happen hardcore with the Mario’s, Zelda’s, and Final Fantasy’s.

@@adamhoffoss5768 like insider trading kinda 🤔?

@@pika23 no not like insider trading. Collusion would be the correct word.

@@BoboBreez thanks!

You’re right. There absolutely no way to know if there is even a rock inside the box or something. Especially with shady organizations like Wata.

They'll never know how few A-presses will be needed to complete this copy!

you can download a rom or buy an copy for 20 any day

I guess I'm just old. N64 still seems fairly new to me. The 360 is still, like brand new to me. Ya, I guess I'm old.

I mean that's the problem with video games as a collectible in general, even the very old stuff is barely 40 years old (at least if you only consider home consoles and not pong machines for example and even they are only 50 years old), so almost non of what is around is really that rare or special at this point and should never command the prices it did at that auction.

​@@uselessDMtime doesn't determine whether something is rare. How many of them there are determines the rarity.

Yep. Lol

Last I checked using a fake bidder (schill) in order to drive up the bidding price of your auction is fraud !!! I hope Heritage Auctions is investigated at the very least !!!

“So why? He pissed me off. Normally I care more about keeping murderers and rapists off the streets. Not protecting some fancy pictures and things. Things that are only worth a lot to some very silly rich people…” - The Thomas Crown Affair - Detective McCann (paraphrase)

No CTR's are filed for these transactions. As far as I know.

Like Hunter Biden selling his artwork. Nevermind politics or which side different PPL are on,his paintings & their prices are total BS 😆.

Haha maybe I could finally get Fire Emblem on Gamecube for a reasonable price.

Disown them. Anyone that greedy does not deserve children.

Mate, go home and get your games and store them yourself. There will be a LOT of this going on.

It absolutely is laundering.

@@supyo1 Person X has $500,000 in dirty money. Person Y works at the auction house and has a personal relationship with Person X. A game (or whatever valuable item) is put up for auction and is artificially inflated to an absurd amount in auction in the name of Person X whether the item exists or not. Person X uses the dirty money to buy a clean collectable and Person Y returns money to Person X. Ipso facto -- dirty money becomes clean money. (I probably described this poorly, but you get the gist. If you still don't get it, look up 'high end art auction money laundering' or something.)

They are real sales sadly. High end manipulators selling to other high end manipulators using wata and HA as middlemen

@@__1201 they vet buyers on the high end and reserve the right to sue them for non-payment

The sales are real, it's just money being exchanged between friends for the sake boosting up Wata's and Heritage's profile.

@@__1201 The auction house will know who the buyers are, and they can sue them for non-payment. It's not like Ebay where people can troll bid to prevent a sale from happening.

Game isn't even rare theres gotta be plenty of people with this game unopened what's so special about this copy? Absolutely nothing.

Give u .99p

yeah because the art world isnt known for those scams, lol. Oh this painting suddenly became worth 2 million dollars because of X person bought it and suddenly the artist art work skyrocket in value - because people wanna try and grab everything he has made "just in case" and that painting can now be used for borrow large sum of money or insurance scams (oh no my 2 million dollar painting got stolen) Its well known tons of people do "money laundry" through art.

they are idiots if they think they can make money on it iin the future

@@Security848 nope.. they are laundering money.. no idiots here

They arent hyping cause the have a lot of sealed games sitting in a warehouse it's hyping the need to get everything encased in plastic and graded by WATA only

probably some micro scratches on the foil

Nothing. All that shit is an absolute joke

Its probably if the machine fucked the shrink wrap, the sticker seal isn't complete blah blah blah.

@@badfanedits same with comics. I've seen, mainly modern comics, graded a 9.8 I would have passed on at the comic shop.

I would imagine there's much more 9.8's of first print OoT's than they are of SM64 out there.

Nah, listen to the whole thing. Wata's making bank on the fair market value increase in graded games and heritage auctions is making money hand over fist with their auction fee's. The point was to make everything sell for stupid prices which they've now achieved. It's a good old fashioned scam and it's working perfectly.

And made them greedy and also turned them into assholes. You forgot that.

Real?

Really? Which ones?

Can confirm disk is made of gold. Was opened to check and resealed.

@@Kevinsyel Nice of them to check and then factory seal it. Ahhh...... mint.....

I'm no seal collector and I'm going to play devil's advocate here. The ratio between a sealed copy of this and a loose copy is insane. Why wouldn't you try to profit off of of a sealed game if you have one in possession? No one's buying a sealed copy of these retro games to open them to play. These people are treating this like a piece or art now.

@@thelastdragon5551 I can appreciate treating these games like a work of art, but you don’t put the Mona Lisa in a Walmart frame, if this truly was about the artistic value, why would you want it in that ridiculous wata case, it looks gaudy as hell and does not display well at all, I despise this graded trend that’s happening

@@PatrickThomasBrady I would say having it WATA graded means the right people did their due diligence to verify it’s authentic and not resealed. That means more to the buyer than having it in an ugly case.

@sonikchilidog You just don’t know that. Especially that they usually stay anonymous.

@@thelastdragon5551 except they’ve already been caught grading obvious fake games that real gamers can easily spot, you know, the people who actually know the gaming industry and its history far better than this “official” grading company, I’m sure people who are looking to spend this kind of money on games as an art would look into this and wouldn’t trust a company like this, unless you just don’t care and are looking to pump these prices up and make a killing

At least the NWC is rare and we know how many there are. They made millions of SM 64 and there's thousands and thousands of sealed one.