Tim Atwood looking real smart right now.

Two things:

1.  I totally agree with you on the holy grail issue.  I had someone try to convince me, just the other day, that Burning Rangers for Sega Saturn was a holy grail.

2.  I think this one guy, the dentist, dropped 1 million by himself.  There is a group of collectors/investors that went in to buy some "famous" lot of games originally, and this group is now starting to sell them.

 

There is no question this was a speculative buy. None. This was not an instant collection purchase. It was an investment/speculation purchase. 

 

Getting your fingers bit and having to deal with halitosis on steroids?  



 

That's not the way I read it.

"With the additions from Denver, Naierman and a small group of partners called the Video Game Club obtained sticker-sealed, black-box copies of Nintendo Entertainment System games"

As I said, it takes money to make money.  But if you have that much money to drop on something like this, do you REALLY need anything extra?  I bet its just a bonus 'if it happens it happens but I can eat the MILLION loss, instead of yknow, buying real estate or something'.
 

I stand corrected.  Thank you.

 

I remember a time when most high end items traded privately. Now everyone wants the sales price documented so they can lure more unsuspecting speculators into the market to continue the Ponzi scheme. Surely I can't be the only one to notice this?

100k mario, article.
Someone spending 500k in video games, article.
1 million on games, article.
Go collect buying Dains collection and now dumping the vast majority on HA... creating public sales prices. We'll get an article too, dont worry.

It's literally a Ponzi scheme at this point. How many people can you try and recruit to the hobby....

I seriously don't understand how Castlevania wasn't mentioned. That was the gem of the lot IMO. Oddly it wasn't the the nicest one available tho. IMO that was a huge missed opportunity for the VGC. They should have bought both sealed HT CV's available, or at least the nicest one.

Also, is it too soon to call them the VGC??

I had very similar thoughts as you. Another trend I've noticed is WATA games and Heritage Auctions are always interviewed in these same articles. 

Well that’s prob because VGA doesn’t know a thing about video games. 

 

It's literally not a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme uses non-existent investments and fake returns to generate money via new investors. Rinse and repeat. No investment actually ever exists. If you want to make the argument for market manipulation I’d suggest that instead. 

Apparently my fiancee got this news from a co-worker (neither of whom play games) before I even heard it here. Nuts.

I agree. There's just something about the Heritage people speaking with authority that rubs me the wrong way. 

I really like the Heritage folks but your point is extremely valid. 

 

He is literally trying to influence the market and hype up his stuff so it gains value. It's a PR stunt.

Not much different than the whole story of the sale of a Mario for 100k that was created by the people who bought the Mario..

It’s hype activity at its peak relating to retro games. It seems more like an accidental pyramid scheme, in that the early buyers are making profit off the next one in the chain, and the need to hype and promote their items.

My main concern is that the truth might be twisted and the values we’re reading from these articles aren’t necessarily absolute values of purchase. 

For example, $100,000 for games X, Y and Z. With bonus items like posters, merchandise, a kiosk etc. But all we are seeing is just the total price and only the games. So on a technical level, games X, Y and Z might be worth $90,000 to $95,000 of actual sales. 
 

 

I can say that that’s not the case. The prices you are seeing and hearing about are very real. And it’s for only the games. 
 

His Instagram is Vvgclub.
 

I am a Dentist. I can tell you most Dentist I know do not have that much money to spend on a hobby.

I always kind of find these things amusing....Its kind of like "I paid this much so therefor its worth this much". But is it? Something is only worth as much as the market as a whole decides it is. Time will tell if these "investments" pay off or not. Personally I couldn't care one way or the other. I just don't get why suddenly people are thinking its going to go up / stay up, its 110% speculation.

Every time something pops up its like "only one of 5 known" or some crap, but where are they drawing those numbers from. The hobby (especially in this sense) is still young. While they are careful to use wording that is technically true (known copies, etc) it holds 0 weight, especially this early in the game. Every person making these big buys wants it known, they want to inflate the market up and cash out.

If they didn't care about them a year ago why are they suddenly going to care 10-15 years from now?

And I still stick with my opinion that the 100K purchase of mario bros previously was purely to "boost the market", WATA and HA are both making a killing right now im sure, and part of that is probably due to all the hype train on sealed games. Does anyone honestly believe that WATA / HA would be doing as well as they are right now if they never made that purchase / hyped it up ?

What's the membership fee to join the VGC and where do I sign up?

Pump and dump baby!
 

I don't know what VGC is but it sounds cool.  Can I join?