Nm, leatherrebel cleared it up.

I now hate this game more than stadium events.

Ars Technica will be publishing a follow up.

1) Make money
2) Buy games, flip extras
3)?  (Try to Keep Your Beautiful wife from leaving because there are NES games in your Kitchen Cabinets!)
4)Profit!

baahahhaha!  that's about right  
 

Wow, congrats to all involved...

Exposure like this is not only good for WATA but also for collectors in general.

It may have some downside for the games are meant to be played group, but you can't please everyone.

Honestly, that group shouldn't be too unhappy, because if anyone wants to play SMB, they can still get copies for $5 pretty easily, and that won't change due to this story.  
 

But the sticker sealed game is the only way to play SMB! I demand that they sell it to me for $5!

 

I would pay up to $100,149.99 to play SMB.  Anything more would be overpriced.  

 

Holy shit, is that a 1.0 graded SMB 3, like from the Wizard??

I hear those are 6 figures easy.
 

Only 6 figures, nah Imma hold out and wait til it's worth more... TEN MILLION DOLLARS

I have a SMB that was VGA'd as a 10, and a SMB3 Challenge Set that is WATA'd as a 1.0

SMB VGA 10 is about to be sent into WATA to be uncased and certified by WATA to match the SMB3...

Now if only I could find a beat to shit SMB2...    it seems if one does exist it's too pricey for my cheap ass.
 

Let my kids play with a mint crisp Mario 2. It’ll look just like my formerly nice, Unripped CIB Sachen Games. Thankfully they only ripped “common” generics but still  

I have a nice Mario 2 WATA graded. I'm happy to sell it to you so that you can stomp the shit out of it and re-submit!

Serious inquiries only, pls.

This is starting to feel to much like the earlier days of bitcoin.

Nope, I refuse to see a game intentionally destroyed/harmed for my purposes...

I'm sure there's a copy out there somewhere over the rainbo....  oh wait...

 

Seen on another board

"If I was super rich, I would buy this . . . and open it."

I will gladly sell it to some idiot who wanted to do that.
 

I see a lot of comments saying this is good for the hobby, and I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment. Sure- if you have everything you want this is a good thing but for the average buyer I think this will only cost them more money in the long run. I can see a trickle down effect happening especially affecting cib copies in the future.

This used to be a hobby anyone could really get into no matter the income level, and it is disappointing to me seeing it become a thing only the wealthy can afford.

I don’t want to see this turn into another era of even more speculators

This is still a hobby anyone can get into. The retail price of a game hasnt changed in decades. If youre lamenting that older stuff gets rarer and more valuable with time, you just described every hobby on the planet. 
 

It used to be hobby in which anyone could get into and complete their goals. If game collecting gets in the same level of collecting hobby's like comics or cards I'm not sure if that will still be possible. Not so much due to rarity or time, but with more eyes on the hobby than ever before.

People still participate in those hobbies. And people still coin collect and stamp collect.

We've been spoiled because full sets used to be more doable, especially compared to other hobbies. If your goal is a full set of a popular platform, you might have to re-evaluate your goals, but that doesn't mean you have to get out.
 

Anyone can still get into game collecting as a hobby. It's a very cheap hobby, in fact.

For the sake of argument, let's focus on Nintendo NES right now: Is there any licensed Nintendo NES game in existence, which cannot be had for fairly cheap ? Even the most extreme titles can be had for cheap. Some examples:

Little Samson ? Get a PAL cart for €100
Stadium Events ? Get a PAL cart for less than €200 - or get a Famicom cart even cheaper
Dinosaur Peak ? Get a PAL cart for less than €300
Mah-Jong ? Get a Famicom cart for less than ¥1000

Those are 3 examples, and there are maybe 10 more in that price range. Which leaves you about 750 more NES carts obtainable for less than $100 each; most of which are available for less than $50 each.

You can amass a collection of literally hundreds of different NES carts without ever breaking the §20 mark on any single title.

I don't know - Doesn't seem like a very expensive hobby for me...

Now, if you want to collect early version sticker sealed games, WATA 9+ graded CIB's, VGA NM+ sealed CIB's or stuff like that, than yes, this was expensive and might even get more expensive after the SMB sale - But this a completely other beast than normal game collecting, and I really doubt that people start out game collecting with the mindset of going after such items specifically.

As a cart only/CIB collector, I feel like I have little to "worry" about long term. Even if the toy/comic/card investor types start snapping up super high end stuff at exorbitant prices, a mint 1978 Darth Vader figure might sell for $1500+ but complete/loose it's still $20, maybe still even in a flea market dollar bin.

I used to like reading Superman's Pal Jimmy Olson a few years ago because it was a silver age comic I could reliably find in the dollar bin or just a bit more. Comic investing madness going on for decades and Superman books from the 50s were still a buck, because the investors/collectors don't care about non-keys or books in average shape, and certainly few people in comics are trying to get a full set of DC comic books. The super collectors want the cream of the crop. A mint Alpha Black Lotus is a $50k card, but you can get an average Unlimited one for under $5k, an order of magnitude difference based on condition and print run for the same "the card". That Halo that sold is the craziest example a $20 insert variant that sold for $9000 because it's mint and sealed. Maybe this will affect how hard it is to get a 10/10 supreme example of a Zelda game but I don't see some new collector ever giving up on buying every Zelda game because it's out of reach.

yeah exactly. Loose and sealed have always been two different markets and two different collector pools. One going up or down doesn't much affect teh other.

There's some crossover.

Mint CIB cardboard hangtabs, and mint CIB first print fan-favorites come to mind first and foremost. Then there are mint CIB other-medium fan favorites like Star Wars, Disney, TMNT stuffs.

The inverse is true for about 99.97% of everything though.

A Mint CIB can never be worth more than a mint sealed. So, in turn if a Mint CIB sells for $x,xxx then a sealed mint CIB must go for $x,xxx times x (Usually 2-3 multiplier unless it's got more factors like hangtabs, or other qualities going for it)

Oddly, sealed super-high end doesn't seem to be effected.

A mint CIB Stadium Events, Myriad, Panesian, MBR/SR, Magical Chase, Outback Joey or DinoPark Tycoon probably won't be a drastic savings compared to a mint sealed counterpart. It will be more expensive, yes...but not a with a huge multiplier.

Then there's High-End CIBs that will have extremely high multipliers for sealed because of single digit known populations. Cases like Sculptors Cut, and Dino Peak come to mind.