https://www.washingtonpost.com/vi...

weird flex but ok

Fun article!

Looks like a group of collectors made a million dollar purchase rather than a single person. Still an insane amount of money! I really don't see the value of this stuff going much higher than it is now, but I know very little about the speculation market for collectibles.

I can say with certainty that my wife would murder me if I invested our retirement savings and my son's college fund into something so volatile. At some point you start to run out of potential buyers.

The article referenced it a couple times, but this transition from nostalgia collecting to speculative collecting is a bit of a bummer. Kind of sucks the joy out of the hobby.

To be fair, $1,000,000 was spent, but value of the collection is TBD. He did buy some one of a kind items that he can kind of control. But he also bought all of those CIB Halos, CIB Sonics and CIB Mario 3 left bros... and those didn't exactly turn out that well. When you are speculating with fun money the risks are inconsequential. When you are speculating with huge amounts of money solely as investments, risks are significant if you ever need to free up capital.

mark
noun. A person identified as an easy target, or "sucker". A mark is always the short end of a joke or scam, and is never let in on whats going on. A mark is usually being cheated out of money. It's origin is from old English traveling carnivals from the late 1800s to early 1900s, where workers would refer to people paying to see thier made up shows and games a "mark".

The whole article was cringe worthy imo. A few guys drop a load of cash on a few sealed games, so what? One of the best collections in the world? Get out.

"But increasingly, experts say they've seen a movement away from collecting based on nostalgia and toward a view of collecting games as commodities while the market for rare games heats up. In years past, the hobby was dominated by aging gamers. Entering the hobby now are the same sort of serious collectors who consider coins, baseball cards, comic books and works of art as part of their investment portfolios"

I suppose it's a change we've all seen coming for a while now. Not the most exciting concept for many of us, but it is reality and it's here.

Thats a lot of buzzwords.

"Sticker seal"
"Black Box"
"First print"

Lol

Nerd!

I could feel a tumor in my brain start growing as I read that article, yeesh.

Using "holy grail" in the headline immediately invalidated any chance that article had of being taken seriously.
 

tldr? i summarise for you using only words from the article:

most avid collector
most sought-after
one of the largest
collecting experts
factory sealed
one of a kind
maybe two of a kind
no wait maybe three of a kind
known to exist
"black box"
"sticker-sealed"
independent grader
some experts
foremost collection
overall value and rarity
only known copy
only known copy
holy grails
cream of the crop
historic value
wata games
52 combined years
watershed moment
experts say
first-edition
could fetch similar prices
heritage auctions
playstation 2
wii
metaljesusrocks
one of the best in the world
top-notch collector's items
serious collectors
investments portfolios
art
historic value
among the world's best
experts say
sell for 1$ million

should have been a dentist......

I feel poor.

Words you hear on Home Shopping or in Franklin Mint commercials for $200, Alex
 

idk, it's really not impressive outside of the big dollars dropped. to be honest I'm rather annoyed with all these new "collectors" coming in from other hobbies because they are being priced out and are looking to cash in on the "next big thing".

What I take away as interest from the article is that the former owner(s) of some of those games basically named their price for what they had. Which has always been the difficulty/challenge in this market.....a lot (not all) true game collectors simply don't sell their stuff too easily. For what seems like forever, I've tried to pry a few rares out of collectors hands (true rares anyways) and I couldn't get them to even blink w/o an outrageous price attached to it......I've been much luckier just finding random buys from owners of games in that they didn't really have any nostalgia attached from them. A million bucks is insane though 😮

Yeah, but there's a difference in a seasoned collector such as yourself trying to acquire some true rarities vs. the mega-globo-awes0me-hype-train bullshit that's going on here.

Like Jone said, he spent a million.   Anybody with a million can do that.  It matters on what you bought with that million, and buying stuff at full market price hoping it'll go up more is a horrible investment strategy.
 

He could have the last laugh if he flips them for 3 million in five years.  If game collecting goes the way of comics and cards, which I think it will, then he made a great investment IMO.

 

It seems one dentist bought these games for a million dollars. It is my understanding they come from a collection that multiple people went in on to buy and now they are flipping them. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same dentist that bought that Stadium Events which was featured in an ESPN article about Stadium Events.

We're not the target audience for this article. The knowledge on this site far surpasses that of the author, "collectors" and resources used combined. Take what they're saying with a grain of salt.

As mentioned, it's not a $1M collection. That's like saying Atwood's collection is a few grand because that's what he paid. TBD is the correct answer.

The only part I took exception too was calling vvg an avid collector. That remains to be seen. An avid buyer, sure. Also, couldn't agree more with the liquidity comment. Seems to me someone came in 7-8 years ago and did something similar. Then couldn't move any of the games.

I sincerely hope he makes tons of money. All ships rise with the tide, but damn that is one crazy risky bet. All the best to him.

Two different people. That’s was Tod Curtis in the ESPN article. 
 

Hey there's people that blow a million dollars at a casino.  He has better odds here.  Still not a sure bet but I like his odds.

Look at this Derek Jeter card that just sold for $200,000.  Cards, comics, and games are all getting crazy now.  Where will it stop?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1996-Select-Certified-Mirror-Gold-D...

 

It's just a matter of time before someone pulls a Bill Murray; someone will buy a rare, great condition, graded, sealed, CIB, only to open it up in front of the buyer and eat the box.