also - i cleaned up the off-topic stuff.

if this thread goes off-topic again i am going to lock it and have matt and mark post up a new thread with the link.

if you feel like posting off-topic stuff, don't. find a thread that discusses your topic and post there.

Haha, I'm an idiot.  You should have posted the MJ eating popcorn GIF instead of the smiley face.

Thatnks J-man.  Not that I mind the discussion of VGA stuff and protos, but it would be cool if this thread was mostly about the auction.

Well this proto has to change hands for the value to jump significantly. I'm not convinced that the market has changed that much just yet. We have had ONE record breaking prototype sale and who knows what got that single buyer motivated to buy that single item.

It is a best offer situation. So let us see what happens.
 

My gut tells me that we won't be getting the "right" offer from this current listing.  If that is the case, we won't be relisting them right away.  I know others have mentioned VGA'ing some protos to me, I'll see how the market views them when there are more out there and then consider relisting.  This is all of course dependent on us not getting an offer we like the first time around.

I hope this doesn't go off topic too much, but I think my question falls in with this auction too.

Earlier in the post you mention that you personally wouldn't want to buy a VGA prototype (at least I think I remember reading that), after ProgrammingAce brought up about how VGA really wasn't verifying if the cart was real or not.  If most people want to see the board of a prototype to help verify that it's real, something that (typically) isn't done with a VGA game, then why would the market for VGA prototypes increase in the future?  I realize that you mentioned some new collectors would feel more secure purchasing one, perhaps, but what about the seasoned collectors?  I have had enough prototypes run through my hands and I know that I would personally not purchase a proto encased in a VGA case, where the seller does not accept returns if the case is broken.  With your Arcadia cart it is not an issue, we all know where it came from and that it is legit.  But what about some other cart at some other point?  This is what I have been thinking about, and just trying to figure it out.

I know we don't always see eye to eye on things, but I'm not trying to troll either.  I am just wondering about this and the market.

Totally legit question and definitely relevant to the thread, I'll do my best to answer all questions:

-  In response to Ace about buying a VGA'd prototype, I told him that it was unlikely that I would do so personally.  It is also unlikely for me to buy a VGA'd sealed game.  With VGA, I personally like using the service first hand (sending in my own stuff) rather than buying items that have already gone through their hands.

-  As for the question of why the market would go up on VGA protos, I guess I really don't know if that's the case.  I see it going strongly in one of two directions:  VGA'd protos are going to greatly increase in popularity and it will be the norm to get them slabbed before/after a sale, or the exact opposite (people running away from VGA'd protos as fast as they can).  If these two don't get offers that are right, I'm going to sit back a bit and see how other VGA'd protos are viewed before I make my next move.  It's an excellent question, and I think only time will be able to answer it. 

-  The best question of your many good questions is taking a look at the PCB of a VGA'd proto.  I know you can pay to have detailed pictures taken of your sealed games, I would strongly suggest anyone sending in a proto to be verified has VGA take detailed photos of the PCB before slabbing it.  This way the game would be encased while at the same time someone could view the exact PCB of the game and make an educated decision beyond taking the word of the VGA rep who slabbed the game.

I still don't know where I'll go with the rest of my collection.  I love preservation, and no matter what I do I will be getting the ROMs of every proto I own to the masses in one way or another.  Due to the insane price increase in NES games in general, I have a feeling (many may call it wishful thinking, and I wouldn't fault them for it) that protos are going to be appreciated for their uniqueess and their rarity, and eventually their price will reflect that.

Gretsky collects baseball cars, Leno classic cards, all it would take is for one or two whales to come out of the woodwork and prices would spike (for better or for worse).  If prices spike, we're also bound to see new protos come out from hiding.  Sure, they'd be expensive at that point, but at least we would know where to look.

Very cool questions, this is the type of discussion I was hoping for.

Edit:  Leno collects cars, not cards*

I tried to send you a best offer but it said I can only enter a numerical dollar amount, not the phrase "my first born child". Dammit.

I just looked this up on my conversion chart and we have a problem. If you convert a first born child into cash you are looking at some serious negative numbers. Perhaps if you give him an unreleased title yet to be discovered he may go for the deal.  

I don't know what's actually been removed from this thread, but i don't think this point is off topic.

I find it really interesting that the buyer of that $50K zelda cart is choosing to hurt the value of his purchase by not allowing the seller to talk about the deal. We've already established that the best way to verify an NES proto is real is by tracking it from seller to seller. Several people have come out in favor of VGA using that as a method of proving validity (bunnyboy and buyatari included, i think).

So without the buyer remaining public, all it takes is one more secret deal for the chain of trust to fall apart. Say the guy who just bought it resells it in 5 years (with the information remaining secret), and the new owner wants to sell it 3 years after that. So we're 8 years removed from the last known owner, and the guy he sold the cart to isn't the person holding it. Now VGA has no reasonable means of verifying the cart. Google ain't gonna help 'em, and good luck tracking down the parties a decade from now.

So I guess the lesson of the day is, if you think VGA grading is going to be valuable in the future, make sure the whole world knows you just spent a stupid amount of money on an NES cart.

Ace - deals done at that level do not require the masses to believe their real for them to take place, considering the tiny pool of buyers involved at that end of the market.

If the new owner wanted to sell, obviously they could disclose or discuss whatever they wanted in the interest of that sale, but letting the current seller spout all the details at this point in time doesn't help them one bit. If anything, they're guarding against short-term backlash and internet weirdos tracking them down (see the dope in the Cheetahmen thread that felt the need to seek out address and home value for the guy running the kickstarter).

I can say with certainty that if I ever paid $50k (in 2012 dollars) for something in my collection, nobody but the seller would know it was me, ever.

No one is going to let the history chain fall apart.  It's obviously in the seller's best interest to track the origins of the cart as far back as he can go.

Just because the history is not public does not mean it is lost.  I'm sure Dream has sold many protos over the years where the buyer is anonymous (I own one myself). If any of these buyers ever sell their cart, I'm sure they would namedrop Dream to add credibility (I sure would).  Anonymous sales do not break the integrity of the item... all you need is for the previous seller to vouch for that buyer.

In most 5 figure deals I've been privy to the buyer is not looking at flipping the item or resale value at least at the time of purchase. While it is not always true most collectors paying this much claim they will keep it forever.

Look at how many people had no sot nice names for such a buyer. There are many reasons why he might want as little about this to be known as possible. Now if the buyer plans on buying more items like this it will work in his best interest to handicap the price as much as possible. If people question the sale then prices may not escalate as much as they would had more infomation been shared. 

As for trackability, no matter how many times this game changes hands from this point on (public or private) the VGA case with serial number is all that is needed at this point to track it back to this auction and from there we all know it came from Dream. 

take this discussion elsewhere. this isn't about the zelda game

^^^ couldn't agree more

You're absolutely correct, it's about this Arcadia. Please follow along with the rest of the class.

If VGA is going to claim they can authenticate prototypes, then there needs to be some mechanism where they can validate the cart based off inspecting the product. If I sell a loose cart to someone else, I'm not going to vouch that they haven't altered it. Follwing the owner is a decent metric, but using that as primary authentication is foolish.

I buy a cart from buyatari, reflash it with an smb rom hack, then VGA authenticates it because buyatari is a trusted seller and he acknowledges I'm the one who bought it?

Say i buy this prototype, pull the rom and change the ending credits to "VGA Sucks", then reflash it to the same cart. Do you think they'll authenticate it? 'Cause i don't think it's really all that authentic at that point...

Anyone notice this on all of CGA's websites?

VGA (Video Game Authority) – for packaged and prototype video games and related items

First time I've noticed that. Mark your auctions will do good so enjoy it!

^^ This forum is for bumping personal auctions not discussing whether a company can authenticate a product or not. That topic should be held elsewhere.

So the whole 8 pages worth is about the auction?

I'm not referring to the whole 8 pages I was referring to programmingace's comment.

Bump

Free bump and a little advice for ProgrammingAce . You and your shit is getting pretty old in this thread. If you want to keep repeating yourself about the same damned thing for days on end, maybe you should start your own thread about it instead of shitting in this one.

If you are buying the hardware and not the data which will be dead at some point anyway then it hardly matters. VGA can at best only authenticate the dev board as being genuine. 

I think you will agree VGA is able to do this much and now we can stop talking about it

Issue also is a lot of dev boards are not proto boards though...

Do you think Yeah Yeah Beebiss will ever be found? Or was it likely a huge ass typo?