Because if the stadium isn't sold out it doesn't get televised.

absolutely no reason to call out someone in this thread like that. might wanna be a little more considerate before you go get yourself banned here.

Well almost, in the HOME market it isn't tellevised, but you can still buy the cable/satellate access for the team and get it anyway.  Or just go to your favorite sports bar.  Either option=much cheaper, and ironically you see more.  Not that I've paid lots of money to go see my favorite teams in their respective stadiums.  I do it all the time.

Anyone else watch the Jet's - Dolphins game at the end of the season which was in a half empty stadium, I saw it on regular brodcast TV, despite not being sold out, mostly do to the crazy weather we've had.

I say the VGA has a place, but not in my collection. Here's hoping that it drives down the price of ungraded games to the point it's financially feasible for me to buy them to open for my list

Definitely should have been an ezine article!  Very well written and laid out.  You could add more ideas from the responses here, some picts of grading results, maybe ebay price stats. Should also have accurate numbers for the cost of getting one or many things graded.  I know there is a discount system which may make the service more worth it for bulk sellers.

I'm still holding out for the day I can find someone to make a convincing reseal for me so I can get it graded, then videotape me opening it...

Time to vent...
I really don't like certain resellers in this community either. Not going to mention names, but I've lost a hell of a lot of good deals on great games to someone who buys it just to resell it for three times the price just because i can't afford to spend as much money as they can afford to. I'm glad someone mentioned this but it should have its own thread altogether. I've lost a lot of confidence and respect to a few members I once appreciated on these boards.

I mean seriously, the majority of NES collectors are in this community and were allowing ourselves to get price gauged by our fellow community members and act like its all gravy? Should I let my neighbor screw my wife and than invite him over for a beer on football Sunday? It's disappointing to collectors, such as myself, who can't enjoy a hobby as much as they would like to. I've considered selling off my collection because of this very reason.

Back to the VGA subject. Its a thin line, but grading is looking at a stronger future in this hobby. There is no turning away from this fact. In sealed collecting terms, which is all I collect, VGA is more for legitimacy reasons since resealing techniques are getting better as well as they are simply great to display. I do believe that VGA is charging too much for their service and I do disagree with how they grade games. I've had damaged games grade as well as a mint condition game and that's unacceptable to me. I feel that VGA should release a specific standard rule sheet on what the most major flaws that a certain item would be graded down for at each level. No one is asking for techniques or secrets but something for collectors to refer too on the legitimacy for the grades they are being given. Why should I be able to resend a game to VGA to be re-graded? It should have been graded right the first time. Why would one grader grade an item differently than another? If grader A grades down on certain aspects than grader B should I have grader B regrade my item for a possible higher grade?

One possible solution? A grading report perhaps?  In June I was charged 5$ for a detailed report for graded games (a simple typed up paragraph on the major flaws). This same report is now 15$. Why the hell would that go up in price? Is the paper non-flammable? Does it glow in the dark? Hover off the ground? (The paper does not do any of this.) They are greedy and once they redo their site in the next couple of months, guess what, all prices will go up. No competition = a Monopoly = collectors charged outrageous prices. Until I am given other options, I'm going to have to deal with these facts.  I chose the hobby.  I agree with VGA but I also disagree with it. 

Frost, I agree with the venting to a degree, but sometimes it's all about forging relationships with people too. If someone considers you a friend, they tend to not want to screw you over (I've had people walk away from eBay auctions because they saw me bidding [back when you could see who was bidding], or give me below-market prices on goods because they're friends. I don't want to gyp them out of fair market value, but they don't want to push items out of my reach either. Give a few deals to people you consider net friends, and they'll do the same back. And if not, don't give them deals in the future The people trying to make money off the hobby are the problem, but they're the ones that lose in the end, because if you aren't passionate about your hobby, then it's just work.

agreed.

Yeah, this isn't how we do things here.  If you can't handle it, go back to DP.  This signing up to call people out bullshit won't be happening on these boards.

Go for it. You say thread crapping, I say an opinion contrary. Anyway, I'm sure some mods would think "Fuck him, he craps on everything in sight (Oh yes, I do!), let that douchebag get some of his own medicine" so go nuts with my blessing.

Just so anyone doesn't think otherwise, I'm not ignoring responses. The time to digest these responses and properly respond is something I don't have today, being out due to snow for the past 4 days. Probably later this evening.

Awww man I'm going to enjoy this thread but I want to read through it all before making my response. I'll get to it this morning after I have coffee

In a nutshell, the only good thing that VGA provides is an "authority" to examine sealed games and supposedly eliminate reseals. As soon as they let that first reseal pass through their grading criteria (which WILL happen one day if it hasn't already), the entire service will be completely worthless (as if it isn't already).

im not really a vga hater or lover at that. Doesnt matter to me, i just see games as games and not as a product like a baseball card. So grading a game "to me" isnt the same as a baseball card

However someone could argue that games were never produced to be graded as collectors items either. But neither were baseball cards or anything else people get graded. I mean kids used to stick cards in their bikes and just trade them with friends. Games were designed to do something and were made for the sole purpose to play them. Not be to be kept sealed and graded on the condition of the cardboard on the box. I mean there were thousands of game developers sitting for months on end working and designing a video game. It took about 2 seconds for a machine to pop out a mint cardboard box lol. think about that?

Either way these discussions are what makes a forum a forum. i love it!

I don't think you understand how a pyramid scheme operates if you believe that VGA has ANY similarity to one...

Yup.  If they don't televise a game nationally, they lose WAY more money in advertising than if they didn't sell out the stadium.

I love VGA games... Privateer and xwing are some of my favorites...

Wow, nice one there.  I get flamed in a thread that I have nothing to do with.  Go back to DP.  And thanks for plugging my auctions while you were at it.  I appreciate the free publicity.

Alright, had a chance to read and digest this thread, so here we go.

1) Grading toys has absolutely nothing to do with video games.

It is easy to determine if a toy is sealed, either the bubble plastic is stuck to the cardboard or not.  Video games are much more complex.  You have H-seamed / non h-seamed on NES, V-seamed / non V-seamed on N64, Y-folds and non Y-folds on PS1, all kinds of different seals on DS, etc.  Go look at your bargain bin at wal-mart for DS games and you'll see so many different seals your head may explode.  Yet when they receive a game that they have never seen before, they automatically know what type of seal it is supposed to have? 

It's not like grading a math test where you look at a rubric and say "two plus two isn't 5, mark it wrong".  It's more like grading an essay where it is so damn subjective that the same game is going to grade differently multiple times, just as the same paper grades differently to each English teacher.

We're paying for "expert" opinions from toy collectors.  Really?

2a) Overpriced lucrative profiteering scam...

So let's charge $25 a game with a horrible return time, or charge $50 a game with a quick around time.  Oh but wait, there's bulk discounts right.  Almost forgot about those.  You'll save a whopping $10 total and reduce your price to $24 per game if you do 10 at once.  Awesome!  Sign up for a stupid monthly or yearly fee and you save a bit more!  Want to know why your MINTY MINT game only got an 85?  Just send us $15 more dollars and we'll give you a sentence or two justification!  Cowabunga! 

They don't give two shits about your product or this hobby, they are there solely to make money. 

2b) .... Which in turn causes sellers to charge more to offset the grading costs

It no secret that some people go and buy commercially available PS3 / current generation games to slab them and resell at a profit.  I'm sure these sellers try and find the best possible ones they can grab, looking for a VGA 100.  Then when it comes back as an 85 what do they do?  They still have to mark up their price, after all, they bought it to resell at a profit.  An 85 on a commercially available game is DIRT COMMON and should be priced roughly the same as a non-graded copy, maybe +$5 for those uber cool bomb-proof cases.  The seller took a gamble (and lost) by paying $25 to get it graded as an 85.  But of course they have to pass off this cost to the consumer.  Because they feel a right to charge more for anything that is graded... mostly because VGA tells you that their games "have higher resale value" as reason #2 for you to buy into their scam.



I could go on all day but that's enough for now.  I personally think that VGA grading is a horrible idea as it severely limits your target audience.  I know several people that "collect sealed" who would never buy a VGA graded game simply because they hate the service and do not think the price is justified.  Collecting has always been about the thrill of the hunt. 

The people who buy slabbed games are like the car enthusiasts who buy cars after they are fully "hooked up".  That's why true car enthusiasts go by the "built not bought" motto, and true collectors acquire their collection slowly over time rather than buying everything they want at VGA 90s and then calling it a day.

I suspect that acquiring a collection of all 90+ graded games would take just as long as finding things the conventional way.



I just think it's so ridiculous and hilarious that so many people seem to harbor true animosity towards a service that they're never going to pay for, and are virtually unaffected by.

this thread is great, nice, constructive writing dave. I see no problem here.

On that note, to those calling people out...this is childish at best. To say someone who collects sealed games and/or gets them graded does not love video games is the stupidest statement i've ever heard. Vectorman, please be (at the very least) respectful and a bit more constructive when making such bold statements.

Personally, I think VGA is cool, but I don't use it. I like the idea of being able to protect the condition of my sealed games. Hell i'll never open them and it would be nice to keep them in the condition they are in now.

I've always thought the VGA was a waste of time and money. Nice to see others agree with me.

It affects everyone and anyone who collects sealed games. People who sell graded games on ebay assume they have a right to ask XX times the value of said game then what the same game would be worth ungraded. Other sellers looking to sell their ungraded game automatically ask an absurd price themselves because they see ebay littered with these overpriced VGA games. Thus an artificial inflation in prices is created.

Oh and asking $15 for a 2 sentence long grading report that should come free with your overpriced submission is just beyond greed and arrogance. That is just fraud.

This is only partly true.  Sure, it's quite possible some uneducated collectors/resellers might see these inflated prices and try to get those prices for their games.  However, any collector/reseller who has any knowledge of the games realizes this isn't the way it works.  For instance, I've had a thread up for some time now with tons of sealed NES games.  My games are in great shape, many probably "gradeable."  But I'm not asking the types of prices people who sell their VGA games are asking.  So, really, it's not like it just 100% ruins the sealed market.

Oh yes, because there is no such thing as a resealed toy!!!???? It is obvious you have no knowledge of the sealed toy market and this comment shows that.

Video Games are 10 times easier to grade than a toy....