Market manipulation in retro gaming

M76

M76

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If even half of this is true, then this is big. And why wouldn't it be true? Collusion and insider trading, driving up prices to help your auction house, appraising / grading games owned by the company's founders/directors, media manipulation. Insane And the guy playing the central role has already done something similar in the eighties only instead of videogames it was with coins then. Got fined 1.2 million then, which is probably chum change compared to how much they made by driving up the prices artificially.

 
I feel like this has been know about by real gamers for years, and why I don't think any better of games that have an "official" grade and certificate. They have just gotten more brazen recently with how far they tried to inflate values this time around. The same scam has been practiced and sadly accepted in other collectible markets like trading cards and comic books.
 
Armenius said:
I feel like this has been know about by real gamers for years, and why I don't think any better of games that have an "official" grade and certificate. They have just gotten more brazen recently with how far they tried to inflate values this time around. The same scam has been practiced and sadly accepted in other collectible markets like trading cards and comic books.
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I never collected anything so this is news to me. It is my biggest fault that I always assume other people are honest until I see evidence to the contrary.
 
M76 said:
I never collected anything so this is news to me. It is my biggest fault that I always assume other people are honest until I see evidence to the contrary.
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Karl does great exposes in the video game world so it is good to see a thorough piece explaining the situation put out by him. The way the mainstream media picks up a story about "record breaking" video game sales can often paint a misleading picture. I am firmly in the "trust, but verify" camp when it comes to people given my experience. I used to default to thinking highly of people and giving them the benefit of the doubt when I was young and naive, but boy has that attitude burned away to one of extreme pessimism.
 
Some things in that video are a bit outside the fraud-deception stuff a bit:

1) It is not strange than an auction company would not actively tell who the buyers are or that a buyer would not declare it to the world, specially if they stay in Delaware and other Freeports of the world lockers (like in the movie Tenet), as far as that goes it can be your usual Art money laundering or tax optimization scheme but with a different collectible.

2) Same goes in buying "share" of an collectible equity, that sound very standard.

3) The notion of a not for profit collector in those price range is a bit strange, maybe it exist in the world of not knowing what to do with your cartel money, but otherwise yes obviously, this is a speculative, spending that much because there is a plan to resell market, it is obviously not to game with. I doubt it is artist painter with a passion in painting themselve that buy those 8-9 figures painting either, a lot of it stay locked in port-airport tax free zone container.

The part with the manipulation of actual news (made up hobbyist buying stuff when it is a group of investor) is where it really start to be interesting, it is really easy to feed someone that need to generate content we a pre-made story if it is sensational, even at major place nowaday
 
It's not just the big companies or whatever, as in the video.

I collect(ed) video games. I have 6000+ boxed games for multiple platforms that I've done over the years. Most of this was done when I graduated college, and decided now that I'm making money, to buy all the games I use to play, or wanted to play. And I'm sure that's true for a lot of gamers. I.e. You buy right after college. But I think the most I ever spent on a game was $500, and we're talking a super rare, can't even be pirated game. But many games I bought for $2-$5 are now going for $100+ on EBay. It's ludicrous.

But the other thing that bugs me is that no one's actually buying these games. You place a game for sale and people bid it up from $10 to $500, fine, I'll accept that. But you have many games now which are just listed at $200. Zero watchers, and maybe 1 bid every once in awhile from a desperate fan.
 
The shrink wrap adds like 30k to any rare NES game and can be peeled off with fingernails.
 
Nytegard said:
It's not just the big companies or whatever, as in the video.

I collect(ed) video games. I have 6000+ boxed games for multiple platforms that I've done over the years. Most of this was done when I graduated college, and decided now that I'm making money, to buy all the games I use to play, or wanted to play. And I'm sure that's true for a lot of gamers. I.e. You buy right after college. But I think the most I ever spent on a game was $500, and we're talking a super rare, can't even be pirated game. But many games I bought for $2-$5 are now going for $100+ on EBay. It's ludicrous.

But the other thing that bugs me is that no one's actually buying these games. You place a game for sale and people bid it up from $10 to $500, fine, I'll accept that. But you have many games now which are just listed at $200. Zero watchers, and maybe 1 bid every once in awhile from a desperate fan.
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New generation of kids are glued to their phones
 
There is no Market Manipulation with PC games untill the Steam reviews come out or gets buried on the Epic launcher.
 
M76 said:
I never collected anything so this is news to me. It is my biggest fault that I always assume other people are honest until I see evidence to the contrary.
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Yes, always be nice, but assume every other person is out to screw you over until proven otherwise. Twice or more.
 
Yeah I mean just having that tissue paper of cellophane wrap on Retro games like Kid Icarus brings in 10s of thousands.
 
I have a bunch of old rare games. Mostly because my gaming preference has always skewed towards the weird, japanese and rpg.

Watching the prices rise astronomically on some of my games makes me smile. I'm probably not gonna sell any of them, but I have to admit that selling Cubivore, a game I bought for $20 back in like 2008, to pay for an RTX 3080, is very tempting.

Same with .hack//quarantine. .Hack isn't that good of a game, even back on the PS2 it was pretty fucking repetitive. I've never actually even played the damn thing because I never finished part 3. But it's going for $400+ with the manual and the complete set I could probably get a nice grand for, apparently.
https://www.ebay.com/p/10698

I am gonna hold onto my damn Earthbound, giant box and game guide till the day I fucking die however.

Edit: Jesus christ, Metal Warriors is now going for $400 loose? What the hell Market.

Maybe I should actually do a full inventory and sell some of these things. I could easily make 10s of thousands. Just looking at https://www.pricecharting.com/conso...=&exclude-variants=true&exclude-hardware=true I have about $10k worth of SNES games alone. And I *haven't* kept any boxes (Aside from earthbound, but its in rough shape.)
 
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M76 said:
If even half of this is true, then this is big. And why wouldn't it be true? Collusion and insider trading, driving up prices to help your auction house, appraising / grading games owned by the company's founders/directors, media manipulation. Insane And the guy playing the central role has already done something similar in the eighties only instead of videogames it was with coins then. Got fined 1.2 million then, which is probably chum change compared to how much they made by driving up the prices artificially.

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That's how free market capitalism always works out, don't like it go to a socialist nation.
 
SOAREVERSOR said:
That's how free market capitalism always works out, don't like it go to a socialist nation.
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You mean that's why free market capitalism doesn't work. Free market capitalism is not in practice anywhere on Earth.

I'm already in a socialist nation, as are you.

If you truly want free market capitalism create an enclave and put it in practice, let's see how it works out. I'm not against social experiments, as long as the participants are volunteers.
 
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M76 said:
You mean that's why free market capitalism doesn't work. Free market capitalism is not in practice anywhere on Earth.

I'm already in a socialist nation, as are you.

If you truly want free market capitalism create an enclave and put it in practice, let's see how it works out. I'm not against social experiments, as long as the participants are volunteers.
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True capitalism always turns into Somalia.
 
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