Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION In The Retro Video Game Market 

Yeah. They Just want money.

Have you been following the Wargaming, World of Warships saga Karl? reg: The mass walkout of the community contributors, gambling loot boxes, USS Missouri etc?

Hoping for your safety, legend

HOPE UR SAFE LOVE FROM ISRAEL

I just know they're gonna go all Billy Mitchell on you. I'd be ready for a lawsuit.

Hi mossbag. I 100% agree with you. I remember the days when 3ds games were 30 bucks and that was awesome. I can’t believe what people are doing just to get more money in their pockets. Also keep up the great work mossbag. Can’t wait for silksong lore videos when the game comes out.

@@R0ll0run 3DS games? they still are 30 bucks

why are you here

@@jordanwise5 I mean when almost all games were 30 bucks, 3ds games as an example

@@R0ll0run found the shill. "hello, popular RU-vidr who is popular. Can't wait for your series of videos covering specific topic." 🤔

It's pretty poetic that this video describes perfectly what corporate "journalism" has become, a PR platform for shady practice because they trust that no actual research would be done. In a trend larger than video games, video essays are effectively real journalism, and it's fascinating.

Perhaps not just in video games, just in general. I have limited interest in games and virtually no interest in speed runs but I've found his presentations, especially the investigations of fraudulent activity to be very well done.

The dance

@@gizmogremlin1872 me too, I'm too lazy for speedruns, but I've watched most of his videos because he took it seriously.

Investigative journalist period.

google "wash trading"

@@aristideau5072basically just buying and selling repeatedly to fake market activity if I’m correct?

@@aristideau5072 holy hell

Karl explains how in the video mate

Because it's money laundering that's why it wasn't some joe smo's game it was sold by the auction house and the grading company. That's why it's obviously a crime.

Not sure where your niece lives, or you, but I'll gladly offer up my collection, if it worked out, for rightful pricing.

The thrill of going to Rumage and yardsales. All the best in her endeavors.

Same

@@SuppleBadger $10,000 minimum, right? ;)

Garage sale and thrift store plundering is the best part, if you ask me. Just owning the items is one thing, but it's the stories you create hunting for them that really make collecting special.

i legit replied "a documentary about financial speculation"

I love the fact that neither of you are wrong

100%

It back fired, she wants to watch now

Lucky for Karl Truth is a wonderful defense against slander ;)

@@DietArdee if its true

@@thaddeuscosse9527 if you have reason to believe it's not I'm sure myself and a lot of others would love to see it. Does appear like he has done his research here.

Karl: ah sh*t here, we go again... anyway, who's hungry? I took a cooking course on Skillshare.

Yay :D

I laughed when I heard "yea if we lose 15k on you, whatever, no big deal" I was like ohhhh these people are RICH rich. For 15k to be an acceptable loss on a hail mary is insane.

Can’t fix stupid with money

​@@keithbellair9508Oh, nice, casual anti-Semitism

@@EmilinkoHoward every character in the story was one of them… but i could have told you that before i even watched it.. every single time.

​@@EmilinkoHowardoy vey...

I had this in the background and I thought they were just VERY desperate

13:30

I thought he was talking about porn for some reason

Muda ❤🤟

Yep

Sup brown man

Immediately thought of you, Muta. Y'all are doing god's work here, love it.

Muda muda muda

What a true statement 👏

51:22 spotted :^) , real quick shot but its there

Toilet paper shares went down now

That is hilarious because they're literally grading a TON of *shovelware*

Brb. About to monopolize the controller market 👌

this is standard for every auction house on earth. they all charge a percentage of the total cost, and 40% is standard

@@TacoTuesdey He is talking about the graders taking a percentage, not the action house, you clown

@@TacoTuesdey absolutely not what @Bang Bang meant. Wata charging percentile and not flat is a HUGE conflict of interest

@@TacoTuesdey the AUCTION HOUSE yes. the graders/appraisers absolutely not, that's a massive immediate conflict of interest.

​@@LauraLovesHugs you don't get it, he's trying to say that they are all scammers

For people wanting an example- Nintendo World Championships (never officially released, was part of a game competition in like a magazine or something in the 80's) used to be called the holy grail of Nintendo collectors, and it was just a loose cart.

I think that you’re missing an important point; if they pump up rare items it only stimulates a few sellers and buyers. If they make widely available items more valuable it creates a wave of movement in sales and in hype. "Wow such a well known game is worth that much? What about other great games?’ I’m no expert but it creates a longer lasting hype if more people can engage with it. I see your point about rarity but these people don’t care about video game history.

nice content

Absolute Legend.

Karl reached out to me after leaving this comment on your channel, Pat (37:10). I then approached RU-vidr "Reserved Investments" about the project Karl was working on, and Shaun said he was already on board with the investigation. Great to see the RU-vid community working together to expose corruption in our favorite hobby. The amount of evidence Karl was able to come up with in this video is staggering.

Thanks for including THE POTATO BOY as a part in the video. I kajaijhwhwihwiuhwjihaiuhaija ianjianajinaluihauukhauukha it!

The irony of getting angry at this but defending Blizzard with Diablo Immortal...

I’d like to see Jim try to file a suit when Karl has done all the lawyer work in this one video

when he started talking about the coins I thought, it would be funny if the same people were involved in both...but then I laughed thinking that was way too ridiculous..

Yes! I thought he was just going a comparative tangent for our sake. Never saw the connection to the two that was about to slap me in the face.

Is it?

You would think as part of the punishment he would not be able to own another "grading" type company. Also, I remember watching a pretty similar report on 60 minutes (years ago) about the inconsistent and even fraudulent authentication companies in the sports memorabilia market.

That’s the pun.

I thought I was the only one lol

It's like his name. I pronnounce it Karl, but my friend insists that it should be Carl.

​@@glemonsbhatkin514 nice, I think that Shawn and Sean should be pronounced differently

like Jim Sterling but for non industry bullshit

@@Sceleri and without diabetes

Same but I love it more than you

I hope hvvh hand hit hyou h h h h hi h h how how how h hh ih ih ih. H

@@chaseyoung5984 the bush president president bush bush president president bush president is president president bush president president of bush bush president president bush president of bush bush sunshine sunshine sun sun shining sunshine sunshine sun shining sunshine sun sun shining

It does make him sound more professional though.

I could not hear pawn stars at all

@@stevedoidoultimate4815 holy shit dude, 7/10 comment sections i go have some connection to brazil lol

Reminds me of the kind of people I'd watch at night

@@ryandyer3466 no it makes it sound like something else lol, like a different word that's very similar...

Every time.

Everystein Singleberg Timeowitz

Let's support him, if it happens.

Hopefully there will be people with the means standing up for Karl.

He is poking bubbles

There's way more money behind this. This won't be "spurious lawsuit threats": this will be a lawsuit to shut him up, and it's going to come. He's gonna need a legal defense fund already, can pretty much guarantee.

Or they just send a hit man.

You are a bit late on the verified comment group

Austin!! Great to see you here :D

@@solanumtuberosa Austin is a busy man

eyy it's the computer guy

Damn, everyone's here, Austin, muta, critical nobody, shank mods

Are your a super hero

I'm learning a lot by applying this information to the baseball card collecting community. There seems to be some overlap.

@@mofny its every collectible ever, this is funko pop, hot toys, beani babies etc,i cant believe people still buy into hype and trends like this. Funko pops are a good example, adults spend money they often shouldnt to have a "rare" pop that is only desireable due to a falsely created rarity and imaginary desire. People will pay 300$ for a piece of shit plastic because theyve been told that soon it will be worth 600, only to find out later that the goal was only ever to scam the initial goons out of their 300 and many high dollar funko pop sales are shill bids and inside buyers simply driving up the online price to dump the shitty retail pops for double or triple what they paid. Collecting for the sake of collecting is fucked up, if you like a thing thats a different thing, but many collectors are simply caught up in the attention that having a "rare" item gets them

It's really an impeccable reputation he's cultivated

There needs to be more education on the video game market and what prices are a scam or not. Doing this will drasticly lower the scam market.

what if you sell now and buy back when it all crashes

@@Maebbie he does it as a Hobby so he probably doesnt care about the money

I just bought these games when they came out and never sold them.

Same here, been collecting since the early 00's and have sealed games that would grade very high and I have never graded a single game of mine.

How can you have sealed games? Serious question, at least with toys you can watch them, but in games you can only watch the box.

Deniz Khan has a scummy haircut just like Billy Mitchell

Fun fact. Kahn and Halperin both belong to a certain group that specialises in usury and speculation. It's amazing.

Bernie Madoff: how cute

Nah man Deniz is cool I think he should be head of Heritage for it also lol

@@firaselachkar4159 Eric H. Naierman also !

James L. Halperin is a jew by the way.

@@AA-lz4wq Likely are Kahn and Haspel, too

@@AA-lz4wq umm and what's your point?

@@GalanOfTruth there greedy money hungry people. That’s the point. Dummy 😒

You're shocked a multimillionaire is manipulating people? Brilliant. You're one of those people who believes Elon Musk is a great guy 😂

Yep.

amazing how people will overlook clear conflicts of interest for a gamble to make it rich

It raises concern. Or rather, it really should raise concerns for anyone thinking of doing business with a company having that policy. The fraud really is in the racketeering of the whole thing between circles of key people, but getting a sense for the motive is a sign of working intuition.

@@groomersgotohell Ah. The rich and powerful narrative within a select demographic people-group. That really only comes down to opportunistic individuals having their own bent for control. Dumbing it down to broad labels is…well, dumb.

You'd probably do a simple moving job for a couple hundred bucks. Would you do a moving job full of fragile valuables for a couple hundred bucks or would you raise the price because handling valuables puts you at some risk

@@russellm2555 There should be a hard cap they don't go over, at least, not a percentage that can forever scale up. Sure, a harder, more valuable item filled moving job you'd charge more for, but you wouldn't be like "Ok, we charge 5% of your total networth to move your stuff" like WATA is basically doing with each item, lol. Also, with moving stuff, or working on someone's house, etc, you have insurance to cover potential damages to help mitigate the risk. You don't take a flat percentage of their networth and try to justify it by saying "well it puts me at some risk" instead of insurance, or ontop of insurance. I've painted multi-million dollar houses. We didn't ask for a flat percentage of the house's value or the owner's networth to cover our risk from working on such an expensive place. We just had insurance. Sure, we charge more for a big job, especially if there's parts that will be an extra hassle or be complicated, but not a percentage that can scale and scale up way too high to absurdity.

100%? that will take a while

"Exposing Market Fraud - Lawsuit%" more like. Karl's done a good thing, but these people ARE going to go after him for this. There's too much money involved.

I’d never miss an episode

100% is impossible, the contents are randomly generated with no end

We call it as "exposing wall street%"

he said that in the most condescending way too

@@jamesderepentigny5446 all decent and heallty people. Yea, sure.

@@milosmevzelj5205 he said wealthy 😜

All on red!

me too, but just could, even if they wouldn't.

Appreciate it

@@karljobst ❤💯👍👍👍fingers crossed you spark a change in the industry

Investors riding high during a recession period. ”It’s a big club, and you aren’t in it.” Pretty sure that was from George Carlin.

Real eye-opener! What a scumbag.

That was some real Ace Attorney stuff ngl.

As soon as I noticed Halperin's name, my brain totally did a *record scratch noise*. Wait, WHAT?! lol.

like, how do you even find that? can you do a search for any place his name comes up? or do you have to already know to check into coins? like how do you make that connection? I'm so impressed

Watch how "true gaming websites" all of a sudden care about this subject soon.

It may sound like a silly question, but can't video games collectors use this trend to their advantage ? They have hundreds of retro games they bought for much lower than the current price. They could make some money selling them now, and buy more once the prices go down.

@@fabienmorival669 The thing about that is, the auction house only sells games that have been graded through WATA. Its those ones that go for ridiculous jacked-up prices. If a games collector wanted in on that action, they'd have to actively support the companies that are responsible for this market manipulation, perpetuating it to even more ridiculous extremes. And that would make them no better than scaplers.

@@fabienmorival669 Not a silly question and this is different per collector. I can only speak for myself, but the most important think is its extrinsic value. My CIB copies of my video games that I had as a child each have a specific personal meaning to them. They were given to me by friends or family members, some have passed away. I also bought a lot of those games personally from a store so I know they are authentic. You're right, I can probably sell it for a lot of money now and rebuy a different copy for cheaper. BUT, If I sold those games, I will never get that exact copy back. It loses ALL of its extrinsic value to me. Now on the intrinsic side, buying used games online as a collector is not as easy as it sounds. The vast majority of games sold online are either by collectors getting rid of their inferior copy, game stores trying to flip a game they overpaid for or games that had multiple owners. These games often are incomplete or damaged in ways only collectors will notice. Furthermore, there are A LOT of reproductions out there and they are getting better. Sometimes the manual or artwork is a reproduction but everything else is authentic. Therefore, I'd have to spend a lot of time talking with sellers and getting additional photos trying not to get scammed. Some of these sellers themselves, don't even know they have a reproduction piece. All and all, collectors for the most part collect for the love of video games, not for profit. Selling our valuable collections just to rebuy a different copy in similar or better collection is just too much work.

The other issue I see with this is, whos to say the box being graded is even real, or if theres even a game inside it? Whos going to think to invest in something like this to crack it open and truly see and make the item 'worthless'? No one... for all we know, they could be putting a blank cart, or something weighted insidew, have a reprint of the box and seal it themselves, than bam, 'grade' it some how and be done. Profit.... It's a scam is so many ways and whos to say if there doing this or not. There really isn't any way to tell and with the prices as they are it's just... yikes...

;w; Sad that so much knowledge went by the wayside in the pursuit of $$$.

They are missing an opportunity. They should rent the fossels back to the musiums at a premium.

The capitalist market has reached a choking point, the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. This kind of shit is going to continue until the complete collapse of our society as we know it.

@@barry1902 uh huh.. somehow i doubt your solution involves more freedom and liberty

@@cosmichemistry Unfortunately, "freedom and liberty," in the sense of no restrictions to what one can do, are exactly what led to this mess in the first place. These people are too _free_ to restrict others' freedoms themselves. The freedom to restrict others' freedoms is one that is worth restricting. It's the same kind of deal of "is it tolerant to tolerate another's intolerance."

Lol the ghost of Karl Marx has possessed this man

Well not really. It’s little more then insinuations and tangentially related events, with a heaping of personal incredulity. It’s realistically a starting point and Hopefully someone else will be able to do some actual research gather evidence that can actually make a change.

@@kx7500 You don't have to be a marxist to be disgusted by the likes of Jim Halperin. The guy's a crook. Plain and simple. This is the polar opposite of a "free market".

@@wallyman292 you do need to be an anti capitalist if you want to offer a solution to the problem, though.

@@kx7500 Really??? I"m a capitalist, and I'd offer the solution that this man halperin and several of his accomplices need to be arrested, fined heavily (for the second time in halperin's case) and put in prison for a number of years.

I mean he just explained how a pump and dump works. One of favorite books is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Lists every single bubble from the last 1000 years in detail.

@@sorsorsor11 Yeah, but he also provided a lot of evidence for how the people involved with this are tied together, which is the investigative part.

@@sorsorsor11 Which video did you watch? He explained a lot more than that...

@@danieljensen2626 Oh yeah no question, but you cant prosecute. Its like pumping up the price of dogecoin or a minecraft silver on a server. There are things that are totally unethical frauds, but legal.

@@TehCommentMaster LOL not dissing him, he did a great job, just saying this happens literally every day. Or maybe I just spend too much time watching stocks and reading SEC filings for a decade...

I remember buying a sealed copy of Aria of Sorrow on GBA long before this nonsense started happening. Opened that sucker up and plugged it into my Classic NES GBA SP and had a blast going through it. All these collecting bubbles cannot burst soon enough...

@@CyberDragon10K I bought sealed boxed set of Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Complete many years ago and opened and played it myself.

​@@CyberDragon10K i fucking hope so cause then i can grow my atari 2600 collection and probably afford the required parts to fix it as well.

How far is the price going to plummet?

@@the_kovic sadly rogue squadron is still an issue

Being called a journalist is an insult, more than anything

@@arcanehornet Unfortunately, but the point still stands. Journalism outside of the rare instances and few exceptions is a dead industry.

Love your art TenHun!

@@arcanehornet ok, how about Public Investigator?

@@arcanehornet nope it's not , look at the brave female journalist in Afghanistan and an indian journalist died covering the talibans. A lot of journalists do deserve respect .

honestly the kind of thing that makes me think speculation should be illegal, period

@@evanjacoby7805 It should be. Especially speculation on large scales (Hedge funds influencing the stock market and real estate, 2008 could've easily been avoided..)

These kinds of people will always be around and it's difficult or impossible to make laws to prevent it. The best thing we can do is to educate potential buyers so that they don't fall for this scam. There is a famous cartoon that had two panels. One panel was labeled "ways to grow rich" which had activities like hard work. The other panel was labeled "ways to grow poor", which had speculation, gambling, and that sort of thing. Of course, some people are beyond help. I remember back in the bitcoin days someone ran a bitcoin ponzi scheme. Everyone knew it was a ponzi scheme and its creator almost admitted as much. And yet people were still buying into it. Eventually he ran off with everything. Some people are just beyond help.

@@evanjacoby7805 This kind of speculation is pretty scummy but I can't think of a worse response to it than to ban all speculation. What you're asking for is a law to make it impossible for fools to be parted from their money. Which is impossible, but politicians would love for you to beg them for more laws to try.

That's a lot for words for "I hope they go to prison"

NFTs were doomed from inception to be speculation bombs. I'm sorry that many young artists will get left holding the bag when the bubble pops.

I laughed at even the idea of NFTs. Sounded even more ridiculous than the virtual real estate scam, and twice as corrupt. Nobody believed me. No single tool I have has been more useful than skepticism these past 7 years or so. I have been vindicated every single time. Let me tell you right now, especially in our current sociopolitical climate, there is nothing more powerful than refusing to be manipulated. If you think that something seems too good to be true, or that something doesn't add up, or that something is missing, *believe yourself.* Do not let yourself be swayed by anything but your own research and intuition. Know when you are being played, and by whom. The harder you are being pushed to blindly accept or believe something, the harder you need to push against it. The louder something is being screamed, the less attention it deserves. The more widely accepted something is, the more scrutiny it warrants. Do not let yourself be a statistic.

@@ootdega I agree with you.

This shit is done in every market. Art market, stock market and worst of all the property market

Oh naturally. NFTs are probably the worst scheme of them all as you don't literally have anything physical to hold. You don't even have to buy it to own the image.

ugh... they just write the expected. blablabla customers blablabla trust blablabla we are good company.

Notice they didn't mention any specific claims that are "baseless". They could have easily said "No these people aren't directors and have no financial stake in Wata" IF THAT WERE THE CASE. But instead just run of the mill corporate speak for "we don't like it when you point out our shitty practices". Reminds me of the recent Homestuck video by Sarah Z.

download this video just in case shit happened...... At high quality.

And they will be releasing their publication reports to make people feel better?

Also, Jobst shot back at Wata Games's response by tweeting this gem: "We have conducted an investigation (and in record time!) and find ourselves to be innocent."

I’ve got a guy in eBay whose bragging about owning an original sealing machine- Karl figure out to Dm me i think you’re going to want to read this conversation

He is a journalist at this point, i think you don't to have that label or career to be recognized as one, the investigation, work and passion he has is more than enough to be one

My thoughts EXACTLY. Why can’t we have some real journalists. Nobody believes anything anymore

@@dean7528 Hi. When you say an original machine, you mean one from a game company's factory?

Pultzer prize time

Oops, this was worth a million dollars! Give us 10%!

Yes! This is a problem for so many collectible communities, they shouldn’t be able to change it based on the worth of the collectible, that’s bullshit.

Exactly, charging you a fee based on the price they assign to your item is such a massive conflict of interest, it obviously incentivizes them to inflate the value as much as possible. It astonishes me that these companies aren't immediately shut down for the obvious scams that they are.

Same shit realtors do.

@@maythesciencebewithyou No. The difference is realtors collect a percentage of the sale price on an open market. CGC and WATA collect a progressive fee based on the speculative value of the comic or game. No sale has occurred. No open market has established the assessed value for that item. Nothing but an incentive to rate the collectible with a high value so that the fee is higher.

Right?? Huge conflict of interest just in that one aspect of this whole mess...

As someone who's younger brother is getting into higher value pokemon cards, many of those appraisal services also take a greater fee depending on the value of the card. This makes sense to me though because the value of any individual card can be easily verified, and getting a high rating generally boost the value by a predictable amount. Also for higher value cards, they have to be that much more careful with it to make sure they don't cause any damage themselves, something that is super easy to do especially when many flaws can only be seen through a jewelers loupe or something similar. It also makes lower value cards (~$100) much cheaper to appraise often at around $25 when the value can increase by much more than that with a high score (which is luck of the draw considering most flaws are printing errors). Also since there is competition in thos market, there are appraisal companies who's decisions have ruined their reputations, so in this field they have to be careful and appraise well to be trusted by the community to maximize their income.

Yea, auctioneer here- appraisal fees on a sliding scale based on the "value" of the item is a racket, plain and simple.

It flatly makes no sense why it could or should cost more to evaluate an object/game

Couldn't agree more!

Same, Like $1 million for a game that everyone has.

They been doing this in every industry. In every facit of life for dacades now. Same old scam.

Same

How are you involved on the retro games industry?

More people should see this!

This man was on the grindset from an early age

Early life shows he's a member of the small hat tribe every single time.

Can't you start a lawsuit against those ppl. ? You can just take this video to the police 😂.

Halperin is from the blue blood ruling caste families for sure. This isn't the first one Karl has unearthed; Bettencourt and his fake Mario speedrun was the other. Halperin's wiki is a goldmine. The fact he's pulled the same scam in the coin market show's he is protected by some powerful people. His niece Molly DeWolf Swenson was a White House intern under the Obama administration, for example. Halperin also attended spook feeder schools including Middlesex School, then later Harvard. Halperin also endows the James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, so he knows how to run a charity tax evasion front as well. If you need some extra vomit, he also wrote a sci-fi novel called *The Truth Machine*, which is about a genius who develops an infallible lie detector, that every citizen must pass in order to get a job or license, thus "eliminating dishonesty in all parts of human interaction..". Of course, the inventor of the machine created a backdoor, allowing him to avoid detection. Gee, this story sounds familiar..

I actually bought it last year for $130. Was really surprised with how the price skyrocketed a year later.

@@Jackie_Fhan just the cartridge. Cib costs around $1000

@@abdallahalbaiti3252 COVID has had an impact on prices in recent months.

That's going to be a tough one, mate... Not a lot of people could afford a $100 game, when it came out, so that's always going to contribute to it's rareness. I know that I wanted to buy Earthbound, as a kid, but just couldn't afford it and had to get Illusion of Gaia (was only $60-$70), instead.

I remember Best Buy had dozens of these for $10 each or something when N64 was out.

look at my channel about the clintons. the clintons did this shit in the 90s big time with property and drugs. its super easy to verify

another _dead ringer?_ for what?

@@selfademus he was right on the bell, hit the nail on the head.. are you Bailing what I'm Swathing here, or should I explain further?

Tyler Brewer pretty smug fer someone so clueless. learn what a _dead ringer_ is, doofus.

@@tylerbrewer8863 he's got you on your use of dead ringer. I can't believe I liked this comment without spotting that.

Yeah, I mourn the loss of my original Pokemon HeartGold. The prices now for getting a legitimate copy?

@@RooftopRose079 same man; my house got renovated in 2014 and after that I couldn't find it again. During that time it was around $80 new, then in 2018 it shot up to $300, weird thing is it's still around that price and the pokewalker accessory is really hard to find; sellers marking it over $100, feels like market manipulation. On my lost game, I had all the event pokemon from Ruby/Sapphire to the last ones for Heart/Soul Gold/Silver, felt pretty bummed out when I couldn't find it.

@@RooftopRose079 If it's any consolation, the bubble will burst and prices will come down, be it in 10 or 20 years (hopefully doesn't take that long).

@@Zed-Corps Yea a few years back you could sell a game and get it back later for a smaller higher amount but now if you sell you are expected to pay 3-5 times the amount in a year span. Sad

And we had a perfect example of speculation inflating prices just a few months ago. When Sony announced they'd be shutting down the PS3 and Vita stores, prices for the games skyrocketed. Then when Sony changed their minds after fan backlash, the prices went back down. Vita games are still kinda expensive, but that at least makes some sense. Most Vita games didn't have hundreds of thousands of copies printed like PS3 games did.

@@Mocha. how is this man not behind bars 🤷🤦🏻‍♂️

@@Don_Dilla *13*

That's been the way with retro games since good emulators started coming out. Collecting is on some level about acquiring the real items - it's about the thrill of the hunt, getting the real object to hold in your hands. But if you just want to experience the gameplay, the emulators are just a Google away.

Seriously, and I have replica SNES and Saturn controllers that work great for any sega or nintendo emulated games, and the Playstation controllers never changed much, so using the PS4 one on old PSX/PS2 games feels great. I miss cartridges and the giant physical collection I once had, but it was all stolen, so I just use emulation now..

This actually puts me in a decision making dilemma, because on one hand I love owning physical copies of the games I play, but on the other hand, emulation would be so much easier for playing the games I want and I wouldn't have to go through the nonsense of dealing with overinflated prices

@@KipsterMc Maybe you could do both - emulate the games you want and if you're able to get the physical copies, get those as well.

@@stephaniethebatter7975 That is true. Really, for the games I want, I can probably get most of them physically as long as they're not Nintendo games

Hey, I just started this video and I'm not sure if the topic of Reproduction Carts comes into play. I wanted to ask, considering you're so deeply invested in the community. I thought it'd be neat to hear your opinion. I dont have as large of a collection as yours, just a boxfull of Genesis cartridges and some ps2 games. Some are CIB, some are not. However, when it came to the Genesis games, I picked up a few reproductions for the simple purpose that I wanted to add a physical copy of the game to my library. They were never marketed as a genuine cart, I got it at a reduced price. I can see the issue of reproductions when you're actively attempting to FIND a genuine, and the two are getting mixed together, however I don't hate the existence of them. Where do you stand? Thanks!

51:22 spotted :^) , real quick shot but its there

Dude just watch him giving a tour of "his video game collection". He says things that make no sense.

I can imagine it being there but still outrageous when you think about other people barely making ends meets, it’s an disgusting attitude to have and very wasteful.

There exist way richer people than this. Yes him and his friends and family are clearly upper middle class but I don't see anything wrong about this. (Other than the dishonest market manipulation)

@@herrabanani Bruh how can you not see the grotesque disregard for $15,000 when that amount is monumental to 60% of the population. That is not middle upper class

@@herrabanani i had no idea rich people exist

It's just a lie

only thing left is to go after counterfeits and pirated copies. Market is large but also scams the user with copies of video games that are legit almost unplayable due to piracy checks.

Emulation is more about nostalgia, then it is about collecting...

@@laurensa.1803 i wouldn't say nostalgia, it's more about preservation

@kook Yeah, it's not like there's only 1 reason for emulation

@kook both, imho.

Emulation absolutely is not the same. I have been collecting since the 90s. The good news is none of this stuff is actually rare. In around 1998 I found an entire shipping carton of "beat em and eat em" an allegedly rare adult game for the 2600. A whole shipping carton full of sealed copies. I literally found them at a pawn shop. NONE of the games are rare. I have a tooth protectors 2600, a chase the chuckwagon and a number of other "Unbelievably Rare" games that I found at a flea market less than 20 miles from my house. ALL of these games, ALL OF THEM are made of injection molded plastic. Injection molding plastic simply is not viable in small numbers. Even in the 80s, the molds cost thousands of dollars. The PCBs and ROM chips are only viable at numbers. To make a hundred cartridges would make each one so expensive that it would have sell for hundreds of dollars. Not only that, but every game mentioned in this video that sold for stupid amounts of money are THE most common games out there. SMB for the NES? There are MILLIONS of them. I guarantee you there is a box of these things shrink wrapped in some warehouse. You can still buy most tubes for classic radios. Some guy in Florida just died with a warehouse of over a million tubes. OVER A MILLION. There are still NIB tubes from the 1920s. The very oldest tube types and there are still many, many, many of them. There are many thousands of coins from the Roman Empire still in existence.

Thats so horrible Im so sorry for you and I hope somehow someday you can get atleast some of it back

Underrated Comment Alert 🚨

That's perfect!! lol

Good job

they are creating a business - remember good analog office keyboards replaced by cheap chineese crap and they raised the price to 1500% and gave them fancey names by companies like logitech -no noname really good keyboard - only cheap trash at those prices - this were around year 2000 - these guys were big companies creating a business

This needs to be top comment

It never hurts to ask.

Underrated comment

You should always ask but be extremely long winded before asking for the title. Waste as much time as you can.

@@MrJohnlennon007 pretend to be a 70 year old grandpa with a stutter wanting to buy Battletoads for their grandson, but can't really remember the title.

Hello, is this GameStop?

Mah Bread! (Edit: autocorrect WHY)

Yeah but which fossil did you take and how much was it graded

@@supyo1 Yeah a few thousand to few hundred thousand with the steepest exponential climb I've seen since bloated memecoins. Seems pretty legit to me. Now just wait when the price doubles again in under a year, because that's how collectables work.

I thought the same thing. The shop by my school sold boxes super Mario in mint condition for 299. I thought someone would have to be dedicated to buy

I remember seeing the price for $0.09 in a Funcoland flyer