Wata & Heritage Auctions Game Scandal Blows Up 

13:00 dude alone the fact that people in some ways affiliated with WATA grade their own games at their own company is something that never can be a ok thing that should happen because those people obviously have interests to give their own games the highest (reasonable) grades which delegitimise the whole credibility of their grading system you can't pretend that you are a "objective" grading company when you have self interest to grade your own games and those same people are also in relations with the auction house that also gets a share of the sold items price so both those companies have interests to inflate "their own" games and both companys have interests to get more investors and more people in general interested in this market which gives them even more reasons to grade their games in the most favorable way and artificially inflate those games prices to the max. All in all this all is just one big scam

The WATA heel-turn is my favorite story line in gaming. Thanks for the accurate and entertaining coverage of the flim flammery.

Personally, I hope the game sales department of HA and the entirety of WATA get a big fine, as well as having to pay a fee per item not returned, and take customer-voluntary returns, covering all related costs until games are safely back with their original owner, AND THEN they have to close their operations / shut down WATA. Realistically, I think Halperin & Co. perfectly executed this plan, as he sold the company, and might have to pay a very modest fine, while all the inv3st0rs will continually keep patching up the market by basically wheeling and dealing and doing sort of the same thing. And otherwise, I think we're still stuck with a market not willing to open its eyes. 😕

This is dumb. Nobody cares about Nintendo cartridges anymore

Sell sell aell

Karl is a fuckin GOD

I see what you did there.

No partial legend here, just pure uncut gem

My god someone finally put it into words. What they would do is pull a Billy Mitchel and have shark lawyers ready.

And that’s that

It’s no secret Karl lives in Australia. They knew exactly what they were doing there. He didn’t need their validation in the first place.

"wadda you mean I'm funny??!!!"

I was picturing the helicopter scene from Scarface

Yep. When you grade games on WATA, you have to pay according the value of the game you expect to get from its grade. Anyone that sends a nice sealed SM game to be graded needs to pay thousands of dollars. That's why they boost the price with those fake sales.

@@madjoe8622 Thats the thing. They take a % of the expected value of the game if it exceeds a certain amount, so they are interested in having prices being as high as possible.. And that also creates another problem. Artificial scarcity. I've been collecting games (mainly gameboy) for about 15 years (damn, I am getting old...) and I have a bunch of sealed games (non of them graded), including a couple super rare ones. I have a Shantae mint sealed, which just complete in box even if its a bit beaten goes for a few thousands. I don't know how much would it cost graded, (I don't know if there are precedents and I am too lazy to look at it, xD) but I know one thing. I can't afford to grade it. It will be way more that what I payed for the game. A friend of mine has Mario Bros, MB2 and MB3 all of them mint sealed (non graded). He spent what was a good money on them back in the day because he wanted to have them. He would have to sell his house to be able to pay grading those now... And I know a few other collectors in the same situation. My point is, I am not saying those games are common, but I would like to know how many average joes like me and my friend, who have been collecting for the fun and love of it, going to conventions, yard sales and hunting them down, have sealed copies of some of this games that simply are not going to get graded because their owners can't afford it? Non of use really care much about that because we are not intending to sell, but that creates a scenario were the most expensive games (specially if they are not really that rare, like the Marios) are ungradable for collectors that might have them because of the cost of grading. Therefore making that games population lower than it really is/would be.

No a pump and dump is when Rudy signs a marketing agreement with a new TCG like Metapoo and cons moronic kids into buying into it as if anything in will be worth price of a original Black Lotus. This with video games? Is legit criminal activity and money laundering, without a doubt.

Their pricing model for their grading services is proof enough that it’s a scam. It’s set up to benefit themselves and their rich investor buddies.

@@bkirk0510 it happened with Atari Spider-Man.

The grades are being given by the people selling the games. How can you know how rare the SM64 game was if they don’t report how many games they’ve graded?

@@jonny5alive123 Don't forget they also bought Nintendoage just to shut them down so they can sell NOT rare games at a stupidly high price. It's all about the population reports.

@@bkirk0510 It was bought out by people who see game collecting as an investment and not a hobby. They sucked NintendoAge dry of its data and then killed it. You can choose to view it anyway you want, my friend.

It will never happen for a simple reason.....those bast**** mentioned are faking the whole thing. They are selling and buying from each other so no real Million dollar was spent and may be the game it self did not move from the shelf. The actions they are doing (Wata/AH/Khan/dentist/coin scam man....etc) should really be investigated as it may involve money laundry. and if the guy in the report has more resources and access to social security system, he will find them all as nephews, old neighbors, step family or old colleagues.

go fund me a hitman thats what i say

I hope they get SEEEEEEEAAAAALLLLEED behind bars

FTC is looking at the claims.

Depends how connected they are to the powers that be

Jim has before. I worked for a coin and card grading company back in the Hay Day. He got Pinged

Lawsuits don't actually move that fast. At least not in a way that 'we would see' it.

Dats a BINGO

This!!

Agreed. I'm hoping this fallout will turn people away from grading stuff.

I was going to grade my games a month ago...not any more !!!

Funny how you consider your shitty CIB collecting the same as sealed. Literally two different hobbies lmao. Get over yourself.

This fraud has hurt the retro gaming scene, I go on eBay and can’t find any real rare gems on sale anymore.

go watch the "Retro Rick" channel here on youtube, it already bursted on his face

@@chaosdimension6433 Any particular video to watch?

A true game collector you are my friend. Caring more about collecting and less about what our collections are worth. I also sincerely hope the market eventually collapses or bursts so they are affordable and people can reasonably collect without competing with resellers and sham speculators

​@ElectronicWasteland Graded games literally have almost zero impact on your shitty CIB market. You're talking about two completely different hobbies lmao.

@@aceone2156 LMAO! Feeding your family off graded video games! Nobody gets shut down for auction fraud lol! This is gr8 b8 m8!

My wife

@@jakethesnakepkm?

Great user name!

@@leland242 thanks, it goes along with my music podcast and vinyl channel pretty well :)

@@InfectiousGroovePodcast I’ll be checking that out immediately !

Yeah... It's a load of crock as Wayne Gretzky's game used shit does not go for this much... WAYNE GRETZKY one of the greatest athletes who owns almost every record imaginable in the NHL. His shit goes for less than what that Mario 64 and Super Mario Bros (NES).

Which Finals game 😂 I’m just kinda curious if it’s that Boston Center game 😳

YEA DUDE PUMP AND DUMP SCHEME BASICALLY

@@Wexter0083 These video games should have never reached more than 10k, and even in the most best market, games should have never gone above 100k. This was assuming only collector's bought. But investors, and scam artists showed up.

It's not a red flag, it's proof these guys are crooks.

James Halperin has literally been scamming since he was 13, go look at his Wikipedia page. Mail fraud has a teenager and now he's still at it. He turns 69 this year. A fitting age.

These con artists are sociopaths with no sense of ethics or morality. They would even go so far as to screw their own grandmother (not literally you sicko!).

Yep you could buy all the 12 backs and own the star wars market. Lets not give people any idea. lol... Star Wars is still relatively still affordable.

With 2M you could buy like 7-10 MTG Alpha sets. Crazy. That SM game doesn't worth that. Fake fake price.

James Halperin has been scamming since he was 13. He turns 69 this year.

What RU-vid collectors are downplaying this news. I’m curious as I’d like to check out their ‘response’

@Emiliano Hurtado I didn't want to name names but that is correct.

They're trying to get out of the market ASAP.

Lol “we don’t need no water…”

I mean sealed for thousands isn't too outrageous for over 30 year old games. those 10000s and 100000s to millions? nah.

But... that's because they have a high grade. That makes them valuable. Duh. :P

Does real journalism even exist anymore? Even sites such as BBC having links to tweets as news....

@@haveanotherpinacolada the best journalism I see is usually by amateurs on RU-vid and stuff. There are people with a lot of talent for it but there really isn’t anything good on mainstream media

Good for you, no one cares.

@@haveanotherpinacolada Reuters, The Associated Press, Al Jazeera. That's pretty much it

Same here. Also Kotaku is way too woke. No thanks.

@@ThereIsNoLord thank you, I was so proud of myself for that one. I like that pic, is that bad religion?

Dude. I can’t unsee it. 😂

😂

Also Ian, obviously.

@@supyo1 Maybe so, but Ian still has given proper reservations regarding this.

Ian's ok

Whenever I get a game, I rip off the plastic in my car like I'm a kid. I used to work at egghead computers as a teenager. We would open up games, take them home and play them, and bring them back and reseal them.

I don’t see many graded loose carts out there… which ones are you referring to?

@@aceone2156 is a big difference between speculators, collectors, and enthusiasts. Very few mediums have interactivity the way video games do. Enjoy your boxes.

@@aceone2156 As a seller it's not surprising that market manipulation means squat to you and you shrug it off like flies and your opinion of illegal activity is "oh well it happens all the time" or you somehow lump fraud into "competing forces". If anything the inflated higher prices benefits you in the short term which is why you're defending it. What wata did is bad for the market as a whole and taints the reputation of graded video games even though most collectors don't care about graded or sealed games to begin with. It befuddled me that you're incapable of comprehending how bad it is to have news articles being published about "record breaking million dollar auctions" in video games when they were a illegitimate scam to begin with. One doesn't need to be interested in buying sealed games to be interested in the entire retro video game market and concerned about the affects of the wata scandal. If you can't fathom that you're 1) in denial 2) in defense mode or 3) you just have a dim bulb upstairs in your head

@@aceone2156 lots of people have brought up youtube influencers as a product of driving up prices but it's not illegal for them to post RU-vid content and sell games especially if the increased demand is an unintended result afterwards. What wata is doing is illegal and there is a possibility that this type of manipulation has been going on in the loose and cib market as well.. I'm done having a debate with you dude.

I guess greed and drugs

They can just emulate the game. It's not like what's in the box is unique.

@@Jackie_Fhan did you not read what he wrote? If there are 20 copies of said item at any given time it's not rare. He didn't say anything about condition. Get a clue and re-read what he said.

@@Jackie_Fhan did you reply to the wrong comment? Nothing you wrote has anything to do with his comment

I cannot take credit for that comment, that was all Pat lol.

Are you kidding Anthem and Fallout 76 will be in the billions in a few years.😆

Looking forward to the time when people aren't greedy fucks that seek to grease people.

It's a huge bubble driven by Millennials entering their peak earning years (a similar bubble hit comic books in the 80's and 90's due to Boomers getting lots of money and driving comic book speculation). Later generations won't makes such a big deal out of this crap, and values will decline (look folks, the market for video games in the late 80's and 90's was massive, there's no way such plentiful items deserve to be as expensive as the current collector's market thinks they ought to be. In the later 90's the comic book market crashed when people realized how common most comic books were (making them not so valuable).

@@ryanjacobson2508 exactly!! I laugh in the face of people that think that Mega Man 1 is worth $70 & Contra & Mike Tyson Punch Out is worth $40 when there are millions of copies out there.

Mario 64 was marketed to the 2nd/echo Boomer generation born in the late 80's/early 90's (birth rates were massive from about 1988-1992). Millions upon millions of copies were sold. We still have kajillions of vinyl records from the 70's (that are largely worthless) because so many were pressed to satisfy the ginormous Boomer market. Realistically many 90's video games should not be that valuable because so many were made.

@@ryanjacobson2508 Exactly. It sold like 10 or 11 million copies. But in the 90's, the trend of collecting sealed things had already started. Whether it be star wars figures or video games or whatever. People are sitting on boxes of these things.

Wonder what Pat thinks about his good buddy Dain?

@@RetroHabit82 who?

@@thecianinator Rain Anderson. Nintendoage founder and who's collection was sold and later graded by WATA

@@RetroHabit82 Rain jumped ship when he saw the money coming in. NinAge was part of the deal for the "collection" but was also a way for Wata to control information, as GoCollect certainly hasn't been updated like promised, its barren.

Easily. They can hook up with a sealing company, and they pay them a cut for helping with professionally resealing the games. It's to damn easy to fraud.

Hehehehe

BUT SHAWN

Everything is manipulated by people who are in the same evil team. Which is why society has gone to shit so fast, and they're not done yet until the world is literal shit and we're begging for a new world order to come save us.

His other content is extremely good but he definitely raised the bar with this story!

The majority of responsibility is on them. Prices won't rise if ppl don't buy them. The road is THICK with morons. All within the age of emulation, no less. I feel same about pre-ordering games. For impulsive suckers 99/100.

I mean to remember that at least some of the buyers where inn on the scam to begin with. But yeah people with more money than brain is a real problem.

@@SeattleSundown The prices are raising because these people are sellling the games to themselves to pump the price up. None of this would be going on without this wash trading scheme.

yeah no one is buying these games at the astronomical prices being shown, its the ppl who own the auction and grading companies who are 'buying' their own games and attempting to create an artificial demand for them, thats what makes it a grift

Is that good or bad

@@GamerBoy870 its good. So lets say you get a grade in a 9.8. They tell you how many there are out there and then how many in each grade have been graded since Day 1. So if they start from scratch w videogames people will have a better idea of whats going on.

Essentially yes, that's exactly what they're doing.

Mommy needs to slab your art in plastic first and stick it on the refrigerator. Then it’s official. You’ll be the next Picasso. 🎨 🏆 💰

Ya got an extra zero there bud

Wouldn’t it put an even bigger spotlight on the whole situation if they sued him? Hmmmmm……I hope they do it. ⚖️ ⚒ 💸

@@xyrzmxyzptlk1186 Exactly. They don't want the attention. They couldn't win a court case. But at the same time they couldn't completely ignore it because of how much it pulled the curtain back. They want to do damage control, but the cat is out of the bag.

Good catch. A guy working at WATA probably has that box and the 5 remaining games 🤣

🤣😂🤣👍

you showed them

What is 'better differently'supposed to mean?

Well, that, and mainstream gaming journalism doesn't expose corruption, it sucks up to big money hoping for sponsorships and such.

How many copies do you have?

lol a third of my 360, PS3, PS4 games are still sealed. Sealed games for these consoles - are - not - rare!

@@madjoe8622 do you have Skyrim’s? It’s not about rare. Are Pokémon cards rare they go for that much? Bitcoin is a VIRTUAL currency with 18 million Bitcoin and its $40k. That’s not rare and it’s trading for $40k.

I use to throw the game in the trash and keep the case for other games that had bad cases.

Bryant Arlington, Stop been stupid by asking that to everybody as it proves something. You can still buy a new, pristine, sealed Skyrim 360 on amazon for about 30$.

Karl's example of the graded tomb raider full of holes shows how grading is WORTHLESS

6 mega corporations control all entertainment and media. And those 6 corporations are in the same evil team. It's like one single dragon, with multiple heads.

I think to the contrary they know what they are doing. Associating Mario with a high price tag is a good publicity. All news outlets will take that story. A lot of people don't know anything about these games but they all know about Mario. They will be more easily interested and curious in an articles if they know it's a Mario game. But, I think Pat is right. They just went to greedy and now they are getting "bad" attention because it looks like a scam.

I feel they just faked that sale to boost the sale price of WATA. Or they just don't care because they probably think they are SO smart.

Heritage is selling me a bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge slabbed & graded? Nice! 💰

Especially when in a 100 years the cellophane will probably crumble to pieces in the case. The only difference with these graded games and unsealed ones will be the WATA case 😂. Crazy when you think about it.

What if these $1,000,000.00 games are defective? How would the purchaser ever find out? Guess we’ll never know because you can’t break the forbidden seal. The whole Sealed thing is ridiculous. 💩

@@xyrzmxyzptlk1186 Good point. Do they at least pass the box in x-rays to see what's inside? 😂

@@madjoe8622- As far as I know a defective circuit board X-rays just like a functional one. The only way to know for sure is to open it up and test play the game……but God forbid we break that precious seal. This whole “sealed” thing is ridiculous. 🤡

@@xyrzmxyzptlk1186 Oh yeah, you cannot be sure if it's functional. But maybe you can at least see if it's a true game. I mean, not a true SM, just a true game 🤣. Yeah, that 2M$ cellophane is ridiculous. Cellophane, too, that will probably crumble to pieces after 100 years.