Here is the YouTube video for this episode-

https://youtu.be/2D5dbX61qXM?si=iW1MM_VVPRVX20bZ We are actually coming up on the 4 year anniversary since Mario 64 sold for the record breaking 1.56M dollars and Karl Jobst famously published his video about WATA games and Heritage auctions being a scam. Much of that video’s sentiment still lingers in the broader hobby to this day, albeit the actual substance of the video has become twisted and distorted over the years, as people will now claim money laundering and then link Karl’s video as proof. 

The infamous NY Times article about how video game collecting where someone is cited as saying something along the lines of “you literally can’t overpay for a video game”.  In that sense This was no different than any other collectable category, like sports cards, comics etc.  From about 2020 - 2022, every collectable category realized insaaannne growth and price appreciation across the board.  You can google “everything bubble” to get a broader economic view of what was taking place at the time, but it’s important to know that it wasn’t a video game specific pump and dump, though video games had a lot of specific events during that time as well.

This culminated into the July 2021 when 9.8 A++ Mario 64 sold for $1.56M. And then the infamous Jobst video comes out and most people would point to that as the reason why games tumbled 97%. While it certainly did have affect the market, it wasn’t the main reason why games were dumped. So what were going to do is discuss the timeline of everything that happened and what we see as the main catalysts for why things pumped and why things dumped over the years, and make sure to share your own thoughts as to what were the most crucial events and what might have been overblown or completely overlooked as we review the events of the pandemic bubble.

1. Comic people come in/Wata themselves begin buying/advertising -  WATA comes public around 2018 and starts grading games, a lot which were VGA crosses. Their scale is based off the comic scale and drew in comic dealers and stores to grade and sell games. VGA had already existed for about 10 years at this point, but never focused on marketing/expansion/cross-appeal.  They were pretty content doing what they were doing while WATA deliberately wanted to expand this field and grow the entire category.
   
   

2. 100K Mario Bros Sale / Heritage auctions exclusively sells WATA games - Shortly after HA first started offering video games in January of 2019, the infamous 100K private sale took place for the Sticker Sealed Mario Bros, that included Jim Halperin of HA, which many would point to as the critical moment for video games being “put on the map” as a legitimate collector category. This was a massive news story/media release, whatever you want to call it.  Everyone in the gaming world knew this sale took place whether you believed it was real or not.  The second youtube video when I searched for this is actually a Philadelphia news station reporting the sale.
   
   For anyone who doesn’t know about the sticker seal mario - highest grade eaerliest print to exist sealed.  There are ZERO sealed first prints.  The famous 100k mario has never transacted since the sale back in 2019.  This is something a lot of casual viewers get wrong as the 2M Mario sale, which was a different copy.
   
   This was the main impetus for people to cross their games so they can sell on heritage. This was before CGC was around but VGA was curiously not allowed to be sold, although that changed in 2022-23. It was also stated that security concerns regarding VGAs cases was a big decision for HA to avoid VGA for so long - as we know, VGA cases don’t really have any “modern” tamper-proof tech that you see with cards, comics, or even WATA games at the time. 
   
   

3. Pawn Stars- The famous episode where normies point to manipulation. I don’t actually think this episode did anything.  No one watching Pawn Stars is immediately going to go out and think every video game is ultra rare and valuable.  I’ve watched Pawn Stars for years and it’s never incentivized me to go and buy something.  Either way, it became a massive talking point for why WATA is a scam.
   
   It was just a bad look in so many ways. You have a WATA co-founder who bought the Mario, it is now graded in a WATA case, and you call in the WATA president for an evaluation and he claims it’s now “worth” 3x the amount you paid for it early in the year? In actuality, according to the WATA lawsuit deposition, Deniz, the WATA president did disclose his relationship with the person who was on Pawn Stars, but the Pawn Star editors cut it out of the show. And according to the community they did have a private offer of $300k.
   
   

4. Fractionalization companies and other auction houses- you had companies like Rally and Otis bidding on games at auctions and buying them from collectors to set floor pricing. This mainly affected the top end games, which at that point might have been a 9.4 Super Metroid.

   
   The biggest thing with these fractional companies buying up stuff was they didn’t care what price they paid because they literally couldn’t lose.  Whatever they pay, they then just break it up into 1000 small parts and sell to people.  

5. WATA supply constraint- THIS is the biggest contributor to prices going up. People wanted WATA graded games but famously during the pandemic, everything either shut down or was running at 50% capacity. WATA orders were through the roof and turnaround times were anywhere from 6 months to close to 2 years at the worst if you were slow tier. So any random game graded by WATA would 2-3x because there was NO SUPPLY. And grail level games were 9.4s because there were no top end conditioned games submitted. 

6. 2021 Mario 64 sale- Games were doubling and tripling every few months since 2019. This culminated in the July sale where Alexis bought the SM64. And one other big time collector from cards bought up along with Alexis the majority of that auction, where the total was excess of $7M. It’s funny that SM64 gets all of the attention but that also had Final Fantasy 7 for over 100k, tomb raider for over 100k. And when people look to sealed and graded games as they reason to why ALL games went up I can’t help but laugh because let’s be real, Tomb Raider on PS1 stayed affordable.  Mario 64 carts didn’t budge any more than any other popular N64 game. They are almost entirely separate by that point.
   

7. Jobst video- this is when the normies get really mad at graded games and blast them on Reddit. The normal response to seeing a graded game is - WATA SCAM, and Did you see the YouTube video? Many will point to this being the main reason why games collapsed. While it contributes to the continued vilification of graded games and certainly was a reason why values went down, the next point is the MAIN reason why-
   
   Yea I genuinely believe nothing would have actually changed with the prices of graded games whether or not Karl publicized that video.  Maybe it helped increase the velocity or speed of some price drops, but the market was only headed one direction regardless.  Pokemon, Sports, Comics, etc etc all came crashing down in the same time period and all have recovered (or not recovered) at different rates now.

   
   Also in light of recent Karl Jobst defamation lawsuit that he lost in his native country Australia, it was legally proven that he makes up some of his “journalistic” content for the clicks. Billy Mitchell successfully sued him for $350k for Karl accusing Billy of leading another YouTuber to suicide. And Karl raised $200k from his viewers for his lawyer views on a false premise that the lawsuit was based off of Billy being a video game cheater. Karl recently filed for bankruptcy.

8. The dump commences- after the July  sale, all those comic dealers, which were probably 5-10 of them, start to dump all their stuff. If you look at HA signature auctions, and even weeklies the number of games balloons, Goldin starts their first video game sale with a 9.4 A Sonic going for 300k + and a 9.4 A hangtab Mario for 600k+. All these dealers who bought the SMB3s at 10k each all of a sudden are gone and only collectors are left to bid. So all through 2022-23, every subsequent game that comes out in the next auction goes down another 50% each time. Usually healthy markets have a balance between speculators and collectors but when it goes from 80-20 to 20-80, you’re going to feel the effects price wise. 

9. The aftermath- high end games were hit the hardest, where you see a Smash Bros sell for 200k+ during the peak to 50k in 2024. The air was and still is thin up there and almost all the big money dealers were gone. However even during the slide to the bottom which was mid 2023, the mid end 2k-10k games showed resiliency. All the Day 1 sigs kept going down but Day 2 held strong throughout. This showed us that real collectors were still in this hobby that’s been around since the 90s and 2000s. 

10. Hope?- all of 2024 was a stabilization period were prices didn’t go up much or go down much, except for high end. The first sig of 2025 was the first time day 1 showed upticks while day 2 wasn’t as impressive as before. Perhaps high end players are willing to put some real money into the hobby again? 

Unlike comics, the video game community has never codified “eras” of collecting. So we are here to formally introduce the idea of breaking down collecting by Ages according to tent pole consoles and the games that defined the time period. If you guys prefer to watch the video instead of text, here is the YouTube Link https://youtu.be/bMa7rp2IW8o?si=WBYc8tdppmGqCalh

Prehistoric Age (1972-1985)

The age of Atari, Commodore, Intellivison. Certain games are collectible like Pac-Man, first appearance of Mario for the Atari 2600 and so on, but by in large, 99% of the games are forgotten and will never come back to people’s radar. You also have uber rare games like Air Raid that sell for 5 figures but the collecting base will only grow smaller over time as people age out and new collectors come in. 

Golden age (1985 NES-1995 SNES)

NES saved home console gaming back in the 80s and the most valuable games and the largest number of collectors will always collect for this console. 

Mario became what it is currently because of Super Mario Bros 1 and Zelda started it all because Miyamoto wanted to create a game that captured the wonder of exploring nature in his childhood. Other amazing IPs include Kirby, Metroid, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, and others.

Genesis biggest and arguably only investable exclusive IP is Sonic. Even then, it’s more of a tier 3 IP, where it’s being kept alive by box office success but the actual games themselves haven’t been relevant since the Dreamcast days of Sonic Adventure. 

SNES is also a juggernaut with important starts to franchises like Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario Kart and Starfox. Its RPG library is extremely collectible like Chrono Trigger and Mario RPG. 

Silver age (1995 start of N64 TO 2000 before Gamecube)

Nintendo 64 grail games are Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Zelda OOT, Smash. Tier 3 titles like 007 Goldeneye and Sculptors Cut are also very valuable. Perhaps it’s because N64 has a small library that it’s easy to collect for but somehow they are as expensive if not more than SNES.  

Playstation 1 is an interesting console with a ton of firsts- Grand Theft Auto,, Tomb Raider, Tony Hawk, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Twisted Metal and the list goes on. And beyond firsts, they got console defining games like FF7, Castlevania SOTN, Metal Gear Solid. With major franchises like those you’d think PS1 games would be near N64 pricing. However these 4 points limits PS1 pricing-

• Jewel case vs cardboard, just easier to get higher # grade on jewel

• Lots more shovelware, a lot of games are complete garbage 

• Double jewel case games don’t have the manual with staples that can get messed up, and thus have higher # grades as well

• It isn’t Nintendo

Bronze age (2000 start of PS2 Xbox and GameCube To 2005)

The BIG console of this generation is arguably both Xbox and GameCube. PS2 had some new IPs like Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Devil May Cry and God of War but most other top games are continuation of series like GTA Final Fantasy and Resident Evil.  

Original Xbox has the mega IP Halo and Star Wars KOTOR. It doesn’t have a ton of original IP that’s relevant today however. 

Gamecube Introduced series like Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Luigi’s Mansion, and Chibi Robo which are still going strong. Also other major gamecube IPs are continuations of big Nintendo IPs like smash Bros Meele, Mario Sunshine and Zelda Windwaker. 

Modern age (2006 PS3 and beyond)

This is when online play really took off with Sony and Nintendo catching up to Microsoft. Big games include Last of Us, Little Big Planet and Wii Sports. Besides being selective with high grade and big franchise games, wouldn’t recommend pouring any investment funds into this timeframe of games.  

Tier 1- It’s Mario. It’s Zelda. It’s Pokémon. Great future upside and limited downside but more expensive now to participate in. Collect any game you have nostalgia for but if you’re worried about it retaining or growing in value, then you have to consider the longevity and relevance of the IP. For example, consistent investment in the Mario IP by Nintendo, whether through games or theme parks or movies, help make it the blue chip franchise of graded game collecting.

Zelda is not far behind in popularity and IP investment by Nintendo, with the movie coming out as well as consistent banger Switch games.

Pokémon is a behemoth when it comes to cards but for games, it’s oddly lacking behind especially when compared to the price of some Pokémon cards. Remember, Pokémon came out as Gameboy games FIRST before cards or anime.

Tier 2 IPs are other Nintendo 1st party mascots like Metroid, Donkey Kong, and Microsoft giant Halo. They still have consistent game releases through the years but typically lag behind the tier 1 IPs in terms of value, and aren’t nearly as heavily invested by their developers as compared to the tier 1s.

However rare variant and high grades are fought for when they come up for auction. For example, Metroid Hangtab 9.6 A+ sold for 125k in 2024.

Tier 3 IPs are IPs where they had important games during NES’s or the consoles heyday but have fallen off the cliff when it comes to IP and game development. Examples such as Castlevania, Mega Man, even Kid Icarus have occasional new games but come out for the DS handhelds only and the quality of the games aren’t up to par with the first 2 tiers. There’s always a possibility they become tier 2 or even 1 IPs again but it will take a drastic change in company philosophy to refocus and reinvest in those IPs.

Tier 4 IPs are niche IPs that have a cult like following but will never be mainstream and do not have games that were released during the golden era of cartridges (NES SNES N64). Games like Nier or Phoenix Wright were amazing games and have strong fan bases but as for investing, will likely not grow in popularity and limits your potential buyer base when you go to sell your game.

Lastly Tier 5 IPs are just completely dead franchises from long ago. Buy only because of your nostalgia, not because of investing.

Final rule of thumb, simple rule in how to tell if your game is a top tier IP. If you go to a non game collector and told you invested in a game, how many words do you need to answer the question WHY?

YouTube episode link- https://youtu.be/IQIVEhKphAk?si=6dT-d1-nUDHkJO5E

YouTube link to the episode- https://youtu.be/0PhPTsbV1nQ?si=dJClCK5er0WpyT5D

There’s a lot of similarities between the 3 leading video game grading companies and card grading. Essentially, WATA = PSA, VGA = Beckett and CGC = CGC. Do remember that there are 2 components to grading sealed games- the Box integrity and the seal quality.

Grading Scale

WATA- uses comic scales that go by 0.5 increments until 9.0 and then goes up by 0.2 until 10. Seal grades are from A++ on downwards. 

CGC- same as WATA but has a 9.9 grade 

VGA- uses a scale up to 100 that uses increments of 5 and a +. So you have 85 85+ 90 90+ and this one grade encompasses both box and seal. In general VGA grades harsher on seal and more lenient on box. In general a VGA 95 hardcase game is 9.8 A++ or higher. For cardboard it can be a wider range because of leniency on box.

Pricing 

WATA- anywhere between $50-150 for 5-30 day turnaround + Fair market value upcharge. But recently have introduced discounts anywhere from 10-30%.

CGC- anywhere between $40-125 for fast turnaround + 1.5-2% FMV upcharge. Also has membership where you pay upfront for 10-20% discounts for the year.

VGA- $50-150 for standard games with 21-75 day turnaround. Only game in town for custom size cases but goes from $115 on up. No upcharge

Grading Consistency

WATA- anecdotally has gotten easier to receive 9.8s because 10s are now possible to to get. Harder on seal than CGC.  

CGC- 9.9s are easier to get now than before. Harder to get 10s than WATA but also possible to get 10s with non A++ 

VGA- most “mint” games end up in the 85 and 85+ grade.  Extremely difficult to get 90 or better.  

Resale value

WATA- typically outsells CGC 20-50% if the same grade, only outshined by very high grade VGA (95 or more), which would equate to a BGS 10. 

Collector base

WATA has the widest collector base since the pandemic boom onwards, much like how PSA dominated after 2019. And WATA is owned by PSA.

CGC just entered the space 2 years ago and is having a much bigger presence in Heritage Auctions so the future is looking bright as well. 

VGA has a die hard fan base with long time collectors since they’ve graded the longest since 2008. And for things like consoles and games that require custom sizes, they are the only game in town. 

Case quality

WATA’s new case is much sleeker and form fitting but the blisters have had issues and can come scuffed that inhibit eye appeal

CGC’s case is quite clear but the blue labels are not anyone’s cup of tea and the case looks like a hanging blister pack

VGA’s acrylic is the clearest and most form fitting because of its custom nature. Labels are clean but lack pertinent variant info.

Since a lot of Mantel users are based in sports cards and maybe TCG, I figured it’d be good to make a crash course on how and why you should collect video games that you guys care about or have nostalgia for. Every topic is intended to let you guys learn more about why we think video games are cool and how they are vastly different from modern sports cards, but VERY similar to vintage cards.

If you guys digest content easier through video form, here’s a link to @GetTheGreg weekly podcast that goes over this topic- https://youtu.be/YNMOJBc9t9s?si=8Y8GT9n4zGOBNmKW

1. Huge disparity in graded collector market size- Video games are 10-50x smaller than sports cards or TCG collecting, with graded games a smaller niche. Liquidity is a bigger issue on games that aren’t sought after. But, you can collect what you want without a ton of competition, which means much lower price points. E.g. Paul Skenes debut patch for $1,000,000 vs Super Mario Bros 1 for $20k. PRO for collector, CON for flipper

2. Pump catalysts essentially don’t exist in games- Video games don’t have volatility when a new game comes out. Comics used to with Marvel movies but that has died out. Modern sports cards are all about the chase cards that can either 5x or tank 90% depending on player performance. Vintage cards are much more aligned to how video games operate- slow and steady up over time. PRO for collector/investor, CON for flipper/speculator

3. IP Risk vs athlete or character risk- Mario/Charizard/Spiderman aren’t tearing ACLs or going to Diddy parties PRO for everyone

4. Profit potential over time- Video games do not currently have any gambling mechanic like how ripping wax does for cards. It’s much more geared towards long term investing without crazy short term volatility like modern sports cards. PRO for collector/investor, CON for flipping

5. Barrier to entry much lower for cards- Graded video games can be affordable around $50 for non 9.8 modern Mario games, but still doesn’t compare to a $10-20 PSA 10 of a random athlete. It inherently is more expensive because grading games are more expensive ($40 the cheapest option so far). CON for all

6. Utility for games and TCG but not sports cards (gives rise to Organic Collectibility)- Video games inherently are meant to be played and were never intended to be sealed. TCG cards are meant to be played as well but are just way easier to keep in good condition because of its smaller form factor. Sports cards entire existence was meant to be collected, although vintage cards have had tons of attrition due to bike spikes and passage of time. Because people aren’t told that games can be collected, you have segmented group that hates any sealed, let alone graded game. But just like comics were meant to be read, overall narrative will change over time since the popularity of graded games really came about in 2018 with WATA (grading games were around since 2008 with VGA but never marketed to a wider audience). PRO for everyone long term, CON short term with vitriol from normies and Redditors

7. Organic rarity is king, there are no 1/1s- Games were not meant to be sealed, comics are meant to be read. Vintage cards have had attrition over time but modern sports cards and even TCG like Magic the Gathering rely on serialization and parallels to maintain value. People like to be told what to collect, but true rarity lies in the things that were never meant to be collected at all. The one issue for the future is that there will not be enough sealed game supply for everyone who jumps into the hobby. For example, our most graded NES game is Super Mario 3 with a total WATA population of 400 and only 16 9.8s. Compare that to any modern sports card like Wemby prizms and you can see the difference. PRO for everyone joining early