Published August 23, 2025 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

When COVID-19 hit, the world shut down. For many of us, collecting became a lifeline. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, many of us were introduced to modern-day break culture—the hobby exploded—virtual engagement, marketplace scrolling, social media galore.

It was natural to gravitate toward community, connection, and nostalgia during lockdown. But as Dr. Shah reminded us when he joined us for Episode #7 of The Collector’s Compass, this “boom” carried its own hidden cost: it sparked what could only be described as a pandemic within the pandemic.

At first, a simple base card or parallel of your favorite player was more than enough enough. But over time, the dopamine baseline shifted—heavily.

The joy once sparked by a pack of cards now required a numbered auto, a super short print case hit insert, a one-of-one.

As Dr. Shah explained, “that baseline of dopamine starts to elevate… until the original baseline is dissolved“.

What started as a pandemic pastime quickly became a pandemic within a pandemic. The resurgence of sports cards wasn’t just about nostalgia—it also fueled cycles of compulsion that many are still struggling with today.

What began as fun soon evolved into dependency, mirroring the same tolerance patterns seen in substance abuse and alcohol addiction. And with 24/7 access to breaks, auctions, and streams in the palm of our hands—no matter where you were located in the world—the cycle became relentless.

The real pandemic eventually ended. But for many collectors, the dopamine pandemic was just beginning. The accessibility of apps, constant exposure to hits on social media, and normalization of gambling-like mechanics made it harder than ever to unplug. For some, disappointment, anxiety, and even depression filled the gaps where the next dopamine hit didn’t land.

Looking back, it’s clear: what started as a way to connect during isolation left many isolated in a different way—trapped in a cycle of compulsion.

That’s why awareness, boundaries, and reform matter so much today. Because this “second” pandemic hasn’t gone away. It’s still here, still spreading, and it’s up to us to build the guardrails that the industry refuses to.

At Collectors MD, we believe in naming these truths—not to shame collectors, but to shine a light on what too many are silently battling. The “first” pandemic ended, but this one won’t unless we fight it together.

#CollectorsMD
The pandemic ended, but the dopamine pandemic kept spreading. Together, we can help spread awareness to ultimately slow it down.

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No ties or grill stuff for this guy

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? 

The wife and I are knee deep in Pandemic tonight. Who else plays board games?