If you collect games, be wary.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, that's a great video and I hope Wata and Heritage get some serious attention because there is clear fraud going on there, in the name of ripping off people for potentially millions of dollars.  They need to be stopped, but who knows if they will...

The other question is, though, how much does this bubble they are creating affect people who don't collect sealed graded games?  Because as we all know, the classic game market has gone up significantly since Covid started.  Between having to stay home more and stimulus payments, people started spending more on old games and prices went up across the board.   But, those increases are nothing like THIS.  This is a significant boost on top of that, but is it, or will it, have any significant effect on the rest of us, people who mostly buy games to actually play them or at least to open them?  Yes, I own a lot of games I have played and too many that I haven't played yet, but I do not buy games intending to never open them.  I buy games intending to use them at least some, more if I like it.  My guess would be that this probably is having, and will have, some amount of spillover effect artificially raising used game prices across the board.  That seems likely.

So yeah, sealed collectors mostly don't care about videogames.  I mean, if you cared about them you'd want things you can actually use.  They are mostly in it for the money, so some don't even care about Wata and Heritage's actions since it might make them some cash at more foolish peoples' expense.  But even so, this is awful stuff both for the people potentially being ripped off and for the impact on this thing I love, videogames.  It's easy to see why people would get tempted into doing this kind of thing, since it's so easy and helps make them money, but that's exactly why laws should exist, to stop this kind of behavior.  And I hope that the lasting impact on non-sealed and graded game collecting is minimal.