WATA released its first pop report today. The pop only includes NES games right now.
(Sorry if this isn’t the right place for this, but I thought it was interesting given the earlier discussions of WATA games on this forum.)
Notably the original Super Mario Bros. in 9.8 that sold for $2 million earlier this year has 7 copies in that condition, and 157 sealed graded copies overall.
Excited to see how many Pokemon games have been graded when they release the full pop reports.
7 copies with a 9.8 box rating, we don’t know the seal ratings of those copies. also the specific revision/print that sold for $2 million is pop 1 in 9.8
also there is vga 
while I’m not big into the video game grading scene, theres a lot of copies for some of these games to be going for hundreds of thousands to millions.
In sealed, mint condition? It’s like saying there are plenty of base charizards even though a PSA 10 is $400k (or w/e the current market price is)
Is there enough interest here to start a game collecting/grading general thread?
but also remember that the concept of video games are for enjoyment and to open the box and play the game inside. A sealed graded video game is the same concept of a sealed graded pack. I just can’t believe in tact shrink wrap is the deciding factor whether or not a box is $50,000 and $1 million. Also the fact that the super mario games have over 100 copies this early into grading and they’re going for such high prices shows that they are over inflated. Not saying there isn’t a market but it’s way too high right now.
sealed video games just give me NFT vibes. the difference between games and cards is the inherent purpose of the item to begin with. A card is meant to be played yes but even then you are looking at the card and appreciating it in its purest form. A sealed video game is the shell of what the actual item is. Again i will use the point its the same as grading packs. Yes there is a market but we don’t see sealed 1st ed packs going for more than half the cards of the same grade inside. Along with the high number it just seems unsustainable that the growing pop can support those high numbers with low to mediocre demand. There are so many unknowns with video game grading right now like consistent grading standards, how the pop will grow, how many ungraded copies are out there, demand, and the overall future of the market. After seeing this especially I just cant justify the current prices. Not speaking for the future just now
Bigger scam than multi-level marketing
From a technical perspective their entire NES pop report is handled by a single 266KB JSON file: www.watagames.com/populations/nes/nes_pop.json. Searching, changing tabs, expanding rows and sorting are entirely client-side operations - the entire dataset is present in that one file.
I realise that this isn’t their final population report and they’re claiming to be working on something better, but this is quite literally an afternoon of effort for any competent full stack engineer. I imagine it took them longer to write out the email.
At any rate, the benefit of it all being returned at once is that we can quickly extrapolate some data, so without further ado, here are the totals:
| Grade | Quantity | Percentage |
| < 6.5 | 514 | 5.66% |
| 6.5 | 367 | 4.04% |
| 7.0 | 517 | 5.7% |
| 7.5 | 606 | 6.68% |
| 8.0 | 815 | 8.98% |
| 8.5 | 1,037 | 11.43% |
| 9.0 | 829 | 9.13% |
| 9.2 | 1,108 | 12.21% |
| 9.4 | 1,724 | 19% |
| 9.6 | 1,030 | 11.35% |
| 9.8 | 528 | 5.82% |
| 10 | 1 | 0.01% |
| Total | 9,076 | 100% |
tl;dr: about 5% of the NES games they’ve graded received a score of 9.8, and there are more 9.8-graded NES games than there are games graded lower than 6.5.
NB: That link will inevitably change in future, so for preservation sake I saved the entire response on Pastebin: pastebin.com/XVEYGcb2.
NFT vibes? That’s quite a stretch… sealed video games, or sealed products in general, are coveted for a multitude of reasons. There is a significant premium placed on sealed booster boxes as well, including ones like 1st Ed base which is sealed with a non-marked, plain, clear plastic wrap. There’s history behind it. The inherent purpose of a booster box is to be opened. Doesn’t change the fact that a box that has been preserved in its original state is more valuable than one that’s been opened.
You can always open another booster box. You cannot “make it new” again. The same principle applies to video games.
Sealed booster boxes are coveted for two reasons and you forgot the other one. One is yes it looks pristine because that is how it was when it was first released, but also because an authenticated seal means the contents inside are untampered with. Same reason why people buy new cards vs used ones, because they have that piece of mind that everything inside is how it as intended. It’s also the same concept of buying anything new and just letting it sit along with a little seal saying its authentic. Imagine buying a new baseball glove and instead of using it you put it on a shelf to collect dust and thinking it has more value because its only been touched by a few people. Thats what happened with these games. There is a demand but prices right now are extremely overinflated and speculative thats all im trying to say
hmmm influencer peddled + manufactured scarcity vs peak organic collectability & nostalgia… might be one of the worst takes of 2021
Just saying, super mario bros. alone sold 40 million copies. and not a single person in the world knows how many are sealed, but I know for a fact it’s more than what are graded rn
as opposed to… ? there being less sealed copies in existence than the amount already graded… ?
Ur phrases are worded very strangely, clearly I’m saying that there are plenty more out there and this is only the beginning. I see a WATA 6 going for $6,000 which a 6 is in the bottom end of the pop making up less than the bottom 5% of the pop. No way jose one of the lowest graded copies of anything in existence where there were 40 million copies sold should go for remotely that high.
okay then buy these games in 10 years when the pop reports are more robust and the prices are much cheaper : )
I’m good if I want to play the original super mario bros Ill just play a used version on my NES, or I could play my version on the switch, hell I may even just emulate it. Just remember these are video games in a very young and early market. I’d hate to see you or anyone get burned by prematurely investing in something that has a short past and foggy future.
and instead of collecting pokemon you can just look at .jpgs of cards on the internet !!
I mean, you carry a lot of risk, since it is the start of the market. But every hobby or investment started that way. Scott did not get the collection he has today because he started when the pokemon market was established. I am not saying the sealed graded games might have a hugely inflated price, but everyone should just collect what they like. If it is graded games for a huge some of money, I will wish them a lot of fun collecting:)
