Karl Jobst
1 HN recommender · recommended in 6 months, 2021–2023
52:22 · 2.8M views · Aug 23, 2021
Karl Jobst investigates the retro video game bubble, examining who caused it, who profits, and how graders and auction houses like Wata Games and Heritage inflate prices. It runs almost an hour.
HN points to it as investigative journalism backing the view that vintage game prices are inflated by wash trading and grading services.
9 comments from Hacker News
I just saw this video ( this video ) on why vintage video games cost so much money now. It's almost an hour long piece of effectively investigative journalism by someone in the speed running (and thus vintage gaming) community. The evidence presented does seem like a bubble, with scam/fraud properties.
This is as good a time as any to remind people that the prices for vintage video games are artificially inflated and largely the result of wash trading via auction houses and grading services, which locked out the preexisting retro gaming communities and turned a beloved hobby into an instrument for dubious financial speculation (and arguably set the precedent for NFT crypto trading, which has even fewer regulations and even less transparency that could prevent these wash trades): this video The story says the collector described his collection as an "archive". This flies in the face of actual archival efforts like The Internet Archive, which persist digital copies of old games and make them available to the public when possible. Having a large collection of rare games in pristine condition in locked cases in your vault is not archival, it's hoarding at worst and financial speculation at best.
There has been a lot of people calling out the role of game-graders and auction-houses in artificially raising the prices of video-games. For example this expose: this video But I think it's fair to say that the people who are paying these prices are not interested in gaming per se, instead seeing their purchases as investments - after all the prices keep going up, and their grades are "the best". What could go wrong? (Ignoring the fact that millions of cartridges exist, of course.)
I hope they didn't use Wata Games Scam auction prices as a guide. Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION In The Retro Video Game Market Karl Jobst 2.2M views 2 years ago this video The Retro Video Game Market Has Officially CRASHED 1.3M views 1 month ago [LINK]
I hope they didn't use Wata Games Scam auction prices as a guide. Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION In The Retro Video Game Market Karl Jobst 2.2M views 2 years ago this video The Retro Video Game Market Has Officially CRASHED 1.3M views 1 month ago [LINK]