RETRO: Media Coverage and Key Engagements

Discussions of RETRO and its reports from domestic and international media outlets, and quotations from certain individuals who have publicly engaged with RETRO.

{Note: Prior to October 19, 2021, RETRO was Proof Games. Earlier quotes refer to RETRO content that was originally published elsewhere on Substack. In some cases, individual media outlets published reports about RETRO reporting via discrete branches in different countries; for this reason, the country of origin of each media outlet is listed after the outlet’s name.}

🇺🇲 The Athletic (United States, 2021):

Also critical of WATA and Heritage Auctions this summer has been Seth Abramson, perhaps best known as a leading critic of Donald Trump on Twitter. {link}

🇨🇦 RDS (Canada, 2021):

In addition to the inconsistency of WATA’s [game-grading] evaluations, what many point out is that the company is careful not to communicate the number of [copies of individual] games it has evaluated and that therefore are potentially available on the [open] market. Yet this is done in other collectibles markets.

As author and journalist Seth Abramson observes, many people involved in the [sealed and graded video game] market are trying to hide this [so-called “population”] data. Following the release of a documentary on WATA and Heritage Auctions [by Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst], Abramson decided to release a compilation of his research on the NES games market—research that prompted him to remark that the [video game] auction [and grading] houses don’t want it known that the games that make them rich are in fact the most readily available games on the market. 

[In late 2020], WATA accidentally revealed that it had already graded 750 copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 since the company’s founding in April 2018, though Abramson was “only” able to trace 65 sealed and graded editions of the game being introduced to the market since January 2019. While we must remove [from this 750 figure] any graded but unsealed copies of Super Mario Bros. 3, this still suggests that some of these games are in the hands of investors and are coming to market just slowly enough to avoid flooding it. And we’ve known for three or four years now that several players in this speculative pyramid scheme systematically buy up the most popular sealed titles so that it’s no longer possible to find them during retro gaming events or trade shows.

According to Abramson, these speculators are quite familiar with the practice [of reselling games at artificially inflated prices], and won’t hesitate to buy games for $30,000 and then resell them for $40,000 or $60,000—until the market collapses because there aren’t enough buyers anymore. These speculators hide behind the notion that the games they’re selling have historical significance, but in reality they’re just in it for the money. {link}

🇨🇳 Chuapp (China, 2021):

In theory, a grading house should be an independent arbiter, with self-grading and self-dealing disallowed in the same way a person can’t at once be the referee of a game and an athlete in the contest. Since the last time [grading house] WATA was exposed as being involved in scandalous conduct, concerns about the graded video game market have only increased. And the scandal isn’t over yet, according to investigative reporter Seth Abramson, who found, while cleaning up empty boxes at home, that there was a note in one regarding a game he had bought on eBay. It had an email address on it and read, “Send an email to Mark Haspel to get more games.”

So who owns this email address? Seth’s investigation found that this person was at the time selling 74 Atari 2600 games rated by WATA on eBay, with the games having a total value of $46,405. Seventy-three of the 74 games had box grades higher than “9.0” (out of a possible “10.0”), all with seal grades of “A+” or above. WATA’s own assessment scheme suggests that such sealed games are “games worth investing in.”

Whether the collectible in question is cards, antiques, or games, people send them to a grading agency to get a grade. That grade represents the appearance of the item. Each grading house focuses on different things, but generally, all look at the extent to which the collectible has been well-preserved. For [Chinese] gamers, game grades may still be a relatively unfamiliar phenomenon. This scheme has mostly enthralled gamers in Europe and the United States. In both locations, the nature of the grading process is the same: it considers the integrity of any plastic packaging and the lack of [any flaws] in or on the box. The scores derived from this assessment basically quantify the appearance of the game. Even if you don’t consider a title’s rarity, the higher the score, the more costly the collectible will be when it is sold.

A simple [online] search tells us that Mark Haspel is one of the co-founders of WATA. Of course, this may be coincidence—a stranger may happen to be selling games under the same name [at the WATA co-founder], or two men may happen to have the same first name and surname. But candidly, this sort of coincidence is unlikely. So we have reason to believe that Haspel, a co-founder of grading house WATA, is manipulating the [video game] grading market—for profit—by secretly selling or buying graded video games. {link}

🇩🇪 Eurogamer (Germany, 2021):

In response to the [YouTube] video [about WATA and Heritage Auctions by Australian journalist Karl Jobst], lawyer and journalist Seth Abramson referred to a lengthy article [now at RETRO] containing his NES [game] market analysis. He said the report showed that the games that “make them [WATA and Heritage Auctions] rich are the most widely available (and yes, also the most admired) in the world.” In addition, wrote Abramson, WATA had in the past “accidentally” leaked information saying the company had rated more than 750 copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 since its founding, even though only 65 of these carts have been sold [in a public market] so far. According to Abramson, this suggests that “big investors are holding back many copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 and slowly releasing them [into the market] to hide how common the game is in sealed and graded condition.” “While this may be legal,” Abramson continued, “it underscores that by 2024 the market will be saturated with games that people are paying $30,000 for today. But here’s the catch: the people paying $30,000 for these games aren’t serious collectors, they’re speculators working with a big budget. They’ll look to resell their seemingly ‘rare’ Super Mario Bros. 3 copies for $40,000, then $60,000, and finally $100,000—right up until the market collapses because there are no more fellow resellers to sell to.” {link}

🇫🇷 Game Blog (France, 2021):

Last week, we told you about revelations from journalist Seth Abramson, who is trying to bring sanity to the retro gaming market by publishing a list of the [sealed] NES games most commonly sold at auction—his aim being to raise awareness about the sudden surge in retro game prices. Now Abramson is further helping to set the scene by publishing the results of a new investigation that’s sweet with the scent of conflicts of interest. It all starts in the summer [of 2021], when [Abramson] receives at home one of the retro games he ordered a few days before from a well-known auction site [eBay]. He discovers in the package a Post-It Note and email address belonging to a well-known recipient: Mark Haspel. Haspel is well known to retro gaming fans on both sides of the Atlantic, as he’s one of the co-founders of WATA—a company that assesses the condition (and thus the rarity) of games sent to it before giving them grades and protecting them in one of its now-famous plastic cases.

Described this way, the story doesn’t sound like much—but then the journalist [Abramson] discovers that he has already bought other games from this same person, which is revealed as a problem once you understand that WATA has publicly declared itself hostile to any conflicts of interest. Haspel—who was selling WATA-stamped games [on eBay] under the pseudonym “m*s*h”—had his own company judge the quality of his games, which he then sold via the internet.

Faced with the revelations from [RETRO], the WATA co-founder explained his approach: “I have only visited the WATA premises twice since April 2018. I have never evaluated my own games, or any game submitted to the company’s experts. I submitted my games to WATA like any other collector would. I am proud to have contributed to the founding of WATA, and I am confident that the new management team [that took over in July of 2021] will ensure its success.”

So while not employed by the company on-site, Haspel nevertheless let subordinates assess the quality of his retro gaming collection and then sold it at a good price, taking advantage of the importance that [he and WATA] have been gaining in recent years via the WATA [grading] system—whose success he’s personally invested in as a WATA co-founder.

Abramson concludes his article with sixteen questions directly addressed to Haspel, who in response deleted all his online advertisements. {link}

🇦🇷 Diario Tiempo (Argentina, 2021):

In response to a [YouTube] video from [Australian journalist Karl] Jobst, Seth Abramson, a lawyer and columnist, posted an article offering all his market research on the NES [video game market]. Abramson reports that “the games that are most [artificially inflated in market value] are the most available, and [the most common] in the world in terms of [being graded].” He also claims that WATA “accidentally auto-populated information [on its website]” revealing that it has graded more than 750 copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 since its inception; only 65 of them are available on the market today. Abramson says that these data suggest “that [high-end resellers and speculators] are holding many copies of Super Mario Bros. 3, and are releasing them slowly onto the market to obscure the [commonness] of these games.” Although doing so is legal, Abramson states that by 2024 the [vintage video game] market will be saturated with [common and popular] games [like Super Mario Bros. 3] because people are paying $30,000 [for them] now. Abramson adds, “Here’s the rub: the people paying $30,000 right now aren’t serious collectors, they’re just resellers or speculators with a lot of money. This causes copies of Super Mario Bros. 3, which isn’t a rare game, to sell for $40,000, $60,000, or $100,000. Soon the market will decline—when there are no more fellow resellers for the resellers to sell to.” {link}

🇫🇷 Marseille News (France, 2021):

Video Games Chronicle reported this week that Mark Haspel, one of the co-founders of WATA, is selling games rated by his company as a side gig on eBay. This was discovered when reporter Seth Abramson noticed that a few games he had purchased over the summer were all from the same seller, Haspel, and [that] the seller had included his name and email. In Abramson’s last audit, Haspel “was selling 74 Atari 2600 rated Wata games for a total value of $ 46,405.” That’s a lot of potential money, and it’s definitely a shady practice. If you are able to make a profit on the games you are responsible for rating, of course you will want to rate them higher than you would otherwise. WATA has a policy that prohibits employees from selling their own rated games, but apparently Haspel felt he was above the rules of his own company. It makes you doubt buying retro games on the market right now, especially since the price of many of them has gone up in recent months. {link}

🇺🇲 Nintendo Life (United States, 2021):

According to lawyer, author and journalist Seth Abramson, power-brokers in the [video] games auction market are “systematically trying to hide data” in a get-rich scheme. Abramson has now released some hard data in an attempt to spread the word and combat this artificial market. You can get a more thorough rundown of the whole thing over on [RETRO]. {link}

🇬🇧 Games Industry (United Kingdom, 2021):

The chief advisor of game grading firm WATA has been accused of selling in contradiction of company policy. In his substack newsletter, writer Seth Abramson has said that WATA’s Mark Haspel has been operating a side business on eBay selling WATA-graded Atari [2600] games. Abramson discovered 74 games listed on eBay by Haspel’s account, the vast majority of which had “investment-grade” WATA ratings of 9.0 or higher. He put the total value of those titles at nearly $50,000. {link}

🇺🇲 Nintendo Enthusiast (United States, 2021):

[A]n online source of curatorial journalism run by lawyer Seth Abramson has compiled and published an enormous treasure trove of sales data for all sealed and graded copies of NES games sold publicly since January 2019 across the six most major platforms for such sales. These platforms include Heritage Auctions, eBay, Amazon, ComicLink, Evolve Comics & Collectibles (but it’s “essentially moribund” now), and Mercari. The intention of this data collection was to illustrate for the first time exactly how scarce (or not) sealed and graded copies of games in the NES library are, especially because game condition grading house WATA does not release data on how many copies of games it has graded.

[Abramson] effectively, well, proves that the massive amounts of money paid in recent headline-grabbing auctions and sales, such as $2 million for Super Mario Bros., wildly overvalue how much these games are actually worth. Long story short, the lists of sales data for sealed and graded NES games demonstrate how many copies have been sold since 2019 and how many copies were graded at least WATA “9.0” or the grading equivalent by another grading house [VGA]. It finds, for example, that 65 sealed and graded copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 have been sold since 2019, and 35 of them were at least 9.0-grade by WATA standards. It is the most commonly sold game in sealed and graded condition, followed by Friday the 13th, Dragon Warrior, and [the original NES] Super Mario Bros.

Although it’s ultimately all one collection of data on display, Abramson breaks the data up into a few segmented lists to further highlight which games are genuinely scarce. The first two lists of games represent games he would recommend never buying for investment purposes because the data supports that they are just not rare. (For example, sealed and graded copies of Zoda’s Revenge: Star Tropics II are not as rare as you’d think.) That being said, Abramson does not offer up this massive sales data on sealed and graded NES games for the purpose of investment advice in the first place. He makes explicit that it’s just “a market analysis by a video game collector, not a financial adviser.” Still, this NES game sales data is extremely useful and may become a thorn in the side of investors hoping to make a hefty payday off of commonly bought WATA-graded games. I would recommend reading the full report, as it’s really interesting... {link}

🇩🇪 Artnet News (Germany, 2021):

Seth Abramson argues [in an article at RETRO] that platforms like Substack free writers from the demands of corporate employers, who are ultimately driven by the financial bottom line. “America’s corporate media structure is living on borrowed time—and the ‘creator economy’ can’t possibly be forestalled”, Abramson wrote.

🇬🇧 Video Games Chronicle (United Kingdom, 2021):

Journalist Seth Abramson reports that while clearing boxes at his house he discovered a note included with a game he’d purchased from eBay in the summer. The seller’s note told him to “email markhaspel@[redacted]” for more games. Abramson realised that he had purchased a game from Mark Haspel, one of the co-founders of WATA, then looked at his previous purchases and realised he’d bought three in total. Looking further into Haspel’s eBay activity, Abramson discovered that, according to his claim, Haspel was “running a significant side business selling games his company graded”. According to Abramson, Haspel is trading on eBay under the name “m*s*h” and, at the time of the article’s publication, was selling 74 WATA-graded Atari 2600 games with a total value of $46,405.

Of these games, only one of them had a WATA grade lower than 9.0 and none of them had a seal rating any lower than A+, meaning practically all of them were what WATA considers “investment grade”. Abramson alleges that by exclusively selling Atari 2600 games, “[Haspel] ensures that most or perhaps even all of his business on eBay escapes the notice of US journalists, who thus far have written almost exclusively about Nintendo Entertainment System games.” He also surmises that Haspel may be focusing on Atari 2600 games in an attempt to raise their value, and that his role at Wata may make him privy to data about which system’s games are selling better than others. “Because it is possible (but not yet confirmed) that Haspel has access to internal WATA ‘population’ data—data that reveals how many copies of each video game WATA has ever received and graded—there is a chance that Haspel is selling only Atari games because he knows that this market is waning due to few people sending in these games to be graded”, Abramson suggests. “If Haspel is using any such data to determine which games to buy, get graded, and sell, there’s at least the danger that he’s participating in what investigators might consider insider trading.”

Abramson stresses that he is not specifically accusing Haspel of “illicit conduct”, but does point out that WATA’s refusal to make its population reports public could give [Haspel] an unfair advantage in studying the market. “In almost every collectibles market in the U.S., grading companies make population reports public so that no one in the market has special access to corporate data they could use to make investments relating to their own company”, Abramson says. {link}

🇺🇲 Nintendo Life (United States, 2021):

Goldin Auctions is one of several companies being investigated by journalist Seth Abramson amid ongoing allegations of insider fraud in the realm of retro video game grading and auctions. {link}

🇬🇧 Eurogamer (United Kingdom, 2021):

A detailed report into Mark Haspel, the co-founder of game grading company WATA, has brought to light worrying details of his business activities, and of WATA in general. WATA appraises and rates the quality of collectible video games, often pushing their prices into the hundreds and thousands of dollars. To avoid any conflict of interest, it has previously stated it does not allow employees to have their own games graded or sell any that have been graded by the company. But, this week, Seth Abramson discovered he had apparently bought several WATA-graded video games from an eBay seller that turned out to be Haspel. One of his purchases reportedly included a yellow sticky note that invited Abramson to email Haspel privately “for more games.” At the moment, Haspel is simply accused of breaking WATA’s company promise not to own or sell stock it has graded. But after [it] look[s] into the matter further, Abramson’s report raises a number of concerning questions. The eBay account in question currently lists nearly $50,000 worth of WATA-rated games, almost all of which have been rated [by WATA] as “9.0” or higher, described as an “investment grade” tier. The majority are 9.6 or higher, among the highest-possible grades WATA gives. Among the questions Abramson raises…are when these games were bought and rated, and who by, and what insider knowledge Haspel has of the market, such as how many other copies of a particular game might exist of a particular quality. There’s much more in [Abramson’s] report, which is well worth a read. {link}

🇺🇲 Nintendo Life (United States, 2021):

Over the past couple of days, investigations by both [RETRO] journalist Seth Abramson and YouTuber Karl Jobst have shone a light on alleged foul play and collusion between retro game grading service WATA and auction house Heritage Auctions. Copies of NES games have recently sold for record-breaking prices—$2 million for a copy of Super Mario Bros., $870,000 for a Legend of Zelda—and have attracted suspicion and attention from some quarters. The latest question comes once again from Abramson, who has highlighted on his Twitter account the disparity between two far-from-mint examples of NES games which were graded differently—specifically in the way the company flags items that have been compromised by mould….If you're wondering exactly how this speculative market is drawing such large and improbable sums, Abramson has an excellent (and lengthy) Twitter thread that explains his findings, and Jobst’s 52-minute YouTube video is also a fascinating exploration of the evidence and allegations so far. {link}

🇬🇧 Input Magazine (United Kingdom, 2021):

“[Video game grader WATA’s grading operation and its relation with auction house Heritage Auctions] is all a song and dance”, [Australian journalist Karl] Jobst tells Input. “It’s all completely fake. The more I looked at it, the more I realized, ‘Yeah, there’s something going on here.’” Both Heritage and WATA have denied all the allegations. Separately, journalist Seth Abramson has made similar allegations of collusion between the two [in articles on RETRO]. {link}

🇦🇺 Kotaku (Australia, 2021):

The obvious [sealed vintage video game] market bubble has even been enough to attract the attention of Trump thread man Seth Abramson. The Twitter pundit, whom the Columbia Journalism Review described as a “Lawyer turned poet turned professor turned journalist turned influencer”, recently…research[ed] a rough working list of how many actual copies of rare [NES, Atari 2600, and Intellivision] games are currently known to exist in the wild…his accounting…continue[s] to raise questions about why WATA, which maintains its own [population reports]….won’t release them. {link}

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