Video Game Grading

[Baby Shoes]

Been going through my movie and game collection and trying to purge stuff I’m either done with or likely won’t ever get to. I knew a PS3 game I had was pretty rare but didn’t realize the price really spiked more since last time I looked. Looking online I saw a sealed copy can sell for around $175 and some perfectly graded copies are projected to go up more.

I’ve only recently started looking into sports card grading but stumbling on this as a grading candidate, I tried poking around the CGA website. The site looks fairly low rent, I’m not sure if I’m better off just selling it - though looking into this game I get now why I have some annoying people bug me on eBay about rips and tears in packages, though some of the $10 games they carry on about still baffles me. Think it’s fair for them to ask if they drop $180 on this or whatever.

Know we have some big gamer folk on the board so thought I’d solicit tips and advice as I try to figure what I want to do with this game.

 

[SFH]

A trio of my friends invested $400 in an old video store's NES-N64 inventory in 2014(?) and turned it into $3,000 (I was invited to participate but it was right after some health shit that had me strapped to even throw in $100). There was mostly CIB games and a few loose things. The one that did the bulk of the work said that while it was nice to turn a profit, the amount of extra photos they had to take beyond the original eBay listing for people that wound up not buying them was frustrating. But they did sell out everything.

Like with Sports cards, a graded item tells you within the bounds of that hobby's vocabulary exactly what is wrong with it by a trusted objective 3rd party that a large number of consumers in that hobby agree upon. Same with currency and comic grading. I would venture the terminology in gaming is different than cards (I dipped my toe into the currency collecting pool in college and noped the fuck out of there, but there were different words than with cards).

I get why a gaming collector would grade a game, if they have another copy (or rom) of the game to play. So, if you're looking to sell it to a collector with no intention of playing, please be keep your expectations balanced on final price. If you do get it graded, make sure you're familiar with what parts of the inspection are weighed heavier than others. I'm pretty sure CGA is the logo "VGA" is what I've seen in the vintage game stores I've hit.

(Is it the NCAA game that everyone's suddenly keen on buying up?)

 

[treble]

I don't quite understand the appeal of it, especially for newer games. I get that if you want to get a sealed copy of an older game and looking at an eBay auction, having knowledge that someone has already gone over it so there won't be any surprises once you get it yourself could add some peace of mind, but I think people are overvaluing these grades.

I would go for it, though, if you think it would add enough value to the game to make you enough money to override the cost of getting it graded.

 

[Baby Shoes]

Thanks for the thoughts, guys. I have to see if the costs are worth the extra time, though I feel it gives me some sort of extra protection in selling it.

It’s actually not the NCAA game, SFH. Though I know some of those have spiked in price. The game I’m referring to is I have a sealed copy of the US edition of the game Afrika, which I see due to a low production makes some of the rarest PlayStation game lists. It’s funny because back in the day when it was out, I thought it could be interesting. Had gotten a used copy from like a GameFly sale but then got a new one cheap on Amazon, sold the used for more than I paid for the new one and never opened the new one.

Looking last night, I saw new US ones having lowest listing around $200 and one person had a graded on for $1200. I went to another site that showed the selling average on a sealed one was closer to $175-$180 and grading projections weren’t extraordinarily higher than sealed but there really wasn’t a record of a graded one being sold above one that received like a 7 grade.

 

[Master Thrasher]

I've sold games on Amazon and graded them myself. I have a copy of the last NCAA Football game and I know I could sell it for a lot right now.