Topic: Grading Sealed Games?

How do you guys feel about collectors who send in their factory sealed games to have them graded (www.vggrader.com)? If you don't know what that is, it's basically like how collectors would send in their comic books and action figures to get graded and sealed in a case. This also makes the items more expenisve, whether or not that is artificial inflation. A lot of people have been doing this lately and selling the games on Ebay and sometimes ridiculous prices.

I'd like to know what you guys think, but here are my thoughts. I have in recent months tried to become more of a collector when it comes to video games. I've kind of given up on the VC (with the exception of Rondo of Blood) and have been buying the original games. Buying factory sealed games, and especially graded ones, seem unneccesary to me, because at the end of the day I would still like to play my games. With that said though, I do prefer to buy games with their original box and instructions. And even if I did buy a game to keep factory sealed (I would only do that if I had another copy that I could actually play) I don't think I would actually have it graded. Just having it sealed on my shelf, or perhaps in a plastic case, would be enough for me. Maybe that's just me though.

For me, games/toys/comics/whatever are made to be played (or read). Keeping them in the cellophane just seems pointless and anal. I mean, what's the point in spending >£100 on something if you have no intention of using it? So you can sell it again on eBay to another person who'll just keep it cellophaned and in the back of a cupboard for another 40 years?

I'd love to go around to someone's house who collects toy trains. Just so I could rip them all out of the packaging and set up a massive badass trainset. And set fire to the limited edition action figures childrens' dolls too.

Yeah I agree. Right now the only reason I still have games in the shrinkwrap is because I just haven't got around to playing them. Grading games is a ridiculous extreme, that really I think only sellers are interested in because they can mark the games up so much more.

if you're talking about grading as in grading how "sealed" it is, sounds a little too far off the edge of collecting. But the reason for collecting is why anyone would want a big house, a large pool, a classic car, or an autograph of a famous sports player: value and bragging rights. Who wouldn't want to have a gold NES Nintendo World Championship 1990 cartradge in which there were only 25 ever made? Now how cool would THAT be? You'd be able to show it off to your friends (but certain friends wouldn't give a crap), and if kept in good condition will probably QUADDRUPLE value in so many years (I don't know how many but it wouldn't be long). In the end, there's people who don't care about the value of any game, which is most people. But then those most people won't treat they're games/game cases right and the ones who have kept theirs in great condition 15-20 years down the road have something that is worth value (especially if it's a rare game) But for the people who think this post is all garbage look at the prices for earthbound on eBay compared to other SNES games, or the recent Stadium Events game sold on eBay.

Either you didn't read my post or you misunderstood it lol. I do collect games. What I was asking was your opinion on how you feel about people who send in games to be graded (I provided the link at www.vggrader.com).

I collected comics growing up and kept them sealed. Don't know about video games (though I still have some that I never opened dating back to the PS1 era). I'll sell them all eventually (except one special comic worth thousands that I plan to keep).

I was never a fan of this practice when I collected comics. The most I did was buy those plastic hardcases for a few of my more expensive comics but I never went so far as sending them in to be judged and sealed. Though honestly, for some comics, say anything from the golden age or older, I do see some value in preserving the originals, especially seeing as reprints are readily available.

At this point in time, I'm not a proponent of the same practice for video games. I personally love the Virtual Console, but I do prefer to own the original versions whenever I can. The thing is, for video games so far, the practice seems much more commercial. Like I said, I see the grading/sealing practice as fine for comics pushing sixty or seventy years old that will literally deteriorate with handling and exposure (not to say that newer comics aren't graded, of course), but most video games I see being graded seem only to be done so in order to artificially increase the resell value. I don't care how perfect the shrinkwrapped plastic is, there's no reason to pay $500 for a video game from this or last gen game, save for a particular few, but certainly not for random game X with a rating of 10 from so-and-so grader.

Maybe video games are just too young an art form for me to really consider them for this sort of preservation, or perhaps it is the nature of the digital medium that makes them easily archived that makes me question the value of this practice. At this point, there's no fear of losing classics such as Super Mario Brothers to history, though granted, original sealed copies are hard to find and definitely worth preserving, I don't even think we need to go so far as having them graded and sealed to do that. I guess my problem is that if I look online, most of the graded games I see are from the PS2 era back to the SNES days and are (attempting) to sell for hundreds upon hundreds of dollars just because they're graded and sealed. They're not particularly old, they're not rare games, they're not landmark games, aside from being graded well and sealed, they're unexeptional in every way. $140 for a graded Mario Party 5? $300 for Xenosaga Episode 1? $400 for Silent Hill? $500 for Marvel Super Heroes on the SNES? $800 for Super Mario Kart or Symphony of the Night? $1000 for Super Mario World? $1500 for Link to the Past? $2500 for Super Metroid? $3000 for Chrono Trigger or Earthbound? I'm not saying that these games are bad, nor that they shouldn't be preserved, but at the same time, vendors just seem to be pulling numbers out of their ass because the games are popular. Is there any real danger that the original copies of these games will be lost? Hardly. Chrono Trigger may be in demand but its not actually rare in the actual definition of the term.

Another thing is, who are the graders? What are their criteria for grading a game? Really all they are judging is the shrinkwrap and condition of the box. Because they can't open it up and examine the contents, theres no way of knowing if the game actually has a defect, or if the instructions are bent, etc. etc. Not only that, what if someone is so good at re-sealing the game that the graders don't even notice. Someone could be paying a 1000 bucks for a fake sealed game. I really don't think that serious game collectors even care about games being graded, as they can buy cases already to put their sealed games in.