If you don't have enough reasons to hate sealed graded games.

[Dark Sakul]

So a guy submits a sealed game to UK Graders gets a 75, opens the box carefully resubmits the game and it comes back (same game) with a higher grade of 85.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/20...mes_graded_could_be_a_complete_waste_of_money

 

[ChuChu Flamingo]

While I love VGA acrylic cases, vga grading in itself is a pyramid scheme. Everything about the grading procedure is mysterious and illusive, and ultimately subjective. How can you say this is a grade x when they have no publicly available guideline for grades. What is even more hilarious is a 75 vs 85 is a big difference, 85+ usually being what you would find at retailers through normal handling.

I think its alright for people to keep OLD sealed games sealed, I for one would love a MM X2 or X3 (more so X2 as I don't have that CIB just looose) as I love that game so much, but some people take it a step beyond that and only collect sealed. Grading disc based games is a dumb idea as well since many disc will eventually get dislodged. Hell, some of the ones i've seen of saturn have done just that/ps1. Anyone who has half a brain would just buy the acrylic case and put the sealed game in there.

What I hate is the people who flaunt them around/there just to make money (which is the majority of them).Just go on sealedgameheaven or see rarebucky ebay listings to see what I mean.

What is even more hilarious is they aren't preserving shit other than dents and creases. Air is still getting to the box.All VGA grades is the outside box and shrink wrap (which you can remove if you want and they will just grade the box). They do not grade the inside unless it is verified which is innately flawed. Lots of new games are not perfect, some of the manuals have dents and games with batteries will eventually leak (although cr2032 batteries are pretty good at not leaking unless they get wet but what about 40 years from now?)

You know what I would do if I had like a whole library of sealed games for a specific system? I would display them how they used to be at retail stores, but that would too cool for these collectards.

 

[Caliburn89]

VGA has always been a scam.

This guy had a fairly in depth series about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BbHDMXxm04
Was a pretty interesting watch, iirc he gets a Metal Gear Solid Greatest Hits bundle graded (with the Players Guide) and the case actually damages the guide.

I'm pretty sure on the VGA website it even says that the grades are based on the graders opinions, so there can be discrepancies. The problem is you have guys using the service, paying a good chunk of money to get their stuff graded (see:entombed), so it would be foolish for this "authority" to give these guys a poor grade. I honestly don't think I've seen a VGA grade under 75. It wouldn't surprise me if they only had stickers for 75, 85 and 95 because even if something was terrible quality, you want the customer to continue using your service.

I've bought a few sealed games because they were actually cheaper than getting it opened (Armored Core: master of the arena), but I have every intention of opening it and playing it when I get to it.

 

[grimmythereaper]

something about graded games have always seemed "off" to me. games are ment to be played. Rumor also has it that the video game graders have even graded high resealed games without even knowing that the games were resealed

 

[cr8zykuban0]

graded games in my opinion serves no purpuse. so you have a mint or sealed game, so you pay money to get graded and put it up online to sell for 5x the amount? no thanks.

 

[Tanooki]

ChuChu I know from other places and he will verify this, but it's something that was (is?) popular to do with NES games over at NintendoAge. Back when I was a regular there was/is this rampant wing of the site with lips firmly around the VGA joystick so much if you question their practices or even results or how they come up with them, ban hammers start getting tossed like it's Donkey Kong. A thing I saw more than once there was people not liking a grade, returning the game 1-2x more to get that higher level. They know they don't have a set system, set standards, set code of ethics, nor the same three people looking at it each time. So they'd just keep spinning the knob on their pachinko machine gaming tactic and wait until it dropped into the gate and it paid off. You'd see an 85 silver, 85 silver, then an 85+ GOLD eventually and were happy as 'the investment' was worth the increase in value. Fuck that shit straight up.

Here enjoy a VGA un-coffining. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psZN6GHtZ0c

 

[ChuChu Flamingo]

Oh man I remember people resending in shit multiple times lol.

Thou shall not say anything bad about VGA or how games are meant to be played or else you get the axe.

Do you remember the guy who got a vga game inside of a vga case. Man that shit was hilarious. How about that guy who has a VGA 10 Mario Bros, the guy who collects games in the shittiest condition possible for everything. I like that guy.

 

[Jibbajaba]

See, I would love to get a sealed copy of some A-list NES game like Castlevania, just so I could relive the excitement of opening it and playing it. I honestly don't understand the appeal of collecting sealed games, much less sending them off to get fake-graded and locked up in acrylic tombs.

 

[NeuroticMoose]

Its been the same in the comic community for awhile, basically the graders stance on stuff like this is that it varies from one grader to another, in other words what might be a 75 to one person could be an 85 to another grader. Yes, its bullshit

 

[Tanooki]

Oh man I remember people resending in shit multiple times lol.

Thou shall not say anything bad about VGA or how games are meant to be played or else you get the axe.

Do you remember the guy who got a vga game inside of a vga case. Man that shit was hilarious. How about that guy who has a VGA 10 Mario Bros, the guy who collects games in the shittiest condition possible for everything. I like that guy.

That was the former co-admin Paul into shitty games. At one point we were on really good terms and I swapped him his crappy (not so much, just rippled laminate layer over label) for my non-label Gun-Nac. His terms was I apply a white label and get creative to make one for it so I used a sharpie and tried to copy the original art. He can choke far as I care now. When they decided they didn't like my anti-price raising, vga buttkissing, questioning their shady methods type posts they hacked a post of mine and put me out to pasture and he got to yelling at me on IM saying I knew what I did and got all nasty with me for a good hour probably. I had to keep prodding that dead horse along with a few others to found out I got sand bagged and pieced it together over a couple of weeks. Fuck that type of mentality, it's why I got out and got into handheld gaming, Sega 8/16bit stuff, and pinball/arcade cabinet play. Far less competitive fuckery and price scamming shit bags, plus people seem more informed since it's smaller circles compared to that feeding frenzy of retards at all levels.

 

[xsq]

future generations will look back on this shit... feel ashamed.

 

[alphagamer]

Thanks to sealed collectors future generations of gamers will have the pleasure to enjoy 20+ year old games in pristine condition.

As for dropping a huge sum of money on games just to look at them: ... why? buy a painting instead.

 

[wyndcrosser]

That's what I expected to happen another use on NA.com did the same thing. I like shit sitting on my shelf, but I also only collect games I actually played. I finally got my NES collection down to about 70 games from 350 (that I actually like), because I realized I had a problem lol. Sealed collecting never made sense to me personally, maybe if I had a bunch of dough to blow... but I don't.

 

[oliverclaude]

VGA is just a constructive business idea. One can hate for what it stands (collecturds, price manipulation, turning games into unplayable objects etc.), but ultimately, this progression within the video game world was inevitable. In times, where nearly everything is playable for free via emulation, there's no reason to tilt at windmills. Yet, I thank God Japanese Mega Drive, Super Famicom & most NG games were never sealed or one would simply forget to open them, with all those other possibilities to play at hand.

True, the preservation aspect itself is not without a certain logic, but let's face it: video games? And preserve for whom exactly? A museum for applied arts? Well, I never saw anything sealed there. So this is rather, how you'd imagine the last thoughts of a VGA graded game...

Spoiler:

 

[grimmythereaper]

Its been the same in the comic community for awhile, basically the graders stance on stuff like this is that it varies from one grader to another, in other words what might be a 75 to one person could be an 85 to another grader. Yes, its bullshit

comic grading is more strict then the vga, with better guide lines as to how to get a 7.5. But also comic graders also give out lower scores and the people who get the comic graded have to deal with it, there is no winning and sending it back in to get a higher score. But with that being said i have seen people who grade comics laugh at some the books that got sent in bc they knew it was just a cash grab. The idea of grading anything makes me sick, but i feel like comics have a better reason.

 

[flashbackx]

Not an opinion, it's a fucking fact. Games/comics grading is a scam and anybody who participates in it should walk their fat ass right into oncoming traffic.

 

[xsq]

True, the preservation aspect itself is not without a certain logic, but let's face it: video games? And preserve for whom exactly? A museum for applied arts?

...and why do people think it is their responsibility? There are professionally run archives (maintained by states and industry both) for that - and they do a great job preserving all kinds of stuff for future generations. If they don't include video games yet, invest your time/money into influencing politics so they will.

 

[Burning Fight!!]

If you think you're preserving something for all eternity because you put it inside an acrylic box you're an idiot.

I wonder why museums even bother maintaining all their staff, storage space, etc., just put the Declaration of Independence in a shiny VGA box.

 

[Bar81]

If you think you're preserving something for all eternity because you put it inside an acrylic box you're an idiot.

I wonder why museums even bother maintaining all their staff, storage space, etc., just put the Declaration of Independence in a shiny VGA box.

Lol. Yeah these clowns. I enjoy breaking games out of those coffins - VGA is perhaps the dumbest shit in videogames.

 

[Tripredacus]

Its been the same in the comic community for awhile, basically the graders stance on stuff like this is that it varies from one grader to another, in other words what might be a 75 to one person could be an 85 to another grader. Yes, its bullshit

Cards are like this too. Video games are at a disadvantage in that there is just the one company. It is common to find people wondering about cross-over grading of cards, going between SGC, Beckett and PSA. The entire grading situation is corrupted anyways. The only times I've considered grading something (not counting just for funs) is to preserve something that damages easily. Or a situation where the case allows something to be displayed more easily. Video games do not have this appeal to me in that way because they already come in a box.

 

[alphagamer]

just put the Declaration of Independence in a shiny VGA box.

Only got a rating of 75 anyway...

 

[Dominance9]

Ehh, I personally hate sealed games and VGA games even more. Thats just the gamer and the anti-collector in me. Sure I like excellent condition CIB stuff, but I also want to play it and enjoy it. Not just act like its some rare only 2 made in the world item. Because lets face reality, most games were made in the 10's of thousands to multi millions. They technically are not "rare" at all. Sure condition denotes rarity now just like with comic books or sports cards. But just like a graded comic, if you cant open it and read it and enjoy the experience of it...whats the point?

 

[oliverclaude]

I love VGA apt games: 640x480 rocks!

 

[johhnnyD14]

I only own one sealed PS2 game but I just keep it in a box somewhere. Going so far as to have graded special boxes for your sealed games is way extreme for me.

 

[Tanooki]

I've got 2, one of them I keep in a shadow box, didn't pay too much for it, but the art is my favorite of the 8/16bit era of samus (the yellow Metroid NES re-release) and I've got it in a shadowbox. I asked the VGA pros at NA in the day, supplied some huge shots of the box all around, said it was a good 85+ level and suggested I turn it in. I didn't, I like it in the shadowbox better. The other was just buying FF5 Advance over a year ago, I intend to play it eventually, or at least I hope to, so it'll either get opened up by me, or I'll get fed up with it sitting and let someone else rip it open or not.