Wata Games has made some changes. Lets dig into the changes and how they might impact the community of collectors and investors of graded video games.
Source
Wata Games has made some changes. Lets dig into the changes and how they might impact the community of collectors and investors of graded video games.
Source
Keep making daily videos man!
The estimate times are definitely way more honest, I had a single game speedrun order take about 40 business days until it was in hand and it wasn’t shipped until they had already had it for about 35 business days.
My concern is if it turns into 50 days because the new expectation is 35. On the plus side, this may make people more selective on what they send in…but probably not :p
We need CGC to enter the game grading market to compete with wata and increase quality while reducing cost as a result of competition. VGA is doing nothing to compete other than offering grading service and a larger variety of video game items. As soon as game dealers feel they are not getting a good return on their WATA costs, they are going to abandon the service. If buyer paying these recent 20x prices (on "wata formula" type games) feel they are buried in their investments (which I believe they are) they will stop buying graded games from dealers and the market will stabilize as this maturation process takes place. We'll soon see an ebay landscape of dozens of the same top tier rare game graded and sitting on ebay and that's when reality will sink in with newcomers to the market.
Pokemon demand is a major X factor though. Would not be surprised if that market continues to climb and never comes down.
I would bet money that Wata eliminated the fastest turnaround tier and greatly increased the time estimates on the other tiers for these 2 reasons:
1) Fear of tarnished brand name as news propagates of people waiting 2x+ the estimated turnaround time.
2) Fear of credit card chargebacks due to not meeting listed turnaround times. Since Wata doesn’t have their app and QR code tech live, they have no leverage for credit card chargebacks. They could threaten to pull your game’s info from their app/QR code data, which likely would lower a game’s value, but they don’t have that ready yet. So right now, you could send in a large order, get your graded games back way later than the time estimate, and then file a credit card chargeback for the entire order for Wata not providing the service in the promised timeframe.
It makes sense to jack up the price on CIB. If they are pressed for time, grading CIB probably takes at least 2x the time. Certainly not in the favor of my wallet, but I totally understand why they would do it. Hopefully as things smooth out and they get more staff, they could consider dropping the price a bit (like if they have a dedicated CIB crew).
Great video as always!!
Update on this Video: WATA updated their site again to discuss this, and actually wrote that they are looking to lower the costs again in the future “Due to the high volume of orders that we’ve been receiving, we are temporarily changing our service tiers and estimated turnaround times effective immediately. Warp-zone orders are temporarily unavailable. We hope to make it available again soon. We’ll still process CIB’s, but they will cost more than they have historically. CIB’s on Speed Runs will Cost $170 and Warp Zones will have incremental $60 added to the order total. We do not intended to keep them at this level for the long term. We’re working to bring these costs and estimated turnarounds back down to more in line with where they’ve been historically l. We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding throughout this tile of growth”
I hate waiting, but I understand the market is red hot for graded games. On a different topic, I wish you could choose FedEx Express for your shipping method. FedEx Ground and FedEx Home is not reliable. FedEx Ground lost my shipment from Heritage this week.
Any source of someone sending unopened Pokemon boxes to PSA for them to open and grade? (12:05)
Pretty sure this is false, they don't open packs you have to send individual cards in card savers or top loaders. The only thing this would make sense maybe is for if someone is sending a box to be cracked and have them grade the packs, but even then I've never heard of it cause you typically send individual packs so I don't think that's accurate
Great video! Was hoping you’d cover the Wata changes. I placed a Warp Zone order for 8 CIB games last week, Wata received yesterday, and already moved into Post-Grading today.