You’re not wrong - video game collecting has become big business, and “mint” copies (based on an arbitrary scale for the most part) are treated like investments - we’ve been through this many times, like with Ty plushies and other assorted nonsense. I still remember a time people were outraged that they’d have to pay $500 for a copy of Radiant Silvergun, and that was genuinely a rare piece of software, so there was actual scarcity involved. Pokémon isn’t a particularly rare piece - you can’t throw a rock and not hit some kind of Pokémon game. The n-thousand dollar premium on what amounts to cellophane and cardboard is inexcusable, and everybody knows those prices are artificially inflated by grading houses. Heck, those graders often aren’t even subject matter experts anyway. Earlier this month they admitted that they gave a “perfect” score to a reproduction cartridge and had to profusely apologise because they “didn’t know” those exist.
Edit: Here’s their pathetic statement. They can’t even tell if the damn game is real, how can they *possibly* be able to grade it on any scale? Scammers pretending they’re king shit, nothing more, nothing less.
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Maybe this is a controversial point of view, but I’m a collector *and* a gamer. I honestly believe that those products were meant to be played, not to be put into a plexiglass box never to be touched again. Collectors who do that care more about appearances than what they’re actually collecting - yes, take care of the collection by all means, but if you’re never going to play any of it, it has no value to me.
