Bronty

Some pics from 34 of sample fronts and backs

I’ll take some pics

Thanks guys. Some fun art on the backs of the pages too. I guess Sergio was doodling on them

Similar story here i thik1 wow, 2 years! Kinda similar story I think in that the address had an issue. Postal code was OK but whomever addressed the package switched the city and the province.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes! Could have knocked me over with a feather when it showed up!!!

After 4.5 months, the USPS decided to deliver the package today!!!! No warning at all just showed up at the door! Sooper happy the Art wasn’t destroyed. Here it is!

I guess I can’t expect anything else given the situation Im sure the piece is Very nice.

Anyone have a pic of the ff59 page in question?

Well. The 'history of game grading' since you wanted to go down that road, is that a collector I was friends with bought a lot of material from Tom Derby when he was at Cloud City. Now his trust fund ran out, so Tom actually had to sue him for some payments not received, but not before Tom saw how much money my old buddy was spending on games. So it dawned on Tom that this might be a new service for AFA to provide. Tom reached out to Bucky and myself and so the lists I had finished writing a few months before on what seals came with what titles were the initial authentication reference for Tom/VGA to look at when games were submitted. I provided them with help on tricky authentication issues for many years. A large chunk of the inventory Brian's Toys purchased when they tried to get into games was from me. So, I say this from having witnessed all of it first hand. Wata has simply done a better job in that regard. They have gone out to conventions and marketed with purpose and effectiveness and got people to buy in. The results speak for themselves. Yes, VGA sent threw a picture or two up on that 1995-fresh website, but nothing much beyond that. As much as I like the guys, they don't know games very well. Their expertise is toys. How are they supposed to speak with passion and purpose on material which they can grade, yes, but don't even know what they are looking at sometimes? I can go grade star wars toys and be taught to do it within a week, I bet. Doesn't mean I know shiz about them or can explain to anyone else why they should collect them when I don't even collect them myself. How can you market something you don't really understand?

that's a lot of typing for amounts to what I said already the service isn't all that much different but the outreach wata did was 100x better.

wow! the venus in particular is just awesome! congrats! Hope you've been well.

No, its really not, I'm sorry. That may be your perception and perhaps there are good reasons for your perception from the toy collector side of the fence, but I've been on the game collector side of the fence since way before vga existed and no one on this side of the fence ever cared about that 'investigation' for more than five minutes. Honestly.

I'd say both parties are credible graders but if you require 'qualifications' of a game-centric variety frankly WATA has more of that. VGA certainly has more toy related expertise which you will be comfortable with from your toy collecting.

85+ and up was the start of 'gold' grades yes. that just meant the holographic sticker was gold (thissun's nice, podner). the + grades are the half grades I mentioned earlier.

well I'll be honest, that 'investigation' was a joke, #1, and I wouldn't repeat it or link it.. I think you'd do well to delete the link, but do what you want. #2, sure wata has partnered with heritage, so what? I would never hold that against a grading co. CGC is owned by heritage's owners after all. Let's not get sucked in by those with an axe to grind. Hobbies are relatively small business and its naive to think relationships won't exist between players.

At the very beginning (I'm talking first year of VGA), that was pretty well their only grade (85). THey basically didn't give 90s and 80s weren't worth submitting. Eventually they added the half grades which helped a lot, and started grading more leniently, meaning more of the range was used, but I hear you.

VGA provided a service but didn't grow the market. Wata partnered with heritage, which is huge, got clink going, hit the shows and reached out.... lots of people love the material, we all grew up with it. Its just getting them to know its even a thing. They've been successful at that where VGA (with all credit to the work that they do) never even attempted that.

I dunno about all that Joe but I know that when you bring down barriers like education, liquidity, and price tracking, prices go up.

Nah the retail boards are well built. Prototype boards are less stable.

You know, I once sent a book on St John to a favorite artist of mine (Tom DuBois, painted a lot of the late 80s to mid 90s Konami covers) and after Tom read the book he came to realize that he'd seen his work before; when Tom when to Art Institute in Chicago, his drawing teacher still had St John pencil samples up for the class to learn from. The teacher's teacher had been St. John. Was quite a revelation for Tom at the time and quite the unexpected connection for me between two artists I regarded highly.

Did the neck bother you in person? The bird's neck looks off to me; I find it distracting and as much I love love love St John, I'm not sure this would be my first choice. Of course, there isn't much out there to choose from as far as I can tell.

preduction = theo nothing to do with donnellys

It’s epic and the fact you took it to the next level with the plunger... respect

Yes! However, the head of that turkey appears to have been severed for use as a plunger, so I'd say his days of having objections to where I poop have long passed

Back around that time, I sold a friend's collection in that manner, and Brian, that bought out an old distributor from Hawaii, had weekly auctions also. I wonder if you bought any from me and/or Brian. Brian's were distinguishable by generally having two price tags with inventory codes rather than prices on them. There's still stuff out there, 100%. But I can tell you that every year there is less and less and less. Today, far less is found than back then. Asking an old store owner to store a room full of stuff for from their closed-down shop for 30 years is asking a lot. Now that ebay has been around for 20+ years, the large majority of those old hoards are gone. But, still a few remain, no doubt. The thing about those finds though is that its amazing how many sealed NES games some stores had without having anything good. All the same crepe titles in quantity but quantity zero or one of anything you'd want, etc. Over-orders of unpopular titles, in other words. Unsold stock.