Inside the $100K+ forgery scandal that’s roiling PC game collecting

From <em>Akalabeth</em> to <em>Xenobia</em>, many rare PC titles are now considered elaborate scams.

Read the whole story

 

[LesMilpool____]

And nothing of value was lost.

This isn't as heartwarming as the NFT collectible issues, but its also a good source of laughter.

Came here to suggest (generously /s) that maybe the money would have been better put into NFTs.

If any of the parties involved were also involved in gamergate then my care factor becomes very low, in fact microscopic. Whenever I read anything to do with gaming, the foul taint of those times still hangs around, irrespective of actual connection.

The Gamergate crowd was mostly young kids playing modern console/PC games. They don't particularly strike me as the type to be interested in moldy old games.

 

[Fuzzypiggy]

Only then did Ricciardi admit that he had changed the bag, "thinking it was not important, and, come on, it's a bag."

Alarm bells! No collector would ever, ever consider doing that. I'm no collector but when I sell old or rare stuff on eBay I never change a thing, "sold as seen" so then the person buying decides if they want it, even if the original packaging on a game, CD, vinyl is ruined they can decide if they still want it.

 

[LesMilpool____]

I can't understand the collector mindset. If I can't use it, I don't want it. Why would you want to saddle yourself with more junk? Yes, it's junk, almost zero utility. I can understand a museum collection, with a clear purpose to share the material for public edification. I can understand a scholarly interest, to study what was made and how. I can understand the financial aspect, although there are ways to invest that actually benefit society. This hoarding obsession is pure waste; waste of time, waste of money, waste of space.

Well, I can say that speaking for myself, it's mostly a nostalgia thing. When those games were originally out, I was too broke to own them. I'd read magazines back-to-back, play the occasional arcade game (when I could afford it), but ownership was out of the question.

For me, video games were the beginning of a career in programming, as well as an opportunity to escape the shittiness of life. I don't think it's lost on any of us that we're just amassing clutter, but there's still some enjoyment to be derived from being able to flip through the Super Mario Bros. 3 manual, or re-read GamePro's ill-fated "preview" of "SNES CD", which they prognosticated would "likely see release of 7th Guest".

A buddy of mine once called his video game collection "my monument to middle age". Can't say I disagree with that description. Worst case scenario, if I get bored with them, I'll just sell them to someone else who might still enjoy them.

 

[morpheusro]

Suckers!

 

[foxyshadis]

I can't understand the collector mindset. If I can't use it, I don't want it. Why would you want to saddle yourself with more junk? Yes, it's junk, almost zero utility. I can understand a museum collection, with a clear purpose to share the material for public edification. I can understand a scholarly interest, to study what was made and how. I can understand the financial aspect, although there are ways to invest that actually benefit society. This hoarding obsession is pure waste; waste of time, waste of money, waste of space.

Well, I can say that speaking for myself, it's mostly a nostalgia thing. When those games were originally out, I was too broke to own them. I'd read magazines back-to-back, play the occasional arcade game (when I could afford it), but ownership was out of the question.

For me, video games were the beginning of a career in programming, as well as an opportunity to escape the shittiness of life. I don't think it's lost on any of us that we're just amassing clutter, but there's still some enjoyment to be derived from being able to flip through the Super Mario Bros. 3 manual, or re-read GamePro's ill-fated "preview" of "SNES CD", which they prognosticated would "likely see release of 7th Guest".

A buddy of mine once called his video game collection "my monument to middle age". Can't say I disagree with that description. Worst case scenario, if I get bored with them, I'll just sell them to someone else who might still enjoy them.

That's a good description of how most video game collecting was until recently, along with the group who literally felt compelled to complete collections at any cost for whatever reason.

Then speculators on the sidelines started noticing that thanks to middle-age wealth, the value of games was much more random and elastic than an efficient market, and was ripe for arbitrage. And when you commoditize a market, the speculation becomes a self-perpetuating race upward as they sell to each other instead of hobbyists, propped up by a shrinking number of particularly wealthy outside buyers. That's when rating agencies entered the picture, instead of blowing the whole segment off, lending mainstream respectability and enticing an entirely new institutional crowd of speculators.

Until the bubble crashes, it's a forger's dream market.

This same process seems to happen with every form of media.

 

[Haas Bioroid]

Its amazing how many articles this include focus on "bad" Europeans or European actions and fail to share a balanced view of "positive" European actions or people.

Nothing like a bit of xenophobia, because it always sells ...ARS ?

What ?

 

[J.D.M]

Not many people have said it but it's a great article, I enjoyed reading it.

 

[Hawley]

If they want rare, try and find Usurper for the ZX Spectrum with the actual hex map it's supposed to be played with.

Only 100 copies were sold to Tiger distributing in the UK (I hand cranked most of them). And only one colour map was made, I'm not sure if that survived.


And Next War for the ZX Spectrum, also by Assassin Software. Great war-game based unofficially on the Avalon Hill game "Next War". (I coded the Amstrad CPC disk version, and the never released Memotech MTX conversion which only existed on one tape).

But nobody would care. It's just stuff and value is highly subjective.

 

[phaolo]

Interesting article and shame on that scammer collector.
It's always terrible when renowned figures end up being frauds.

By the way Ars, I'm still waiting for that promised article about Wata Games..

 

[ardent]

If you're the go-to-guy for spotting fakes, of COURSE your stuff will always be legit, right?

Who Watches the Watchmen?

This is an ongoing problem in other collecting communities, especially ones with lots of older "experts" who built most of their collections in the pre-internet era.

The thing to keep in mind is that even the "experts" are, by definition, amateurs. These are just people who are really interested in a thing and gather together a ton of knowledge about the thing. And that's a lot of work, so eventually once a community decides that someone is an expert they become an authority figure. It's a lot easier to trust an authority figure that everyone believes really knows this stuff than to do the hard work of gathering all that information yourself.

Yes, but then again, no. For other comparable markets that are more mature, there exist independent third party grading services, like CGC for comic books. The people doing the grading, which involves determining if the items have been restored, have been tampered with or are just plain fakes do it for a living and have for a long time.

There's not much in that way for computer games, really, yet. And something like the obvious Xenobia or Ultima mismatches above would've been caught immediately. Also, the whole thing about "baggies" and their relevance or not must be completely incomprehensible to somebody even remotely into, say, comic book or trading card collection. "You betcha that's important!"

[Frank shaking his head gif]

 

[Belisarius]

I'm not saying the guy wasn't selling forgeries, because I have absolutely no idea, but some of those differences could be explained by poor quality control in the printing process, as well as different print runs not matching each other (which is not at all uncommon, especially back in those days). My strong hunch is that these early-days software publishers were operating on shoestring budgets, so they very likely weren't using high quality commercial printers*, but rather cut-rate operations whose quality was iffy at best. Once upon a time, commercial printing was almost an art as much as anything else, and the difference between a good printer and a bad one was pretty significant.

*When I say "printers," I'm referring to commercial printing companies, not printers as in the devices that sit on your desk. That technology, outside of dot matrix, didn't exist for home users at the time anyway.

 

[ardent]

I'm not saying the guy wasn't selling forgeries, because I have absolutely no idea, but some of those differences could be explained by poor quality control in the printing process, as well as different print runs not matching each other (which is not at all uncommon, especially back in those days). My strong hunch is that these early-days software publishers were operating on shoestring budgets, so they very likely weren't using high quality commercial printers*, but rather cut-rate operations whose quality was iffy at best. Once upon a time, commercial printing was almost an art as much as anything else, and the difference between a good printer and a bad one was pretty significant.

*When I say "printers," I'm referring to commercial printing companies, not printers as in the devices that sit on your desk. That technology, outside of dot matrix, didn't exist for home users at the time anyway.

It's the, as you might say, "confluence of coincidences" that make it far more likely than not that Ricciardo was making forgeries. The documented replacement of materials. The use of Italian paper. The offers to recover the evidence.

There's no real smoking gun here. The stakes are currently not criminal, after all.

 

[MicroManager]

Gotta say that this guy may deserve it and learned an expensive lesson - But I would bet that he knew there was a high likelyhood it was fake when he bought them but didn't care enough. I own a comic business and I only deal with very high end graded comics that are authenticated and encased. I once had an affiliate ask me to help with some video games that he had sent into the country from Mexico, I was to help send to Canada. Within the first few seconds, I realized that I didn't want to have anything to do with it.

There is nothing special about these and I am a former hard-core gamer who spent hundreds of hours in college bootlegging video games for $5 a piece. Many of the most expensive Video games are supposed to be sealed in the original box to be legit, so you can't even verify what is inside. Could've been anything in there and you can't open it..

Check out the story of Logan Paul buying an 'authenticated' box of first edition Pokemon cards. That was an amazing video worth watching multiple times. Authentication in the hobby is what makes the hobby what it is today. We expect counterfeits.

 

[Tom8747]

I have some ocean front property in the Mtns. of NC
if anyone wants to buy it .....

 

[HobbitsHaveThePower]

Only then did Ricciardi admit that he had changed the bag, "thinking it was not important, and, come on, it's a bag."

Alarm bells! No collector would ever, ever consider doing that. I'm no collector but when I sell old or rare stuff on eBay I never change a thing, "sold as seen" so then the person buying decides if they want it, even if the original packaging on a game, CD, vinyl is ruined they can decide if they still want it.

A friend of mine who collects Silver Age superhero comics would end up putting the bag inside another bag, because amongst the high end antique collectors he moves amongst, there is the belief that certain kinds of bags were more harmful to paper than others. So the original would be paper friendly and needs to be kept not just for historical accuracy reasons but for practical ones too. Truth, or urban rumour? I don't know, but you can be sure they demand total knowledge of where the bags have come from...

 

[ardent]

Gotta say that this guy may deserve it and learned an expensive lesson - But I would bet that he knew there was a high likelyhood it was fake when he bought them but didn't care enough. I own a comic business and I only deal with very high end graded comics that are authenticated and encased. I once had an affiliate ask me to help with some video games that he had sent into the country from Mexico, I was to help send to Canada. Within the first few seconds, I realized that I didn't want to have anything to do with it.

There is nothing special about these and I am a former hard-core gamer who spent hundreds of hours in college bootlegging video games for $5 a piece. Many of the most expensive Video games are supposed to be sealed in the original box to be legit, so you can't even verify what is inside. Could've been anything in there and you can't open it..

Check out the story of Logan Paul buying an 'authenticated' box of first edition Pokemon cards. That was an amazing video worth watching multiple times. Authentication in the hobby is what makes the hobby what it is today. We expect counterfeits.

This is what I was indicating when I said that "experts" in collectibles are typically nothing more than collectors who've realized a side income selling expertise that is, at best, actually expertise. More often it is the same guesswork anyone moderately interested in the subject could have done. It was a lot easier to establish yourself as an expert when you could horde information about your collectible field and not be betrayed by the internet.

Now? There's a reason collectibles are being more and more obscure and niche. It's hard to hustle in the sunlight.

 

[HobbitsHaveThePower]

In order to do due diligence, I had time during lunch to quickly check where I saw the claims of the data itself being wrong; it's not listed in the 3 evidence submission forms Ars here linked too, but it's in the "Announcement from the admins of the Big Box PC Game Collectors Facebook group." which collated the evidence.

MEDIA: Disks were tested, and many did not include game data. Disk labels appear to be hand-cut, different sizes, and printed on modern technology. Cassette tapes did not have game data on them, had actual audio, or had data patterns that weren't what they should be. Cassettes often had glue residue from the removal of old labels. Some disk labels had indents from a corner template which looks a lot like someone was tracing the rounded corners on top of the labels.

The statements about why the group didn't test the data earlier is at the Kotaku coverage, as I thought I remembered;

The most damning evidence presented, though, was that in many cases the disks that had been sold by Ricciardi were blank, something many buyers were only discovering now that they had been prompted to check. If you’re thinking to yourself “why didn’t these guys check that before?”, we’re talking about disks and tapes that are in some cases over 40 years old, which as the Big Box PC Game Collectors members explain, means doing this isn’t always the best idea:

These disks are 40 years old, and the software is widely available online via emulators at this point. The goal in getting these games is not to play them, but to collect them (people who collect baseball trading cards do not trade them much either). “Testing” a 40-year-old disk can risk damaging the disk. Further, some collectors do not have access to the computers which originally ran these games.

 

[The Dark]

I imagine this is also prevalent in the tabletop game collecting (if that is a thing). Several years ago I was hunting for an old copy of a Steve Jackson game that was out of print. I loved it when I was a kid and wanted to share the experience with my son. I finally found a copy on Ebay that was not advertised as a bootleg, but after getting it and with close inspection I could tell it was not original. For this case though I didn't care. I just wanted to play the game.

Car Wars??

Haha, yes. My friends and I played the crap out of that game. We used to tape together notebook paper and create huge city maps. Even created our own "store" to where you could buy goofy items for your vehicles. It's a shame they stopped making it.

There was a reprint of the classic edition in 2019, along with the supplements and related items (such as GURPS Autoduel and Autoduel Champions). I think they reprinted almost everything except the AADA Road Atlases and Autoduel Quarterly (they only did the Best Of volume).

 

[Penforhire]

I see a couple of people wondering why anyone has a collecting impulse.

A few good drives have been put forward for why people collect things.

As a child I collected pennies from almost every year (fitted into a prefabricated 'book'). That was a 'gotta-have-them-all' impulse.

As an adult my own drives are based more on either nostalgia (e.g. video games I kept along the way) or some different emotion that causes satisfaction with seeing/handling/using something "artful."

That explains, for example, my small collection of specialty knives (that I rarely cut with), briar & meerschaum tobacco pipes (though I haven't smoked in years), and writing implements (pens & pencils that I rarely write with). They bring me a hard to describe joy just to look at and handle.

 

[Resolute]

Its amazing how many articles this include focus on "bad" Europeans or European actions and fail to share a balanced view of "positive" European actions or people.

Nothing like a bit of xenophobia, because it always sells ...ARS ?

Those who see bigotry where it does not exist need only look in the mirror to find what they seek.

 

[Scud]

Such a great article. Thanks for the work you put into this!

 

[davethepak]

Ok, very fascinating....

So, a few thoughts;

1 - I had no idea there was a market for this - I had heard of a few "collectable" type games before - some old carts and what not. NO idea this was such a big thing.

2 - "Collectables" just confounds me - but it should not - I mean, when I get into a hobby I like to collect all variants of something (wargaming, books, etc.) - but I had no idea this expanded into such areas.

3 - Wait...how much for what? Woah.... (how much did I throw away).

4 - Now, I need to look at some of those boxes in the closet - I know I have thrown away lots of old games over the years - and what in the world do I do with some of the ones I have left (got a bunch of 3.5 games from the 90s).

 

[Antz37]

"It’s like finding a double agent in an intelligence organization," collector Dan Chisarick told Ars. "He knows the holistic value of classic games and the kind of damage that fake copies can cause."

I have Ultima 1-4 on 320K floppies I might be inclined to donate to their cause. They are copies, obviously.

Don't donate them. Slap a coat of NFT over them and $$$!

 

[ardent]

I see a couple of people wondering why anyone has a collecting impulse.

A few good drives have been put forward for why people collect things.

As a child I collected pennies from almost every year (fitted into a prefabricated 'book'). That was a 'gotta-have-them-all' impulse.

As an adult my own drives are based more on either nostalgia (e.g. video games I kept along the way) or some different emotion that causes satisfaction with seeing/handling/using something "artful."

That explains, for example, my small collection of specialty knives (that I rarely cut with), briar & meerschaum tobacco pipes (though I haven't smoked in years), and writing implements (pens & pencils that I rarely write with). They bring me a hard to describe joy just to look at and handle.

I get the impulse. I don't have it. Whether I never did or it was forcibly broken in the service is a different question. My dad is a coin obsessive. Mountains of coins. Which made him ecstatic when I started to hand off my military coins to him. They were artifacts of my life that he could collect, sort of a piece de resistance for him. He discovered there's a massive secondary market for them and people will pay big money for them. My General Austin coin from USFI is apparently highly sought after now. Which just proves there's others like him out there. Or people who really, really want to win coin challenges.

 

[jazzylarry]

One of my housemates has a copy of Akalabeth. Legit too. I keep telling him he should consider selling it and some of the other early adopter games he snagged as a youth. Will have to show him the high dollar those things are fetching nowadays.

My oldest boxed game is only Ultima III. I got so pissed at the Infocom style games that I tossed them all, except for Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I cut up with scissors to express my disappointment.

Well - pulled out the boxes, and lo to my disappointment - I now recall that I got rid of most of the boxes, especially the larger ones, to condense the size of the collection into something manageable. Oh well, just disks and manuals etc. At least those are originals.

 

[Foxtrot360]

I can't understand the collector mindset. If I can't use it, I don't want it. Why would you want to saddle yourself with more junk? Yes, it's junk, almost zero utility. I can understand a museum collection, with a clear purpose to share the material for public edification. I can understand a scholarly interest, to study what was made and how. I can understand the financial aspect, although there are ways to invest that actually benefit society. This hoarding obsession is pure waste; waste of time, waste of money, waste of space.

I collect (kpop albums) because it brings me joy to look at the things and go through them. The packaging also fascinates me. I think for most people it starts there. To me it isn't junk. I wouldn't go so far as treasure but it isn't junk. I don't look at it as an investment or anything though. I think collecting something for speculative investment is just a waste - its never worth what it is on paper or an internet list when you go to try and sell.

 

[Navalia Vigilate]

I wonder who is even collecting these at this point in the game, considering most gamers pirated heavily during the time period when these games were out and they would have bought what they needed by now.

My career in IT and eventually security started because of wanting to get to BBS's on the left coast to download games when I was a teenager. Toning through the broken up remnants of Bell Systems was the only way to do it when you and your friends have Commodore 64's and 128's with Hayes modems and are all under 18. Sprint in particular was easy to get though by calling operators and asking for a transfer to a number. I forget the days before fences, it was a fun and very naive time.

That led me to 2600 and from there lots of fun until some dude from CA called my house late one night to tell me that his board was not busy (usually unable to get a connection) and it was a good time to dial in. Parents were not amused that an adult was calling me long distance from CA about computer stuff. Dad was an electronics technician and knew enough to realize that I was somehow calling long distance boards without long distance charges showing up on their phone bill. Lost my computer for a month for that offense and had to make all of my calls from a friends house after that.

Never stopped reading 2600. That was around 1986. First full time IT security job was in 1998. Had assumed doing it part time in 1995 due to attacks on servers at JHU where I was working at the time. Used Marcus Ranum's router firewall guide to protect the network until I was permitted to install CheckPoint in 1997. Went to a .com in 1998 to a real security job and never looked back.

I still have over forty 320K floppies with games on them. And the first virus I ever wrote. Unfortunately the Blue Chip drive gave up working decades ago and I've cannot be bothered to rescue it all. I think it sits in a box with an original Atari and a modified Superman cartridge that permitted inserting and removing 4K EPROMs that Dad would use to copy other Atari & Activision games onto so I could pirate Atari games. Have around 60 of those chips, each with a game. He made me build a radio, help build a tv, and fix anything with a chip or crystal.

Dad was not a great nurturer, more of an atomic family Dad. But he was a great tech and I have an entire career because of what he taught me and what he let me do. I never used my undergrad in genetics, he was very unhappy when I did not get an EE but I was terrible at Calc and had to hire a tutor to get me through Calc III.

 

[DrewW]

I wish games still came in giant cardboard boxes with manuals and random swag

AMEN! The last boxed game I ever bought was Doom 3 - for the little pewter pinky demon that's been with me for 17 or so years now. Inside that box was many CDs and a "Steam Code." I never bought another boxed PC game...

 

[Dark Jaguar]

This has been an ongoing issue in a lot of spaces. In console gaming, I've had to learn tricks of the trade for spotting mass-produced forgeries. That's quite a bit different here though, where the forgeries seem to be bespoke.

Incidentally, WATA have notoriously sold actual forgeries for insanely marked up prices. That all bleeds into just how that particular company intruded into the retro gaming space and artificially inflated prices across the board.

PC gaming does present a niche place for collecting at least. I've managed to find all manner of rare productions from otherwise popular series for impressively cheap prices, but I know the moment WETA casts their gaze on it, the good times will be over there too. For now, I'll enjoy my AGI KQ4 edition I recently picked up for $30, or my completely unopened collector's edition of Star Trek Judgment Rites I picked up for the same song. Maybe I should shut up now... I can feel their gaze shifting and the subtle dark whispers "money on the table, disgusting table money...".

 

[Crazy Diamond]

I've always wanted an old Roman coin, but I suspect virtually the entire coin collection industry to be completely full of forgeries. Utterly no surprise that the PC game collecting industry is also full of fakes.

 

[Thad Boyd]

I've always wanted an old Roman coin, but I suspect virtually the entire coin collection industry to be completely full of forgeries. Utterly no surprise that the PC game collecting industry is also full of fakes.

In fact there seems to be pretty good evidence that the people currently inflating the classic-game market are the same ones who inflated the collectible-coin market back in the '80s. AdamWill had a pretty good rundown in a previous comment section.

 

[orangpelupa]

I don't understand what are people thinking in collecting stuff and not play them.... Heck, they don't even open them!

Then I look at my steam library

Oh...

 

[Celery Man]

Are people stupid and believing this "Mister X" crap? WTF is wrong with people, and when you pay 100k, you should get a chain of custody and certificate of previous owners etc.

Lol that is at least normal for expensive cars, watches etc. If someone says "here is a Rolex for 500k but I got it from an anonymous person sending via PO box YOLO" and "even though I got it original boxing, but I changed it haha, no biggie" maybe stay away from the trade.

I've got a sealed Genesis game still, an impulse buy from a Toys R Us years after the Genesis ceased production. The only way I could prove ownership or chain of custody would be the receipt, and god knows where that is if it even still exists, or if it's legible if it does because thermal printing never ages well. And the older the game in question is, the harder proving that becomes.

In a perfect world you aren't wrong and I'd want that too, but I also don't think it's a realistic expectation.

If you used a credit card you should have proof, assuming the transactions are kept that long

In my case, some of the games were bought from Frys (R.I.P) & I usually put the receipts in the box & they are still readable

I guess everyone used to buy & hoard games with the expectation they would "play & finish them someday"

...... then life kicks in......and you can them post about the good old days

A receipt isn't very *good* proof. Especially given receipts from before 2000 or so rarely state exactly what the item is. And the receipt proves nothing about whether the item being sold now is the item that accompanied the receipt.

And that assumes the receipt is even readable still; I hung a receipt for a video game pre-order on my wall in high school, and within a year the thermal paper turned dark and made it almost unreadable.

 

[Deleted member 221201]

Are people stupid and believing this "Mister X" crap? WTF is wrong with people, and when you pay 100k, you should get a chain of custody and certificate of previous owners etc.

Lol that is at least normal for expensive cars, watches etc. If someone says "here is a Rolex for 500k but I got it from an anonymous person sending via PO box YOLO" and "even though I got it original boxing, but I changed it haha, no biggie" maybe stay away from the trade.

I've got a sealed Genesis game still, an impulse buy from a Toys R Us years after the Genesis ceased production. The only way I could prove ownership or chain of custody would be the receipt, and god knows where that is if it even still exists, or if it's legible if it does because thermal printing never ages well. And the older the game in question is, the harder proving that becomes.

In a perfect world you aren't wrong and I'd want that too, but I also don't think it's a realistic expectation.

If you used a credit card you should have proof, assuming the transactions are kept that long

In my case, some of the games were bought from Frys (R.I.P) & I usually put the receipts in the box & they are still readable

I guess everyone used to buy & hoard games with the expectation they would "play & finish them someday"

...... then life kicks in......and you can them post about the good old days

A receipt isn't very *good* proof. Especially given receipts from before 2000 or so rarely state exactly what the item is. And the receipt proves nothing about whether the item being sold now is the item that accompanied the receipt.

And that assumes the receipt is even readable still; I hung a receipt for a video game pre-order on my wall in high school, and within a year the thermal paper turned dark and made it almost unreadable.

Some people are just unhappy in life

I'm fairly certain most people on this comments section bought games back in the day with the intent of playing them & never got around to it & found the boxes years later

I don't think people on here are running around auctioning their games & most would be happy if someone bought it for a reasonable price & just enjoyed them

I know that last year I also sold off my near mint Gamecube (platinum) with 50+ games at a low price to a dad who simply wanted to relive some of the fun with his 13 yrs old son.

Tossed in as may cables & extra controllers I could find for free & later on got a very nice text message saying they had an awesome father/son time playing mario kart / tennis/ pikmin etc etc & that is really what made it worthwhile

The dad also found receipts in nearly every game & per my request shredded them and we had a great chat about Fry's & some of the other game stores that used to exist in those days.

 

[Belisarius]

I'm not saying the guy wasn't selling forgeries, because I have absolutely no idea, but some of those differences could be explained by poor quality control in the printing process, as well as different print runs not matching each other (which is not at all uncommon, especially back in those days). My strong hunch is that these early-days software publishers were operating on shoestring budgets, so they very likely weren't using high quality commercial printers*, but rather cut-rate operations whose quality was iffy at best. Once upon a time, commercial printing was almost an art as much as anything else, and the difference between a good printer and a bad one was pretty significant.

*When I say "printers," I'm referring to commercial printing companies, not printers as in the devices that sit on your desk. That technology, outside of dot matrix, didn't exist for home users at the time anyway.

It's the, as you might say, "confluence of coincidences" that make it far more likely than not that Ricciardo was making forgeries. The documented replacement of materials. The use of Italian paper. The offers to recover the evidence.

There's no real smoking gun here. The stakes are currently not criminal, after all.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely not making an argument for the guy's innocence – there seems to be a lot of smoke for there to be no fire – but just pointing out that every discrepancy isn't necessarily only attributable to fraud.

 

[10basetom]

So the BBPCGC is the best place to sell my PC/Mac games collection? I tried eBay but their commissions add up, especially if your games sell in triple digit territory.

 

[AdamWill]

This has been an ongoing issue in a lot of spaces. In console gaming, I've hard to learn tricks of the trade for spotting mass-produced forgeries. That's quite a bit different here though, where the forgeries seem to be bespoke.

Incidentally, WETA have notoriously sold actual forgeries for insanely marked up prices. That all bleeds into just how that particular company intruded into the retro gaming space and artificially inflated prices across the board.

They're called WATA not WETA. WETA is a digital effects shop.

WATA is a grading agency. It doesn't sell games for any price, "insanely marked up" or not. People get games graded by WATA then sell them.

I'm not aware of any case of a WATA-graded game known to be fake being sold for any significant price. The only clear-cut case of WATA grading a fake that I'm aware of was a Japanese PC Engine game, a fairly obscure market. Don't remember if that game was actually sold at any point, but if it was it wouldn't be for much money.

VGA (WATA's main competition) has graded multiple fake DS games that have been "sold" (then, likely, returned) on eBay for four-figure sums. Don't know of any cases higher than that.

 

[Celery Man]

Are people stupid and believing this "Mister X" crap? WTF is wrong with people, and when you pay 100k, you should get a chain of custody and certificate of previous owners etc.

Lol that is at least normal for expensive cars, watches etc. If someone says "here is a Rolex for 500k but I got it from an anonymous person sending via PO box YOLO" and "even though I got it original boxing, but I changed it haha, no biggie" maybe stay away from the trade.

I've got a sealed Genesis game still, an impulse buy from a Toys R Us years after the Genesis ceased production. The only way I could prove ownership or chain of custody would be the receipt, and god knows where that is if it even still exists, or if it's legible if it does because thermal printing never ages well. And the older the game in question is, the harder proving that becomes.

In a perfect world you aren't wrong and I'd want that too, but I also don't think it's a realistic expectation.

If you used a credit card you should have proof, assuming the transactions are kept that long

In my case, some of the games were bought from Frys (R.I.P) & I usually put the receipts in the box & they are still readable

I guess everyone used to buy & hoard games with the expectation they would "play & finish them someday"

...... then life kicks in......and you can them post about the good old days

A receipt isn't very *good* proof. Especially given receipts from before 2000 or so rarely state exactly what the item is. And the receipt proves nothing about whether the item being sold now is the item that accompanied the receipt.

And that assumes the receipt is even readable still; I hung a receipt for a video game pre-order on my wall in high school, and within a year the thermal paper turned dark and made it almost unreadable.

Some people are just unhappy in life

I'm fairly certain most people on this comments section bought games back in the day with the intent of playing them & never got around to it & found the boxes years later

I don't think people on here are running around auctioning their games & most would be happy if someone bought it for a reasonable price & just enjoyed them

I know that last year I also sold off my near mint Gamecube (platinum) with 50+ games at a low price to a dad who simply wanted to relive some of the fun with his 13 yrs old son.

Tossed in as may cables & extra controllers I could find for free & later on got a very nice text message saying they had an awesome father/son time playing mario kart / tennis/ pikmin etc etc & that is really what made it worthwhile

The dad also found receipts in nearly every game & per my request shredded them and we had a great chat about Fry's & some of the other game stores that used to exist in those days.

I mean yeah, I'm unhappy in life a lot of the time, but it has nothing to do with an unreadable receipt from 21 years ago.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

This has been an ongoing issue in a lot of spaces. In console gaming, I've hard to learn tricks of the trade for spotting mass-produced forgeries. That's quite a bit different here though, where the forgeries seem to be bespoke.

Incidentally, WETA have notoriously sold actual forgeries for insanely marked up prices. That all bleeds into just how that particular company intruded into the retro gaming space and artificially inflated prices across the board.

They're called WATA not WETA. WETA is a digital effects shop.

WATA is a grading agency. It doesn't sell games for any price, "insanely marked up" or not. People get games graded by WATA then sell them.

I'm not aware of any case of a WATA-graded game known to be fake being sold for any significant price. The only clear-cut case of WATA grading a fake that I'm aware of was a Japanese PC Engine game, a fairly obscure market. Don't remember if that game was actually sold at any point, but if it was it wouldn't be for much money.

VGA (WATA's main competition) has graded multiple fake DS games that have been "sold" (then, likely, returned) on eBay for four-figure sums. Don't know of any cases higher than that.

Oh you're in for a treat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbuNwS-gaI
In short: WATA (thank you for the correction) and Heritage Auctions are colluding to artificially inflate used game prices.
VGA by contrast was a group made by retro game fans and for retro game fans. How much it's avoided corruption is up for debate, but WATA was corrupt from it's foundation.