Another SEALED Retro Game Bubble?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 29 кві 2024
- Thanks to The Perfect Jean for sponsoring! Screw your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code CUPODCAST15 at theperfectjean.nyc/CUPODCAST15 #theperfectjeanpod #ad
----------------
Are we on the verge of another sealed retro gaming bubble? We discuss recent eBay auctions and articles suggesting so.
➡Support us and get goodies: shorturl.at/fswBU or on Patreon: / cupodcast
➡More info @www.cllct.com/sports-collecti...
kotaku.com/sealed-castlevania...
#gamecollecting #sealedgames - Ігри
Waht do you think about these eBay sold prices? Is this another attempt at a sealed game bubble? Or something else? Thanks to The Perfect Jean for sponsoring! Screw your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code CUPODCAST15 at theperfectjean.nyc/CUPODCAST15 #theperfectjeanpod #ad
Seems legit to me. 2 rich nerds dueling each other for the prize.
its sus
The transition from the galactic enthusiasm for jeans, to the sad deflated dull somber attitude towards the world of sealed games. 🤷
@@selbyjohnson5986The “winner” is actually “2 friends” who went in on it together (by their own admission). So at LEAST 3 nerds/speculators were dueling😂
It is absolutely market manipulation.
I'm part of a facebook group where this article was mentioned and one thing I've noticed is that the buyers and sellers of these types of auctions all know each other or they claim they know the buyer. Sealed collectors are a small niche community but I truly believe that these sales are being used to pump the market by a small group of collector's that are colluding.
Yep. No one I know is paying nearly $100,000 for any game no matter what condition. Most collectors are people in their 40s trying to get complete collections or maybe a game or two sealed to show off. No one is dumping six figures in to one cart even if it's sealed.
I know all the groups very well and you're right. They ALL know each other. And all the owners and admins of the groups know each other. GetTheGreg is also a part of their little friend group and they all hang out in his discord and "Speculate". They're all just selling to each other.
We've seen this show before. A small group moving things around among themselves, or pretending to, to keep market value artificially high for the odd occasion a real buyer from outside their circle falls for it and gives the con artists their money.
People need to understand that it's also about avoiding taxes.
19:01 here's a theory for you. The people doing this in the 80s were adults, who had seen the video game crash. They probably thought these games would suffer the same fate and become scarce, thus valuable, relatively quickly, so they bought them up and never opened them.
Then video games exploded in popularity and stuck around, so they just kept going, waiting for the next crash to cash out, which never came.
I think in the 80's the big collector things were coins and baseball cards.
@@andywolan Comics. Baseball cards were huge too - but comics where MASSIVE in the 80s.
Kotaku got totally gutted and has beaindead new management. Expect their previously low standards to be through the floor now.
Marxtaku?
@@hagbardceline1980 What?
When you want to feel like a clown just buy sealed games for these prices
If you want to feel like a clown then think these sealed games actually have something to do with the market.
@@willissudweeks1050 they have, the average person selling stuff they found on their basement or whatever will find this prices on the news and say "hey, i have those games, they might be worth a lot, and put them on the market at high prices not knowing what they are actually worth, it also raises the average price since regular people put a price of their stuff based on similar stuff they find on the site they're selling "hey, people is selling this Super Mario Bros + Duck hunt for 90$ on ebay, i'll put 70$ and say its a bargain!"
If you want to feel like a clown, then think these sealed games actually have nothing to do with the market.
@@willissudweeks1050 I too enjoy commenting unrelated things
@@thepatternofchairs9814 I enjoy giving both your comments upvotes because I'm bored. 👍
@@willissudweeks1050 they have, the average person selling stuff they found on their basement or whatever will find this prices on the news and say "hey, i have those games, they might be worth a lot, and put them on the market at high prices not knowing what they are actually worth, it also raises the average price since regular people put a price of their stuff based on similar stuff they find on the site they're selling "hey, people is selling this Super Mario Bros + Duck hunt for 90$ on ebay, i'll put 70$ and say its a bargain!"
If you want to feel like a clown, then think these sealed games actually have nothing to do with the market.
if you enetr a max bid on ebay it will automatically bid in incriments till you have the higest bid or your max bid is exceeded. Then if you have 2 people who are doing it every other day or so when they get notified they were outbid you will see the bids like you did.
they probably did not bid it up them selfs.
ebay just increased the bid for them because they entered a higer bid ammount initially..
That is a non issue not even suspicious, thats just how ebay works.
What id like to know is if the buyer even paid for it.
yeah that’s what happened here. The bidder put a high amount.
It's suspicious only in, why would anyone pay this much for a video game?
@@AlucardsQuest as far as im concerened. the whole "id have paid more in cash" part is where the future scam comes in.
@@AlucardsQuest For certain video games and signed by the creator/team, I can see it being worth that. Oh, and of course sealed still.
Ebay doesn't show automatic bidding as individual bids . Each one of those bid amounts was a separate bid . If you bid 900 bucks on an item max bid and a second person bids 1000 on it , it will only show 2 bids even if the item started at 99 cents . Those bidders on this auction were inching up until they hit the highest bidder's max .
Waiting for the the day a super expensive game drops all the way to 1k
Considering Gen-X is getting much older, it won't be too long. Can't imagine too many younger people are gonna give a flip about these games. They made SO MANY of them that it would seem there will be more than enough to go around.
Already happens. Pokepark sold for $22k. Now it's $500
@@hieinh ohh wow. I want to see them flip when they get like 1k for a game they spent 90k on
@@stephenthomas1492millennials are the ones who grew up with these games
Hey look mom. I've seen this episode before. It's people buying games from themselves while pretending to be other parties in order to generate publicity and trick the public.
Yeah the same thing happened with golden age comic books, just more stupid amounts of money.
I have a Wonder Woman #7 that would be worth 14 grand if it wasn't fire and water damaged. It fell off a truck.
Actually a hipster shop near me burned down and I found a stack of golden age comics that washed away from all the water the firefighters used. When I saw the fire, I went to the nearest creek that was below (in elevation) the hipster shop. I got like 7 golden age comics that are basically worthless, but super old.
Those will be fun to show my niece and nephew.
Has anyone considered the possibility of the entire collection being planted at the estate sale, and bought by a coconspirator? A miraculous collection you can label "DFW" to generate articles and buzz right when you need to stave off a crashing market and legal battles, is too convenient all around.
I'd love to find boxes and boxes of sealed NES games. Dear lord, that'd be the highlight of my life.
Well its possible, there was that one youtube video a while back that bid on a storage locker unit. Inside was tens of thousands of dollars worth of sealed retro games. That's about the only way you'd find something like that though, a lucky storage unit bid.
My friend sent me one of those articles and I immediately knew you guys would cover it. I spent the rest of the day thinking up cooler stuff you could get for just as much or less money.
1. Fly to Japan and get IGA himself to autograph every Castlevania game you own.
2. Rent the original Dragula and drive it around town.
3. Get some really awesome horror movie/show prop like Barnabas Collins's wolf headed cane.
Rich people are so fucking boring and unimaginative.
So after finally getting a chance to watch this completely, I gotta agree with you guys that this really smells like another attempt to inflate a bubble. If someone reaaalllly loves Castlevania to the point they want to spend $90K on a sealed copy, that's cool, go for it and be happy. Why start writing articles and speculating about what it might be worth in monetary value? If they did it for the love than that shite doesn't matter.
If they did it as an investment though, then it starts to matter. Now they can say "hey give us $150,000 for this game that might be worth $250,000". They make money and some sucker is left holding the bag, possibly, unless they can pull the same trick on someone else. And so it goes until the bubble pops...
"... stinging regret that their past selves lack the foresight to keep their childhood games sealed."
I bought Megaman 1 new as a kid for like $30 from ToysRUs. Loved it. If I kept it sealed, my copy would be worth thousands, maybe tens of thousands, yes, but I also wouldn't have had the fond childhood memories playing that game. Seeing a sealed copy of the game sell for that much demonstrates to me how much value those fond childhood memories are actually worth to others.
Pricecharting has a complete copy of Castlevania valued at $399.00
A 'New' copy, now valued at $90,100.00
That's some expensive cellophane.
Pretty much this. Who knew shrink-wrap would end up being as good as gold.
Sometimes, there are left of field reasons for outlier high sales prices, like museums buying for exhibitions or movie studios buying for props. Unlikely, but sometimes.
idk about movie studios for props, I've sold stuff for movies, firstly you are not selling to a studio every film is its own production, so you dealing with usually the set designers with a budget, and second they most certainly don't just pay anything, they haggle like any normal dealer.
I can see Pat talking to Mrs. Ferguson then later...
Ian's treasure giveaway~yyy!
Remember when Ian and Pat were sponsored by that Manscape groomer? No way that would happen anymore
Just curious. Why’s that
Pristine 10 Alpha Black Lotus just sold for $3 mill. 1st Print Castlevania seems like small potatoes now but I guess Apples to Oranges
The problem with collectors is that they want to make EVERYTHING valuable, even if it shouldn't be. NCAA 14 is a great example. It is a very common game. It sold around 3 million copies on 360 and PS3. It should be a $5 game. But there are people that have paid over $100 for it - because collectors have pushed a fake agenda that it's still desirable for people to play because it was the last NCAA football game. That's nonsense, because we know that very few people download the updated rosters (it's around 2,000 people currently).
The game was valuable the day it launched because collectors knew it would be the last NCAA game. They stupidly equated that to it somehow being rare, despite millions of copies being sold. There are plenty of games that are the last in a series - why are they worthless?
I have a large Xbox 360 collection, and it's kind of silly what kind of games are valuable. I have at least 20-25 games that have $4.99 Gamestop used stickers on them that are now worth $100-$200. They shouldn't be worth that, but collectors try to make everything valuable. All it takes is one person to make a video - or one person putting it for a ridiculous amount of Ebay, then everyone else tries to do the same.
$90,000 for Castlevania, I'm glad I only spent $15 for it, and got 2, 3, Super 4, the first 2 Game Boy games, Bloodlines and Kid Dracula.
You guys are right. And, naturally, Price Charting is showing this, completely skewing the system. I just looked, and a new copy before this was in the $5-10k range (which is still ridiculous considering a complete copy is only $400, but I digress). Now it shows this insane value as the "new" value.
I mean, this really DOES feel like the person buying this is trying to create a new bubble now that the millions of videos exposing these false prices have died down. Possibly they're someone who bought a lot of these sealed or graded games and they're seeing all the money they spent going down the toilet. So they prop this one up hoping to generate buzz to get the collectors salivating and inflating the value again.
It's called a "Dead Cat Bounce", and you're seeing it in action. The graded game subculture is now trying to rally and spend considerable resources to recover from the huge crash. You'll see another bump to game values, but I suspect it won't be sustainable.
@@TravisSurtr I think you're right.
Personally, I hope the whole thing crashes. I'd love it to go back to where you could get a legit copy of a game like Earthbound without having to fork over an entire paycheck to do so.
@@TheModelGamer Hell, I'd like to own a loose copy of Little Samson just for the pleasure of putting the damn thing in my NES.
I think those are the jeans that Orange Cassidy wears. 😜
I literally have game carts with $0.25-$20 on them. They range from NES Open to Mario Kart. I was buying these games a little more than a decade ago at Goodwills, local stores and estate sales for nothing. I even have boxes have many games with instruction manuals.
It's nonsense that someone thinks a sealed copy is worth nearly $100,000 for any game. You can literally create a dream game room with this kind of money. Why drop $100,000 on a game in "mint" condition that someone probably resealed or could even be a repo.
Wonder if any actual people not involved with the scam has made any money? Nobody is stupid enough to pay these prices after the first collapse, these things just don’t happen.
is money laundry 💲💲💲💲💲💲
Sucks that they were the ones who found this person's collection first, i don't believe they didn't know these were going to be there
Pat putting off Vince Vaughn Vibes… he has the same kind of voice
LOL I'm constantly telling my partner what my geek collection is worth just in case I'm ever hit by a car or something. She gets annoyed but at least she knows to not sell it all for a song......
I also love the "raw" term for these games..... so naughty :)
Yes that’s a perfect example of an ad that completely makes me regret clicking this video while at the same time ensuring that I will never try the product. Thanks Pat
Would you rather them not make money? You know you can skip the ad? As well its better than some shitty mobile game lol
Ian's beard is giving post-TV David Letterman.
It's probably the beast incarnate himself, Hellfire Halperin!!!
It's the same all over the hobby space, tcg prices are crazy right now
Pertaining to what you guys call fishy bidding...
I honestly do the same thing. I do certain increments seeing what the other budder might have bid. At the same time I contemplate if I actually want to go that high & remember the funds I have to spend on one item
My Limited Run Castlevania Collection looks more badass than a 90 grand sealed original
The only thing stretchier than that jean ad is the retro pricing market 😂
The fact I can find multiple multiple copies of castlevania ii and iii sealed on eBay this second makes me very much doubt the 23 year claim
Also, people can forge works of art that use the same techniques and supplies from the same era as the original. You think people cannot do that with a piece of cardboard and plastic? COME ON!!!
The only time I've ever made a social media post about something I won in an auction, was when I got an insane deal. Buying a copy of Castlevania for $90k is not a deal, but it is insane. I feel like the people who do this shit should be forced to watch the Mizkif video of his games tanking in value.
Man your boy Ian's looking rough what's going on with him he looks like Gollum or some Lord of the Rings character
Do yall have anymore NES guides? Really want one
Too bad I only graduated high school in 2012. Games like Super Mario 3 were less than $500 sealed 10 years ago
Collectables are only important to the collectors. Once the collectors are gone so is the collectability of the collectable.
I'll stick to my diecast collection. It's good to know how much value I have in it, and what it could sell for, but I have them for my own enjoyment
Unlike other auction houses such as Heritage and Goldin, eBay does not allow you to pay with wire transfer, I imagine what Grailmonster meant is that he ran into his credit card limit while bidding. I believe eBay recently enabled an off-eBay payment option for the video game category, likely in response to this sale, as well as the $80k+ Kid Icarus sale, which oddly wasn't covered here.
The game graded 9.4 A+ and I would say $90k is a great deal in hindsight for the buyer. There is a 9.2 A+ coming up at the May signature auction, so we'll see then. 9.4 graded cib hangtab copies have recently sold for over $7000, so the ratio is in line with many other key titles.
It's 1 out of 5 or 6 known sealed hangtab copies, and the nicest one at that. It's the only CGC graded copy. VGA recently released pop reports, so that information exists as well. I believe it is common knowledge that 2 VGA copies had been crossed to WATA however.
Anyway, I don't really get how such an awesome find would cause someone deep in the hobby to develop such dark and cynical views, rather than excitement. But I'll leave that for someone else
We’ll see how this comment ages 😅
@@mikedradio What do you mean? The upcoming 9.2 sale?
I think it’s a little crazy to save those sealed games for so many years then someone else just sells them and makes the profit
i wonder if the other guy bidding against himself was the winner's friend who went in on the 'investment' with him
A tale as old as time.
Why would they wanna pay more? To inflate the price and try to sell again? Idk seems dumb
So sick of hearing about everything being 'a grail'. I know words change, but THE GRAIL is THE, THE ONE, THE ONLY. Can't we call it something else already?
I kinda want a Dynowarz just cuz of Ranking of NES
Dang I want some thrashers fries in ocean city.
Actually... I would bid sometimes like that ._. when I really really want something, and can't get myself to put in a large number up front and need that 'bad psychology' that Pat referred to... to get up to that sum little by little (small steps don't hurt as much... until you see where you ended up :D ) .. except I would be bidding with amounts 1000 times lower :D :D :D
...also 79,800 ... 79,900... lol. What did $100 matter at the point of $79,800?? :D ...kids, don't do ebay. Unless you can walk away from your sniper bid and never look back ;3
Its almost that sunk cost fallacy. You didn't really spend any money.... yet.
Thats how I do ebay too! I find it more fun that way lol
Lookin good Ian!
This segment is probably my favorite of the entirety I’ve seen of your show!
Love your podcast, you guys will go down in history as legends of one of the best gaming podcasts around. Keep up the good work!
lol sealed Urban Champion 5:01
If everyone had the foresight to keep thier games sealed, there would be a glut in the market and those sealed games wouldn't be worth much more than a cib copy
Ian's lookin like Captain Caveman
Only worth if it would be a investment or you have like 100 miljoen plus compared to this is a mid engine brand new corvette and 30k party money
Even revenge of the nerd actors would drive of with the hot outrun blond next to him
I think it's funny that he spent ninety thousand dollars on a version of castlevania that has a well known glitch that causes the game to crash
Jeans and Cereal guys
Make sure to tell friend you trust unless you want to force to sell them in a divorce. RIP MTG cards
You guys are talking about the value not being real if there are only 2 people bidding it up, which I agree fully, but there are 6 unique accounts bidding on the Castlevania above $80,000. Remove the second place bidder and it would have still ended at $84,100. With that many different accounts being close to the 90k sale price, it doesn't seem like an extreme outlier price.
The articles to follow are absolutely pumping it, but the auction itself seems pretty darn organic for where we are at in 2024.
As an aside, stretch denim is great.
I dunno I feel like they would have figured out all eyes are on these types of auctions so how much harder is it to sit there with multiple eBay accounts and work in tandem? For the very reason you just name, that it appears organic
These idiots just yap negativity all the time lol. They wont understand what youre saying
Everything about this speculative bubble looks organic to you Greg.
What if....the story of this collector is made up and this copy of Castlevania is a formerly slabbed copy that was cracked out ? Why eBay over Heritage Auctions? Its just a theory
The buyer of the Castlevania came out publicly, actually purchased it, flew to go pick it up and slabbed it. He apparently purchased it with a friend. There's very very few sealed first print Castlevanias out there and they barely come up, the last sealed one at auction sold for six figures (and if I recall it was over $200k). I'm not defending the purchase, it's a ridiculous price, but it's a legit purchase.
Was his friend's name Jim Halperin?
@@mewimi Probably not. Safer for Jim to just wait and get his cut of the sale at Heritage at this point.
@@MilkWasABadChoice17 Hahaha. Fair enough!
Get ready for the pump and dump
But spending $90k on "Castlevania"?
WTF! I'm thinking about a big ass weather balloon 🎈 going 💥!
Tax write offs.
… this conversation is going to last forever as long as people keep talking about these buyers as if they’re “gamers” or “collectors” and not “INVESTORS.” They may be stupid and wrong but nobody is buying this cartridge because they love Castlevania so much or have a Belmont Shrine in their office
Here's an idea don't spend 90,000 fucking dollars on a game that will collect dust long after you're gone. It's a stupid thing to do
But it’s for their great grandkid’s retirement.
In 98 99 we used to go to funcoland and get nes games for a buck in the bargain bin. I completed my entire mega man loose set for 20 bucks back then. I remember the nes black box games going for .25 and .50 cents. Have the whole set. Me and the guys back then loved collecting those carts bc they weee so cheap. I ended up w all of them in 05 after my buddy (whose house we kept them at bc he had a cool finished basement that we would party at) gave them to me bc he moved to DC to an apt for a new job. Back then though I still thought of them as cheap old games not worth much.
In total 275 nes, 124 snes and 85 genesis. Tons of heavy hitters. I kept them in storage until about 2016 when I got back into retro gaming after the nes classic came out. 41 YOA now and I contemplate selling but I can’t because of the memories each game holds. Plus I don’t wanna go through the hassle of selling. It would be a pain in the ass
Whats the historical significance about this game.... is it just nostalgia??
SEALLLLLLLLLLLLLLED
Why we're still referencing Kotaku is the greatest mystery to me.
Haven't seen Ian in a long time and holy hell bro.
Yes that pizza commercial is a cringe
US $90,100.00 lol
Ian ages about 10 years per episode.
Original owner should of gone on pawn stars like yourself to pump it
Theres not really anything to burst. It was a good way to launder money until it wasn't. People weren't spending 200+k on sealed games out of nowhere for no reason other than to launder money. Everyone and their mom knows the price will come back to normal eventually
Why does Ian look like he's going to open a Chinese antique shop & sell someone a mogwai?
I’m thinking more the antagonist from a Shaw Bros kung-fu film, respectfully 💪
Waist sizes from 26 to 50 inches for the jeans?? Sorry bruh.. I'm 69 inches
🦭🦭🦭
This smells fishy to me.😑 Sounds like a classic pump & dump scam. Nobody in their right mind would spend that kind of money on that. Also, with sealed games you never know what's really in the box. You wouldn't dare unseal it to verify it's a legit copy.😉
Also when yall talk about Journalists, don't forget that tons of them got laid off and the rest got put on miserable content mill stuff. That's why there's no "learning" from the first time
that's some expensive saran wrap! my loose copy gotta be at least 20k now!!
😊😊😊good
Its ridiculous but lets consider a few things. The game came out in 1986 when most adults thought that video games would be a failure after Atari previously crashed the industry. This means that pretty much nobody thought to buy an extra copy and keep it sealed... unlike today where its a $300B/year industry and every company out there is pimping "collectors" editions.
So yea, its very rare. On the other side of things, its an iconic title that spawned a genre that still sees new series and titles today.
Sure, it's a ton of money but it's also true that there are now plenty of rich people that grew up in the era of this game.
Look at what happened to the price of muscle cars or Fender guitars once the kids of those eras got a bunch of extra money later in life.
Castlevania 1 didn't spawn a genre. It's just an action game with a horror theme, which Capcom did a year earlier with Ghosts n Goblins in the arcade. If you're talking about the Metroidvania genre, that started with Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. Also, other than a few collections, the series hasn't seen a real entry in over 10 years... and that game bombed hard. People who know the name today, mostly know it from the Netflix anime, or at best as DLC for Deadcells or V-Rising.
I agree and this is the first print hang tab too. It’s just a show off for a rich video game nerd. It’s like buying a Ferrari.
The name is in the name and it was the first. Any sort of collecting generally works that way with a bump to the original of a series or line. @@AlucardsQuest
Rare? Eh ..that's relative .
Problem is you don't know how many units are still out there in the wild. Muscle cars, Fender guitars, the # of actual units of each that sold is known. Some of course got destroyed at some point. A video game though, probably a lot more units were made. Granted that were sold were of course opened and played. But even then there's collectors of anything and in one of Pat's other videos talking about Nintendo Age, there was that one forum user who even stated they had 4-6 boxes of sealed Stadium Events (don't recall the exact number). And that's boxes, so however many copies of the actual game are in there times 6.
Until these unknown collectors die and their collections end up into the marketplace, can't really know how many of anything is out there. Don't believe CV1 is worth $90k USD, even with that hang tab. Get it signed by the director though, then sure.
I don’t understand cib or sealed, I like the box look for games but I buy repro boxes and manuals, or if I can get a good deal I will buy but otherwise I ain’t paying that premium when I can buy another 4-5 loose games for that price.
Anytime anyone posts on social media about spending outrageous sums of money on a game, let alone participating as the subject of a Kotaku article on the topic, it's pretty clear what their intention is. It's designed to incite FOMO, get others excited, and frame the purchase as both "reasonable" and "exceptional" to a broader audience, with the main goal to normalize these prices for this type of item. Those are hallmark traits of a form of market manipulation.
this is something similar but not the same as the sealed gaming scandal a few years back. people are gouging collectors as resellers/content creators push FOMO on the masses through the aid of social media. resellers are trying to push box variants and manuals at astronomical prices because a niche market is becoming main stream
the box tab variants didnt seem to be a thing worth 5 figures 5 years ago, how can they have possibly appreciated this much this fast for no reason what so ever . just a tidbit as some one whos been collecting/loving video games since 87
all that is money laundry nobody is stupid enough to pay these prices
At this point, 90k for a mint 1st edition Castlevania doesn’t seem that bad.
Thou doth protest too much. Couldn't have said it any better Ian.
Feel like it’s a legit sale. Like if it was nefarious why not get it above 100k? Could also just be some idiot bidding it up with no intention of paying.
That's like something someone involved would say. Is it your game?
I'll buy it off you for $100k, as long as you accept a check.
Boing!
Sproing!
I think the many up bids are probably automated with a separate auction app. I don't know about eBay, but I know bidding things from Yahoo Japan that it could look like that.
I don't know how else to tell you this: Atari has BOUGHT Intellivision!!
Do a video on it plz.
Come on, it's been resealed. If people can forge passports and currency, they can forge a box for a videogame. Just COME ON! Don't be so dense and do NOT give these "people" the benefit of the doubt.
Alot of "hype" talk, hype stories, it's all bunk, whoever bought it is pumping it up and they'll attempt to resell it to a larger sucker.
lol there's still people clicking on hyperlinks to Kotaku articles? ... wtf is wrong with people?!
How come Pats jaw is always in METH mode? Always moving that bottom jaw.Hahaha
I know. It's possibly a nervous tic, but it does make me uncomfortable. I've seen it a lot back in the day when I was an addict.
I don't want to jump to conclusions, but it is a constant thing that happens.
definitely used a bot to up the bids, they were all within a couple seconds of each other
lol, Kotaku hasn't really done investigative journalism since Patrik Kelpeck left in like 2008. But in general hasn't done decent work post pandemic.