[HN Gopher] Super Mario 64 game sells for record-breaking $1.5M ...
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Super Mario 64 game sells for record-breaking $1.5M at auction
Author : shivbhatt
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-07-12 14:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| As an 80s and 90s gaming enthusiast --and, to a small extent,
| collector-- I really want to know what the hell is going on here.
| It doesn't seem that long ago that Nintendo World Championship
| was going for $15k and I could at least understand that from the
| confluence of historical significance and rarity, but $1.5M for
| one of the most sold games in history just because of its
| condition!?
|
| Is this just a symptom of the ludicrous increases in wealth
| disparity, that someone has $1.5M to throw away on something like
| this? Or is it some kind of money laundering? Seriously, someone
| please explain this to me.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Probably laundering right?
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| The general thought is that like Higher end Art, it's a form of
| Laundering / Tax evasion that's now running rampant in the
| Console Gaming side of the house.
|
| It's rather sad, now a lot of classics are being ridiculously
| priced at used game stores and while i'm all for making money,
| some of the recents i've seen have been insane price gouges. I
| saw Panzer Dragoon for Saturn going for 3800 at a used game
| shop, it was not complete either. I bought a fully complete in
| box copy for like $380 a couple years back and That was pricey
| to me.
| [deleted]
| jonny_eh wrote:
| This completely justifies emulation/flash carts/ODEs in my
| mind.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| They're really great. You can play games on original
| hardware without having to worry about wearing out moving
| components or the availability (and therefore
| affordability) of any given title.
|
| Some people balk at the satiator's ~$250 price tag, but I
| own individual Saturn games you can't even buy with that.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| $380 for complete and good condition does sound a bit pricey,
| but it's within the realm of "I have this and I'm willing to
| wait for a buyer who wants it badly enough". $3800 is
| _insane_. I myself own a couple rare-ish games (none sealed,
| I bought them to play them), and if they got up that high I
| 'd sell them in a heartbeat. I have a satiator, I don't need
| a CIB Saturn Bomberman.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Exactly, I like owning a few of my favorites. I do have a
| complete US Dreamcast collection and the vast majority are
| Sealed. I started snagging them up as soon as the console
| "failed".
|
| I hadn't even noticed the Satiator was out finally! Thanks
| for dropping the reminder. There goes $250 lol.
| orangegreen wrote:
| How does one launder money / evade taxes with high end art?
| lathiat wrote:
| My naive understanding is it's a way of transferring money
| in return for something supposedly valuable. That might
| really be payment for something else.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Isn't it a scheme where you sell to yourself and then claim
| illegal money is money you earned from the sale ?
| thebean11 wrote:
| 1. Buy for $x
|
| 2. Get appraised for $100x
|
| 3. Donate
|
| 4. Take $100x tax deduction
| vincentmarle wrote:
| Doesn't the tax deduction only apply for 30% of the
| donation though?
| r00fus wrote:
| 100x * .30 = 3x value in deductions. You can scale the
| 100x accordingly to your needs.
| adventured wrote:
| That doesn't work. That's the great myth of donation tax
| dodging that isn't actually true, yet is endlessly
| repeated. You ultimately - at best - only save a fraction
| of your donated value, you'd be better off just selling
| the asset instead of donating it for a fractional tax
| saving.
|
| If that actually worked the top 10% wouldn't be carrying
| such an outsized share of the nation's tax burden on its
| shoulders via our very progressive tax system, they'd all
| be busy dodging all of their taxes via donations.
|
| If you really wanted to avoid taxes, you wouldn't donate
| anything, you wouldn't sell anything.
|
| The single best way to avoid taxes in your lifetime, is
| to borrow against your assets and only repay the
| borrowing in death. Your cost will be interest (interest
| rates are ridiculously low today). You could go much of
| your lifetime without paying taxes, while enjoying the
| good life borrowing against eg your stock holdings.
| Warren Buffett has made this point numerous times, that
| if he wanted to avoid paying taxes during his lifetime
| while enjoying his immense wealth, he'd just use that
| approach. Buffett could have taken out a $1 billion loan
| 30 years ago, had fun with that cash, and paid zero taxes
| on it for decades (while also not selling his primary
| asset - Berkshire Hathaway stock - which has appreciated
| dramatically).
| uxp100 wrote:
| > you'd be better off just selling the asset instead of
| donating it for a fractional tax saving.
|
| The idea of this scheme (which may be exaggerated on the
| internet) is that you cannot sell the asset.
|
| This is a painting by the cousin of someone who went to
| the same barbershop as de Kooning. There is zero market.
| There are approximately zero buyers. There is some story
| to be constructed that plausibly justifies some
| "historical value." There is presumably some decorative
| value.
| thebean11 wrote:
| A fraction of the donated value is still much bigger than
| the actual value you paid for the art. The important part
| is to get an appraisal far above the actual value.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| 1031 Exchanges are one method, buying overpriced items to
| bring illicit cash into legitimate ownership is another.
| There are a myriad of ways to make it beneficial. I think
| we all can agree though that the price is nuts.
|
| Then again The H.Biden paintings are listed for 75 -
| 500,000 so maybe I just have 0 clue about what super
| wealthy people want.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >buying overpriced items to bring illicit cash into
| legitimate ownership is another
|
| No, Christie's (or some other big auction house) is never
| going to take your money that way. No one, actually.
|
| It's the same with real estate. "Just walk in with a
| million in $20 bills and pay the property with cash".
| That's not going to happen. Ever.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Never ever?
|
| You'd think so, and yet it's come to light Crown Casino
| in Melbourne was doing just that, knowingly maintaining
| relationships with known crime organisations, and was
| actively enabling money laundering.[1]
|
| I argue politics and big business _is a front_ for bad
| behaviour, as evidenced by the endless stream of
| corruption news pouring out of the Australian federal
| government.
|
| I find it difficult to believe the the other G20
| nations[2] are markedly _better_.
|
| 1. https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/five-
| bombshells-th...
|
| 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20
| moralestapia wrote:
| That's a casino, you expect cash to be there. And they're
| being busted ... so there goes your super laundering
| operation.
|
| You will never buy property and pay for it in cash (in
| developed countries, obviously).
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| You'd _think so_ , but I actually know a _drug dealer_
| who did just that not so long ago.
|
| Cash deposits above $10,000 in Australia are mandatorily
| reported, that doesn't mean every cash deposit above
| $10,000 is investigated.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Wait, so your friend (or acquaintance?), bought an
| apartment in cash? Or does he regularly makes cash
| deposits below $10k?
|
| Please clarify because those two things are THREE orders
| of magnitude apart.
|
| Buying an apartment with a briefcase full of money is
| something you see only on Disney movies.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Purchase a property with AU$150,000 in cash, literally a
| briefcase full of cash.
|
| So, he'd have handed that money to the vendor.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Wow, amazing. I stand corrected then, but I don't think
| you could pull that off on this side of the world.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I think you drastically under estimate how much dodgy
| shit goes on all around us all the time.
|
| There is but a _thin veneer_ of righteousness barely
| covering a small fraction of the lands.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Small businesses regularly make $20-30k deposits in cash.
| That represents the weekly cash revenue of a successful
| McDonald's franchise. You can slip an extra $1-5k in
| there, weekly - If you do your accounting "right", it
| looks like you're moving a little more product than you
| actually are, and is virtually indistinguishable from
| real business. See Walter White buying a Car Wash in
| Breaking Bad. You need a bit of scale: 5 or 10 locations
| to make it really work, but it does work.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I know, but that's still far from making a $1M+-or-so
| operation with a bunch of cash.
|
| That's the whole point, you just can't drop that much
| gray money on something at once.
| rodelle wrote:
| I believe it's more like: here's 1.5 million dollars that
| you can use to explain to the IRS how you're paying for a
| new house. If you give me 2 million in illicit cash, I
| can use that elsewhere and the IRS doesn't care because I
| already have 100 million dollars in assets.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >IRS doesn't care because I already have 100 million
| dollars in assets
|
| Again, that won't happen, ever. The IRS is not going to
| just forget those 2 million, they don't care if it's
| "pocket change" for you or not.
|
| Also, you are implying that somebody with 100M+ in assets
| is going to compromise everything to launder 2 million
| from some other stranger ...
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| There is a place you can do this. Casinos.
|
| There's apparently been an incredible amount of money
| laundering going through casinos in Vancouver.
| moralestapia wrote:
| This is the exact question ("how?") I always ask when
| someone parrots "tax evasion" and the answers I get back
| never make any sense, at all.
|
| And it's always from a bunch of armchair "tax dodgers"
| that, judging from the fantasies they share, have never
| seen an IRS form in their lives.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Your assumption is it's only US tax evasion. It's also
| about getting money out of other countries and evading
| their taxes, creating values of wealth store. Much like
| the real estate industry in key markets of the US,
| foreign investors don't care about paying more if it
| means they can safely get their cash out of host
| countries.
| haggy wrote:
| > A high rating is not enough to guarantee a high auction price
| - although it helps. Another copy of Super Mario 64 in the same
| auction with a 9.6 A++ rating sold for a comparatively
| affordable $13,200
|
| This seems to reinforce some kind of laundering/tax evasion
| scenario. There is little logical reason for one cartridge to
| go for $13K and another to go for $1.5mm when both are
| certified excellent condition. It appears that the one going
| for far more is a product of timing. Someone needed to move a
| large chunk of money quickly and decided on the Mario
| cartridge.
| cinntaile wrote:
| If the normal buyers are only willing to pay $13k I don't see
| how it makes sense to pay $1.5 million to launder money.
| That's a big loss you'll have to take.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The seller is a co-conspirator? The loss is only the
| auction house fee in that case.
| cinntaile wrote:
| But if you use dirty money to buy a good, it doesn't
| magically turn into clean money. A possible scenario
| could be where the buyer has clean money and wants to pay
| the seller for services by bidding way too much for a
| rare game. It doesn't make too much sense though because
| now your transaction is under scrutiny by the entire
| world?
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Hiding in plain sight! The perfect plan!
| ipaddr wrote:
| That's hundreds of thousands of dollar to pay in fees.
| wgerard wrote:
| I read an interesting explanation on reddit somewhere that
| posited this is the result of a small group of devoted
| enthusiasts basically wash trading: They sell the games to each
| other back and forth for extremely high prices to make it seem
| like there's an insane amount of demand for them, in order to
| make that a self-fulling prophecy.
|
| Whether that's true or not I have no idea, but it's certainly
| plausible.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| They don't even necessarily have to be coordinated.
|
| If you're operating a business that profits from selling
| collector items, you benefit from headlines about high sale
| prices. Spending $1.5 million to juice the market and
| generate excitement could manufacture enough demand and trade
| volume through follow-on buying frenzies that you come out
| ahead in volume sales of cheaper items.
|
| Then you're still sitting on an asset "worth" $1.5m that you
| can use to play games with taxes (depreciation?) and also use
| as collateral to secure cheap loans.
| adventured wrote:
| These game prices are no more absurd than a Mickey Mantle
| card being worth $20-$30 million (1952 Topps Mantle #311 PSA
| 9 sold for $5 million not long ago; there are three superior
| PSA 10 copies which in theory should be worth a lot more, two
| of which are owned by a billionaire).
|
| Consider the global scale and love of video games, Mario,
| Zelda, etc. Versus the localized scale of Major League
| Baseball (even if it's in the largest economy) and
| particularly Mickey Mantle.
|
| So why not Mario if Mantle? It makes just as much sense
| (however much sense that is, granted).
|
| Check out what new prospects go for in the baseball card
| world. A Wander Franco card went for $200,000. This is a 20
| year old that has barely played any professional baseball,
| recently got called up with the Tampa Rays, and hasn't hit
| well so far (and may just end up as a flop, as these guys
| sometimes do).
|
| So Wander Franco cards make sense, and Mario doesn't?
| Obviously all of it seems crazy. And yet there it is.
|
| You know what else is really crazy? Tesla's valuation.
| Shopify's valuation. Snowflake's valuation. DocuSign's
| valuation. And so on.
|
| Yeah, I know, those are _real_ companies that have products
| and services. Ok. I posit that many of those valuations are
| less sustainable than a 1952 Mickey Mantle card at $5m. And
| we 're not talking a million dollars, we're talking trillions
| of dollars of laughably over-inflated valuations in the stock
| market. Mario at $1.5m is not crazier than Tesla at $600-$800
| billion.
|
| It's all part of the same asset speculation mania.
|
| Millions of people out there are paying obscene prices for
| stocks and it won't end well. And with stocks it's not just
| some rich person with a toy hobby (because who really cares
| what that person burns their money on), it's retirement
| funds, pensions. All loaded up on Coca Cola at 33 times
| earnings, for a company that hasn't seen any growth in five
| years, has mediocre prospects for growth, and deserves half
| their present valuation at best (now repeat that scenario for
| most of the garbage-valuation blue chips, like McDonald's or
| Starbucks; check out the valuation on WD-40 (WDFC), an old
| slow-growth degreaser/lubricant spray company sporting a
| 40-45 PE; the entire market is like that now, out of its
| collective mind).
|
| These are the consequences of perpetually low interest rates,
| it has bred a rabid culture of speculation and desperation
| for any yield or return.
| wgerard wrote:
| I think the reason for the speculation it's wash trading is
| that unlike the 1952 Mickey Mantle card, there are
| presumably a lot more Mario 64 cartridges in circulation
| and thus the auction price seems out of line for the supply
| available.
|
| Doing a cursory google search, I can see most used
| cartridges going for ~$25-40. Is an unopened cartridge
| worth many more orders of magnitude? Possibly, but it at
| least raises a lot of eyebrows that there's something else
| at play.
|
| EDIT: An analogous collectible is probably more something
| like a black lotus card, which as far as I can tell has
| "only" procured 500K at auction for a flawless one, and as
| far as I can tell inferior versions cost an order of
| magnitude less (10K or so) but nothing near to the spread
| here.
| adventured wrote:
| > I can see most used cartridges going for ~$25-40. Is an
| unopened cartridge worth many more orders of magnitude?
| Possibly, but it at least raises a lot of eyebrows that
| there's something else at play.
|
| Yes, that's exactly how it works. The unopened package in
| near perfect condition is considered extraordinarily
| scarce.
|
| It's the scarcity factor via grading that is being
| applied. That's obviously a graded Mario 64 package, not
| just a stray cartridge (of which there are zillions of
| copies as you note).
|
| The supply, in the collectible world, is thus considered
| to be exceptionally low. You're talking about a sealed
| box, top notch grade. There are only a small number of
| those still in existence.
|
| Here is the image of the graded Mario game:
|
| https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/12EF3/product
| ion...
|
| It's a 9.8, which is a very high grade for a vintage
| video game box. As far as the collectors are concerned,
| that's a very scarce item. The value is in the condition
| of the box and that it's sealed. Without that, you could
| just buy the item on eBay for ~$30-$50.
|
| You see the exact same outcome in the comics world, for
| graded comics. And it's identical to the quality +
| grading = scarcity aspect in baseball / basketball /
| pokemon cards.
|
| 1969 is Mickey Mantle's last year for Topps baseball
| cards. There are a lot of copies of that card in
| existence, relatively speaking. You can buy it ungraded
| for $100-$1,000 depending on the condition you want. If
| you want a PSA 10 of that card (there are only two)? Be
| ready to pay $500,000+. That's the same exact scarcity by
| grading mechanism in action as with the 9.8 graded Mario
| cartridge, it's because there are not very many of them
| in that condition.
| nly wrote:
| Would there be anyway to buy a low grade cartridge and
| repackage it in to look like a high grade $1.5M one?
|
| Asking for a friend.
| wgerard wrote:
| Interesting! TIL.
| jfkylymyn6 wrote:
| There is no fundamental difference between a very rare old
| vase, car or game.
|
| Someone living in 1950 would also think is crazy to pay 1
| million for a 1940 car.
|
| Someone living in ancient China would also think it's crazy to
| pay a lot of money for a cooking pot.
|
| People are realizing this, and are basically front-running the
| market, so the price of future priceless artifacts are rising
| much sooner.
| Swizec wrote:
| It is very convenient, for many reasons, if you can call a
| $1.5m transfer "a sale". If you can support said price with an
| auction so the price is supported by a fair market, even
| better.
|
| Legally transferring that much money to another person (and
| minimizing taxes) is difficult. Art and collectible sales are a
| convenient escape hatch.
| theklub wrote:
| Who purchased it? I believe it's an advertisement for grading
| services/a way to grow the industry.
| louhike wrote:
| Most collectors of old games do not understand why it was sold
| that much. Super Mario 64 in mint condition and wrapped is
| rare, but clearly not often to justify this price.
|
| One thing I've noticed though if that people buying a auctions
| do not always seem aware of the actual prices on the market. I
| attended an auction recently and bought nothing, as all people
| in the community I know. Everything was sold for far too mych.
| We were laughing about it, wondering why people were buying
| those games at those prices, as we know we could easily get
| them for far less.
|
| I'd be really interested to know more about the dynamics making
| people spending far too much money like that (misinformation?
| excitation during the auction?).
| chrisgd wrote:
| Why was the 96 rated one worth 100x less?
| Keyframe wrote:
| Money laundering, no other explanation.
| Crash0v3rid3 wrote:
| There certainly seems to be something nefarious happening here
| but how are they laundering money this way?
| i_call_solo wrote:
| If I need to transfer $1M to you because a some type of
| "favor", you can buy a collectible like this for a reasonable
| price, then get it appraised for a ridiculous amount like
| this, and then I can buy it off you for that crazy amount.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not sold it being money laundering. Getting a story
| by the BBC is the absolute last thing you would want. You
| also want to avoid expensive items with paper trails. High-
| volume cash businesses is where it's at.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Criminals can be very creative, but I struggle to understand
| this too. Fine, you sell a ridiculously overpriced thing,
| that amounts to disguising a money transfer as a sale, but
| how can you launder dirty money unless you pay in cash? Can
| auctions take a bag of cash as payment without repercussions?
|
| OTOH, there might be something I'm not seeing here. In my
| country, private doctors at high-end hospitals accept cash as
| payment (even for major surgeries), which for common mortals
| would be a fiscal hell to convert into bank money, but they
| seem to be fine with it. I've noticed that most high-end
| hospitals also have a non-profit charity attached, and that
| many doctors have several big and ugly paintings in their
| offices.
| jfoutz wrote:
| I don't think this is what's happening, but I think this is
| the model.
|
| I have a super Mario cartridge. I also have a lot of drugs
| (or whatever) that I'd like to sell, but I don't have a
| distribution network, so I have to sell at a wholesale price.
| I put up the proxy object for auction. You bid far more than
| we think anyone would pay for the proxy object, and you win.
| We've made separate arrangements for the drugs (or whatever)
| so you already have them, or will get them soon.
|
| Now I have a pocket full of legitimate cash. I think there's
| some biases stuck in American minds about Al Capone. He was a
| bad guy that did lots of illegal things. But his downfall was
| tax evasion. This approach gives me a reasonable explanation
| for all that money, and I can pay taxes on it, so I _appear_
| to be an upstanding member of society.
| casefields wrote:
| The one problem with this theory is why not launder $1.5
| million through a boring painting by a C-list painter,
| rather than a headline grabbing newsworthy object? It seems
| like unnecessary risk that'll attract IRS attention.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It feels more like a marketing move.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| Isn't there, like hundreds of these floating around on eBay? I
| haven't searched eBay for them, but I would like to think that
| common and well circulated games are not that special or rare. It
| reminds me of the Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons saying: 'You
| opened it...it's no longer a collectible'
| markus_zhang wrote:
| When more of these kinds of news hit the public forums like HN,
| maybe it's time to sell...but just my humble opinion and I don't
| know how to quantify these things.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This was on Pawn Stars in 2019, so...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KS9kRUCEVA
| libertine wrote:
| There's too much "odd" money going around these days, to the
| point that's bursting through the pipes.
| sodafountan wrote:
| It's not odd, we're coming off of a global pandemic where
| people were commuting less, saving more (no daycare, not eating
| out), and collecting stimulus checks. Meanwhile, the businesses
| that should have failed because of the drop in consumer
| spending were kept alive with PPP loans.
|
| At the same time, companies like Tesla and Micro-strategy are
| pouring billions into a new finite asset class.
|
| There's simply more cash flowing into the system, it's just run
| of the mill inflation.
| joosters wrote:
| What I find really disheartening is that these games are
| attracting such huge valuations simply because of the condition
| of their boxes! They aren't rare editions, or exclusive, pre-
| release code. The money has nothing to do with the game itself.
|
| These bidders aren't game collectors, they are cardboard box
| collectors, nothing more.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Boxes play into it, but a rare, desirable edition with a bad
| box will probably be worth more than a common edition with a
| good box. The box is just one more dimension to grade the games
| on because collectors are always looking for something more
| pristine, and cartridges will generally be in good shape.
|
| I still think it's silly--I just get the "box" motivation.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Are those true "game collectors" playing the games they
| purchase? If not, then what's the difference?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Not to Scotsman the whole thing, but I would say that yes, in
| my experience game collectors play their games. Maybe not
| _all_ of them if their desire is to own a complete set or
| something, but generally speaking.
| joosters wrote:
| It's a fair point, the whole concept of buying something in a
| sealed container, and never opening it because that would
| ruin the value, is a bit bonkers. Mind you, the same could be
| said of wine collectors - just how much 'fine wine' gets
| bought at auctions for it never to be opened? At least with
| the wine collectors, they don't think a bottle is worth 10x
| the going price simply because the label on it is slightly
| cleaner than another.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This is somewhat depressing because of how unusable it is. With
| baseball cards, you all you could ever do was look at them, so
| you lose nothing when they're encapsulated. With videogames, it's
| sealed (at least this one), and unplayable. You're not even sure
| if the cartridge works.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's not like it's a rare game. You could buy a loose cart for
| $10 and play that. I can guarantee you that whoever bought this
| has one already to play.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| A short Twitter thread from Pat Contri on this is something I
| found provides helpful balance:
| https://twitter.com/PatTheNESpunk/status/1414300310659473408
|
| "Wow, those Charizard cards from your childhood are now worth
| lots of $" has been a common, popular headline across media in
| the last year, and now it looks like old video games are next.
| And as Pat says, I think there's reason to suspect that, in this
| instance, this is artificial pricing.
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