Ok. Watched the video. There is enough circumstantial evidence and overlap of ownership, control, and interests to make me avoid Heritage Auctions, Wata gaming, and Go Collect. They may not have engaged until the same fraudulent price manipulation when it comes to comics, but from my experience, fraudsters continue defrauding people. All it takes is opportunity and means and each of these players has those at their fingertips. Motive is easy=money.
There is even hearsay evidence in the video from the son of a former employee of Heritage Auctions saying they are manipulating graded silver age comic prices.
And the alleged perpetrator of the comic book price manipulation is the Co-Chairman and co-owner of Heritage Auctions, Jim Halperin. Could it help to explain, in part, the huge jumps in comic book prices in the last few years?
I think there is more of an established market, community of collectors, sphere of content producers and “researchers.”
There is definitely some price manipulation in the market, but the vast majority of these astronomical increases in comic books are happening on eBay. This video is mainly aimed at exposing the Heritage Video Game market of sales as a sham. He even goes about showing how these games are not reselling on eBay successfully.
So if all of the record sales of countless comics from all the different publishers, all the different variants, characters, and eras were part of a massive price manipulation bubble, it would have to be a really far-reaching conspiracy. One so big that it defies reason that we haven’t seen leaks from those involved. Simply because it would have to involve so many people.
The difference, in this scenario, between comics and video games would be that the comics market has been established. There is a general consensus how much of any given book is available, and what its value is within the community. The video game market was ripe for early entry manipulation. M2c.
But, yes, it is still not good at having Halperin up bid his own books, in his own auctions.
There’s nothing preventing them from amending the complaint to add defendants. It will be interesting to see what information arises during discovery. Maybe some links between unnamed defendants come out at that point.
They are probably playing it conservative and taking the process step-by-step.
It’s just interesting because Halperin is named in the complaint.
You ever notice on Pawn Stars they never buy any retro video games that come into the shop. They always say something to the tune of while graded video games are hot it’s too much risk to buy them for large sums and find a buyer who will actually give you a profit. But that WATA owner is on almost every episode of Pawn Stars with some new guy trying to sell his freshly WATA graded video game for whatever crazy price the WATA owner estimates. It’s almost like it’s a WATA commercial that Pawn Stars agrees to put up with fully knowing they will never buy these graded retro video games.
Pawn stars is fake. Same with Comic Book Men and others. My cousin was approached at a convention to sell some retro toys to them. They agree to a price before they go on and they are appraised in advance. From there they come on the show and act like it’s totally new information. My cousin declined as the offer they made him was a complete lowball offer. He sells action figures for a living, owns a toy store, and sells at conventions. He was approached for both Pawn Stars and for Comic Book Men (back in the day) and ended up declining both.
Yeah, the stars of Pawn Stars don’t even run the shop daily anymore. They only show up to do the show bits that are yes, screened well in advance. All the shoppers are staged during the show as the shop is closed when they’re shooting.
You have to be approved ahead of time to get on the show with your item.
