Retro game prices have shot up to crazy levels in the last few years. As prices continued to go up far beyond what most individuals could afford, sites quickly picked up on the astronomical rises by offering fractional ownership of retro games. Sites like Otis and Rally.

In 2022, I shared a video from Karl Jobst that reported how the retro game market was actively manipulated by WATA rating agency and Heritage auctions. He showed how they were colluding to create those astronomical retro game values. Many news agencies picked up on his investigation, and a bit of a scandal broke out.

Here we are in late 2023, and it appears the crash has arrived. Karl has watched the prices plummet – and in a great many cases – by 90%.

The real question is if that money was ever real at all. In his original video, he indicated the astronomical sale prices likely didn’t actually involve those huge sums of money actually changing hands because WATA and Heritage were basically selling the games to themselves and the money and games never really changed hands.

One should question if the money ever even existed. So, we might take delight that a game that was falsely sold for $50,000 in a manipulated auction just sold for $5,000, but that’s still a good bit of dosh for games they likely bought off ebay for $500 or less years earlier.