Live-streamed $375k deal for Pokémon cards ended in disaster | Hacker News Reader

Live-streamed $375k deal for Pokémon cards ended in disaster

theguardian.com

I did horribly on a test in high school once and went through my closet throwing out most of my favorite toys, in particular things from Nintendo:

All my pokemon cards (I had a few pages of some pretty rare ones)

My GBA (the thing I learned programming on)

About two trash bags full of other various things including SNES games

Often I regret throwing out the Pokemon cards, lots of people I met in college loved the game and I feel like that could have scored me a bit of reputation (but maybe that's a childish thought.) Then again, maybe if I didn't have that kind of attitude I wouldn't have made it to college at all.

> I did horribly on a test in high school once and went through my closet throwing out most of my favorite toys, in particular things from Nintendo

But.. why? Was it an act of self-flagellation? Rage? An attempt to clear out distractions?

I think this is a fairly common reaction (maybe overreaction) when people first notice an addiction, or that something toxic is in their routine. It's like an attempt to regain control, I think.

How did you learn to program on your GBA?

I used to hack around with GBA programming too, but I started much earlier on an Apple ][.

My first serious attempts at assembler programming were on the TI-85 graphing calculator which had a Z80 processor (same as the original gameboy). Later, I bought a programmable GBA cartridge and a tool that could write to it. There were a Z80 emulators on the GBA to play the original gameboy games, and there were packagers available to make your Z80 programs, so I ported over my "columns" clone I made for zshell on the TI-85.

> When the Guardian reached [the buyer] shortly after the broadcast ended, he said he was still “in shock”. But he noted that he still had his money. “We took extreme precautions,” he said. “I feel worse for the seller. This is going to shake up the Pokémon collector world.”

Note they didn't actually lose the $

They seem to imply that the seller was actually honest and thought it was genuine, so I guess somebody did get shafted in the process (although probably by a much smaller amount).

It's quite a clever hustle in a way: since the wrapped box is worth so much more than an opened one it's an interesting paradox: if you don't open the box, you don't know for sure that it's genuine but if you do open it then it loses most of its value. Therefore if you manage to make a convincing fake using a clean box and some shrink wrap-fu it will probably be hard to ascertain the authenticity of the product without damaging it.

It's like Schrodinger's Pikachu.

Indeed, meaning any buyer who wants to purchase it as a speculative investment "sealed box" and not to actually open it would get fucked. It might actually change hands several times before being opened in a rising market like this one and the seller may have either been the source of the scam (and played the oblivious fool when it was opened in front of him) or was scammed himself.

I've defiantly seen a side by side comparison of a very good fake box and a verified real one. On their own, the fakes look VERY good.

It's likely the scam came further upstream. But, at those dollars, I'd personally be reaching out to the community to help verify the validity.

I’ve been clearing out my closet selling childhood items.

One thing to note. I found some of my original series GPK cards in mint or near mint condition. I don’t have 1a (Nasty Nick), but a graded mint 1A sold on eBay for $12,900 with 30+ bids. Others from series 1 go from a few hundred per card to several thousand.

Going with this article, yes there seems to be a nostalgia bump on eBay for things from 70s - 2000s. Hot Wheels, GPK, YugiOh, Pokémon, all seem to have some value recently.

I feel like it’s just that those of us who had our formative years in the 1980-2000 range are finally old enough and have enough disposable income to collect the things we could never afford back then and/or the things we loved and wish we hadn’t gotten rid of.

Across all my hobbies, from cars to retro tech to various small toy/comic/whatever collections, everything from that generation is sky rocketing in prices now.

Makes me wonder if it's worth buying up things like that now (with the expendable income) and leave it in storage / attic for twenty odd years. I don't know, I don't really see something super popular doing the rounds right now, and I doubt there would be interest in Fortnite cards or merchandise in 20-30 years.

But I could be very wrong.

Unless they franchise it I sort of see your thinking. Games like that are commoditized more it these days it seems.

Games like Pokemon that were popular in the 90s might have vanished from popular thought had they not created a franchise out of it... it's as popular as ever if I'm seeing things straight.

For every story about Pokemon cards there's 20 stories about Beanie Babies collecting dust in the attic...

Exactly, it's a high risk & potentially high reward long term investment.

That's not investment, it's a gamble/speculation.

Sometimes it's worth picking up limited edition or collectible items. For example, I bought the Tesla S3XY short-shorts immediately when I saw Elon Musk tweeting about them because I expect them to quickly grow in value over the next 20 years, especially if he continues being successful.

Wouldnt it be easy to bootleg?

Sure, but that holds true for lots of other collectibles too. For example, the Pokemon cards currently being discussed.

People who want to make money on nostalgia would do well to only buy things that were a part of the rich kids lives.

2005 Camry prices are going to be insane in 2030. 2005 Cavalier prices are going to be about what they are now.

In 2020 every yuppie wants to drive a "classic" Toyota or Volvo like the 90s one they crashed when they were 16 and prices reflect that. Nobody is driving up the prices on Jeep Grand Cherokees or Dodge Caravans from the same time. The people who grew up being carted around in the latter in the early 2010s and now are in their mid 20s with real jobs and disposable money are much less likely to have nostalgia for those times.

Oh damn. You saying 90's-era Grand Cherokees are cheap? My grandmother had one that my sister totalled and I always wanted one just like it...

A few years ago, I sold my 1996 V8 ZJ with a rebuilt engine for $300 as a favor to a friend of mine for his dad. That was maybe 33-50% of the fair market value, but yeah, they're super-cheap.

If you want reliable, the L6 4.0 engine is way more reliable than the B8 5.2/5.9 engine from that era.

We just bought a 2018 Corolla (first car in over 10 years that wasn't the city bus...) but I am going to keep that in mind because at some point we'll need a second, and something like that is just perfect for moving some gear around.

So you're saying the 1990 shitbox Passat I drove for a while is worth more than when I drove it? Damn. Though, to be honest I miss that car...

Might be time to pay my parents' basement a visit...

Got into writing Gameboy emulation recently and went looking to buy one to compare output. there's definitely a u-shaped curve in prices for old consoles with the bottom currently at the ps2/xbox/wii. Its not a entirely quantity related thing, the ps1 and game boy color had plenty of owners but are climbing up the "retro" side of the price curve. But on the other hand the GameCube is a bit more pricy locally, largely because no one owned it at the time, but the Wii/Switch has brought levels of Nintendo interest that wasn't here for non-handhelds in the 90s/early 00s.

> This article was amended on 28 October 2020 to correct the spelling of Bulbasaur.

"Bubblesaur"?

What do you expect from a transaction handled by a "blockchain entrepreneur"

A friend of mine got into Star Trek cards in the 90s, at the height of the trading card games craze. He got two complete Next Gen sets and was considering selling one of them for a few thousand pounds (UK) to fund a trip to Gen Con. I advised him to go for it, but he felt if he kept them they would become even more valuable. A year or two later the trading card games bubble burst, taking down several companies with it. We lost touch, but I sometimes wonder if those sets are worth anything these days.

I used to love this game and Star Trek in general. A kid stole my Data card while at the pool in the 90’s.

The Decipher Star Wars game still goes for crazy money on eBay.

You'd think a blockchain entrepreneur would start a site called Pokemon Online eXchange, or POX, to do this.

> The three sellers were led by Jake Greenbaum, a “blockchain entrepreneur” who uses the Twitter handle JBTheCryptoKing and was billed as Logan Paul’s “personal Pokémon consultant”.

https://twitter.com/JBTheCryptoKing/status/11076091803645665...

Oh wow. They didn't even check his tweets to see if he was real

Why didn't the sellers in this deal do why the buyer did and examine the cards before handing over the payment? That seems to be an extreme failure of due diligence. Can you imagine buying a house without looking inside first? They must have a lot less respect for that kind of money than most of us do.

The box was (supposedly) sealed and a sealed box is worth more than an opened box. Opening the box to check its contents might significantly decrease the box's value.

Opening collectors' items would be more akin to a museum trying to run a pristine old engine to test if it's genuine instead of letting it sit for display. It's the untouched nature of the objects that's making these little bits of cardboard worth more than half a dollar.

I actually just sold my house to a buyer that can't travel due to covid lockdowns but they are desperate to move to the countryside.

Sight unseen house sales are becoming popular at the moment. Big city budgets can buy very nice houses where I live, the buyer just paid for a licensed house inspector to compile a report for them to make sure the place isn't about to collapse.

So their agent looked inside, and their agent was a professional inspector.

Yeah... if I had to pick between me or a professional inspector looking at a house before I buy it, I'm picking the pro every single time.

No, I've never heard of a buyer having an agent.

what disaster? no money changed hands. TFA doesn't document what the seller paid for the cards, if anything at all. because of that lack of information, this reads like an advertorial.

> The three sellers were led by Jake Greenbaum, a “blockchain entrepreneur” who uses the Twitter handle JBTheCryptoKing and was billed as Logan Paul’s “personal Pokémon consultant”

I can't help but cite this sentence from the article that seems to have been generated by a very poor Markov chain:

>The three sellers were led by Jake Greenbaum, a “blockchain entrepreneur” who uses the Twitter handle JBTheCryptoKing and was billed as Logan Paul’s “personal Pokémon consultant”.

We still don't have proper hoverboards but I guess we got what we deserved.

Haha, right, I felt the same in way.

At least there are still quotes around “personal Pokemon consultant”.

Being "in the industry", I've seen my fair share of very good fake boxes and packs. It's possible that I've seen this very same box, at least photos of it. A side-by-side comparison of a real box does draw attention to the flaws of the fake.

But, notwithstanding, a "personal Pokémon consultant" should recognize or at least have a network of people to help verify a fake box.

Pokemon: Cardboard cards with plastic around them.

In what world are these not easily counterfeited by a factory that makes cards.

The master copies exist somewhere - seems like an easy way for Mr Easymoney in a less-regulated country to print these up and make bank.

Likely easier than forging a Mona Lisa or something like that but certainly not an easy feat. Some Magic cards have been in the 5 figures for a decade at least, the opportunity has always been there.

I'm not sure about pokemon but for magic:the gathering, the oldest and most valuable cards have a fair amount of quirks which are hard to replicate, due to the different printing techniques (as well as some effects just due to the age). There's still fakes but they mostly scam unaware buyers (and usually for lower value cards). People who just want to play the game will often buy professionally made 'proxies' which are just as functional as the cards but don't have collector value (and aren't legal in events sanctioned by the designers, since it amounts to copyright/trademark violation).

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