Over the past few weeks, there have been many reports of “record breaking” auctions for highly graded, sealed copies of classic retro games such as the original Legend Of Zelda and Super Mario 64, the latter going for around $1.56 million.

The recency and close proximity of these record breaking auctions soon raised a few eyebrows, and has led to allegations that videogame grading and auction houses have been attempting to sneakily manipulate the market in the interest of profit. According to lawyer, author and Proof journalist Seth Abramson, the power brokers in the game auction scene are deliberately hiding data about the availability of graded games to artificially inflate their value and flip them for profits.

You can read some excerpts of Abramson’s Twitter thread about the topic below, or read the full details here.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1429930857402454017

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1429936971170844674

These accusations have mostly been levelled at popular auction house Heritage Auctions as well as grading house Wata Games, both of whom were heavily involved in the recent record-breaking game auctions. Youtube channel Karl Jobst published a video detailing the possible “fraud and deception” that could be at play, which you can find below.

Heritage Auctions has since responded to the claims, and “strongly refutes” the allegations of “market manipulation” and “similarly illegal or unethical practices”, even going as far as to invite Jobst to meet with their leadership at the company headquarters. That said, Jobst himself seemed less than impressed with their response, as seen in the tweet below:

https://twitter.com/karljobstgaming/status/1430201061248180225

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.