Collecting nowadays has also become a form of investment.
It is necessary to come to terms with this truth, a concept with many facets that sees Grading as one of the resources of the future, but already widespread in our present. To introduce such a complex topic, it is best to start with the basics so as to fully understand what we are talking about: simply put, grading means taking a product, for example a collectible item such as a rare Pokemon card, sending it to a specialized company that determines its value and its current condition in terms of physical integrity.
Once this verification process has been completed, the item will be packaged in a case, officially guaranteeing the preservation status previously verified.
As of today, the main players in the sector are mostly American: Wata, for those who spend time online, currently represents one of the major names in international grading. The next question that arises, since we have been gamers all our lives and the topic is close to home for us, is therefore inevitable: how does the grading process work when it comes to video games?
It’s simple enough: the collector ships (almost always overseas) the game he wants “graded” to a company that offers the service, which, once it has received the item and based on internal coding procedures, tells the customer whether the product in question can be graded or not. If the item passes the checks, it is then literally placed under a display case, assigned a grade based on its state of preservation, and finally sent back, graded, to its rightful owner.
The idea behind grading, therefore, is to protect the value of the product and ensure its originality; there is no doubt about that, and thanks to modern technologies it can be done practically without touching, see the entry “opening the package,” the title in question, which as we know amounts to a full-blown sacrilege. But it is not the only element, namely the integrity of the packaging, that is evaluated: the presence or absence of the manual and its condition is a determining factor, as is that of the cartridge inside. Essential parameters that contribute to the final assessment, as you will have understood.
A to be fair, grading is applied not only to new titles but also to open games, as long as they are complete in all their parts (whether cartridge or disc, maps, manuals, extra material if it is a limited edition). Grading is very widespread in the States and has been for over twenty years, and in Japan, the birthplace of video games par excellence, it became common practice at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when the concept of preservation began to become synonymous with increasing value over time. The fields in which the first steps were taken were comics and numismatics, but soon there was a significant spread into other sectors, especially sports.
Da about a decade, it has also been gaining ground here in Europe, with the advent of million-dollar auctions that have gone down in history for Pokemon cards, and not only those, sold at very high prices: to this day, the first grading market in the world, and the one that is now the standard in grading terms, is precisely the one linked to the cute little monsters born on GameBoy.
Molti collectors and clients, recently, have begun to ask for grading procedures in specialist stores. With the constant threat of counterfeiting, fakes and reprints of titles cleverly passed off as new, grading appears to be one of the possible official responses to infuse greater value into original games in perfect condition.
And above all, contribute significantly to the preservation of video game historical memory, in an era where physical media is slowly giving way to digital.
