Deniz Kahn is the founder of Wata Games. Wata Games launched in 2018 as primarily a video game grading and certification company, when video games were ânot even on the map.â
A longtime collector since the age of 12, Deniz sat for an Instagram Live conversation to share his expertise and discuss the legendary Nintendo World Championships cartridge.
Why is Nintendo World Championships considered one of the holy grails of video game collecting?Â
Historically, ever since Iâve been collectingâwhich is 15 years plus nowâthe NWC cartridges have always been a Holy Grail. They are a representation of a major, major competition event. Pepsi and Nabisco were involved as sponsors. They rented out a stadium for this competition. They made such a limited quantity of the cartridges, and they really were never supposed to get into the publicâs hands. They were designed specifically for the competition. So you have that rarity aspect, and this awesome history behind it.
We donât know exactly how many cartridges are out there. The highest number that was ever found was 343. These have been documented over time. Weâve found about 80, maybe up to 90. Itâs assumed that the most thatâll ever be found is 100 or so, and theyâve been found everywhereâfrom garage sales, to owners who actually got them.
A little bit about how they got out in circulation: Nintendo Power held a Nintendo World Championship contest, where they gave out the gold cartridges. Those are a separate beast on their ownâthey only made 26 of them. When they started getting distributed, the parents of the children who were on the championship tour were like, âWhy are people getting these trophies that my kid deserves, since theyâve been touring?â So the event organizers agreed that the finalists got to keep a cartridge as a trophy. But, keep in mind, they were used in the competition. These were not kept pristineâthey were played. Because of that, itâs an anomaly to find one in high grade, let alone one in 8.5
Just a brief history on the cartridge: Itâs a six minute and 21 second timer. You have to get 100 points on Super Mario Bros, then you gotta do the first level of Rad Racer, and then you get to Tetrisâwhere you rack up all your points. There was a movie called The Wizard, and itâs loosely based on the Nintendo World Championship. So, from a marketing perspective, this was a massive undertaking that Nintendo did, and this game is a good representation of that history. Thatâs why collectors have coveted it for so long.â
How many of these cartridges do you think youâve seen?â
I think we have graded roughly around 30 in maybe our entire lifespan. That might seem like a lot or a little depending on where youâre coming from. You look at something like Action Comics #1, and theyâve graded roughly around 100 of those, and thatâs the most valuable comic book thatâs out there.
Not only that, theyâre all numbered, so every NWC cartridge is unique. It allows you to track the provenance, and it allows you to have something that isnât just a mass produced game, where condition is the only thing that differentiates it. â
Could you walk us through how you might grade an NWC cartridge similar to ours? What particular features differ from other games?â
When we grade an item, especially with cartridges, weâre actually really harsh in our grading scale. People will send in what they think is a mint cartridge because the label looks so glossy, and theyâll get in the sevens. Weâre looking at it under certain lights.
âWhenever weâre grading something, we grade it based on what the item is. So, we donât grade on an absolute scale. We will treat, for example, unlicensed NES games differently from licensed games, because the boxes are much poorer quality and they get damaged easier. Itâs the same exact thing with an NWC.
âNWCâs are probably the most unique item that we grade, because the labels are handmade. They were glued with a different kind of glue than the mass production stuff that a lot of cartridges have. Almost all of them have something called glue mottling. The glue mottling, to someone who might not know what theyâre looking at, can look like damage. Itâs this speckling where the glue is sort of eating through the label. You can have a dead mint cartridge, and itâs still going to have glue mottling no matter whatâso we donât actually consider that damage.
âThereâs also a lot of NWC cartridges that will have label lifting, because the glue over time rots and causes the label to lift.
âBut, the number one thing that we see with most NWC cartridges is a significant amount of wearâwear along the ridges of the cartridge where itâs been put into a system multiple times, and itâs been used. When you have wear like that, youâre automatically out of the nines, the eights. Youâre pretty much into the sevens and below. Weâve graded NWCâs all the way down to a 4.0. We have a cartridge still at Wata where someone put it in a safe, and the safe had a fire retardant that ate all the plastic. It was dipped in acid.
âAn 8.5 is pretty much an unused cartridge. Weâve had CIB (âComplete In Boxâ) games that we can tell were factory fresh. No one played it. Maybe they opened the box once, and even cartridges that come out of those get 9.2 sometimes, so, just because you open a factory sealed game, that doesnât mean itâs gonna be a 9.8, and so 8.5 is unheard of.
âIt really is unheard of. I mean, I personally remember looking at this and being like, âThis is unused! How did this happen?â A little thing to add to the history of how these got out thereâsometimes crew members who worked on the tour⦠one might have âfallen off the truck.â I would imagine this was something like that kind of scenario, where it wasnât used in the competition, someone got it, put it away, and it ended up at Wata 20 years later.â
There is an 8.0 NWC right now at Heritage Auctions that is ending tomorrow. Could you explain the significance of the jump between between an 8.0 and an 8.5 like ours? â
âYeah, itâs much more significant for a couple of reasons. One, because weâre talking about something where there are so few of them. Population skew is going to be a big difference from one point to the next.
âThe other thing is that youâre not going to get 9.2, 9.4, 9.6, 9.8 of these cartridges. You have to think: where is this going to max out? Are NWCs really going to max out at 9.0? And if so, does an 8.5 make it pretty much the nicest that you can get? Then the jumps become a lot bigger. Theyâre not as fine as a Mario game that weâve graded 200 of, where 9.8 is the focus because thatâs attainable. Itâs not attainable on an NWC cartridge.â
Are there any crazy stories or anything attached to this game that youâve heard of within the collector community?â
âItâs mostly the fact that theyâve been found at garage sales, specifically with the gold cartridges. This is kind of a famous storyâit was the first gold cartridge that we graded, and the owner bought it at a flea market. It might have detracted a little bit, but he still left it for gradingâthereâs one of those little cheap dot stickers that has a two on it. He had taken it to the guy and asked, âIs this the price?â and the guy said, âIâm not taking effinâ anything less than that,â so he took out $2 and gave it to him!
âThereâs a lot of cool stories like that. This guy Pat brought some to Pawn Stars many many years ago, and they offered him what would be a laughable amount today for both of them, but at the time was pretty close to market, so good for him that he turned that down.
âAnother one that comes to mind: someone was contacting all the finalists with a gold cartridge and one of them said, âOh, no, mine got burned in a house fire and I lost it,â so some of these are just gone forever. Those are some interesting, often sad, stories attached to the game.â
It really is amazing to see how the culture gets to assign the value of something and play a role in the stuff that we care about.â
âThatâs exactly right. And itâs not a formula either. At the end of the day with collectibles, so much of it is just emotion. Youâre going to see all sorts of anomalies that might not make sense. I think of it more like a Venn diagram. The NWC is definitely not going to be as culturally significant as Mario. But itâs now moving towards that little section of the diagram, and that video game history partâcollectors always revered it. A lot of the items selling for tons of money today are not the stuff that collectors 10 years ago cared about or even gave any credence to.
âItâs hard for a lot of us, myself included, to look at these auctions and say, five years ago, I could have bought that for $500 and itâs going for $50,000 now. But the market speaks. As video games collecting becomes more mainstream and as more people are getting into it, whether itâs from ancillary hobbies, or just starting fresh, thatâs going to make a difference.
âBut going back to the NWCâNWC, we always cared about. I remember the first article I ever looked at when I started collecting back in 2006 or 2007. It was a Racket Boy article that had the rarest games, and the NWC was the number one. That was the Grail and we always talked about it. It was always the Grail. Itâs cool to see something that was historically considered by collectors to be something super valuable and like a trophy is still carrying that through this new phase of growth, where other factors are driving value.â
Weâve seen this a lot in other categories: a lot of the grails are reaching levels where the average person has no real hope of ever attaining them. Unfortunately a lot of the time, we see the people that care the most have the smallest seat at the table, if any. Thereâs a lot of money out there thatâs investing in this, and itâs not necessarily always collectors. Everyoneâs buying it, including pure investors. So, to be able to maintain a foot in the door for the nerds out there that really care about this stuff, itâs a happy medium for the time being. The fractional concept is still new to a lot of people, but hopefully collectors will start to see and understand it as a new concept that is going to open doors that maybe werenât even opened before.â
âNot only that, but from the investment standpoint, like you said, thereâs so much speculation and investment in stocks for something invisible, intangible, right? A lot of people, hardcore collectors, donât like when youâre mixing investing and collecting and buying and selling, but at the end of the day, I think itâs a lot cooler to invest in something that is physical, and that resonates with you and makes you feel good, rather than some account somewhere that doesnât mean anything other than the bottom line, the dollars. The fact that you guys have the gallery, even if itâs closed right now, and youâre able to go and see and touch and feel these things, makes it that much more personalâas personal as you can get for an investment essentially. â
Are there any interesting trends youâre seeing in the collectible video game market as a whole?â
âFOMO, for sure. And then what I talked aboutâthe cultural part. I just saw a Modern Warfare for Xbox 360 on eBay, graded, sold for four grand or something. It was the package version, it wasnât even the original standalone release version. I see things like that, and some of the other spikes and I know that thereâs going to be some corrections in the market in the long run. But at the end of the day, people are being driven by emotion, like I said, and trying to see what the next big thing is. They saw the spikes in Marios.
âThereâs still the biggest barriers I talked about: the reliable certification standards, transparency in the market. The third piece is education. We put out a Black Box article that changed the way people looked at and collected variants and Black Box overnight, because it was comprehensive information, it was resources.
âThatâs the number one missing piece right now in the market for people coming in. There arenât enough resources for them to educate themselves. So the trend that I see is that people are acting with emotion because they donât have the information. I canât say whether thatâs good or bad for the long term. I know that itâs going to cause corrections because thereâs a disparity, but itâs interesting to see what people are gravitating to, and again, itâs a combination of the stuff that I talked about. Itâll also be interesting to see when more information gets released, how that affects the market.
âWata obviously has a big role and a responsibility with population information. Iâve touched on this before, but first of all, any grading company that releases population information or has in the pastâshow me one thatâs done it in the first five years of operating. You have to hit a critical mass.
âFurther, we have to qualify the information so that it doesnât cause more harm than good. We have to explain some of the reasons why populations exist, especially for new collectors who donât know. A great example is selection biasâpeople initially sent in the rarer stuff, because they knew it was rare, and they wanted to encapsulate it and preserve it. So, the population report wouldnât be an accurate representation of whatâs actually rare or whatâs out there in the market. Itâs a representation of what people sent us. Unless we either wait until we hit a critical mass thatâs a better representation, or qualify the information, or both, weâd be doing a disservice by releasing it. We 100% have a plan to release it. I really hope and want to release it in due time, because that information is really critical and will help the market. Itâs just a matter of doing it when itâs appropriate.â
What are some of the characteristics of a collectible game that investors or collectors should keep an eye out for that might signal value from an investment perspective?â
âThat is a tough question to answer. I donât want to keep sounding like a broken record, but again, it goes back to that intersection of those different drivers of demand. Weâre in a phase where there is an information disparity. There is a lack of information and resources. A lot of people look at that as a bad thing or a barrier, but I can spin that and say itâs an opportunity. Itâs an opportunity to dig a little deeper than just trying to look up on Google, âWhat should I buy for video games?â
âStart joining communities, Facebook groups, talk to collectors whoâve been around for a long time, educate yourself, start playing around a little bit. Soon youâll have the ability to make decisions that are not necessarily, âThis is gonna be a home run,â but rather, âThis is what I want to invest in, because I feel x y z, I feel comfortable about it.â And also, âI feel good about it, so that if my investment goes down, Iâm still happy.â At the end of the day, thatâs the really important thing, because there are going to be adjustments. But definitely taking advantage of this unique period weâre in would be my advice, because pretty soon, a lot of this stuff is going to become more public and enable a lot more people to come in, and then itâs going to level the playing field a lot more.