A VHS Tape of ‘Rocky’ Just Sold for $27,500, Because Why Not

Resolution found a contemporary picture that showed DiMaggio apparently wearing the shirt, although without the mourning band. The tiny imperfections in the flannel were the same. The jersey sold for $564,000.

Data can mislead as well as illuminate. Two years ago, an Australian gamer named Karl Jobst released a popular video that made allegations of fraud against Heritage. The company responded that it “has always acted with the utmost integrity and has never falsely inflated the collector video-game marketplace or any other.”

At the heart of the accusations is the question of grading. In the 1980s, ratings companies began offering numerical scores for coins at auction. In theory, that meant bidders knew exactly what they were getting without having to examine each lot personally.

Ratings accelerated the development of online auctions, with the practice spreading to sports cards, comic books and, more recently, game cartridges and videotapes. After grading, items are inserted into a hard plastic case to prevent wear. Just like a photo-match, a high grade reassures potential bidders that the object is, indeed, something special.

Then came the Super Mario Bros. game cartridge auctions.

Super Mario is a Nintendo game introduced in the mid-1980s that became a global phenomenon and, this month, a new Hollywood movie. In 2017, an unrated copy of the original game brought in $30,000 on eBay, prompting shock and disbelief. Two years later, a cartridge graded 9.4 sold for $100,000 to a group that included Jim Halperin, a founder of Heritage. The purchase was used by Heritage to promote its new auction of graded games.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/technology/heritage-auctions-vintage-videocassettes.html