A detailed Proof Games report into Mark Haspel, the co-founder of game grading company Wata, has brought to light worrying details of his business activities, and of Wata in general.
Wata appraises and rates the quality of collectible video games, often pushing their prices into the hundreds and thousands of dollars. To avoid any conflict of interest, it has previously stated it does not allow employees to have their own games graded or sell any that have been graded by the company.
But, this week, Proof Games' Seth Abramson discovered he had apparently bought several WATA-graded video games from an eBay seller that turned out to be Haspel. One of his purchases reportedly included a yellow sticky note that invited Abramson to email Haspel privately "for more games".