"I just changed the baggie. I think it's not a crime."
June 15, 2022 7:55 AM Subscribe
At least seven PC game collectors have publicly or privately identified dozens of suspected forgeries they say [Enrico] Ricciardi traded or sold as far back as 2015 and as recently as last month. Collectors estimate that those trades and sales include games that would be valued at well over $100,000 total on the open market if they were authentic. Ricciardi told Ars he is also a victim who simply unknowingly passed along suspect collectibles without checking them thoroughly enough. Regardless, the overwhelming evidence suggesting that there are many forgeries circulating through the world of rare PC games has shaken the trust of that community to the core. from Inside the $100K+ forgery scandal that’s roiling PC game collecting [Ars Technica]
Tangentially related, but I started watching Choose or Die on Netflix just yesterday... I had never realized games came on cassette tapes before yesterday!
One of the characters in the movie collects vintage gaming stuff or something, and the premise of the movie is a cassette-based cursed game called Curs>r falls into his collection and people start dying in horrible ways. Haven't finished it yet but is pretty entertaining so far if you're into horror.
posted by Grither at 8:17 AM on June 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
One of the characters in the movie collects vintage gaming stuff or something, and the premise of the movie is a cassette-based cursed game called Curs>r falls into his collection and people start dying in horrible ways. Haven't finished it yet but is pretty entertaining so far if you're into horror.
posted by Grither at 8:17 AM on June 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
> people start dying in horrible ways
TBF waiting for a Spectrum 48K game to load often felt like that.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 8:34 AM on June 15, 2022 [27 favorites]
TBF waiting for a Spectrum 48K game to load often felt like that.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 8:34 AM on June 15, 2022 [27 favorites]
When I first heard about this story, one of the funniest details was that “there is at least one black box Ultima 1 that we think may be fake that was graded by WATA.” I was told by a game collector (and, incidentally, a member of that PC game collection group) that WATA, a company that grades the physical condition of games, doesn't have the best reputation. It seems they've recently been sued for retro game market manipulation.
In general, the big-money video game collecting space has been bizarre the past few years, though this story takes the cake.
posted by May Kasahara at 8:39 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
In general, the big-money video game collecting space has been bizarre the past few years, though this story takes the cake.
posted by May Kasahara at 8:39 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's worth mentioning that a lot of the 'eye popping prices' mentioned in the article above are the largely result of wash trading and self dealing by the sleazoids at Wata and Heritage Auctions. Karl Jobst's excellent video has more detail. May their names be blotted out.
posted by StarkRoads at 8:40 AM on June 15, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by StarkRoads at 8:40 AM on June 15, 2022 [10 favorites]
This reminds me of the Netflix "Made You Look" documentary about art forgeries, including the shadowy "Mister X" source.
Also: I'm going to have to get used to the fact that an Apple ][ and a beige box from Gateway 2000 are both called a PC nowadays. So it goes.
posted by credulous at 8:50 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also: I'm going to have to get used to the fact that an Apple ][ and a beige box from Gateway 2000 are both called a PC nowadays. So it goes.
posted by credulous at 8:50 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
On the one hand, this sucks. On the other hand, someone willing to pay 5 or six figures for a physical copy of a retro game you can download for free on abandonware sites? I can't muster a single scrap of sympathy.
posted by rikschell at 8:51 AM on June 15, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 8:51 AM on June 15, 2022 [13 favorites]
On the one hand, this sucks
On the other hand, forging collectibles is based. If I were an independently-wealthy artist / supervillain, I would seed every collectors' market with forgeries of varying quality. Art, wine, assorted consumer detritus... forge it all.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:01 AM on June 15, 2022 [9 favorites]
On the other hand, forging collectibles is based. If I were an independently-wealthy artist / supervillain, I would seed every collectors' market with forgeries of varying quality. Art, wine, assorted consumer detritus... forge it all.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:01 AM on June 15, 2022 [9 favorites]
Somebody call the NFT people (kidding!).
posted by mmcg at 9:14 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mmcg at 9:14 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
I guess I mean it sucks from the point of view of forging the historical record. I hope the people who are preying on the rich are cool and downtrodden folks like in Parasite, but I expect they are probably just another flavor of rich asshole.
posted by rikschell at 9:18 AM on June 15, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 9:18 AM on June 15, 2022 [8 favorites]
Uncleozzy, Based God:
An acquaintance of mine, we’ll call him J, back in the ‘90s, showed up one day pleased with himself that he had gotten a relatively good deal on a Magic card (Cyclopean Tomb, if memory serves), like say it was a $60 card at the time and he paid $40 for it.
Another guy, call him B, had just been talking (I forget which of us told who) about how the cards were printed on the kind of paper that has a layer of black in the middle to prevent light passing through, just like regular playing cards.
So, armed with this new information, when J showed up with his new (for us very expensive) card, B immediately said, “let me see it for a second,” and held it up to the light. After a very few seconds, he declared, “It’s fake, dude,” and handed it back. It certainly appeared to be fake.
J left, furious, shortly thereafter.
If Collector Supervillain Uncleozzy could recreate that effect at the $tens-of-thousands-or-more end of the pool to fuck with the Martin Shkrelis of the world, I would be extremely okay with it.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:17 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
An acquaintance of mine, we’ll call him J, back in the ‘90s, showed up one day pleased with himself that he had gotten a relatively good deal on a Magic card (Cyclopean Tomb, if memory serves), like say it was a $60 card at the time and he paid $40 for it.
Another guy, call him B, had just been talking (I forget which of us told who) about how the cards were printed on the kind of paper that has a layer of black in the middle to prevent light passing through, just like regular playing cards.
So, armed with this new information, when J showed up with his new (for us very expensive) card, B immediately said, “let me see it for a second,” and held it up to the light. After a very few seconds, he declared, “It’s fake, dude,” and handed it back. It certainly appeared to be fake.
J left, furious, shortly thereafter.
If Collector Supervillain Uncleozzy could recreate that effect at the $tens-of-thousands-or-more end of the pool to fuck with the Martin Shkrelis of the world, I would be extremely okay with it.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:17 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
25 years ago, I knew a comic shop owner who forged collectibles, mostly Magic cards. His attitude was that compared to something like forging money, the items are often far easier to forge, the rewards are great, the penalties are smaller, and it is often the case that the authorities won't take the victims seriously. Ever since then, I've been suspicious of any collectible market where things are easy to forge. What is easy? People famously forge paintings and rolex watches and designer handbags, so any items easier than that are likely to have a lot of fakes.
posted by surlyben at 10:23 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by surlyben at 10:23 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Re: WATA, here's a YouTube expose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A
Edit: I see this was dropped above! Sorry!
posted by Corinth at 10:24 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Edit: I see this was dropped above! Sorry!
posted by Corinth at 10:24 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
If you believe computers have played a significant role in human civilization then I would urge you not to cheer on the creation of forgeries of significant artifacts documenting that history. It’s very difficult to unpoison that well. I see these games not just as expensive baubles for collectors but as the research materials for historians, and their authenticity is important.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:27 AM on June 15, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:27 AM on June 15, 2022 [9 favorites]
I didn't have many Apple II games way back when I owned one. And for school I had to move to PC later. But I have some vintage MS-DOS games still around... And now that I have a book scanner, I may start digitizing my existing collection of manuals and whatnot...
But yeah, Apple IIs were weird back then. The drive controller had to be programed to read stuff (a lot like the Commodore 64), and copy protection folks can do some weird tricks like 1/2 track or 1/4th track which made some sectors uncopy-able through normal means. I can see how they can determine if the game was genuine or copied, or even how it was copied.
But then, I grew up with Cassettes sharing the spotlight with 5.25 floppies as the preferred storage medium. Tandy Color Computer (aka the CoCo) and its cousin, the more "business" TRS-80's (aka Trash 80s) have options to save onto floppies... or cassette through audio recorders. I learned 6805 Assembly on a Tandy CoCo 3 with cassette save... and this was for school. :D
posted by kschang at 10:27 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
But yeah, Apple IIs were weird back then. The drive controller had to be programed to read stuff (a lot like the Commodore 64), and copy protection folks can do some weird tricks like 1/2 track or 1/4th track which made some sectors uncopy-able through normal means. I can see how they can determine if the game was genuine or copied, or even how it was copied.
But then, I grew up with Cassettes sharing the spotlight with 5.25 floppies as the preferred storage medium. Tandy Color Computer (aka the CoCo) and its cousin, the more "business" TRS-80's (aka Trash 80s) have options to save onto floppies... or cassette through audio recorders. I learned 6805 Assembly on a Tandy CoCo 3 with cassette save... and this was for school. :D
posted by kschang at 10:27 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Horace,
The fact of the forgery is part of history too, so as long as forgers stay in copy territory and don’t make simulacra, I don’t think it’s catastrophically harmful.
But I’m not a historian, so I’m willing to admit there are probably very great voids in my understanding.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:34 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
The fact of the forgery is part of history too, so as long as forgers stay in copy territory and don’t make simulacra, I don’t think it’s catastrophically harmful.
But I’m not a historian, so I’m willing to admit there are probably very great voids in my understanding.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:34 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
In a lot of cases these forgeries are only possible because someone else took and posted very high quality archival photos of real versions, which is probably more important for historical purposes than the actual artifact. One consequence of forgeries is that this can discourage amateur archivists from doing this because they're afraid it will be misused. This has been a problem in the console game rarity market for years, many of the most rare games have not been dumped (scanning the digital data so it can be exactly reproduced) because the people who own the original products are afraid it will lower the value of their collection. So, for that reason alone forgeries suck.
There's a lot of drama in the game collecting space between "dump everything" people and the rare collectors. Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation published a report of their work inspecting rare games and it made a lot of people upset on both sides.
posted by JZig at 10:51 AM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
There's a lot of drama in the game collecting space between "dump everything" people and the rare collectors. Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation published a report of their work inspecting rare games and it made a lot of people upset on both sides.
posted by JZig at 10:51 AM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
The fact of the forgery is part of history too, so as long as forgers stay in copy territory and don’t make simulacra, I don’t think it’s catastrophically harmful.
Most of the "Greek statues" you see in museums are actually Roman copies, but that doesn't mean historians don't wish they had the originals.
posted by praemunire at 10:57 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
Most of the "Greek statues" you see in museums are actually Roman copies, but that doesn't mean historians don't wish they had the originals.
posted by praemunire at 10:57 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
...and, yeah, people buying old games deserve not to have forgeries passed off on them, but artificial restriction of knowledge to try to prop up the artifacts' value? Bullshit.
posted by praemunire at 10:59 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:59 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
4am is mentioned in the article, who is preserving Apple ][ games via cracking and documenting the methods. Some of these titles were way more popular in pirated format than retail package, and things like the title screen may have been shaved off of the pirated version. 4am has a tool that preserves the original data but disables copy protection so that it can be imaged and emulated. Many titles (especially the long tail of edutainment) were never preserved.
It would require specialized knowledge and hardware to make a disk that could fool 4am and friends, but it looks like the forgers in the article didn't even try.
posted by credulous at 11:13 AM on June 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
It would require specialized knowledge and hardware to make a disk that could fool 4am and friends, but it looks like the forgers in the article didn't even try.
posted by credulous at 11:13 AM on June 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
Now I feel like an idiot for not bidding on an auction lot of IBM PC games in their original packaging.
posted by jadepearl at 1:15 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jadepearl at 1:15 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
To clarify my position, so I don't come off as some kind of history erasing monster,
First, my agreement with uncleozzy was about putting fakes in the hands of speculators, because fuck them. Dunno where ozzy really stands on that one, but that's my feeling about it. Honest hobbyists and collectors shouldn't face the potential harm, but if you're just trying to make things harder for everyone else, or money laundering or whatever, well, enjoy your copy of V3's How to Dismantle an Emetic Bomb.
Second, my response to Horace Rumpole was that I think that if something was considered worth faking, that is in itself historically interesting. I mentioned in passing the idea that fakers would fake things into the historical record that didn't really exist in the first place, like the iron maiden or Polybius, but I hadn't considered the idea that a supposedly authentic copy might exist of an actually authentic original that had been lost or destroyed.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 1:36 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
First, my agreement with uncleozzy was about putting fakes in the hands of speculators, because fuck them. Dunno where ozzy really stands on that one, but that's my feeling about it. Honest hobbyists and collectors shouldn't face the potential harm, but if you're just trying to make things harder for everyone else, or money laundering or whatever, well, enjoy your copy of V3's How to Dismantle an Emetic Bomb.
Second, my response to Horace Rumpole was that I think that if something was considered worth faking, that is in itself historically interesting. I mentioned in passing the idea that fakers would fake things into the historical record that didn't really exist in the first place, like the iron maiden or Polybius, but I hadn't considered the idea that a supposedly authentic copy might exist of an actually authentic original that had been lost or destroyed.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 1:36 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I expect they are probably just another flavor of rich asshole.
I somewhat doubt that, why would a rich asshole go to the trouble? I would expect it's usually people connected in some way with the collectibles market and used to dealing with rich assholes, but unlikely to be one themselves.
I mean, Charlie Mortdecai was fictional and Eric Hebborn was really at a different level of craft from re-shrink-wrapping a game box.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:03 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I somewhat doubt that, why would a rich asshole go to the trouble? I would expect it's usually people connected in some way with the collectibles market and used to dealing with rich assholes, but unlikely to be one themselves.
I mean, Charlie Mortdecai was fictional and Eric Hebborn was really at a different level of craft from re-shrink-wrapping a game box.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:03 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
someone willing to pay 5 or six figures for a physical copy of a retro game you can download for free on abandonware sites?
... is laundering money.
posted by mikelieman at 2:14 PM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
... is laundering money.
posted by mikelieman at 2:14 PM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
I somewhat doubt that, why would a rich asshole go to the trouble?
Money laundering.
posted by AlSweigart at 4:05 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Money laundering.
posted by AlSweigart at 4:05 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
big-dollar artifact forgeries always make me gleeful. someone who pays big dollars so they can flaunt an i-own-rare-shit boner is someone with high-class problems and I DGAF about them.
I laughed my ass off at the complainants of Made You Look in the same way I laughed at the various GOP fucksticks who got taken by Theranos because they were too dumb to understand that the science actually kinda matters.
now I just need to figure out a way to alert the Hobby Lobby guy about the location of some fake cuniforms I've stowed in a warehouse in Turkey...
posted by Sauce Trough at 5:43 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I laughed my ass off at the complainants of Made You Look in the same way I laughed at the various GOP fucksticks who got taken by Theranos because they were too dumb to understand that the science actually kinda matters.
now I just need to figure out a way to alert the Hobby Lobby guy about the location of some fake cuniforms I've stowed in a warehouse in Turkey...
posted by Sauce Trough at 5:43 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
big-dollar artifact forgeries always make me gleeful.
The hype trained fueled by shady practices on the high end of have made it a lot harder for people who don't go cry in their yacht to collect games as well. A lot of people who were collecting just a few years ago have gotten priced out.
In contrast, for those high rollers, the risk of forgeries is priced in. Random acts of profit seeking by forgers won't fix anything. A luxury tax wouldn't hurt though.
posted by StarkRoads at 12:45 AM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
The hype trained fueled by shady practices on the high end of have made it a lot harder for people who don't go cry in their yacht to collect games as well. A lot of people who were collecting just a few years ago have gotten priced out.
In contrast, for those high rollers, the risk of forgeries is priced in. Random acts of profit seeking by forgers won't fix anything. A luxury tax wouldn't hurt though.
posted by StarkRoads at 12:45 AM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Do folks think rich people launder their money *themselves*?
posted by aspersioncast at 5:49 AM on June 17, 2022
posted by aspersioncast at 5:49 AM on June 17, 2022
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Some pretty rare things like an Atari 8 bit hard drive adapter with an incredible 10MB hard drive, too.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:14 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]