Pat the NES Punk was talking about this a couple weeks ago. Apparently, it stemmed from a horrible ebay seller, Rarebucky, who has been selling sealed games for years. Atwood decided to liquidate a bunch of stuff to "give back to the community."
I have several issues with this:
1. NDA. I get that the guy is selling stuff below market value but, what does that even mean? I mean, what's a "good deal" below market value on a game, when sealed, goes for over $30k? $25k? $20k? Who knows. All I know is, whenever someone has a sale here, it is general practice to have the prices listed so there's a reference point for future sales. With NDA...not happening.
2. "Giving back." First of all, not buying it...not one bit. If he wanted to give back to the community, he'd have sold the games years ago when prices were more sane. He waited until now because of how high prices have got. If you take everything he has, give it an average of $1k per item, he stands to make over $2 million. Bear in mind here, some items are much more than $1k each and some are low 3-figure items. This was an investment to make money, pure and simple.
3. Sealed games. Despite any sort of NDA, we know exactly what's going to happen: everything sold will, more than likely, be sent to VGA to be graded and sold by those same people he "gave back" to at a later date...they're just willing to wait longer than he is. They other problem is, you know these games will never be played...ever. I'm not sure who wins here. If he really wanted to piss off Rarebucky, he'd have made an hour long video of him breaking the seal on every game. That dude would have a heart attack.
Jon