Yuji Naka, the former boss of the Sonic The Hedgehog series and Sonic Team of Sega, was surprised that the original form of one of his games was sold for US$430,000.

That game was the first Sonic The Hedgehog and the cartridge that was sold was certified as a vintage copy by quality-assessment service Wata. Apparently, Yuji was pretty irate about this.

See, Wata co-founder Mark Haspel was accused of selling graded stock of vintage games for a profit, therefore breaking his own rule. It’s basically a huge conflict of interest since a company that grades titles through certification should not be selling their own cartridges via exploiting their own system and code of conduct.

Turns out that Yuji has some free time in keeping up to date with the retro reselling news, since he isn’t really doing much since Balan Wonderworld. 

?What's this https://t.co/U6BkQaWgHz

— Yuji Naka / ???? (@nakayuji) September 21, 2021

This copy of Sonic The Hedgehog for Sega Genesis was given a 9.4 quality rating by Wata. Anything higher than 9.0 is “investment grade”, thus may increase in value among collectors and resellers. However, there’s been many reports that these prices are artificially driven up by parties who want to mark up their own value of their own collections for profit-gaining reasons.