ThePhleo's 2023 NES "Rarity Guide" (General Supply / Demand Guide)

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

Here it is!

ThePhleo's 2023 NES "Rarity Guide" (General Supply / Demand Guide)

^ Click Link ^

 

Overview:

So as it turns out, it's impossible to reconcile Collector Demand with True Scarcity. The two are just completely different metrics, and the rarity guides we've been using and remixing for the past 25 years are just completely wrong to begin with.

Etler's List, and subsequently NintendoAge's list, followed by even my own list are just flat out wrong and paint a narrative that made us want games like "Little Samson" and ignore games like "Magician"

Your concept of rarity is wrong, and it has nothing to do with collector's price or demand, and I've attached links with supporting data to prove it.

Edited September 20, 2023 by ThePhleo

[a3quit4s | 4,102]

So ignore the colors on the left side? Also, you should move this over to Google Sheets so it’s easier to update year over year. Tables on forums are  

edit: wait has surprise at Dino peak become more valuable than Little Samson? Would not have guessed that, I paid way more for Samson than I did for Dino peak and it was around the same time. It did never make sense to me either since Dino peak is a blockbuster exclusive no?

Edited September 20, 2023 by a3quit4s

[DefaultGen | 5,407]

Why is Little Samson so much more expensive, guys let me tell you about Fun House and Race America.

[a3quit4s | 4,102]

12 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Why is Little Samson so much more expensive, guys let me tell you about Fun House and Race America.

Rad Gravity bro

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

@a3quit4s You're right.

Data moved to Google Sheets.

Also, I changed the description a little.

 

The "rarity" I included in this data set is just the "R" ratings I gave everything in 2019, this is of course my own interpretation of rarity in 2019 which was based off of NintendoAge's rarity guide, which in turn was based off of Etler's rarity guide, which in turn was based only off of what he seen come into his store in New Jersey....in the '90s.

We've been using WRONG DATA FOR 25 YEARS. DELETE ALL THE RARITY GUIDES PLEASE

 

Edit: Also, if anyone tells you game collecting is expensive, they're liars and frauds. Just look at the loose cart prices of fan favorite classics like Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, Mario, Zelda, Castlevania....they're freaking affordable. /r/GameCollecting needs to shut up.

Edited September 20, 2023 by ThePhleo

[Gloves | 11,789]

5 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

The "rarity" I included in this data set is just the "R" ratings I gave everything in 2019, this is of course my own interpretation of rarity in 2019 which was based off of NintendoAge's rarity guide, which in turn was based off of Etler's rarity guide, which in turn was based only off of what he seen come into his store in New Jersey....in the '90s.

We've been using WRONG DATA FOR 25 YEARS. DELETE ALL THE RARITY GUIDES PLEASE

A number of us have been saying this for years - the NA "rarity guide" was essentially worthless due to its inaccuracy.

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

4 minutes ago, Gloves said:

A number of us have been saying this for years - the NA "rarity guide" was essentially worthless due to its inaccuracy.

I'm just shocked that so many things that I thought were true staple collector's items are just not as rare as they should be.

Bucky O'Hare is a GLARING example of a game that does not deserve its high price. DuckTales 2 as well.

Edited September 20, 2023 by ThePhleo

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

Whoops, forgot to include the unlicensed data. Gotta pick up the kids from school, but I'll post it when I finish my daily errands.

[Johnny | 38]

2 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

I'm just shocked that so many things that I thought were true staple collector's items are just not as rare as they should be.

Bucky O'Hare is a GLARING example of a game that does not deserve its high price. DuckTales 2 as well.

All of our lists are bad, got it

 

[a3quit4s | 4,102]

I feel like rarity was important before the internet. Pretty much everything is now one click away. Just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s rare. For me there are now two levels of rarity:

A. I can find it on ebay

B. I cannot find it on ebay

We really don’t even need to take rarity into consideration anymore when coming up with a price, since all that work is done for us by eBay sold listings or price charting or whatever. 
 

I guess when it boils down to it, is tracking rarity really a benefit or just something else to over analyze?

@ThePhleo the Google sheet looks so nice!

Edited September 20, 2023 by a3quit4s

[Foochie776 | 1,052]

1 hour ago, DefaultGen said:

Why is Little Samson so much more expensive, guys let me tell you about Fun House and Race America.

Stop talking up Race America. I still need it

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

UPDATE:

1. Added Unlicensed games to the mix
2. Normalized and standardized game titles. No more roman numerals, no more missing "The's".
3. "Fixed" the rarity scale and made it work. You might not like it, but it's unbiased, and completely formulaic. To see it in action, download the chart, Sort by price, then sort by rarity and then tell me you disagree with it.

Edited September 20, 2023 by ThePhleo

[RH | 4,908]

Hey man, can you delete this post and unshare that sheet for about a year. I have about 500 NES tapes I need to buy.

Lol, but thanks for sharing this.  I think this type of info is truly fantastic. I will look at it tomorrow when I get to my desk since looking at spreadsheets on a mobile sux.

[CT | 93]

16 hours ago, ThePhleo said:

download the chart

How do I download the chart?

Also @ThePhleo , could you explain your methodology for this chart vs. your older rarity guide? I love your knowledge and work on this subject. Especially if you could explain the "glaring examples" like Bucky, for my friend .  I really appreciate it!

EDIT: I see you added notes, pasted here:

"Rarity was calculated by tallying up the total available market + 90 days sold market, then applying a median calculation to determine the "R5 Centerpoint".
The R1-R4 and R6-R9 centerpoints were then calculated by doubling the numbers outwards to go from R4-R1, and halving the number to go from R6-R9 which gives us the final range.
This rarity value is only relative for NES Collectors and is not a "universal" rarity scale that can be applied to even other regions of NES, let alone SNES, Sega, or other game collectors.

R10 and R11 are basically made up for "The Grails" but one or two titles might slip in there by just being a R9 or even an R8 going through a 90 day drought."

Edited September 21, 2023 by CT
I see ThePhleo added notes

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

1 hour ago, CT said:

How do I download the chart?

Also @ThePhleo , could you explain your methodology for this chart vs. your older rarity guide? I love your knowledge and work on this subject. Especially if you could explain the "glaring examples" like Bucky, for my friend .  I really appreciate it!

 

Glad you found the notes!

R5 on NintendoAge wasn't the "middle" point and it always bothered me that R6-7 was more of the middle line. I think the way it worked back then is they started from R10 and worked their way down (or opposite, R1 and worked their way up)

R5 should naturally be the middle point for "Uncommon" IMO, so that's where I started.

And again, R10 and R11 are "fake" because a R8/9 drought can cause it to be marked as a R10. R11 is just for those items that are more than "holy grails" they're ultra-special fringe cases that don't quite fit in anywhere.

[nick | 61]

Have you ever considered the idea of to plug the numbers of how many are available for each game into a normal distribution algorithm and calculate the R1-R10 rarity values that way?

Then you could determine the R1-R10 values based on wherever in the bell curve you decide to make the cut-offs be for each rarity value.

For example, something to the effect of:

R5 is somewhere below the mean within a % that you decide
R6 is somewhere above the mean within the same % that you decide as the R5 (so R5 and R6 are both above or below "average" by the same amount threshold)
R1,R2,R3,R4=These 4 values are below R5 and are exponentially more common for each one. By the time it gets to R1 very very few games get the R1 due to how few games fall in to that level of common-ness. Games like Tetris for Game Boy or SMB3 or SMB/DH are what the R1 games would be. VERY scarcely seen.
R7,R8,R9,R10=Same exact thing as R1-R4 but on the more uncommon side of the spectrum. By the time it gets to R10, very very few games fall into that R10 category.

^ This would allow R1 and R10, R2 and R9, R3 and R8, R4, and R7, and R5 and R6, to each be common/uncommon equivalent opposites. So with this system automatically if a person sees a R5 or R6 rarity value, that alone can easily and quickly tell a person if the game is slightly more or less common than average compared to other games, based on math and statistics (not personal opinion).

PS: I took a Statistics 101 class in college so I'm pretty smart. (barely passed it with a C!)

[nick | 61]

There's a few problems/challenge with the above approach I just suggested, which would still require some human being personal interpretation/opinion and intervention to make it work fully:

1) if the same algorithm is used to determine a R1-R10 rarity value for older systems like NES and newer systems like Switch, there is inherently going to be a LOT more games in circulation for a lot of modern popular Switch games despite there are usually a lot less of it in the world. The supply of what is available inherently slowly dries of over time, even if more are produced and out there in the world somewhere, should that also mean it's more/less "rare"?   Is rarity based on how many are in circulation in the world, or how many are available to buy in the current modern world?

2) When getting to the REALLY rare high-R8, R9, and R10 values, there's so few of them that a lot of them would have between 0 or MAYBE 1 available at any given time, despite that some of those are definitely WAY more rare/common than others, and they shouldn't all get the same rarity value.    For example, NWC Gold and Cheetahmen II or Challenge Of The Dragon are all very rare and would show a similar number available within a 30 day period for each, but they definitely should not have the same rarity value relying on the rarity value the algorithm spits out and that's it -- some human personal interpretation would probably be needed to sort out which of those would fall into a R8, R9, or R10 category for the ones that only show that 0 or 1 are available. But ,by the time it gets into more the R7/low-R8 range there's enough out there that a pretty accurate rarity value can be determined based on the math of how many are available in the statistical analysis

Edited September 24, 2023 by nick

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

Hey @nick I thought about speaking to an actual Statistician about this to create an actual universal rarity scale that works for all systems, but I think that’s a step too far.

If you’re collecting NES, you already know where your “average” rarity is, and that baseline is different if you collect SNES, or N64, or Beanie Babies, or Cars.

Also, the numbers on the ultra high end are made up. A drought or glut of a couple copies can influence its positioning in the rarity scale by a wide margin, so I’d actually classify anything R8-R10 (and the super made up R11) to be pretty much the same rarity tier, with only the truly obvious ones like NWC, Myriad, and Stadium Events being actual bona fide R10’s.

 

IN SUMMARY: It’s good enough to use for something that can never actually be totally accurate anyway. 

[Jaden | 151]

Hey man, great work on putting this together! I always knew that a lot of the rarities in the old guides were inaccurate. And seeing some of the differences here really opened my eyes. While there are the obvious outliers like Stadium Events and the Panesian titles, I never really noticed much difference between rarity for those games on the back half of the scale. Like what really is the difference in rarity between something like a Dinosaur Peak and a Pro Sport Hockey? Is some maniac gonna try hunting down every single copy of these games and compare them to try and prove the difference? And even then, what we do with those results would be entirely subjective to the person compiling them and what they classify as the different levels of rarity. So, I agree that we'll never end up with a 100% accurate guide for rarity. Despite this, I still think this could be a great reference to flip through and potentially see how likely you are to come across a certain game. Overall, fantastic job!

Edited October 9, 2023 by Jaden

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

How did I do on the top 50?

 

[The Count | 527]

Monster Truck Rally, I did not know this.

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

5 hours ago, Jaden said:

Hey man, great work on putting this together! I always knew that a lot of the rarities in the old guides were inaccurate. And seeing some of the differences here really opened my eyes. While there are the obvious outliers like Stadium Events and the Panesian titles, I never really noticed much difference between rarity for those games on the back half of the scale. Like what really is the difference in rarity between something like a Dinosaur Peak and a Pro Sport Hockey? Is some maniac gonna try hunting down every single copy of these games and compare them to try and prove the difference? And even then, what we do with those results would be entirely subjective to the person compiling them and what they classify as the different levels of rarity. So, I agree that we'll never end up with a 100% accurate guide for rarity. Despite this, I still think this could be a great reference to flip through and potentially see how likely you are to come across a certain game. Overall, fantastic job!

Thanks.

I just like fiddling with data like this and try to make something out of it.

In 90 days, I'm more than sure things can jump a little. I'm willing to bet there a 1.5± margin of error for anything in the list.

 

4 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

How did I do on the top 50?

 

Loose carts? Oh my! (Actually, that Action 52 black board is really nice lookin')

 

 

3 hours ago, The Count said:

Monster Truck Rally, I did not know this.

Yeah, pretty tough game actually. Also, fun fact: it's a port of a grail tier item for Intellvision (Stadium Mud Buggies)