Look at these prices...unreal right ?

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

1 minute ago, Tanooki said:

Same here problem is it makes a lot of average dumb people think the unsealed stuff has high value too and more and more keep attempting it.  It'll cause someone to break, then another...fear of it going up, will cause it to go up.

Annoyingly I do have one sealed game, and it shot up so bad(good) in the last 18mo in value I'm kind of fearing if I even entertained selling it, what I'd do to even try and safely move it.  The USPS is a clusterf**k of morons who break and lose shit, UPS on the break side is even worse.  None of them would insure it for what it's worth and even if they did, they'd see like hell to make sure not to pay out.  I'd hate to even have that much cash on hand, wouldn't know what to do, and if I tried to save it and someone found out in this house I had it, they'd get mad and probably want it wasted on loans(car, house), or more home repair so I keep quiet about it leaving it in plain sight of all things.

I haven’t told you all about the time I flipped some sealed games a couple months ago and some of the shipments got lost in the mail and took a month to arrive.

But really, if you ever have to ship something like that, you can use PirateShip and their third party insurance is better than USPS, or go through UPS. 

[Tanooki | 4,933]

Well good point and no you hadn't, and I forgot about them too.  As volatile as it is, in part thanks to wata/heritage I'm really wondering how far into stupidville my one sealed game of pokemon red will go.  Right now it's under glass wall art.

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

3 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Well good point and no you hadn't, and I forgot about them too.  As volatile as it is, in part thanks to wata/heritage I'm really wondering how far into stupidville my one sealed game of pokemon red will go.  Right now it's under glass wall art.

If you get it graded and it grades high it’s in the range of a luxury car. You are sitting on a grail.

[Tanooki | 4,933]

I could see a low 9 at best, it has a few minor issues a nitpicker would tear it down over.  I think I showed you it before.

[Nesmaster | 402]

[TheBiRD | 137]

Sealed stuff are insanity right now,  CIB ''mint'' continu to be on the rise

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPER-MARIO-RPG-LEGEND-OF-THE-SEVEN-STARS-COMPLETE-IN-BOX-CIB-SNES-/384035946276?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=osf3JbjxVLAzW5qUB62v4n77krk%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc

[16BitBricks | 59]

Wot in tarnation is going on lately? Just 2 months ago this game was going for $250-$300 cib. I swear I keep seeing this: Someone posts a scarce game for an         r-tarded price, someone undercuts them slightly, a third person undercuts that and sells it. It’s still 5x the previous price, and that becomes the new bottom.

[OptOut | 8,884]

13 hours ago, 16BitBricks said:

Wot in tarnation is going on lately? Just 2 months ago this game was going for $250-$300 cib. I swear I keep seeing this: Someone posts a scarce game for an         r-tarded price, someone undercuts them slightly, a third person undercuts that and sells it. It’s still 5x the previous price, and that becomes the new bottom.

It's just a demand-side thing right now, it'll settle down sooner or later. May never go back as cheap as it was before, but there are already signs that the winds are changing on the low end. Loads of high priced common games just sitting on eBay at the moment, it's a good sign that prices will correct mid-term out.

[Jono1874 | 144]

On 3/15/2021 at 5:52 PM, Dr. Morbis said:

The thing is, those "normie" items aren't rare, so as soon as the demand is sated and covid goes away, those people will be off to greener pastures and the real collectors who aren't going anywhere will still need SE to complete their set.  Yeah a mint first print SMB will always command high value from now on, but the rest of this nonsense bull run on dirt common stuff will be a funny joke to reference back to a few years from now...

What I wanna know is where all those slabbed copies of Spider-Man for 2600 will end up once the fad dies and the people that bought them decide to move on.  They'll at least be in good shape, which leads to another question...

How hard is it to free these games once they've been sentenced to living on a shelf forever?  Like, can the slab be easily pried off or do you need to risk the game inside just to remove it?  I imagine they're sealed pretty tight, because if they weren't, there's the potential to build up condensation or whatever. I don't know.

I don't have any problems with people slabbing their own property. I'm just wondering what'll happen when these all get back into the general market.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Jono1874

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

1 hour ago, Jono1874 said:

How hard is it to free these games once they've been sentenced to living on a shelf forever?  Like, can the slab be easily pried off or do you need to risk the game inside just to remove it?  I imagine they're sealed pretty tight, because if they weren't, there's the potential to build up condensation or whatever. I don't know.

WATA games are extremely easy to open up and VGA games are difficult for me, but another poster mentioned somewhere here on VGS that VGA games are very easy to open too, so I guess if you know what you're doing, anything sealed can be freed from its encasement rather easily...

[OptOut | 8,884]

6 hours ago, Jono1874 said:

I imagine they're sealed pretty tight, because if they weren't, there's the potential to build up condensation or whatever. I don't know.

Actually, you DON'T want them to be sealed too tight, as various materials breakdown over time they release gasses etc. Also, condensation is best dealt with by proper temperature and humidity control, and ALSO good airflow to avoid the trapping of moisture.

You see that sometimes with sealed games and stuff, actually, sometimes the seal actually traps the moisture in rather than sealing it out, so in general you don't want to store your stuff in "airtight" compartments.

[OptOut | 8,884]

4 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

WATA games are extremely easy to open up and VGA games are difficult for me, but another poster mentioned somewhere here on VGS that VGA games are very easy to open too, so I guess if you know what you're doing, anything sealed can be freed from its encasement rather easily...

Apparently the WATA cases are easy to open, but only in a way that it is evident that they have been.

Conversely, VGA cases are way harder to open, but there is a technique you can use to open them without it being obvious if you know what you're doing.

Was it you @jonebone who was experimenting with this?

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

What the? Am I missing something?

[Jono1874 | 144]

14 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

WATA games are extremely easy to open up and VGA games are difficult for me, but another poster mentioned somewhere here on VGS that VGA games are very easy to open too, so I guess if you know what you're doing, anything sealed can be freed from its encasement rather easily...

This is what I was hoping to hear. Thanks for the info.

[AdamW | 713]

One thing I'm curious about with the recent excitement is what'll happen with the really crappy sealed copies. Someone paid (well, they said they were gonna pay, anyway...eBay, you know how that goes) $5250 for a 7.0 Pokemon Blue yesterday:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Pokemon-Blue-1998-Sealed-Brand-New-Graded-WATA-7-0-Seal-Rating-A-/393197883866

you gotta think that could wind up a long way underwater if the bubble pops. I'm not sure people entirely understand that HA headline prices are meant to be for, like, 9.4 minimum.

 

[a3quit4s | 4,098]

Holy bananas. I just put some of my collection into the Game Value Now collection tracker....jeez

 

[Tanooki | 4,933]

Well now that's surprising isn't it.  I could see using something like that just to figure out a rough estimate on value, but I'd hope it is customizable to not have that stupid completion bar rubbed in your face as I could give zero f's about that.

[a3quit4s | 4,098]

7 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Well now that's surprising isn't it.  I could see using something like that just to figure out a rough estimate on value, but I'd hope it is customizable to not have that stupid completion bar rubbed in your face as I could give zero f's about that.

I mean it's kind of cool. I wish I could customize the count to only include licensed and non variants. I added in some of the rest and I think I'm around 36k now. I'm having a hard time explaining to my wife that is not what I spent!!!

[Tanooki | 4,933]

I keep what I spend to myself it's not worth the complaining considering I'm forced to be an utter sting due to her lack of work hours causing us for years to get help now and not have a savings.  That's why I do buy lots(bundles) of stuff, and only when there's something I want to keep in it, then sell the rest so I can at worst break even or come out either up/down just a bit.  If she knew the appreciation value of this stuff due to idiotic behavior over the last year and some months I'd probably hear rounds of bitching to sell things...my things.  From the person with 2 road(racing) bikes worth probably 10K between the two, among other related equipment and stuff.  Trades, swaps, being responsible works for me, ye when it's straight out of pocket I feel guilty dropping $20 on a movie.

That's a good reason why I'd love a tool like that, but where I can customize to hide the values, hide the completeness, etc as it just makes things look overkill.  I get crap for being a hoarder because she's gone all minimalist and that's my fault?  They think 500 games is overkill, I say that's 500 games over 36 years.

[OptOut | 8,884]

Here's a good example of why I think recent prices have been overblown, and evidence of some cooling:

This is Top Gear hyperbike, one of the last games I needed to complete my fullset. I've been watching this game on eBay UK for a few weeks now. There are around 6 to 7 copies of the game that have just sat on there between like 60 and 75 pounds, for as long as I've been watching, but no one is buying at the inflated price.

Moreover, there's also been this offer floating around that eBay sent me:

That's been there a few days and expires soon, people still aren't biting, which proves to me that for the great many games out there, people AREN'T just gonna keep paying crazy prices forever.

Fortunately, certain sellers ARE savvy to this, and the story has a happy ending, I shot an offer to one of them for 40 pounds, and we agreed at 45, free shipping!

I also recently won an auction for Madden 99 (actually a difficult game to get for the PAL set) under 25 pounds shipped, whereas the BINs on eBay are all at or over 50.

So, just be patient, wait for auctions, look for deals and make offers. The world is not coming to an end after all, lol!

[fcgamer | 4,723]

There was that Famiclone set though that sold for $720. That was insane to me, even as a westerner.

[doner24 | 1,196]

35 minutes ago, OptOut said:

Here's a good example of why I think recent prices have been overblown, and evidence of some cooling:

This is Top Gear hyperbike, one of the last games I needed to complete my fullset. I've been watching this game on eBay UK for a few weeks now. There are around 6 to 7 copies of the game that have just sat on there between like 60 and 75 pounds, for as long as I've been watching, but no one is buying at the inflated price.

Moreover, there's also been this offer floating around that eBay sent me:

That's been there a few days and expires soon, people still aren't biting, which proves to me that for the great many games out there, people AREN'T just gonna keep paying crazy prices forever.

Fortunately, certain sellers ARE savvy to this, and the story has a happy ending, I shot an offer to one of them for 40 pounds, and we agreed at 45, free shipping!

I also recently won an auction for Madden 99 (actually a difficult game to get for the PAL set) under 25 pounds shipped, whereas the BINs on eBay are all at or over 50.

So, just be patient, wait for auctions, look for deals and make offers. The world is not coming to an end after all, lol!

Example denied: That game was 20 pounds not that long ago. 

[OptOut | 8,884]

34 minutes ago, doner24 said:

Example denied: That game was 20 pounds not that long ago. 

Well I'm not denying that prices have gone up and do go up. But it's not the endless upwards spike a lot of people are fretting about.

[doner24 | 1,196]

15 hours ago, OptOut said:

Well I'm not denying that prices have gone up and do go up. But it's not the endless upwards spike a lot of people are fretting about.

It’s true that it’s been going up steeply for a lot of stuff in a hurry lately, but we’ve heard this same stuff for over a decade now. Buy now, or buy for more later is the only trend that’s actually happened. 

[OptOut | 8,884]

2 minutes ago, doner24 said:

It’s true that it’s been going up steeply for a lot of stuff in a hurry lately, but we’ve heard this same stuff for over a decade now. Buy now, or buy for more later is the only trend that’s actually happened. 

Oh yeah dude, no doubt there! Fortunately, the growth in my earning capacity has greatly exceeded the growth in prices! 

Also, only ONE more game I need to complete my PAL set now, woooooooooooooo!!!!!