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Book on History of Game Collecting?


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I love gaming books. Just finished "Ultimate History of Video Games," and while it doesn't have pictures, it was certainly a fun read. I've been looking for a "History of Game Collecting" book, but I'll I've been able to find are collecting guides about the history of gaming, not an actual history of the collectors and collecting itself. I'm really looking for a history of the hobby-- from the early collectors in the 90s, to the growing (but still niche) community in the early 2000s, to the mainstream appeal in the 2010s, to the present-day, where the hobby seems to be settling back down into that niche again, as evidenced by declining prices on the majority of things (excluding increased prices because of the pandemic, which isn't a sign of higher demand, simply higher demand online).

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Cool idea but I think it's probably too specific for the young hobby. I mean I don't think there are even many books devoted to baseball card collecting itself, and that's been a thing for 100+ years. Sounds like a tricky premise to me, but someone could certainly attempt it.  

Edited by ApebitMusic
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Declining prices? Certain games are selling for 100 times what they were 6 months ago.

The interesting moments I can remember:

- I initially started collecting in 2010 thinking I would pick up every game for $2 each and that every game has the exact same rarity.

- I quickly found out garage sales do not have games unless you're there at 7am.

- I remember scrolling through 50 eBay auctions for Little Samson and Flintstones: Surprise At Dinosaur Peak for $400 each. I thought I would pick up some more commons before saving up all that cash for those. Oops.

- Someone put up a bounty for $4000 for Stadium Events and people went ballistic how they were overpaying.

- Nintendo World Championships was also selling for $4000.

- Pat Contri moves to San Diego and explains how he found both the grey and gold Nintendo World Championships cartridges within a short period of time.

- A few other forum members explain how they randomly messaged or called the tournament winners listed in Nintendo Power and asked if they would sell their Nintendo World Championships cartridges. Some of them succeeded.

- DreamTR explains how he did the same thing back in the 1990s and had 7 gold cartridges at one time. He sold 6 of them.

- JJGames comes up with the idea of reverse auctions and sets it up on his website at pricecharting.com. Sales start at a predetermined price and drop a few cents every hour until sold. He put up a Nintendo World Championships grey cartridge and I believe it sold somewhere around $7000 which was a few thousand below market value at the time.

- someone pays $12,000 for a grey cartridge and people get upset at how much he overpaid.

- People on Atari Age talk about the strange Air Raid cartridge and some random person comes into the thread saying he has the box for it. People tell him to stop lying and eventually he does post the box, the first ever to be found. It was a crazy read, I read the whole thread and someone actually ended up going to meet the guy to verify the box. It was auctioned off for $30,000 (about) and was the highest recorded game sale at the time. The game had no instructions.

- Shortly after that someone else saw one of those "50 RAREST GAMES EVER!" advertisements and saw the Air Raid box and thought to himself, "Hey, I have that box too." He got his camera, started recording and there is a YouTube video of him going through his storage and finding the game with box, the second copy every to surface. He opened the game and out of the bottom fall the instructions, the only known copy of them. This game was auctioned off and I think it went for $33,000. I also think it went to the same person as the other copy (Jose).

- Someone makes a post on Atari Age about how they found this weird bible themed Moses game and posts game play. People go ballistic that this is a new game, previously unknown to exist. It's called Red Sea Crossing and sells at auction for $10,000. Very cool read.

- Stadium Events is found at a garage sale, with box.

 

I can't remember what else I've seen happen. 

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It would probably just wind up being a miniature history of the internet book.

Game collecting started with Usenet groups and Funcoland lists, then grew into dedicated communities like AtariAge and DigitalPress, then along came places like NintendoAge And a few years later brought Grading services (VGA, and to a much much lesser extent, UKG) and people like me onto the scene around 2010-2013...finally last year the new speculative market came to being along side the advent of WATA.

Our hobby is still too new to write a book about it.

I guess you can throw in AVGN in there since he’s basically the inspiration to a lot of people like me to start collecting...blame can also be thrown on Pokémon for inspiring the “gotta catch em all” phenomena which may in turn have played a role in sparking a game collecting movement.

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30 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Declining prices? Certain games are selling for 100 times what they were 6 months ago.

Yup, just look at NES, SNES, N64, GB, Genesis, SMS, and more before quarantine. Stuff was dropping, not by much, but still pretty much dropping across the board, at least for the popular titles. There's a million reasons why titles jump up or down, but between Switch online, the classic edition systems, and stuff like pretty damn close to perfect SNES emulation, the demand for the "more popular" titles seems to be waning. I feel like thefad of buy, buy, buy! and hoard, hoard, hoard! is dieing off. However, sealed collecting, which is super niche, has been taking off recently. The deep pocketed collectors want their "pristine" copies, and VGA has no doubt played a part in that. I still don't understand the people that buy loose graded carts from WATA for 3 or more times market value. I mean it's a loose cart, not a perfect copy!

28 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

It would probably just wind up being a miniature history of the internet book.

Game collecting started with Usenet groups and Funcoland lists, then grew into dedicated communities like AtariAge and DigitalPress, then along came places like NintendoAge And a few years later brought Grading services (VGA, and to a much much lesser extent, UKG) and people like me onto the scene around 2010-2013...finally last year the new speculative market came to being along side the advent of WATA.

Our hobby is still too new to write a book about it.

I guess you can throw in AVGN in there since he’s basically the inspiration to a lot of people like me to start collecting...blame can also be thrown on Pokémon for inspiring the “gotta catch em all” phenomena which may in turn have played a role in sparking a game collecting movement.

Somebody's gotta get Pat to do it. Persuade him with some cash. I heard recently that he was doing an n64 book in the style of the Ultimate Nintendo books.

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Game collecting isn't even established enough to have a decent book about the hobby, let alone a book on the history of the hobby IMO. The more I look into other hobbies like stamps or coins, I basically melt with envy at their extremely detailed and accurate published books on the hobby, whether how to collect, reference books of items, or just stories about the hobby. People in our hobby still can't agree what the best way to remove a sticker from a label is or how to clean cartridge pins. Our hobby is YOUNG AND WEAK. I want that big coin energy from hobbies that have been around and considered by serious bored old rich people for 100s of years.

Edited by DefaultGen
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2 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

- I initially started collecting in 2010 thinking I would pick up every game for $2 each and that every game has the exact same rarity.

My favorite thing I did in the mid-2000s was price games to the quarter. Big difference between a Top Gun for $1.50 a Blaster Master for $2.25!

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