Stormarov.45

No one is saying that Goodwill faked it, and we aren't saying you did either. We are only saying that it is a fake. It was faked with the express intention of posing as a Konami replacement shell. Who is to blame is irrelevant.

I'm totally leaning at NOT legit. That's a label swap if I ever saw one. That back label section also seems like an obvious scrape job. There are scratches all over that section.

Both of these copies are a bit sketchy. The first one is the wrong label (Way too late) and the board as well is a little too late to be a factory 5 screw. However this may be a repair shell for a hand repair for a 90 warranty replacement. (Sometimes these were cracked in packaging or sometimes a user had broken the shell but the board was fine. At this time in first quarter through 3rd quarter 1988 the repair depots used extra 5 screw shells to replace NES 1st party game shells when they were sent in.) The label is probably too late to even be a repair shell I think, but the repair depots always had weird label variations, and the repair could have occurred anywhere within 1988 reasonably due to game hitting shelves in February likely, and then shelf time, plus up to 3 months after purchase. I am most likely to think this one is legit due to the crisp label, label corners, and perfect alignment. The second copy has a board from the right era, but it still has the wrong label for a factory 5 screw. (orange bullets and not white ones). However, it is possible that this is an early repair cart of the 2nd label version. The 2nd label could have easily been placed buy a repair depot on a copy with the first board version sent in for repair. But this repair would likely have to happen within that short period between early November 1987 and late December 1987 or early Jan 1988 based on the label version. The label corner on the front gives me pause in claiming this is a legit repair cart instead of a label peel, because that is the tell tale corner that is usually messed up when people try that. However I will give it this, there is no glue ticking out of the sides like other examples and the corner isn't curled like it often is with label peels. Also the repair depots were notorious for having less than perfect glue jobs, usually with the top label being mostly unglued due to a light application by hand. This corner raise could be due to a gluing issue, it looks right anyways. But without having the copy in my hand I would be less likely to trust this one, myself.

Yup this one is common

There shouldn't be a TMNT 5 screw with an (R) oval seal. I don't know about the other two though.

The right one (without the MiJ) looks extremely sketch to me.

Nah, I bet that went for best offer. Although I did offer 400 and it auto rejected it, so it might not be that far off.

Ya that's what I'm talking about. I don't need/trust the pricing side of the house.

Is it just me or has GVN been down for two days now?

Sorry for the late reply: I do not know this first hand, I was too young to work in a fab facility, (I am 41). However I understand this is the case from word of mouth and I am an Electrical Engineer with a VLSI/D background, so I know how this kind (or any kind really) of manufacturing industry operates. One the machines are retrofitted for the 3 screw shell, the 5 screw shells cant be used. You don't hold up a 100k retrofit over a few thousand plastic shells that are worth 1 penny each. Then in order to save on cost, instead of just throwing the shells away, you just ship them to a repair facility, since they will be operating by hand anyway. The costs is slightly less than shipping them new shells. And repair facilities aren't putting out all that many repairs, they probably had 5 screw shells for years. (All of that part is speculation, but a well informed one) However, I have had a former repair tech claim to me that they had 5 screw shells available for them. How they got them, why they still had them, was the part for speculation. So I can't say for sure that the machine retrofit was the reason for there being extra shells available, but I'd say it's likely a very good bet. Labels are printed in bulk, they already had stacks of printed labels. Because remember, large industrial printers are used here. There was no such thing as a photo printer yet. I don't know what they did if they didn't have a label already. Perhaps they had to order a one off print? That would require a down printer day (a day where no orders are being printed) and a days work of replacing the plates and ink canisters, and run and adjusting that machine until a good print occurs, only to put it back the way it was, or fit it for the next order.

This is due to bulk purchases. These chips are universal across any title for NES. Very rarely they would use an updated chip (had more functions but still compatible). They would buy these chips by the truckload. When they assembled a board they would just use what chips they had. If 86 chips are left over, those go on the board. The only time this becomes a problem is when the chip date is later than the game fabrication dates, which means it was a counterfeit chip placed on an NES board, (Very rarely this happens because this takes expertise and effort and startup money for a PRG chip programmer. Most of the time when a forgery is made it uses and entirely different board because of the cost effectiveness of newer technology chips versus finding old stock compatible chips with lower demand) In micro chips more demand equals lower costs because they can be fabricated in bulk.

When Nintendo fab facilities switch from the 3 screw to 5 screw clamshell design they had left over 5 screw stock. The the machines that assemble them literally have to be refitted they could not use the 5 screw in the machines anymore. So they moved all remaining 5 screw clamshell stock to the repair department. Back then you could pay Nintendo to replace a broken clamshell (or they would replace them for free from broken sealed stock and etc...) and often they would switch these on damaged or broken clamshells on games that came in for board repair/defects. When they did this, they had the 5 screw clamshells available. And because of this sometimes you see a 5 screw cart with the star shaped security screws in it. So when you see this, if you don't suspect forgery or board swapping, then it was likely sent to a repair facility.

I had no idea I could record my concert poster collection there.

I meant like this one

Wow! 7 posts wasted on this oval v round thing. It's OVAL. The angle is only even slightly making an optical illusion. However, if this cart were to have the print shift error, then we'd be talking...

NES chips, specifically the PRG chip was not an EEPROM (electronically erasable). They are burned in. But good point. I may have my cost model wrong. I have been meaning to send a letter to Nintendo America about this for a while. I will try to do that this week.

Lets get some things straight. The size of the print run is a variable based on market research. But the minimum first print run is 100K to see equitable profit from the cost of burning in the chip with the video game software, (Nintendo may have had business rules for a larger amount). This is because the real cost of a chip is in building the masks. Fabrication facilities charge to build these masks (a series of maps in software that tell the fabrication machine where to apply material for each stage, a series of chemical and photolithograph masks, order of operations for masking, etching and impregnation of materials, and the rules for deconflicting steps in the process), for this chip process the cost was around $500,000. (its more for smaller scale chip processes). But once you have the masks, the cost of the chips are pennies, and a second run is much less. (so 10k could be a minimum run afterwards, who knows). Keep in mind that there were 33 million NES systems sold in the US. A minimum run game like blockbuster exclusives or Little Sampson, means there would be little over three for every thousand Nintendo players out there, (give or take). Because the cost to distribute these is so great, that is why many games get enough production to test market acceptance. For instance since the NES was going strong in Brazil some games near the end came out there first (MM6) and later expanded into the greater US markets. Also Mega Man 5 is not all that rare, but it is less common than MM4 or MM6. But still every toy store in the Midwest received a copy. At the time every store I was in had one. But it's possible that this game did not see much in the way of further prints with the advent of other gaming systems, which might account for the unique distribution of MM6.

It's simple really. Nintendo USA didn't expect to distribute MM6 here due to lower MM5 sales. Capcom said "Fine, we will fund a market test batch", it took a little longer, and then Nintendo like the results.

So I got one of these in this week. Excuse the low res pic taken with my PC. My phone is charging and I'm lazy.

That's why I think its a fake label. More likely they screwed it up putting it on. I beleive yes, the MM6 Capcom version was released in Mexico and some Central American countries with distribution funded directly by Capcom before coming to the US and then being picked up by Nintendo America's distributors. (Its still had a USA serial number because they didn't differentiate in NA releases. I believe all of the South American releases were the Brazilian release being distributed.)

Little Samson also shows signs of tampering with the price, or at least an algorithm issue. I'd say you have a problem.... (Notice that multiple records of the same sales?)

I was suggesting that you might have been swindled.

I don't trust either the R.C. Pro-Am or the Capcom Mega Man 6 to be legitimate considering how those labels are pulling off.

The price of Armored Core (PS1) is way out of whack. Currently 9n GVN there are 4 entries of the same exact eBay lot at $113 that also never sold on eBay. I checked. Maybe your algorithm is counting posts with "unavailable" as "sold" for some reason. This seems like a case of someone correcting a mistake eBay listing, but it looks like foul play. Hell, just knowing you can easily manipulate your algorithm is foul play enough. See this photo

So I've been lax lately in getting you new pics of some pickups. (I used spoiler screens to make this easier on the eyes for scrollers, open them up) We will start with the N7 basketball variant Here is Tiger Heli, an uncommon 5 screw but I also have a misprint copy with color print shift error (black) The manual surprisingly also had a seal print shift error for the gold ink. (see pics) Some Uncommon 3 screws, 2 variants of DK3 and an Urban Champion And finally a Nintendo Switch Game! This Black Variant of Darksiders is the only real NSw variant I have seen other than the collectors editions and limited art covers devs/producers have don on purpose.