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I would bet anything it's just because people think they look cool and there's no cost difference between boring gray and kewl transparent blue. Mega Cat Studios occasionally has plain gray ones, but mostly do the snazzy color thing.

Are you getting hit with double taxes on this? Does Otis pay their capital gains, then you have to pay capital gains on your gains? From a tax perspective, this seems like literally the worst thing if that's actually the case. Like we're certainly in a period where it's impossible to lose money on collectibles, but as if 28% + Otis fees wasn't high enough, do you get hit with the bonus 28%?

77600 + .99 * 77600 = 210,000 - ~30% for taxes? A few thousand more than the actual 28% tax rate but what's a few thousand between friends. They're definitely lumping something else they're keeping as taxes, do they say what and how that's calculated? I went through the SEC filings of another one of these companies and they had a huge fine print list of fees they will charge for warehousing, maintenance, etc. but don't tell you how much they actually are. Congrats to anyone who doubled their money in 4 months on this super long term investment! 2021 to the moon!

"Garcia, nobody can hire my feelings!". Last Alert is a treasure. One of many awkwardly delivered, awkwardly scripted lines in this game. And it's not like one weird line in the middle of a cut scene, they stopped the game for a second specifically so the protagonist can say this important line. "AHHHHH! Nothing is pointless! And the reason is... because I'm the President of the great United States of America!". I don't know how well this line stands on its own, but the protagonist of this game (the POTUS) constantly, ridiculously says "And the reason is... because I'm the President of the United States", so him saying it while jumping onto a Space Shuttle is the cherry on top of the perfect sundae that is Metal Wolf Chaos.

But I want to keep it sealed on my shelf now!

Wasn't sure if it was going to be the ultra rare 7 controllers BOTW or the masterpiece FF7 for 40k before I clicked, but it was a nice surprise.

This is Cena’s heel turn. People have wanted it for decades. His new gimmick is going to be CCP apologist. This is going to be like a modern day Iron Sheik thing right?

Research jobs sound fun. In my mind it’s people poring through archives for info on obscure ancient coins and books. In reality it’s probably entering all the latest Italian set Yu-Gi-Oh cards into a database. Being a grader sounds like everything bad about working for the post office but also requires specialized knowledge and ruins your eyesight.

I have like 50 cultural artifacts ready to be deported at Zenmarket now. Hope it goes well Their website is SO much better too.

So always just check sold listings, got it.

Also to answer your unanswered questions: Boat shipping (surface) is cheap. If you combine a few games and are willing to forget about them until Christmas, you can do that instead of EMS or Fedex. EMS is just starting up again after COVID shutdowns in a couple weeks, so shipping has been more expensive than normal the past year. FDS games are rewritable, so the only thing that's unique is the stickers (and there are fake stickers, woo!). If you're buying FDS don't forget to check the code on the back of the out box, it's unique to the game and often incorrectly paired. There's nicer bootleg stuff generally than what I've seen in America, made to fool collectors not just for Timmy who wants to play Mario Kart 64. I want games like Recca and Gimmick, but I'm not confident enough to buy them off YAJ. I might need to enlist local help one day from the smart people here. I used to use Dejapan, the bargain basement proxy whose prices are so low it has to be some kind of drug front, but their sniper failed on 2 big lots for me. Some weeks later 2 more snipes appeared to fail but were manually corrected to show I won days later. I don't trust them anymore. They also used to double-box my packages and stopped doing so in the past few months.

Also good luck @Hammerfestus on your quest to steal Japanese heritage and export it onto American shelves. It is currently my favorite part of collecting video games.

Is Armadillo not garbage? I played it after I played the similar homebrew Rollie and it's just the choppiest, most intermittently sluggish, most motion-sickness inducing NES game I've ever played. It beats Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout.

Hasn't changed my overall interest, just what I'm targeting. I do prefer the laid back "Oh, that's all over then?" feeling of the 2018 plateau compared to the FOMO gold rushes of 2020 and 2021. Overall it's probably making my collection better because I'm quickly and predominantly getting all the stuff I've put off until a hypothetical one day. The day is here to pare down that long term want list, particularly what doesn't cost 3x what it did 2 years ago. Can't plan on prices to increase hand in hand with rarity anymore. Some of my want list stuff is inevitably an article, Wata case size, or auction sale away from becoming the next hype thing. How many GB games used to fill bulk lots more than Super Mario Land? Today it's solidly $150+. Super Mario Land was garbage just a couple years ago. Who on Earth thought CIB SML was collectible? It was worth less than Klax. KLAX. Now it's like the hottest Game Boy game you can post on Instagram, do ya got the green screens??

Gilligan's Island is the only one I've seen. It was alright. I guess I saw it on Nick at Nite? I've seen a bunch of 1960s shows growing up in the 90s/00s thinking about it. Do kids these days get random 80s and 90s sitcoms mixed in with their cartoon channels? I'd rather watch cartoons TBH.

Definitely over half. Everyone had a shelf of VHS tapes in the 80s, who has any now except some hoarders who don’t clean out their attics and your local Goodwill who has one shelf for the entire city? Old, no longer easily playable media is trash to most people, especially in a time before any video games had a hint of collectibility. I’m sure a much, much bigger percentage of PS3 games live on.

I’m surprised anyone cares about Sega’s approval because no one ever cared about collecting licensed Genesis games in the first place like with NES. I’ve actually never seen a list that excludes games like Mike Ditka Power Football and Star Control as dirty unlicensed games. The fact that it’s a legal release and not some OCDReproductions stolen crap is all that matters.

I don't get rear pockets. Why do I want to sit on the things I'm carrying?

It’s easy to make a game ill-suited for a handheld with a tiny screen being held by shaky hands. It’s harder to do that on a console. Some genres work better on handhelds (Pokemon, puzzle, visual novel, etc.) but we also get every last Call of Duty, Uncharted, and Metal Gear Solid on them. The best handheld games are those that wouldn’t simply be better played on your TV with a Game Boy Player or PSTV but across any era except maybe the 2000s that isn’t the majority of them. Switch is basically the worst of all worlds, an underpowered console and a shaky hands handheld with itty bitty buttons that has only console games. What a disaster, am I right guys!

7/10. Challenging platforming and easy bosses. My favorite combination as a Ninja Gaiden fan! I think the falling platforms in 8-3 are a little excessive even for a challenging NES game. The end of this game is balls hard. Maybe not the hardest NES game, but it's the hardest one I can actually beat.

Nintendo gets away with little BS like this all the time but we all give them a pass because they're Nintendo. OOT MQ was free as a preorder bonus, now ports and remakes are full price, and are the bulk of Nintendo's "filler" games in between the big new stuff now. Hell, a pair of joycons are $70 and they're probably the worst, least reliable controllers Nintendo has ever made and their plans seems to be never actually fixing drift issues. Their paid online service?? With the tethered phone voice chat! My god! And I'm not complaining cause I'm happy to ignore literally everything Nintendo does in between their big Zelda, Mario, Metroid games, but man they're nearly as bad as an Ubisoft or EA. They just have much more beloved characters.

It's neat. I like when these reissued games are released in American for the first time rather than just Mega Man 2 or Shantae or whatever. It's pure collector bait, but at least it feels the collectible value is at least somewhat more legitimate.

I played Rock Band 4 on it once and thought “Eh this isn’t any better than Rock Band 3” and haven’t seen one since.

If you’re paying to play SS again you deserve all 50 hours of the slog that game is.

It's gotta be in a set of some kind to have organic interest without someone marketing it I think. Game Boy hardcore completionists want some of these obscure GB variants. NBA Ballers Platinum Hits is $1000+ because people need it for their Xbox PH set, when it's an $8 game otherwise. There are so many undocumented miniscule variants, the market can't sustain any random minor rare variant selling for crazy money. I roll my eyes all the way out the back of my head and down the street when I see someone with a black box NES game start talking up the "rare 28th print, so and so code over here, only in print for 3 months according to this spreadsheet!" as if that matters to anyone.