jonebone

12 hours ago, wu1fyy said:

To access graded data and add unlimited games to your collection, you need a "Power Collector" membership. However, loose, CIB, and sealed data are available for free across all categories.

Have you considered using a free trial offer?  I usually don't pay for paid things unless trying first.  A huge price tracking site cardladder.com does the same thing 7 days free before they hit you with the $15 a month charge.

4 hours ago, YOURTURN said:

I totally miss the days when "buying and selling" were nothing more than the ins and outs of this hobby. It made complete sense to me when somebody would buy a cart or CIB copy as a means to fill in a gap, or simply sell what they no longer want as a way to finance what they now want to collect.

Plus, the space scenario is why I have shrunk down my current graded collection goals. Because I have seen what you are talking about. And the results in some have me wonder what the collector had to sacrifice in the end.

In a "mature" hobby with defined pricing and steady demand / supply, you'd expect to be able to get out of items near even, plus or minus fees and shipping.  I.e. if you bought something worth $1000 today and wanted to sell it next month, you should be able to get probably $850-$1150 if that pricing were fair and stable at the moment you bought it.

The market on the way up was so crazy that the $1000 could double to $2000 within months or sometimes much higher if you got lucky on the buy price and the item was in a drought.  Conversely on the way down, that $1000 could dwindle to $500 or less if you bought near the top and it was a case copy or supply kept coming out on it.  And over the long haul it was much worse, that $1k could have turned to $10k and could have turned to $100 depending on the title and how it went.

This is not just a graded games thing though, it's any speculative investment ever.  Beanie babies, VHS, crypto, etc.  People just keep focusing on video games because this is a video game forum and they like to rant.  It's really just a much broader argument about speculative investments and the cycles they follow.  The difference between this and something like beanie babies is that a stable set of core collectors always sets a floor to how low the games can fall, while beanie babies really had no organic collector base in the first place.

Everyone is just a lot more selective these days.

In the up market it's easy to be a graded collector.  For a year or two there you could buy almost anything high grade and turn around and sell it at a profit in 3 or 6 months if you got bored with it.  Pretty easy to collect in that market.

In today's market, or the market of the last 2ish years now?  You have to look at every purchase as being immediately underwater.  Thus you're only going to buy it if you really like it or if you want it long term.  

Not to mention the space issue.  They take up too much damn room and if you collect a lot of things (platforms, games, consoles, toys, displays, cards, who knows what else) then you only have so much room to dedicate to them.

Sierra point and click games of the 80s were famous for it.  I just googled a top 10 and that was number 1.

https://www.thegamer.com/sierra-adventure-games-funniest-deaths/

One I remember vividly is in LSL1.  If you try to sleep with the hooker and don't use a condom, you die. 

Surely you jest

People need to remember it's not title specific and it's just the entire collectible market in general.  I think the Zelda II 9.8 A+ was sold at $102k and then closed at $14kish this weekend too (same exact copy).  Crazy sports cards sold for $750k+ that have barely hit $100k when relisted recently too.  

The thing about markets is that they go way higher than they should when money is flowing easily and people are spending recklessly.  Then they bottom out way lower than they should when money is tight, people are scared and are being very careful with their purchases.  

The case has always been not to spend more than you can afford to lose.  

It's been okay so far.  I've enjoyed it but haven't been addicted to need to play thru it.  Play a half hour or an hour here and there with the kids and I'm fine shelving it after that.  I'll give it a 5/5 for variety as they change it up a lot but for some reason I'm just not addicted to finishing it either.

Bought today crew checking in.  WIll play it later.

I'm obviously biased being an N64 kid but I thought N64 and it wasn't even close. The difference was that PS1 had a much deeper library where N64 was top heavy.  But if you limited it to top 10 games only I'd rather have the N64 every time.

Ironically enough I asked for a PS1 in Christmas of 1996 assuming that N64 was sold out everywhere and would be tough to get at Christmas (and it was sold out).  Yet my parents somehow made it happen with SM64 and the rest is history.

May not have become a collector or NintendoAge member if it weren't for that pivotal moment, who knew!  

You still need some?  I may have a a few laying around that have some scuffs and such if you don't need perfect condition.

I'd say we're at a much lower risk now than we were 18 months ago.  China and Russia have some serious economic issues at the moment, while we're faring better in 2023 than we did in 2022.  When you have those economic issues your priority is to fix your internal struggles rather than try to attack people externally.

1 hour ago, Gulag Joe said:

I think either people get excited at Heritage auctions, or the buyers in those auctions are simply a different demographic and have no time to waste on peasant eBay auctions.

Heritage is not indicative of fair market value, ebay is a better pace of that.  HA is just much more volatile with more uninformed bidders.  All collectors use ebay.  Many collectors do not go after HA items and it is more reflective of speculators and investors. 

20 minutes ago, Gulag Joe said:

Call of Duty- the first full PC version of the game. Same grade. Same grading company. The one on HA sells for $2,000 more dollars than the one on eBay. Is it buyer stupidity, someone who doesn’t watch eBay, or both?

 

PC is speculative.  I sold a raw that was probably about 80+ a couple months back at auction for $350ish?  $400-$500 is fair value of an 80+ yes.

One of my favorite series and I've played and beat them all except 4.  I'm only about 20 days into 4 while my daugher is ahead of me already.

I'll say that 1 is archaic.  You have a timed amount of time to finish the game basically.  They got rid of that in 2 and it was far for the better.  You can skip 1 if you're new to the franchise, the "story" you miss isn't a big deal.

2 is a good start, but 3 improved over 2.  2 lets you explore caves and adds a bunch new Pikmin.  Much better game that 1 since the timer to beat the game is removed.  3 was even a bigger improvement over 2, lots more variety, graphics, levels, "story" etc.  

4 is on steroids.  So much new stuff in the game.  You have a "hub world" where you can upgrade your dog / gear kind of like an RPG, that's all new.  They changed all building material to generic components which is great too.  Previously if you needed to build a bridge, you had to find those exact tiles somewhere in the level.  Now you just gather a shared pool of resource titles that you can use wherever you want.  It's really just an amazing game all around, not even to mention the night mode which is like tower defense.

If you want the best game, play 4, but 1 will be unplayable afterwards and 2 and 3 will feel like a let down.  If you're excited about the series in general, I'd say skip 1 and play 2 -> 3 -> 4 in order.  Hope that helps!

Maybe confused?  But you're making really bad decisions here.  And crazily enough, you haven't faced any real consequences for those decisions, probably why you keep making more of them.  

The consequences are inevitably coming though, I really hope you don't get hurt seriously or worse.  

On 4/9/2023 at 5:30 PM, jonebone said:

I bought a bit of NTDOY stock on Thursday just for kicks.  Between this and another Zelda in 2023 it's easy Nintendo is going to beat revenue numbers for the year.

Right around $10 at the time of this post, now about $11.30 and Nintendo smashed their earnings report today of course.  You knew the Mario movie did well and Zelda has been a homerun too.  Pikmin 4 has been fun for me but more niche, and yet another Mario game this Fall that will do well.  Another easy buy and hold.

When will we get the new console rumor though... 

16 hours ago, DoctorEncore said:

 

Not worth the price, imo. I found a couple sellers back when I was considering a CIB copy, but they weren't willing to budge in the slightest. I'd rather own several other CIB fullsets. Also, since it's the same game as World Class Track Meet, I have zero problem with people who don't have it claiming they have a full set.

Anyways, not trying to disparage @CIB_Wholesale in any way here. Wish you the best of luck on the sale, my friend.

There was a CB at auction in the last two weeks.  If you can't buy it fixed price you have to wait a long time for an auction to appear.

Free bump, was meaning to pledge and finally remembered today.  Great work!

I'll give you a different perspective.

You aren't the same person you were 5 years ago.  We change over time.  If you have now lost interest, it's perfectly normal to consider selling.  

My only advice is to never sell it all at once.  You'll almost certainly regret it.  It's a rash decision and your entire life long collecting is locked into whatever the value was at that exact moment.  

You can trim all along the way.  If you're a set collector that's hard because trimming can break a set and once you've broken the set you'll sell a lot more.  But it's perfectly normal to just trim from a space perspective too.  Someone, either you or whoever inherits it will eventually sell it.  You might as well benefit a bit from it yourself too.

6 hours ago, rondy said:

I was just checking sold listings for this game and saw this.

Damn, anyone here got it? Such a deal, I would have paid at least 4 times that and easily twice as much for a CIB that nice. Anyway, I never check HA, but I'm looking for a VGA graded Air Fortress 85 or better

Yes I bought it cracked it and sold it for $1300ish on eBay?  I had it pegged at $1500+ value and wasn't too greedy.  Sold in hours.

This is not news.  We've been in an arms race with China for the better part of a decade at least.  It's not preparing for war so much as it is preparing to deter the other country from intervening.  China wants Taiwan, we do not want that to happen.  Eventually someone will make a move though. 

I'd estimate yours around $15k based on what you describe.  But putting down a value is just a swag, it would be a whole extra argument if you had to "prove" it and try to get an insurance payout.  That's the part that is impossible to "prove".

Looks like it's done really well but I'll be passing.  Beat it once and I don't see the need to revisit personally.

Sure I'll check it out.  Most excited for Pikmin 4 dropping next month.

The old internet was way better.  AskJeeves and Lycos FTW.