Naked Warrior

Good Luck, Man! Anybody who had the iron will to NOT cash in that coupon for a delicious Pizza Hut pan pizza is a national hero - to be celebrated and revered for all time.

I have to agree with @RpgCollector...Sealed collectors typically want perfect/no holes in the plastic/no dents in the box...they will pay for it (the $660 example), but with a tear in the seal that big, you are catering to the "Excellent/Nr Mint Condition CIB" crowd, who aren't going to pony up that kind of dough...Still AT LEAST double the price of your average GB R-Type tho...and I wouldn't be surprised if it hit $300 in this market...GB has been pretty hot lately. I don't have any "real" examples either, but I have tried to sell a bunch of nr mint/poor seal GBA games and nobody wants them - Not good enough for the sealed collectors, and too expensive for the CIB guys...

Added 80+ items today - mostly GB/GBA CIB & Boxes/Manuals and CIB DS.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124714825078 Chances the buyer pays on this? I'm going to put it at 0%...give or take 0%...

You posted this in the "Sealed/Graded" section, so my short answer/opinion is - It is a bad time to buy. In my opinion the graded market is being propped up by grading insiders and a lack of information on the population of these grades...pretty soon those insiders will run out of their "prop" money and population reports will start to circulate (even if the community has to create them themselves). I don't think it is a great time to be an "investor" in videogames. But, I agree with @Hammerfestus - It depends on what you are buying and what your collecting goals are...If you are buying Pokemon or Sealed/Graded stuff right now, I can almost guarantee you are going to lose money in the long run. I just don't know how many end buyers there are for a $60,000 sealed/graded Pokemon Red. Now, if your goals are to have a great Xbox or Wii or PS2/3 or DS/3DS collection on the cheap, this is a great time to buy...because even though the pandemic bumped their value up prematurely, they are still likely much cheaper than they will be 5 years from now. I would also argue most CIB stuff from the NES/SNES/N64/GEN eras will probably hold value very well...maybe dip in value in the following 2-3 years (-20% at most), but recover pretty quickly. Cart only is probably more likely to see a prolonged "bust", but not the 40%+ declines like we are going to see on this Pokemon and graded stuff. If you are a gamer/collector, it is never a bad time to buy, because even if you "overspend", you've got that game that you can play and trade as you see fit! If you are an investor/collector, you better have conviction that this investment is going to outperform your typical mix of stocks/bonds...because the risk you are taking is exponentially higher than a model portfolio... Full Disclosure - I've been buying CIB games from various systems all thru the pandemic (In avg to below avg condition mostly to play, and partly to own before/if they get out of control expensive...). I have no interest in Sealed/graded games.

More new things available!

Traditional IRA deductions are a no-go since your Adjusted Gross will be way above $76,000...but I think I read in another thread that you are self-employed, and I don't think SEP IRAs have the same restrictions. I would definitely recommend a tax professional for this year's taxes! Congrats! $200K+! That is amazing!

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Check out my trade thread in the "Selling" Section!

As a quasi-Philadelphian, I don't trust anything coming out of New Jersey...

Damn, man...squeemozot sounds good tonight...

So, as someone who is not originally from Philly, but has lived in (near) Philly for the past 15 years, I can tell you this (from the prospective of Philadelphians): 1) The question should be "Is a cheesesteak a hoagie?" (Sub-sandwich is not in the vocabulary of a real Philadelphian) and 2) Hell no, it's not a hoagie. You think I take the Schuylkill down to Center City to get a "hoagie" wizwit and watch The Birds whip the Giants' ass? What are you, stunad?

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Funky Monkeys Barrel Blast Past Shell-Shocked Crocs

Only a Lurker on NA EBay: There are a ton I feel like I could mention here (like 95% of my collection is from eBay/Amazon), but I would say most of them weren't really "Great pickups" at the time, but exploded in value later...The higher dollar amounts would be stuff like Kid Dracula, Mega Man V, and Shantae for around $500-600. I bought a lot of ~50 CIB N64 games for like $1,000 that included mint-ish copies of games like Paper Mario, Conker's, Carmageddon, Starshot, and 46+ other non-sports games...gotta be worth 3x that (at least) now. But for pure value the day I bought it, I'm going to go with this New In Box Pearl Blue GBA AGS-101. I got it for $60 about a year and a half ago because the listing was a stock photo with the description of "New - Blue Gameboy Advance"...worked out! In the wild: This is an easy one...I started my collecting in 2016 by hitting up local Goodwills/Thrift Stores - There was a thrift store near where I was working and I went in there a couple times and found some neat stuff (JSRF for Xbox, Nights for Sega Saturn) so I started broadening my search. About 3 months later, I walked into a Goodwill that had a ton of PS1 games that had just been put on the shelf. I got them for between $2.99 and $3.99, so the total spend was $111. I call it "The Jackpot". At the time, they were worth around $700, but now I don't even know...I think Persona 2 is pushing $300 on its own! Funny thing is I never really planned on collecting for Sony consoles...but when life gives you PS1 RPGs, you make a PS1 collection

8/10. I actually played the first game after the 2nd (Black Hole Rising is 9/10 BTW) and was a little disappointed...I also don't really like the branching paths that don't allow you to play EVERY level in the main campaign in one go thru...But overall the design is the best of any strategy game I've ever played. And the COs are different enough that it makes every playthrough feel new. Plus with the ability to buy/make units I don't feel the stress that I have when I play Fire Emblem . Advance Wars DS might be my favorite game of all time (at least top three), so if it wasn't for the perfection of that game, this original might have gotten a 9/10 or 10/10. And I agree with @erac, where is this franchise???? Wargroove was a nice homage, but bring back Advance Wars and those crazy CO Powers Nintendo!!!

I don't believe the current prices for anything not sealed/graded are hugely inflated...I think people forget about the demand side of the equation...they look at CIB Pokemon games going for $300+ and they think, Why? There are literally millions of those...but they forget how the videogame market evolved, and the wave of demand that could be coming. Most of us were probably NES generation (I would have been 6 or 7 when it first was catching on in the US), but back then, and thru my middle/high school years there was still a lot of stigma around videogames - I didn't meet one girl/woman who regularly played videogames until I was in college. Pokemon came out in 1998 - my final year of high school. For kids who were 7-10 years old in that timeframe, I feel like that was the turning point when video games went from a niche/nerdy time waster, to a full-fledged cultural phenomenon, not only for boys, but for girls as well. Now those 7-10 year old kids are 30-33 years old...just starting to make the kind of money that allows them to buy the things they've always wanted...or the things they've lost/had to sell over the years. And there are at least double the amount of them (men AND women) that there were 10 years ago when we hit our 30's and started buying NES/SNES. Anecdotally, I work in an industry that is almost opposite of the videogaming industry, but the 20-something women who start work with me almost always have some videogaming experience. For many it is Pokemon, some had Animal Crossing. A lot of them played Wii when it came out. All of them play games on their phone. They always have a good time playing Mario Party or You Don't Know Jack, or other non-twitchy games. And the 20-something dudes are the same as we were when we were 20, except they have a ton of appreciation for "old school" games...(although I find they only ever want to play N64 (MarioKart, Goldeneye, NBA Hangtime) or Gamecube (Melee, Super Strikers)). That's why I'm so certain your "Marios/Pokemons/MarioKarts/Mario Parties/fun co-op experiences" will continue to rise - not as fast as in the last year or anything, but the people's frothing demand for these games always increases!

I've been following this thread for a while and it felt at first like most people were just amazed by the crazy prices, but it feels more and more like people are lamenting not being able to buy certain games they wanted...I hear you, but we should keep a few things in mind - 1) Many of us had lots of years of "cheap" game buying. I started in 2016, so maybe not as many as others, but I am still so grateful for all those Goodwill finds and mispriced eBay listings (which you can still find pretty often!). I mean, I never got to experience buying NES CIB games for less than $100, but it doesn't really stop my aspirations. 2) We have a lot of options as game collectors...Unless you are a hedge fund manager, NIB full sets for pretty much any system pre-Xbox/PS2/GCN is going to be near impossible...but that doesn't mean you couldn't collect mint CIB...or not-so-mint CIB. I really only collect CIB games, but I've thought about what would happen if I couldn't afford it anymore...I would move to just collecting cart/manuals and make custom cases...and I'd lower my expectations on condition (although TBH, mine are already pretty low). I have always been a Nintendo kid, but I started collecting SEGA stuff this year - Do you know how many CIB Genesis games cost more than $500??? Two! (Outback Joey doesn't count, and you know it). I can get like 7 of the 10 best/rarest GEN games for the same price as a CIB copy of Hagane on SNES or 4 of the 10 for the same price as a CIB Chrono Trigger (which is not rare AT ALL) and it has opened my eyes to a ton of great new (to me) games. I bet a lot of people on here have never looked into handhelds or more recent consoles like the Xbox 360 or Wii (which have tons of great games for less than $20 CIB right now...) 3) You can always unlock the value in the games you already have...I don't even know how many games I have, but I know I have over 1000 different CIB GBA games (including the GBA videos)...at least 350 of those are terrible...even if I sold/traded them for $3 each, I'd have $1,000 to re-deploy - I could buy like 1/4 of the 3DS library for that much! Point being, we've survived this long, we can continue to collect (but might have to make a few more sacrifices) if we want to, and there is a huge, undiscovered world of games out there for almost everybody! Keep your chin up! P.S. I do think the sealed/graded market will crash hard...I don't see who the end buyer for multiple $60,000 Pokemon games is...I mean, there probably are a dozen or so end buyers for something like that, but when you eventually have 10,000 graded copies, those twelve people are going to be pretty full...right now people are just trading them between each other to prop up the value...the end user demand has got to be super low...but I hate to say the CIB market is probably not coming down anytime soon...for the exact reasons I mentioned above - All those people who wanted sealed/graded/mint are going to start settling for something cheaper and realize, "You know what, a 7/10 box for $100 provides a lot more utility for me compared to a 10/10 sealed for $30,000..."

https://www.ebay.com/itm/164835229921?hash=item2660f200e1:g:3wsAAOSwP8RghzAq I think this might be a re-seal...

I like how games bring people together...more than pretty much any other collectible that I can think of. I love seeing my friends/coworkers (and/or their kids) eyes light up when they see my walls of games... I like hearing people say, "Man! Do you have "[Insert Game/System]?" and I can reply with, "Hell yes! Plus have you ever played [Insert lesser known game in the same genre]?" I like that everyone wants to party at my house, and I have enough room/systems/tvs to have more than a dozen people playing Smash Ultimate (Switch), Super Mario Strikers (GCN), NBA Hangtime (N64) and Contra (NES) all at the same time! I like reading manuals before I play a game like I used to do on the car ride home after buying a SNES game with my birthday money. I like having all of (video)gaming history at my fingertips, to play or not at my leisure. I used to have a lot of disdain for sealed/graded collecting because that seemed to be the antithesis of all the reasons I found collecting games enjoyable...but I have come to realize that my motivations aren't everybody's. There are people on here that make their living off investing and/or flipping and there are people who care about owning the rarest of the rare or the mintiest of the minty...That's not me, but that's OK.

Agreed. It's funny because when I told him I was going to have to return it because it crashed if you pressed start on the title screen, he was like, "What??? I tested it and it worked!!" And my exact response was, "Are you sure you got past the title screen? Because every time I test a game, I just make sure the title screen boots and then I turn it off, assuming it works." He accepted the return 5 minutes later...

I bought about 100 different Gamecube games over the fall/winter of 2020 and this exact thing happened to me twice - I put the game in my Gamecube, it didn't work, I made sure the disc was clean, tried it again, it didn't work, then tried it in my Wii and it worked. I kept both of those games, but it does bother me that I can't play them on Gamecube . I also had one case where the guy swore his game worked even tho it was badly scratched, but I tried it in both my Gamecube and Wii and it booted the title screen, but as soon as I hit start it crashed...had to return that one.

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