I'm not sure how useful this information is today, but in the spirit of sharing, here is some population report data from VGA I collected in 3 separate eras (2013, 2016, and 2019).
Basically, I sought to track the VGA population reports for all 30 NES Black Box games, plus two of the silver boxes (Kid Icarus and Metroid... apologies to rad Rad Racer!).
Click here:
Click on the tabs at the bottom of this spreadsheet [2013], [2016], and [2019] to see the snapshots for those years. Obviously, you'd want the 2019 for the latest, but it's kinda neat to see the changes over the earlier periods. You might want to set the zoom to 75%.
For those unaware, in the past VGA allowed you to request 3 game population reports per day via email (business days only). However, each variation counted as a separate game. i.e. SMB Cardboard hangtab was a variant, white seal was a variant, etc. And even sometimes the year of release mattered too. For example, white seal SMB had separate 1988 and a 1989 years, which is why that one seems to be broken up as 2 sets of data. In fact, looking at this now, I don't appear to have gotten the 1989 SMB white seal data for 2013, only 1988 data. It's all part of how they had it stored in their database, which I admit I don't really understand. Putting all that together it meant that a single black box game pop report could burn all 3 of your requests per day, and that might not be even enough to cover a single title! This process took a while, and I thank VGA for putting up with me during these times lol. They were pretty responsive most of the time, but sometimes my email got lost in the mix and I didn't get a response for a while, so I had to re-send the request. Over the course of a few months, I could slowly fill out the complete table.
The years for 2013 and 2016 are generally complete, but unfortunately, I was only able to finish roughly half of the 2019 data. Late that year, I started getting the response from VGA that their database was being updated, and that retrieving population reports would not be possible anymore. As many others have noted, this continues to be their response to this very day. So this is where the project sort of ended. If pigs fly and VGA ever gets to finishing their new website, perhaps this and all their other population reports all be available for anyone to see.... but I'm not holding my breath!
VGA's terminology for the 4 "major" variants of the black boxes:
- Cardboard Hangtab/Hinge sticker --> these are the sticker sealed games with cardboard hangtab
- Cardboard Hangtab --> start of the shrinkwrapped era games, also with cardboard hangtab
- Black/Silver Nintendo Seal --> non-cardboard hangtab games, but still have the circular seal of quality
- White Nintendo Seal --> oval / white seal of quality
Note: don't ask me why but sometimes VGA called it "Black" Nintendo seal, and sometimes it was "Silver" Nintendo seal. Key point though is that it's the older / circular seal of quality. (Kid Icarus and Metroid are "Gold" Nintendo Seal instead of either "Black" or "Silver")
Caveat emptors/disclaimers/notes/etc:
- Data is for entertainment purposes only. I do not guarantee the accuracy of it.
- This was a manual process, there could be mistakes in the tables, either by myself inputting them wrong, or just getting bad data to begin with. I actually remember getting one pop report that suddenly had fewer results in the later years than in the earlier one, which didn't make sense. I pointed it out and then they realized it was their mistake and provided me with the correct data.
- Obviously even the latest data here is rather old by this point. And some of these games have been crossed over to wata (there have been many public posts of black/silver box wata crossovers). But the main ideas here were to get a general sense of what was graded over the years, and also to point out how few certain titles had been graded over time since VGA started. Some variants even as of the last reports still had no graded examples of. Also, a well known collector has at least one sealed six pack case of each of these games, but it's unknown what variant(s) they are. While most of those would be pristine examples, even throwing those in, you're still looking at very few sealed black boxes to go around.
- I left the Q grades in. To a sealed collector, those really don't mean anything though. So basically, you could ignore those
Anyway, enjoy! Hope someone finds these entertaining. It was fun putting them together, but I don't know if I'd want to do it all over again
I'm not sure how useful this information is today, but in the spirit of sharing, here is some population report data from VGA I collected in 3 separate eras (2013, 2016, and 2019). Basically, I sought to track the VGA population reports for all 30 NES Black Box games, plus two of the silver boxes (Kid Icarus and Metroid... apologies to rad Rad Racer!). Click here: Click on the tabs at the bottom of this spreadsheet [2013], [2016], and [2019] to see the snapshots for those years. Obviously, you'd want the 2019 for the latest, but it's kinda neat to see the changes over the earlier periods. You might want to set the zoom to 75%. For those unaware, in the past VGA allowed you to request 3 game population reports per day via email (business days only). However, each variation counted as a separate game. i.e. SMB Cardboard hangtab was a variant, white seal was a variant, etc. And even sometimes the year of release mattered too. For example, white seal SMB had separate 1988 and a 1989 years, which is why that one seems to be broken up as 2 sets of data. In fact, looking at this now, I don't appear to have gotten the 1989 SMB white seal data for 2013, only 1988 data. It's all part of how they had it stored in their database, which I admit I don't really understand. Putting all that together it meant that a single black box game pop report could burn all 3 of your requests per day, and that might not be even enough to cover a single title! This process took a while, and I thank VGA for putting up with me during these times lol. They were pretty responsive most of the time, but sometimes my email got lost in the mix and I didn't get a response for a while, so I had to re-send the request. Over the course of a few months, I could slowly fill out the complete table. The years for 2013 and 2016 are generally complete, but unfortunately, I was only able to finish roughly half of the 2019 data. Late that year, I started getting the response from VGA that their database was being updated, and that retrieving population reports would not be possible anymore. As many others have noted, this continues to be their response to this very day. So this is where the project sort of ended. If pigs fly and VGA ever gets to finishing their new website, perhaps this and all their other population reports all be available for anyone to see.... but I'm not holding my breath! VGA's terminology for the 4 "major" variants of the black boxes: - Cardboard Hangtab/Hinge sticker --> these are the sticker sealed games with cardboard hangtab - Cardboard Hangtab --> start of the shrinkwrapped era games, also with cardboard hangtab - Black/Silver Nintendo Seal --> non-cardboard hangtab games, but still have the circular seal of quality - White Nintendo Seal --> oval / white seal of quality Note: don't ask me why but sometimes VGA called it "Black" Nintendo seal, and sometimes it was "Silver" Nintendo seal. Key point though is that it's the older / circular seal of quality. (Kid Icarus and Metroid are "Gold" Nintendo Seal instead of either "Black" or "Silver") Caveat emptors/disclaimers/notes/etc: - Data is for entertainment purposes only. I do not guarantee the accuracy of it. - This was a manual process, there could be mistakes in the tables, either by myself inputting them wrong, or just getting bad data to begin with. I actually remember getting one pop report that suddenly had fewer results in the later years than in the earlier one, which didn't make sense. I pointed it out and then they realized it was their mistake and provided me with the correct data. - Obviously even the latest data here is rather old by this point. And some of these games have been crossed over to wata (there have been many public posts of black/silver box wata crossovers). But the main ideas here were to get a general sense of what was graded over the years, and also to point out how few certain titles had been graded over time since VGA started. Some variants even as of the last reports still had no graded examples of. Also, a well known collector has at least one sealed six pack case of each of these games, but it's unknown what variant(s) they are. While most of those would be pristine examples, even throwing those in, you're still looking at very few sealed black boxes to go around. - I left the Q grades in. To a sealed collector, those really don't mean anything though. So basically, you could ignore those Anyway, enjoy! Hope someone finds these entertaining. It was fun putting them together, but I don't know if I'd want to do it all over again
