DarkKobold

It's also one of those games. If two people with deep pockets feel they need to own it, the sky is the limit. Pricecharting is actually valuable for one purpose here - it shows that there hasn't been one available for ~7 years on eBay. Someone with money but without contacts to find rare stuff is gonna bid through the roof on this, because this might be their last chance this decade.

I bought it from the guy in Italy who had multiple copies. I just checked eBay, It appears he finally ran out. He must have found a pretty good stash somewhere. He did it the best way possible if you want to unload a rare game you have 30 copies of. He wouldn't negotiate a single dime off, he'd only list one at a time, he wouldn't tell you how many he had left, and he would usually wait 1-3 weeks before posting another one. He might have gone months with out a sale, but sometimes, when he'd list one, the pure FOMO would rule out, and someone would buy it immediately, which meant waiting weeks to find out if he had any left. The FOMO definitely caught up with me, and I bought it at full price. That stung, but... FOMO.

So, I'm not sure I'm deserving of my own thread, but I figured I'd make one anyway. I thought it would be fun to go through my game collection, set by set, and talk about why it was fun to collect, the bad stories, the good stories, etc. To start, here's my complete US (114), complete Euro exclusive (168), and working toward complete Worldwide Sega Master System set. Putting together the US set was mostly uneventful. I got really lucky, finding a BIN lot with James Buster Douglas CIB mixed in with a bunch of generic SMS games for $300, in 2021. Otherwise, I don't really remember getting most of the set. I had Alf, Ys, and Phantasy Star early on, so the rest of the set wasn't hard to put together. The Euro exclusives, on the other hand, were a ton of fun. Trying to seek out deals all around Europe, finding anyone with underpriced games.... One of my favorite stories was finding Power Strike II - It was on some random Swedish game store website, for half the price of a normal CIB. However, there were no pictures, and no description. So, I emailed and asked the two main questions: Do you ship to the US, and is it complete? It is, I order it, and it shows up dead mint. Looks like it'd never been opened. Usually, stories like that don't turn out good, lol. Another fun story was finding Masters of Combat. I got an incredible eBay snipe out of Portugal, for around 30-40% of what the most recent auctions in the UK had been closing at. My heart is pounding through my ears, as for those that don't know, MoC is the rarest, most expensive game out of the set. Later on, I'm on twitter looking for other SMS posts to find deals.... but then, I see this tweet - My freaking snipe, being advertised to a following of around 4,000 people. I was sweating bullets. Was someone going to be backdooring me? Is it going to ship? Is the seller going to cancel my listing? I was beyond pissed. Obviously, the story ended well, but my F5 button broke due to over use on the shipping page. I eventually confronted him a year later, on youtube of all places, and he just replied with a sweat emoji. I wasn't still mad, but I wanted to point out what a crap move that was, for someone who apparently is seen as a price police. Those were the most eventful gets. Now, for the downsides: Australian published SMS games suck. They use about 1/4" thinner cases, which stick out like sore thumbs, and they don't have real manuals, instead unfolding posters. I spent a lot of money on a lot of expensive Australian rare games, just to find that out. T2 judgement day is my last Australian release to replace. Also, SMS spines fade in about 30 seconds of sunlight. Seriously, finding nice spines for SMS games is brutal, because they didn't use very good ink. This was honestly one of the most fun sets I've collected. Having to find deals halfway across the world, trying to convince random game shops in the middle of nowhere England to ship to some weirdo obsessive in the US, scouring deals for games most of you don't care about, it was just a blast. Finally, I'll end with a flex picture: the heaviest of the set.

Just an FYI - Broke Studio is increasing the price of each game by 5 euro starting Feb 1st. If you want to grab games from them, now is the time before the price increase. The Star Keeper thread reminded me of this, so I went ahead and ordered a few of the ones I didn't have. https://www.brokestudio.fr/ I'm not affiliated with them in any way shape or form, nor am I getting anything from this post. I have my own studio, lol. Micro Mages is one of my favorite homebrew, that's all.

OK, gotcha. It's not early. Just earlier. Great clarification. A++. And that constitutes many reasons. I.... was there.

LOL, Wow. First, I was saying hypocrite, because I'm saying "it's not worth that" because, clearly it is to me, otherwise I'd sell my copy for what it's currently going for. It was meant as sort of a tongue-in-cheek, pointing out the irony of what I was saying. Also, Star Keeper is far, far, far, from being an "early" homebrew. I'm pretty certain Battle Kid 1 & 2 were out by that point, and the field of homebrew was already pretty flooded. It wasn't particularly impressive as far as design goes. It's an OK game, but it's only a strangely unique game for being released in limited quantities, from China, and is currently undumped. It really isn't as historically special as you're making it out to be. You insulting the Super A'can left and right is pretty hilarious. A 16 bit system with fun games is 100% the exact same level as a handheld with absolutely awful screen lag.

Fair enough, it just seems like such an odd release, in a dense field of homebrew. I was hoping there was more depth to the story of why it's so desirable, that's all. Like some cool factoid about it that set it apart from the crowd.

Full hypocrite disclosure: I own this from the original NA sales thread, and I would not sell it at the price it's currently going for. Disclosures aside, this game isn't that great, I can't understand why it's going for so much money. Can anyone explain why this particular homebrew has captured so much attention? There's so many other great homebrew games. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game, but it's no Battle Kid. I don't understand why this particular game is so insanely sought after.

Yup! And there's nothing wrong with either side, imo. Also, I guess it's important to say what it means for something to be "part of your personality." For me, it's because one of my friends group is all retro game collectors, it's what we enjoy talking about. One of the last two girls I seriously dated was a retro collector. When I host get-togethers, it's centered around retro games and retro gamers. When we plan friend vacations, we go to conventions like PRGE or Game On Expo. When we got out on the town, it's either to an arcade bar or to go game hunting at local game stores. In reality, a personality is more about introvert/extrovert kind of measures, game collecting isn't part of the myers brigg test, lol. But I feel that definition helps explain why I call it part of my personality.

If they're in my house.... we're already at a level of intimacy that they should know who I am. I don't walk around with a shirt on that says how many video games are in my collection. And I'm 100% happy with people seeing my game collection as a big part of my personality. Not the only part, but a big part. I find it odd that both your references are about sex. Also, if you've ever met a swinger, you know that the first thing out of their mouth is about them swinging. Every swinger I've ever met defines themselves by their hobby.

I almost see my collection as different - I can't imagine someone "knowing me" but also trying to hide what I consider a huge part of my life. I host a lot of get togethers for local friends, and our joining factor is mostly that we collect video games (actually, most of those are past tense, but I digress). Collecting has been such a big part of my life, that if people don't like my collection, they can GTFO of my house. Luckily, collecting hasn't just brought me video games, it's brought me so many great close friends that are friends for life, regardless of whether or not they continue to collect. So in short, I do care what people think, because it's a good judge of whether or not I want them in my life.

So, my favorite "find" of 2023 was obviously REBEL for Super A'can, but I paid 1.5 years of bento boxes for that, so it wasn't that much of a "find." This, however, was my best score of 2023. No manual, but a $3000 piece of cardboard for $275 ain't bad.

I only want one Badger. Give me that Super A'can Full set badger.

You're denying me the dopamine of an endless circular argument about what constitutes a complete set!

One of the things that really scratches my brain is a discussion of what counts as a fullset. Like, does RCA Studio II require you have Bingo? There's 2 copies known. There's no Amstrad GX4000 badge, but if there were, there's like one owner of Chase HQ2. Anyway, I would love to see a debate thread as to what counts as a full set. I'd get many dopamine hits from a long, detailed, nerdy discussion of what should count as a complete set.

I'm a little late to this conversation, but... This FRIST PRINT!!!11eleventy SMB is also really the heart of the sealed game explosion. They sold it to themselves for like $100k, and then had the media run a bunch of articles about how they agreed to buy it from themselves for an absurd value, and that makes the price super-duper real. Then they did that a few more times, and got a bunch of rubes to fall in line. So, they not only pumped the market monetarily, they also set out to change "what matters" in NES collecting. I don't remember anyone giving a shit about print runs. NWC and Stadium Events were the grails to talk about. So my question is, now that the emperor has been shown to not be wearing clothes, are we going to go back to talking more about stadium events, and less about print runs?

Also, since Rebel came in under budget, and this ended 15 minutes later, I decided to bid on this. Kinda got lost in the shuffle with how this thread went.

Once it's dumped, it'll be made available to the entire Super A'can community. I'll have more to say on that soon, but big things are coming. I honestly have barely played it myself, as I'm concerned about hurting it before the dump is made. Probably 3-4 weeks out before that is solved. I feel more like a steward of the game, than an owner at the moment. It's my fault if this copy gets lost to time, so that's sort of a burden, but one I hope to remedy quick. I do wonder how I'll feel about collecting moving forward, as this was #1. No game will hit bigger, emotionally.

FWIW, I never posted a price. It was still a completed eBay listing, and being one-of-a-kind, it's not very hard to track down a price. You basically have to put a 3 month moratorium on posting items like this, so they expire off eBay... except this was also "immortalized" in an article, so, basically, the chance of it flying under the radar as to what I paid was never going to happen. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/09/fancy-owning-the-rare-taiwanese-flop-super-acan-heres-your-chance

There's a total of one system on eBay, so no, I can't exactly recommend everyone go out and buy it, lololol. But I'm also not recommending people go buy Daytona Netlink either. And whether or not Tetris or Super Mario Land is on GameBoy has literally nothing to do with Amazing Tater's CIB price. Again, still waiting on an answer as to what I should have done.

"The reality of the situation" is that the market dictated that price. If I wanted it, I had to pay that price. That's how auctions work. I have yet to see any actual, workable solution from the few naysayers as to what I should have done if I wanted to own the game, but not pay that much. It wasn't even the only 4 figure game, four other games went for over 1k. It may be your opinion that no game on the Super A'can is worth 4 figures, but the market disagrees with you. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/09/fancy-owning-the-rare-taiwanese-flop-super-acan-heres-your-chance I'm sorry that I quoted your post. My intention was not to draw you back into this thread. I can see if you got that notification, how it would seem like a gut-punch. Further, I believe you weren't told to stop posting, you were told to stop making accusations against my character, and how this entire thread was a charade to maximize my resale price. We could get into a discussion of playability versus price, like Daytona Netlink on Saturn, an essentially unplayable version of a $20 game going for $10k on eBay. Little Samson was just one easy example of 100 games that are now 4-figure games, especially when you consider CIB games. The last Amazing Tater CIB went for 6,800 on eBay. Is that game the star gem of the GameBoy?

Because you made a good description of the racist origins of WATA? I found that looking on Google for "WATA grading bruce lee" 'It's literally the first result on Google. I didn't know it would notify you.

I believe this was posted earlier in this thread, but it's hard to get a deeper, more informative dive than LowScoreBoy's video.

Thanks for the kind words! TBH, it's really surprising, given the "state of the hobby." When Stadium Events was selling for 2-3k, spending 5k on REBEL would have seemed absurd. Four figures just seems downright reasonable compared to the 25k a loose SE is selling for. I dunno, it's just odd how many games I got for cheap back in 2010-2015 that are now "4-figure games." 4-figures for a game is honestly kind of common now. It's crazy to me. I don't know who these people are that are dropping 2.5k (or more!) on a loose little sammy. Mine was $600, and that was the most I spent on a single game at that time. Even Power Blade 2 is routinely over four figures! I sold an extra for $300, and that doesn't seem that long ago.