DarkKobold

18 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

I mean did I post that I have a large collection? Yea, but also I post to Instagram and have my collection listed on RFGen and elsewhere. If I was paranoid or worried I obviously wouldn't be doing that. I have a pretty good security system as well as itemized personal property insurance so... I guess you can just take the precautions and hope for the best.

God damn your insta is fun to look at. You have a new follower.

8 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

That German streamer MontanaBlack got robbed recently I think, as did Trade 'n Games but both times those were high profile graded game targets. A sealed Punch Out is worth about the same as every single CIB Sega console game ever made put together these days, so it probably makes more sense to plan your Ocean's 11 heist around something that doesn't require a U-Haul and moving crew.

This is legitimately my nightmare, lol. The number of times I've woken up with all of my games missing, just to wake up (for real), and everything is fine is.... probably not healthy. I haven't had the nightmare since I got a decent alarm system. So I have that going for me.

Also, my question wasn't to admonish people, but to see how everyone else felt about it. There are definitely way better collections out there, that deserve an Ocean's 11 level heist more than mine.

However, seeing that MontanaBlack had an entire security system, and all it did was record the person stealing the games definitely gives me less confidence.

2 hours ago, Nintegageo said:

@DarkKobold honestly, by that logic no one should talk their hobby online, post Instagram, even have a VGS account, et cetera. What's the point having a passion if you can't just talk with people who share that passion?

I guess that's my answer haha nope am not.

I mean, I have a pretty decent collection. However, I don't feel the need to post it on instagram or FB. I think a lot of people would argue that the "worst" people in the hobby (outside the WATA investor class) are the people who only buy things for the 'gram. My friends who own a video game store say that they have a class of customers that will buy something, post it to instagram, and sell it back to the store a month later.

Anyway, my point is, I feel like I can discuss this hobby and engage with fellow collectors just fine, without outlining exactly how big of a UHaul to bring when I'm out of town.

Does anyone else feel like posting in this thread can be a "Come and rob me" kinda thing? Internet personas aren't that hard to track down...

2 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Yeah exactly it makes no sense at all.  There's nothing even gray area.  Even junk that got 90-100% near/rental only stuff goes into that final total.  The whole point of the Yoshi international one was for the non-US market, so whoever wants to argue that needs to pound sand.  N64 is as cut and dry as it comes to it as much as Virtual Boy does.  Virtual Boy US set is 14/14 that's it, one could extend it for personal interests to 16 with the DEMO ONLY sticker variants of Red Alarm and Wario Land, but that's it, stickers...the data is 100% identical (which is why I don't have them, not paying $100 for a flippin' sticker.)

In that respect if someone wants to be that insane about it, the N64 is worse than Virtual Boy.  It has numerous NFR red/white box print stickers on the front, some games got a 'demo' sticker like Turok 2 in black and white, but again, still same game like VB.  I don't believe it had chopped time limited stuff like some GBA games (like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon) with like a 5-10min cap.  This link here covers all that stuff, including the Yoshi bit being just the Japanese game with a special sticker slapped on the front which somehow makes it set worthy?  NOPE.  https://blog.pricecharting.com/2013/02/stevesesy-nintendo-64-not-for-resale.html

The irony of this discussion is my entire post was focused on how every fullset deserves an asterisk, because there can be constant, endless arguments about what counts, and it turned into a discussion of what counts . That said, I love this discussion, especially for systems I don't know much about. Maybe it deserves it's own thread?

(I totally forgot the gray rage wars, which is the "most finished" Rage wars, so it cooooounnnntttttsss ).

 

I wonder if this was purchased by someone in a foreign country who otherwise would have paid 3x this just for shipping. If you want to build a US set in somewhere like Australia or Saudi Arabia, you're gonna pay far more than this to buy them one at a time off eBay. That's the only way this makes sense to me.

12 hours ago, Tanooki said:

@DarkKobold

Technically with the NES a full set could just be what Nintendo licensed alone and kept the license up on, which would take the total down to a range of nothing but them but also anything they jerked off the market for a revision like Stadium Events and Athletic World for World Class Track Meet.  I've seen it all, the angry debates, etc.  Or you have fcgamer losing his shit over Sachen on the NES and Gameboy market fighting it for years, and while he's not wrong, it's just gray enough there's an endless level of pushback as it would skew so many so called 'complete' sets into being NOT.

So, I have a lot of complete* sets. If there's one thing I've learned about collecting sets, nearly every single fullset can have an asterisks next to the word complete or full. There's just too many questions as to what counts.

1. Vectrex. Do you have to have Boston Clean Sweep? Asterisks if you don't. Minestorm cart version. Does having a certain version of the Vectrex console with it built in count? If so, maybe no asterisk.

2. Amstrad GX4000. Do you have to own Chase HQ2? There's 2 copies known in the entire world. Asterisk.

3. Super A'can. Do you need to own Rebel Star? There's at most 4 known copies around the world. Asterisk.

4. Dreamcast. Do you need Sonic Limited Edition? Do you need Speed Devils clean cover? Asterisk.

5. Saturn. Daytona netlink. Working Designs disc variants. Even more asterisks fun! 

6. NES. Sachen, Cheetahmen 2, panesians, Stadium Events, Hong Kong Mahjong. Asterisk everywhere!

7. SNES. Macs. Speed Racer/MBR. DKCC and Star Fox Weekend. Test carts. What even counts?!?

8. Famicom - this is a gold mine if you're looking to start a war over what counts as a complete set.

9. Atari Jaguar - Hasbro allows anyone to call any cart "licensed." I could manufacture a single copy of a shitty pac-man clone tomorrow, and call it part of the licensed set. Hilarious.

10. Nintendo DS has some pretty hilarious pieces to argue about, like glucose testers and museum guides.

11. 3DO - do you need all the woody wood pecker cartoons? Good luck with that, they show up once every 5 years or so. What about the porn videos from Windows that also happen to be 3DO compatible?

12. N64 - a lot of early lists included the international version of Yoshi's Story. I personally didn't count it.

13. PS3 - do you count some unreleased NBA elite game? Open your wallet!!

The point of this list isn't to argue, so much as to illustrate how silly it is for people to argue over what constitutes each individual set. You could create a thread fighting about nearly every one of these topics. At the end of the day, I don't care if FCgamer (no offesnse) thinks my NES set is incomplete without the Sachen games. It's complete* as far as I'm concerned.

I think a lot of people see the sub 300 game count for a complete N64 set, and think "this is doable." It's just an attractive goal. Or was, before Sculptor's cut became a 1k game.

Whereas, with NES, everyone and their brother was going for a fullset from around 2010 to 2015. I know at least 6 other people in Utah who went for, or at least attempted an NES fullset. I only know one other person who bothered to go for SNES, and they gave up around 60% in.

I voted for NES,SNES,N64, because I thought this was a personal preference vote. As far as the community goes, it definitely feels like "N64, NES, SNES"

There was a guy on the old PCEFX forums who would quote "GameDude" as being the most accurate price guide for TG16 games, because they weren't "influenced by the evil eBay." Truth is, GameDude only ever updated their price list on an item when they got a new one in stock. So, of course prices on rare stuff were massively out of date, and surprise surprise, when they did get stock, they were pretty on par with eBay.

But yeah, they'd claim that games selling for $200 on eBay, routinely, were only worth $50 because this out of date, shitty price guide.

Has anyone noticed the other fallout to this debacle?

It's not just WATA games that are fake prices, but now you see ALL video games are fake prices to some in the community. Between that tweet that went viral, which read like a fanfic about evil video game sellers, to this recent video:

I like RetroGamerBoy, but he's dead wrong here. There's three copies across the entire world on eBay of that game. Meanwhile, there's 5 or so authentic Crusader of Centy on eBay, a game that sells for 2x as much. It seems to me like the rarity caught up with the price. He presents no actual evidence of people buying their own, and instead just asserts he "knows" the value of the game is only $350. That irks me quite a bit. The "value" of the game is MSRP. Everything beyond that is the extrinsic collector's value. There's no reason that you can suggest that this game is worth $350, but not worth $1200. Both of those are made-up collector prices. The irony of this video is he's all but cemented the price. FOMO is more likely to hit here, and he's now painted a target on this game, worse than it had before.

3 hours ago, Zach said:

RareBucky is that you? 

Dude, this seems so fake to me.
 

And to add to it, the guy who posted/made the story up, is legit TRYING TO PROFIT OFF IT.

Your alarm bells should be going off about the legitimacy, not the content.

5 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Yes.  It's when you're "in the sealed collector game" but all you really do is buy up the stuff, sit on it briefly, then dump it when the price gets ridiculous, as it's clear those folks never really intended to collect at all.  And really, there's ultimately nothing wrong with that in and of itself (so long as those folks aren't the ones deliberately, artificially rallying all the investor types as has been discussed to death), but seriously, they shouldn't be calling themselves collectors at that point.  The moment you sell out, at best you're an enthusiast, at least to the point where you start collecting and holding onto the stuff you're trying to collect.

I think it all comes down to "intent." If you buy something with the intent to hold it, you're a collector. Even if you sell it later, whether it's because of waning interest or financial duress, the intent was to buy and hold on to it. If you buy something today because you think you'll be able to sell it for more in the future, then you're just an investor or speculator.

4 minutes ago, guitarzombie said:

I had a beautiful girl come over to record some music (shes a friend) and saw my shelf of high end NES games and said it was lit, or legit.  So now its legitimized for me.

Well, the last time I showed my collection off, I got a swirly and they took my lunch money, so now we're back at ground zero.

15 minutes ago, OptOut said:

Wow, do people still watch Metal Jesus, lol!

He's looking more and more like the Dude from the Big Lebowski with each passing year, lol! 

Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man.

On 8/26/2021 at 7:57 AM, Alder said:

Good on Jeff for that but, I still don't understand why he bought NA just to run it into the ground? I'm admittedly out of the loop on this, but what kind of data was he after that wasn't public?

I have a theory on this! They bought NintendoAge to specifically shut it down. NA was the best source for the kind of stuff that WATA claims expertise on. A forum with 20 or so years of research on sealed Nintendo games is a threat to someone pretending to be an expert. I can't prove it, but I believe it's because they didn't want someone dragging out a 10 year old post disproving them when they made a claim about something being a "FIRST PRINT!"

On 8/24/2021 at 11:05 AM, jonebone said:

I usually don't take the bait but yes, I would go to bat for his reputation any day of the week.  It's not my job to be his defender but he had the Wata idea started very early in his life.  All of these conflict of interest arguments were made 2.5 years ago and I agree they aren't the best look.  But that's for them to worry about, not me.

I just know that as a person, Deniz is not just one of, but probably the most humble and genuine collectors I ever met.  If others around him have muddied the waters that will never change my opinion of him.

Humble?
"the BEST video game collection you'll ever see"

On 7/9/2021 at 12:59 PM, TDIRunner said:

It seems like every time we see a video game related Guinness record, it seems easily disprovable.  However, you have to remember that Guinness can only certify what they know about.  Obviously, it would be nice if they added the disclaimer "that we know of" to their records, but that will never happen because it doesn't sound as good as "world record."  

Isn't that literally the definition of "World Record?" In other words, this is the best recorded of whatever it is? You might run a faster 100m than Usain Bolt, but it doesn't count until someone makes an official record.
 

Wikipedia says: "A world record is usually the best global and most important performance that is ever recorded and officially verified in a specific skill, sport, or other kind of activity."

Whatever happened to the guy with the secret collection of 6 Sealed Stadium Events? What are the chances he has a box of these that have never been opened?

On 7/10/2021 at 5:09 PM, avatar! said:

Investors are now looking at these video games much like people looked at Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 - people with lots of money are trying to invest "early(ish)" with the notion that these will just continue to appreciate in value over the years.

Here's the thing, I think it's just turtles investors all the way down. It'll never depreciate, because the next investor in line wants to protect his investment, so he'll pay more than the first buyer did, to demonstrate it's appreciation. That'll justify the next person paying more. A this point, these aren't even video games, imo, they're just vehicles for rich people to hold money.

On 10/22/2020 at 6:32 AM, RH said:

As I've stated, I tend to just chuckle at these posts, shake my head and walk away.  Occasionally one takes it to such ludicrous proportions though, I just have to share it.

Regardless, the ones that do bother a bit is the guy who has a legit rare, but super obscure item that maybe 2-3 of us collectors care about.  It just happens to be a case that he has no clue he has a rare variant or a minor error, or something like that, but regardless wants 100x the going rate. I have seen this two, maybe three, times in all of my collecting.

Yeah, you aren't the angry one in this thread, and there are occasionally legitimately funny ones.

Honestly, the worst ones for me are the super rares that get listed at like 1.5-2x the going price. Mostly because you know someone desperate is going to come along and buy it, and boom, now you have an established sale, and thus a new price point.  At least, in your scenario, it's unlikely to sell at $1k if it's worth $10. But if it's routinely sold for $500 and some idiot buys it for $1k, that pretty much sets a new bar sellers want to reach. It may come down over time, but it's unlikely to ever get back down to $500. That isn't just the fault of the seller though, its also the impatient buyer. When something is only on eBay once a year, its easy for this to happen.

I don't understand the anger - it's never going to sell for $10k, so why get angry about it? It has literally no effect on the market, your life, or anything. A game needs to SELL for pricecharting or gamevaluenow to record it and change the "going rate."

So, let the idiot sit on his throne of hope, it's not going anywhere.

OK, after saying bad things about this topic, I had to share this...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/TurboGrafx-16-Turbo-Express-Authentic-Original-System-Box-Only-POOR-/264898222574?&_trksid=p2056016.m2518.l4276

$90 for a piece of trash? Sign me up!

On 9/30/2020 at 8:08 AM, captmorgandrinker said:

If Nintendo thinks there's any money in it, they'll gladly publish Mario and Zelda collections until the end of time.  I'm a bit surprised there hasn't really been a Zelda compilation since the Gamecube.

 

Probably because its trivial to put each game out on their e-shop, and get money with near zero cost of publishing. Why print physical, when you can sell a digital copy of SMB3 alone for $5 every time you release a new console?

On 10/9/2020 at 1:12 AM, sg17 said:

I personally can't recall a single time I've seen something selling for pennies on the dollar. I've been buying retro games on ebay only on the last 4-5 months but still. I search ebay for stuff I'm I'm looking for several times a week, and optimize my search (BIN+recently listed or auction+ending soon).

When a seller sells something for fmv (according to pricecharting / gamevaluenow), I'm happy because it seems most of the time sellers try to sell for 125%-150% of the fmv.

I suspect this is because ebay has that algorithm telling sellers how much their items are worth (or so I'm told).

Anything on ebay being 80%-90%  of the fmv I consider a bargain. Really, in five months of using ebay regularly, I didn't see a single real bargain.

It used to be easier to find "BIN snipes." I'm pretty sure that people have made a profession out of it now, and use bots and scripts to get there faster than any human looking at listings could. I rarely find snipes these days, but I think its more to do with competition than the lack of them existing. Back in my heyday, I definitely found numerous under-priced "just-listed" eBay BINs, and built my collection that way. That's why I can't fault idiots selling stupid stuff for 500% of FMV.

Also, usually things on eBay aren't going for PC/GVN "fmv" because auctions end cheaper than BIN listings. Since those two sites average the two, you're unlikely to find a BIN for the same price an auction would end at, just sitting there collecting dust. If you want to pay under PC/GVN, watch auctions on the items you want. BIN exists for the "Gotta have it now" crowd.

 

I always thought these sorts of threads were silly. There's an endless number of people who think their trash is worth gold. On eBay, there's an insane number of way overpriced listings - but who cares? For every one of those, there's a person who has no idea what they have, and instead sells it for pennies on the dollar, and we brag about those finds. You can't have one without the other, so why not ignore the idiots who price too high, and just celebrate the ones who price too low?