sp1nz

If clueless people will create most of the demand and pay whatever insane prices the sellers are putting out, then the new normal also means the games you got for cheap can be sold for insane price. It's not going to be sustainable though, hypechasers at large tend to get bored of x thing in a few years, a few will turn into long time collectors and investors shouldn't be so stupid to not scout the market before investing in it. Even the investor types are paying insane prices for weird items and undervaluing some other significantly more worthy items - many of them don't know what they are doing but it's affecting the market big time. There are many players that are making big bucks by hyping the market up, if you aren't long time sealed collector you shouldn't invest on something without population reports. Something like Pokémon is extremely common to uncommon max (for some prints I suppose) for the mainline series in non-sealed form and yet stuff can pull 4 figures. These two pictures from eBay's video game section speak volumes about the market:

Nostalgia (the spark I started my collection on). Love for the hobby - I turned 33 recently and been gaming for 29 of that. The dopamine hit of discovery and purchase. You could say I became addict when I had more money to blow and a hole to fill in my life, at least it wasn't drugs or something but the addiction part has lessened over time anyway. Physical items being tangible things that you own and not just digital files or rentals. I must have the collecting gene - I always had small or big collections of something since young age like games, pins, coins and cards, though I don't think I viewed them as collections at the time and even offloaded / lost / stopped caring about some. Something to work towards and learn about in my spare time. I also like fiddling with my spreadsheets. Having a library I can pull almost anything out of to play, admire or get lost in a manual (naturally those with the bells and whistles and not just a ton of text in multiple languages).

Maybe a bit contradictory to say "I'll never own a legit Samson" and "a hard price cap doesn't really work", of course it's on individual and situational basis but the modern prices are harder pill to swallow when you've lived through the way cheaper past prices. Also getting richer doesn't mean you should get rid of your money at a faster rate and getting poorer means you definitely won't prioritize video games out of all things. My limit is high but it keeps me humble and sure there are items that cost more than my cap but I rather spread the money out than get one 5 figure game. I've made peace with never getting specific really cool items, maybe even below my cap, but I'm open to breaking the cap if I see something that makes me go awooga. There are games I bought nearly 10 years ago that I wouldn't buy today that freely and I'd accept that I'm either being priced out or not interested to that extent - so many things I own have appreciated a lot, even when I already paid prices I considered quite high and that were usual market prices of the day.

Indeed. Still I think a lot of the opinions on this rise from the wording and how people perceive the exact wording. For me the savestates / rewind etc. is "going through the game" but not "beating it", playing on default settings with no assists or cheats on original version is as devs intended (and the default settings are what they set up, no matter how easy or hard) and "beating it", and 1cc or no death just because you consider each life as a arcade quarter you put in or whatever is "mastering it". The arguments were made that "game over" is final, even with continues existing - people are free to think that, even more so in games with infinite continues but I don't think "to beat" carries the same weight for everyone, it's just the basic form of cheatless victory to some. But when you go to the options and change settings or make your own set of rules for what constitutes a completion or use modern digital / emulating / cheat engine perks then that's custom difficulty, even in the more challenging clears. Thinking that all games have to share the 1cc or no death to be just be beaten is just an opinion, just as much as the people who savestate and rewind their way into "victory" thinking they're on equal footing with their clear. I do have different levels of respect for different levels of clears and I expect the same towards my clears - merely going through a game any means necessary is like getting a participation award, sure it's called an award but everyone who tried got it. It's not skin off my back and I'm happy when someone has fun with their games (even if they don't like to be challenged) but some people think about their participation awards as gold medals.

When Sam & Max Save the World was released on Steam I read some reviews and couple negative reviews said that the dev team marketed the script as unchanged up until launch and then came up with that excuse of a statement. Like Tabonga said, if it's not a big deal, why change it? They made it a point to say it's unchanged but somehow forgot that they did change it - right.

Well gravity can bend vinyl albums when stored sideways, so it could technically bend game discs over long time but probably depends on how much the disc is elevated on the spindle in any specific case. I checked some PS1 game that's been stored sideways in its case for years and didn't see any curve on it but those cases don't really have free space to bend into. I'm not too worried on the smaller size discs like CD/DVD/Blu-ray but my goal is to store them upright in any case.

The prices in real auction houses are real of course but it's more interesting to think about who the current buyers/sellers are and why. Who is to say whether it's genuine interest, cluelessness, money laundering, market manipulation, racket or whatever else - at least to me it seems like it didn't rise from organic demand but Wata/HA marketing quickly turning into twisted perception + all areas of collecting being hot due to American circumstances. The market prices aren't nearly settled and the generated hype of HA or even Pokémon cards has affected CL and eBay anyway, so it's no surprise if the prices are comparable when people are FOMOing all over, since who knows when the market settles or corrects itself. It's a fact that there are random collectors and investors who are sitting on shipping cartons or accrued stacks of certain sealed games and are trickling them into the market, waiting even more or just want to keep them in their collection. Without population reports and even with them, you can't predict the absolute rarity nor expected value at the current time unless you are someone who has been into sealed collecting before it was hot and knows about the movement of shipping cartons and singular sealed items within the market.

Sega Saturn is my pick.

With the Wata turnaround times, even if you knew you could make money right now, could you be so sure about one year from now? Either people are only being hype about Wata grade numbers and not understanding VGA scale in comparison or sealed specialists are expecting a market correction for the item before they could get their submission back to profit on. I guess people wanting to add a sealed Sonic 2 into their collection don't see that kind of value in it, neither do I but I'm no sealed collector either.

My mistake, 19 American Keio CIBs in 2020 on GVN. Yeah being ahead of the curve is the best way to put it, you can't be ahead of the curve if you buy what EVERYONE buys and don't buy the future spikers instead - I get a feeling you're very similar to me in what kind of games you collect and how widely you collect, so many games that we have bought are the kinds that tend to spike, mix of rare-, highly rated-, in demand-, hidden gem- and revered series- games and lot of that is just from having a wide taste and wanting the games that are weird and interesting instead of just some flavor of the month hype games. Also absolute rarity and supply rarity are of course different beasts but both mean price increases, if the demand exists.

Depends on your scale but Shantae and Keio could be called rares, on my scale they fit around R6 (semirare) and R7 (rare) - GVN (not that you can trust it) shows American Little Samson CIB at 8 sales in 2020, Shantae CIB 8 sales in 2020 and Keio CIB 19 sales in 2020. In some circles the term rare means that only handful exists globally, so there's that. I bought mint CIB Shantae for AU$600 and PAL CIB (no spine card) Keio for £69.99, so I had my eyes on those early too even though they weren't as supply rare back then and were expensive enough already. I probably should've said the kind of items that are "undervalued" in terms of their rarity, future potential or how good they are on my mind but "most common and modern" games should still be lower on your list of time sensitive buys than "rarest of a platform", if you are after the rares for any reason. How you can, should or will go about it of course depends on many different things . But still leaving actually rare items 5 or 10 years into future is dangerous on your wallet too. While I have some great games for the NES I didn't go hard enough at it early on and now it has bitten me in the ass. Bottom line is that you should be alert on games that have eyes on them and you want, even when they're not absolutely rare or too rare at all.

I thought more about what makes collecting hard and I think "choosing your battles" is a big one. When you have a ton of games you want, if you buy the most common and modern games first it'll bite you in the ass. I always had rares in mind first, so they don't become problematic at the end of a set. Obviously you still can't buy every rare for every system right away and you want to keep your eyes open for the good deals on commons and good games too. So it's goals, opportunity costs and order of operations that combine into this choosing your battles idea. Also gaining knowledge could be called hard, especially if others are stingy about sharing or you just don't ask.

Your list already had Golf Classic but remove the extra yeah. Quarth and Crystal Quest are -USA coded except the manuals I think, so it's debatable if one wants to count those but they were at least sold in Germany in the olden days. Klax I'm not 100% if it exists or not but it was never on my radar, it was not on RetroCollect full set list when the site was still online and I didn't find any online proof of a round seal version with a quick search. GameFAQs does list Klax having European release but that info doesn't always hold true either, like the site having Jimmy Connors code same on Yannick Noah, while it apparently isn't the same code as per your proof. There's at least the title screen and the cover celebrity difference but not sure what causes the code change. I have variant of Track Meet called Litti's Summer Sports but those share same code, they also have different title screens as is logical. All covers I've seen of Frantic Antics / The Movie / Der Film etc. have the same cover art at least, so it should only have one entry.

Both are UKV coded box, manual and cart with extra Italian black and white manual, but they were sold by GiG Electronics in Italy as imports and maybe never in UK. Also I was comparing your list to mine and noticed some discrepancies, left is unique to yours and right is unique to mine: Klax (I don't think there's a PAL release?) Agro Soar -AUS / We're Back A Dinosaur's Story -ITA (Baby T-Rex / Bamse sprite variants) Sports Illustrated: Golf Classic (Golf Classic USA Version) *Crystal Quest (weird USA/NOE mix import) Tom & Jerry Frantic Antics (Tom & Jerry 2: The Movie USA version / alternate name for some European countries if I remember right) Darkman -ESP Yannick Noah Tennis (Jimmy Connors Tennis cover variant) Hit the Ice -FRG *Legend of the River King GB -AUS *Major League Baseball (Ken Griffey Jr. Presents...) -AUS New Chessmaster, The -FAH *Quarth (weird USA/NOE mix import) RoboCop 2 -ESP Super Off Road -FRG (I think NOE exists too but can't remember for sure) I added asterisk to Australian exclusives and weird imports I have.

From my collection:

Depends on the definition of decent and also I would have to not own it already. I've already accepted that most NES games are like medium price at minimum and I can see myself needing to spend the $100+ prices on most good NES games I would want going forward but that's not the line where I draw decent anyway. There are plenty of great games, maybe not always super collectable, that are in the very lows and lows for some systems. When speaking of Nintendo cardboard, yeah, things won't really get cheaper but the price scale is not just about Nintendo cardboard or American versions. Fair but I'm not part of the trend and I'm more likely to shift focus when prices increase beyond my cap on certain items. I'm not that likely to pay €5000+ for something that used to be sub €500, even if it's the new "fair" value. It's not even that I can't possibly spend big bucks now and then but €5000 could be spent on dozens of other interesting items and I really don't know how much there is on my want list that could exceed that right now or in the future and be something I that desperately want. €5000+ doesn't suddenly become less of a blow to pay on one item, even if the market shifts - also €5000 is close to AU$8000. I can't predict that I will never own a sealed graded game but if I owned one I would probably want to sell it instead of keeping it, because if I would want a graded item then it would likely be an actual investment. I already basically have the full regional CIB sets I really wanted to have from retro side of things (MD, SNES, GB [EUR+AUS exclusives for all, but maybe it's debatable on some weird grey area imports that I might miss, whether they belong to sets or not and for GB I have half of a SCN set too and maybe would like the full coded set eventually and that could be pretty expensive per item but I already have the top rarest SCN GB games too]), so I technically don't have to sweat about a rare item getting too expensive from my favorite sets and for anything else I'm fine passing on too expensive games anyway. EUR with AUS exclusives sets I might want to complete: Saturn, Dreamcast, GBC and N64, and EUR with AUS exclusives sets I will very likely complete: Master System, NGP, NGPC, Pokémon Mini, Vita and 3DS. I also have N-Gage full set but it's mostly German versions, I got it all for €500. Japanese MD set would be cool to complete but maybe not going as far as Mega Modem games and Tetris. I guess for me it's exciting to get the games people will covet in the future for cheaper, before they covet them - like I bought an American sealed NES KickMaster for $87 with hangtab still on the wrap (I wouldn't have bid $500 for it back then or now but I'll gladly take sealed for the price of CIB or just little higher), it would be likely candidate for grading if I ever wanted to, even when not a first appearance known character game but just quite rare decent game - on my scale I'd call it R8 rarity with it being sealed and I'd argue I own some R10 CIBs. Or maybe I'd grade a sealed 3.5" floppy Wolfenstein 3D, if some grading company would grade PC games. If I'm not mistaken the grading companies won't grade all regions and systems either - also not that I am fan of CIB grading but doesn't the grading only take into account cart/disc, instructions and box/case in the completeness - also the market is mainly in America and mainly Americans care about graded games.

I hope none of this comes across as hostile to you and it's quite rambly, it's just a different viewpoint. I can respect that even "non investors" can enjoy graded games and I definitely assume too much about the graded collectors in general but I personally like my CIB games because I can read the paperwork and actually interact with the game, even if my collecting is often shelf collecting at least the option to peruse the whole thing is there and it isn't just an art piece that takes extra space. For sealed games kept sealed there isn't really lost functionality and what is lost as extra space is at least gained as "added graded value", so it's more understandable that way even if not my jive. Grading to me is just a thick barrier to protect the game and an appraisal by some person with whatever authority to do so. In case I wanted to have graded games then I would submit some sealed games I own. Currently I don't feel the need to grade sealed games I own and definitely not CIB games I own to reveal the "true condition" and for other reasons like not wanting to support that side of the hobby with my money and interest - same deal with buying graded games. "These are the types that likely increase in value over time", yes but value is not the end goal for me. My collection obviously has great monetary value attached to it and it's more interesting to collect when everything isn't a static mass of similar peanut values but at the same time I have no big interest in spending "inflated values" just from the virtue of something being graded and knowing its condition is presumably what is shown on the card. Of course sealed collecting adds extra layer of challenge to most games, but I feel like there are plenty of challenges even in CIB realm when you collect certain regions or platforms, like Korean retro CIBs or rare Game Boy CIBs, especially if looking for high end condition or maximum completeness. I'd say my collection is mostly good to very good condition but I don't aim for extreme completeness of inserts or anything most of the time. I do like to have maps/charts when applicable, also posters are nice to have but not mandatory for my taste. Heck I can even live with swapped Genesis etc. cases even if original is more desirable, it's quite hard thing to just get the game specific case after the fact when someone sold you a swapped copy. I also can accept more rough copy when it's way cheaper than the norm and not feel too much pressure about "upgrading the condition" later. Going even deeper I guess we could ask the question "what even makes collecting hard?", since collecting simplified is: you earn money, you search and wait, you spend money on an item, you get said item. So the richest, the most well connected, the most ingenious searcher can get most everything they want, if people are willing to sell. The hardest part is arguably earning the money and choosing to spend it on video games and next hardest part is actually locating a game to buy, but this is double-edged sword too: too much time spent looking can be money and more productive time lost, and enough patience alone does not mean you're getting lucky. It's like if I could afford the most valuable game right now and I just paid that price, then I would own the "most sought after / most expensive thing". That alone isn't as interesting as amassing hundreds or thousands of interesting games or variants to me. I like having a vast and diverse gaming library compared to a small shelf of proverbial gold bars.

Top end NES games are definitely doozies nowadays. They're not the rarest things ever but the demand pushes the prices far more than on many other platforms. Nice, I like to collect JP Saturn games with Obis. Some have gone up in price for sure. Yeah $100 for "good-yet-obscure" game rings quite true to me. The current market can be a double-edged sword, some people are more interested to enter a hot hobby and some will be turned off by prices, still if we look at overall game collecting, it's quite affordable medium to collect on many platforms. I imagine the number of people who have paid 5 figures for anything gaming related is very low, whatever they would classify themselves as. Naturally anyone can abstain from buying cheaper items and pool the money for something more expensive if they really want it but that's all about opportunity cost and goals. Hindsight 20/20, I have missed many items I might not see for sale again but I don't actively regret those when the price at the time or time window for the sale didn't quite line up. My cap is to keep me humble and I just don't feel certain games are worth the insane sums some people are paying currently. In general what I collect doesn't really ever even come close to my cap and I can live without things that would exceed it because very few of them interest me on that price level. I feel you, I postponed buying certain games when they were sort of expensive and now they are just too much for my taste for what they are. Like I'm content with my PAL FRG CIB Little Samson, even when it's naturally not nearly as collectable as American or even SCN version. I'm quite omnivorous collector too, I have couple full sets and might go for a couple more, I don't do graded though because I don't usually buy things to sell them later. I do have some duplicates or lesser versions of games for various reasons that I will sell or trade eventually but that's just generally CIB stuff anyway. I mean my cap isn't carved in stone but I don't consider the possibility of breaching it thrilling or not thrilling, it's just something that might happen if something really amazing presented itself, like my example of MD Tetris, but I still wouldn't go nearly market price for it, so it kind of defeats the possibility of even needing to breach my cap. To use the word opportunity cost again, buying a really cool thing that would breach my price cap would very likely feel worse option to me than spending that same money across many cool things. I think your $500 or even up to $1000 is quite reasonable cap. For me it's harder to spend big money on hardware compared to software for some reason but the things you listed are nifty for sure. You have your family priorities in order good sir. Interesting perspective. I won't say if games are good or bad investment, I just don't consider mine as investment even if it has great value. When buying games though you are completely right that buying metric ton of cheap junk is not too great of a strategy for enjoyment of your own collection or gaining profit from it. I remember the one Guinness game collection of 11000+ games but most of it was bottom of the barrel stuff for low demand consoles, though it must've been cheap to acquire and the guy made out like a bandit on the sale of his collection regardless. like I would've valued his collection at up to 7x lower than the sale price. Having the "Guinness" badge of "largest collection", when it's just due to submitting being pain in the butt, is similar to the badge of hype that Wata/VGA grade case is to games. I don't actually disagree with those ranges having those terms, like my list might benefit from having one or two more upper ranges and changing the terms in the lower ranges but that would also mean overhauling my entire collection sheet again, which is too much work for too little gain, $500+ is uncommon enough and I could only make use of your version of insane range 3 times. Then again American CIB collecting perspective is way different compared to European. Lucky you! Even though I joined the hardcore collecting scene quite late, I got majority of my stuff for prices I can agree with. I don't know how enthusiastic I would be if I started from zero in today's market - at least my scope of collecting would be way more narrow.

Hehe, well that's how I set it up when I started collecting and I have no plans changing my ideals even if the market has shifted, still quite a bit of playroom between my €500+ "insane" classification and my €5000 cap. I just feel that the insane level is costly enough barrier to cross for me to call it that. Sub $500 for something you really want is not too bad indeed. There are items that I own that could sell for less than €100 or €1000+ depending on where it's sold and who sees it, so I fully get that. Sometimes there is no real sales data for x years, if at all, and you have to make an offer or calculated bid that you can stomach and that doesn't hopefully end as a big dud. Yeah 4 figures is a good place to stop at, unless you're investor type or really adamant full set collector on some specific platform(s) that demand deeper pockets. I'm amazed how some retail carts have gotten into the 4 figure prices. I understand the Outback Joey cart or some competition carts having gotten there but something like Little Samson cart being 4 digits just feels crazy to me. 5-6 figure carts are insanity sauce. I have a few cart only games that never were in CIB form to begin with but that's the only time I will collect carts basically. Yeah, when the market goes crazy in one direction it's better to deviate from the hype and make good buys elsewhere. I remember when I was super excited to bid on Majora's Mask Adventure Set and was panicking from my maximum bid thoughts of few hundred and then climbing into €600-800 range plans or whatever it was, because it was the first game I really planned to go hard on. I think the game climbed above my max before the end and before I even placed a bid of my own. Before that auction even crossing €100 was biggie for me but maybe it was some sort of awakening moment even if I didn't get to place my bid, so things quickly snowballed for me and we have the price scale I use now.

With all the price shenanigans going on I got curious if other people got a system on how they view prices for single items. My personal price scale for single items as a CIB collector is: insane 500+ X very high 250+ - 500 X high 100+ - 250 X semihigh 50+ - 100 X medium 25+ - 50 X low 10+ - 25 X very low 0+ - 10 X free 0 X being technically for € but £ and $ (and maybe some others) work too, since they are quite comparable currencies and what I encounter the most beyond euros. My price cap for a single item is 5000€, I haven't broken this cap yet but if there was like "extremely good deal" on legit MD Tetris, maybe I'd raise it. Even breaking 1000€ is rare.

I think Wata grading submissions being backed up has a lot to do with how the market prices are evolving. When the submissions aren't released at the same time and put on sale en masse, the market has time to adjust, conserve money and analyze the market - also the market won't be shocked with countless duplicates that might stall the enthusiasm of many hype bidders because the perceived rarity is lessened. So potentially slower turnaround is making more money for submitter and grader here, so I'm not sure if Wata would want to change anything even if they could meet the demand and have snappy turnaround times. It is very amusing though how the market can shift enormously between your submission and getting the game back.

Yes the perception of masses and investors is molded by Wata/HA, they go by the rules they know from comic books or whatnot and it MUST mean that it applies to video game desirability. When something has larger mainstream appeal then it'll most likely rake money on HA because big money low game market knowledge people are hopping on the train (the random German guy just bidding crazy amounts on random PS2 games is good example of an even more clueless bystander to those that have made the market get this far this quick and even he might be making money on his willy nilly 0 knowledge 0 care investment *deep bro*). Like for long term "investing" it makes sense that characters or series with staying power will be known to more people and therefore they are safer bets further into future but at the same token the hot characters are million sellers, so you have to squeeze some "legendary" print run status from them or get into OCD condition scales, because 0.2 more grade must mean thousands and thousands of more value. Still the hype market is largely North America based although the ripple effect will affect all regions to varying degrees. First print is misleading term and can't be evaluated on outer box alone in many cases, DefaultGen has a good on the nose parody video about this and some other issues: Again like I said before, the market hasn't formed organically but is more of a manufactured one, doesn't mean that the market will suddenly crash or go away though. You see the great marketing power on full display with this takeover. "You had your fun peasants but we will make the market now" (I mean if this isn't elitists in other fields just carpet bombing another field, then what is). It's probably inevitable for a popular material based sector to be "exploited" like this when it gets more and more mainstream, yet I'm not sure if this has happened with physical movies for example albeit their popularity, maybe they have too large prints (yet million seller games get valued in hundreds as CIBs) or movie buffs just want the props and other associated paraphernalia. I don't know how the game supply and demand on larger scale will work or be affected by all of this but I'm guessing a lot of people are gonna pay out the ass from FOMO or accept being priced out. All collecting is on the up and up but game collecting value increases exploded onto the scene in the past couple of years. I'm just glad I never started collecting with money or returns in mind. I haven't been buying too much retro in the past couple years and I'm mainly European and CIB collector, so I'm not sure how much I'm affected on European front, if I ever want more of those American imports though, yikes. But even when things become more expensive, not every game ever is going to go into nutso price territory, especially CIB only.

Good tip, I don't own a reddit account though and trying to bring some life here as well. I'll edit the subreddit in my opening post though. Scooter's Magic Castle (1993) PC?

I gave that example but mentioned it was eBay sale and someone mentioned 5.5 Wata Sonic selling for $300+ also on eBay but the prices are symptoms of Heritage hype nevertheless. Would've been more fitting for the "Look at these prices...unreal right ?". No idea if how low grades Heritage sells on their auctions but the Thunder Force II on last page was some overgraded poopee.

Skate Boardin': A Radical Adventure (1987) Atari 2600 fits a lot of your description at least.