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This can probably be moved to confirmed, I have a couple copies with the card, and you see them show up on ebay sometimes too. Here's a picture of it with the game I just pulled from a random listing.

I've gotten a number of China/Aliexpress repros where they blur out the copyrighted name on the listing, then the actual product has the correct text on it anyway. Pretty sure it's just to avoid getting dinged by the platform. I'd personally say while new discs are one thing that would be interesting to have created, perfect replica paper would be the grail for bootleggers. The sheer number of loose disc items that could be sold with an undistinguishable set of materials is probably quite high, thankfully no one has gotten that good yet.

Very cool, and probably the best time to sell it with the hype around the FFVII Rebirth release too.

Just finished the last episode, lol I knew going in it was almost 4 hours long but your optimism of it being a short episode near the start was kind of hilarious. A couple things I figured I'd mention: Plushes: The Nall plush from Lunar is pretty expensive, normally $500 or more if you can even find one for sale. Cards: Can't believe you didn't think about the FF8 Triple Triad cards that are out there. The set of 110 cards can run in the $800-1000 range. Would have also been fun if you mentioned some other pack in cards that are collectible and exclusive, the the X-men cards exclusive to a Game Gear release are the first thing that came to mind. I'm also surprised you didn't mention collectible video game vinyl, lots of different pressing between official and bootleg stuff.

I love this idea. I've got a number of items with Blockbuster and Hollywood video stuff on them, but finding local stuff from the area I grew up in when I was a kid would be amazing. Hell I might even pay a premium for them! My CIB Chrono Trigger is from them when they went out of business. The box is faded a bit and the manuals are rough, but the memories alone make me cherish it more than if a random sealed graded copy that might come my way.

Plenty of stories like this, but I'm always on edge when I order something from another country and use a forwarding service. All it takes is one mishap in the address or the like to run into issues. Bought something and the seller addressed it properly but set it as a pickup from the post type deal, which my proxy wasn't going to walk down to the place and do, and the seller told me to just walk down the street and get it myself (thousands of miles away). Since the seller admitted they screwed up in message I was able to get a refund from ebay, but the seller kept complaining I screwed them over since they didn't have the item or the payment. The package is still probably sitting there for pickup.

I mean, I'd basically try and grab all the stuff I know would bankrupt me otherwise. Outback Joey Complete Set Magical Chase US CIB Elemental Gearbolt Assassin's Case Nintendo World Championship Gold Cart I guess maybe the Blockbuster Genesis Competition Cart? Edit: Actually swap 5 for NBA Elite 11 CIB PS3

See, this feel like pretty much the case with all game collecting, with the only exception being modern games because well they are new and no one has written about or documented them yet. That's your only chance to actually be a "pioneer" in a true sense and contribute new knowledge about game collecting. Everything else really seems to be pretty well known, maybe not everything, but the odds of finding a system or something from the 90s or further back that no one else has even mentioned on the internet once is pretty small. Oh, and don't fall into the trap of reading something in another language and all of sudden considering it new now that you know it. Someone else has documented it, just because no one took the time to read or translate it to your language doesn't make your own discovery of it somehow groundbreaking.

I definitely get frustrated about finishing a set the closer I get to the end, but sometimes even throwing money at it won't necessarily help if you can't find it for sale or in an acceptable condition. As I get closer to the end on a set (I normally focus on one thing at a time), purchases become less frequent and my war chest for pricier stuff starts to increase, so my "pot of money" to finish the set starts becoming bigger. More available cash makes me a bit looser with it sometimes, but other times I get belligerent with people asking dumb prices compared to comparable items so I'll just sit it out. I'll overpay is an item is in better shape than expected or finally shows up after awhile, but normally only a max of like 20% or so if I can avoid it. 20% or more on an expensive item makes me cringe lol, especially if I've already seen it show up and it was sniped by a reseller or something and just got relisted marked up 2 weeks later. (There's that belligerence!)

I've thought the same but in the end I wound up just getting a cheap GT since it's pretty much the same thing.

Have to agree with others that the TurboExpress can be a pain to work on. This was one of the more delicate jobs I did since I've heard it's very easy to loose/lift a trace if you are not careful when recapping, thankfully I got through mine without any issues as well. Thought about a screen mod but couldn't bring myself to.

It does look so great with everything lined up there, nice and clean! I think SMS is such an interesting system to collect myself. The US set is pretty simple except for a handful of expensive ones and the UK sticker versions, but the Euro spread with different languages, styles and manuals, plus the TecToy stuff makes it something that is not easy to locate stuff for.

Ah I didn't know you were talking about the cart not the box. Yeah CJ and Dizzy never got unique labels as far as I could find in the years I've been watching. It's funny though, the Euro copy of CJ has US styling on the cart, whereas the US version of Dizzy keeps the Euro style. Probably just manufacturing shenanigans for keeping costs down.

Dang lucky there was no residue or something. They might have given you a real hard time on pickup.

There is a picture of the US Dizzy on pricecharting, I've attached it below. Regarding the US vs UK version I have seen it pop up sometimes, but like CJ Elephant and Cosmic Spacehead it's very uncommon to locate the US purple bar version. I missed a box of Dizzy to a known reseller last summer and it was up on Mercari within a short period of time for a ridiculous amount. I am still on the hunt for a purple bar copy of Fantastic Dizzy if anyone might have one for sale (looking at you @MrWunderful ). It's one of the literal handful of games I'm still looking for in the US set.

Yeah, 3D printed as far as I know. I think Kytor is planning on releasing them for free and selling them as needed. I have really been impressed with the stuff he's put together. He even had a follow up tweet showing like a bunch of loose carts using them!

This came up on my Twitter feed the other day. Seems like a smart way to add spacers behind your Billy stuff if you want it closer to the front.

Yeah no joke, I'm a huge WD fan but I can definitely recognize Vic was a big pitchman when I came hyping up releases and only giving piecemeal data to drive variant sales. It was still the case when they did the Class of Heroes and Summon Night releases later too.

I have seen people also put a spacer in the back of their longbox games in a Billy to make them sit closer to the front. It feels like a bit of a waste, to me every bit of storage I can wrangle is a boon I read this and I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with using the Billy shelves You're right, they overhang by a tiny amount when double-stacked, but unless you have doors on the Billy it doesn't really impact the look I think in terms of aesthetics. The only thing that would make better shelves would be something I could like open as a rack, archival bookshelves or something, but that's a huge commitment in terms money and installation. Not related to long boxes, but Billy shelves do double-stack with no overhang for Genesis/SMS/GG games, and fit NES/SNES/N64 near perfectly on their side as well. I'd say they are probably the best budget shelves out there.

The back art for 7 with the blue dot is 100% sure. Seen almost every copy pop up like that. Similar for 1, the Sega printed version with the misspelling and no foiling match up. I'm pretty confident in the back insert information as well but it's hard to be 100% sure. SpaceFlea had a nice thread on Sega16 showing the differences (wish they would fix their forums), and I saw the same trends myself so I feel pretty confident in that match up but I cannot tell you it is the perfect truth, only Vic would be able to do that and he's gone pretty quiet recently. The Gaijinworks forum is gone too Problem is back in the day stuff would get traded in and discs separated from cases, then re-pieced at checkout so it's really tough to be positive.

I use Ikea BIlly for my Saturn and SegaCD sets and they work great, I have customized mine slightly as well to hold more by doing some additional drilling on the slats and inserts, plus Billy shelves are deeper than most so I can double-stack longbox games to save space. So cheap to buy as well, and Ikea is doing free shipping on orders over $299 right now I think.

Yeah, WD had a chart up on their website years back to show the variant info. I shared my compiled info on all releases with a friend several years back and we made a nice spreadsheet about all the variants here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NJdYBzy5fGe2FvBUrslNQBnSpQ6lcDWkAq8a-JhVL38/edit#gid=0

Killer find! It's awesome to know that things like this are still hiding out in a garage or elsewhere just waiting for the right person.

My best "find" for this year was a heavy hitter I had needed for my Game Gear set: Urban Strike. A good friend and fellow collector had one and preferred to sell it to me to for funds towards an almost one of a kind item he was hunting, on a set he really enjoyed collecting. The best part is we both won in the end, since he was able to get his item and I have this one for my own set.

A bit late here, but when my original 360 toasted itself I am pretty sure I just pulled the HDD out of the fat drive casing and stuck it a replacement skinny casing I bought online and stuck it in my Xbox E. It's been awhile, but I'm fairly certain as long as a HDD is formatted for 360, you just need the correct form factor of the casing to read it.