Thoughts and Discussion on all of the Hoarding Behind the Scenes?

[ALTQQ | 87]

Someone was trying to bump up the cost of pieces on the SNES years ago, hey kept buying em all off Ebay 

[guitarzombie | 924]

rareusgold

[Sega Genesis Sage | 15]

On 10/24/2019 at 11:50 AM, Gloves said:

One thing I think the comics folks are going to be disappointed with is how free of them the casual market really is, for the most part. 

My comparison here being the difference in completeness. A casual comic collector who wants every Wolverine comic for instance needs to get every one of them, and the whole lot of em are the same - just a comic. But in video games you see people all the time sharing their "complete" sets of Franchise X on social media, and they have the cart games cart-only. There are tiers of options available, and I honestly can't see them buying up all the Mario 3 carts to try to game that specific bit of the market. 

CIB was already pretty niche comparatively, and sealed far moreso; specific rare variants most people don't even register as a thing that exists. So they can buy up all the CIB Mario 3 all they want, but it will really only impact those specifically into CIB collecting, and let's face it - the vast majority of us who collect CIB already have Mario 3, and probably in pretty decent condition due to the not-scarce nature of it.

I think there's going to be some interesting growing pains for the comic guys coming into this, and some potential surprises for them.

I think there is some parity between the groups - at the low end of comics collecting, you have people that collect "reader's" copies and don't particularly care about condition, they just want to have the issue. I see this as being pretty much analogous with loose collecting. Similarly, these people actually like to crack open and read their comics, much like loose collectors like to at least have the ability to play their games.

On the high end of comics collecting, you have people that won't even look at an issue if it's not sealed and graded 9.5 or higher. This is more analogous to the high end, sealed game collector.

The comics collectors also love first prints, variants, etc. That's why you see people trying to bring that sort of mentality into videogame collecting.

[The Count | 526]

T206 John Titus and 1990 Fleer Jose Uribe come to mind, to each their own. 

[DarkKobold | 190]

When I was playing MTG 20 some years ago, I would get as many Drudge Skeletons as a I could. I probably had 3-400, but it didn't impact the market. It was a 10c card, millions were printed. Common as you could get. People going for 1000s of Dragon Warrior carts or Keith Courage can't affect the market. You'd need 100,000 to even have a slight noticeable impact.

What's absolutely crazy to me is that rarity distribution in NES games feels a lot like MTG cards. The major difference is, cards were intended to be common, uncommon, and rare. NES games weren't. People bought the stinker Silent Service by the millions. You see it everywhere. This wasn't intentional. So weird.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

10 minutes ago, DarkKobold said:

 or Keith Courage can't affect the market.

Im Flattered!

 

But That isnt my goal, at least.

[RH | 4,903]

Anyone familiar with the term "pump and dump"?  This is doable with games if you have a way to get people motivated to buy a specific game.  All you have to do is look for an unnoticed game that has only 3-5 titles on eBay that, maybe, have at their for a while. Buy them, and then quickly buy each new one.  Then post something about it on your 100k+ subscriber YouTube channel, or Instagram thread and then sell them off when the hype starts looking on eBay.

People use to do this crap with cryptocurrency and with the increase in bitcoin from when it was in the dollar-per-coin range, today those pump and dumpers are worth hundreds of millions.  Ok, that's a tangent, but that type of behavior is old.  It's possibly people trying to do the same thing in video games.

For me, I have the urge to hoard a couple of titles but I don't.  I don't know why.  For some of us, there's a small thrill in owning a small stockpile, even though the stock pile is pointless.  If you download any of the Topps card trading apps, like the Star Wars one, you can get free packs each day and the common cards literally have counts in the 10s of millions.  Everyone had their "hoard" though and would trade all of their other commons, 1-to-1 for whatever they wanted to hoard.  Some people would have hundreds of thousands of a specific card.  I don't know why, but when the supply is massive, hoarding does creep into the collector mindset.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

 

Am I that guy?

[Lincoln | 230]

14 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

 

Am I that guy?

I have a handful of those I bought to convert. Just haven't had motivation to do so. I also have 100+ other various donors idk what to do with

They're still not cheap but they've fallen off from when the patch was first announced

[Link | 2,709]

On 11/27/2019 at 2:27 PM, DarkKobold said:

People bought the stinker Silent Service by the millions. You see it everywhere. This wasn't intentional. So weird.

There were only 150,000 copies of Silent Service made. But nobody wants them, so they just endlessly circulate. Most of them were destroyed by irate children even before the Super Nintendo came out. Only 18 remain. I actually have one of them right now. I just sold a bulk lot and intentionally left it out, because I knew it would make people bid less.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Link

[Lincoln | 230]

Pat Contri has asserted for a long time now that the panesian games have been hoarded. Regardless of your opinion of him he's generally on point and I'm inclined to accept he's right. For as high profile as they are they are rarely available even at not-serious prices.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Lincoln

[Tulpa | 3,492]

12 minutes ago, Lincoln said:

Pat Contri has asserted for a long time now that the panesian games have been hoarded. Regardless of your opinion of him he's generally on point and I'm inclined to accept he's right. For as high profile as they are they are rarely available even at not-serious prices.

I think he's right, too, and that it's been going on for a long time.

[TheBiRD | 137]

1 hour ago, MrWunderful said:

 

Am I that guy?

I've the NES repro that you sold years ago on the other site.. never understand what to do with the resistance that comes with the game! Lol

Edited December 12, 2019 by TheBiRD

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Just now, TheBiRD said:

I've your repro that you sold years ago on the other site.. never understand what to do with the resistance comming with the game! Lol

The resistor is if you want to mod your NES to get the extra channel of sound the VRC7 uses

[TheBiRD | 137]

15 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

The resistor is if you want to mod your NES to get the extra channel of sound the VRC7 uses

   

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Different hobby, but back in the day I wouId pick up any 1952 Topps Mantle that I could that I thought was at a decent price. I could usually trade them for almost anything or just resell them at a decent profit. Didn't DreamTR try to track down ever NWC gold cart winner and end up owning like a dozen of them? I'm sure that paid off pretty well, so hoarding probably does work in certain cases.

[GPX | 1,369]

On 11/15/2019 at 8:59 AM, Sega Genesis Sage said:

I think there is some parity between the groups - at the low end of comics collecting, you have people that collect "reader's" copies and don't particularly care about condition, they just want to have the issue. I see this as being pretty much analogous with loose collecting. Similarly, these people actually like to crack open and read their comics, much like loose collectors like to at least have the ability to play their games.

On the high end of comics collecting, you have people that won't even look at an issue if it's not sealed and graded 9.5 or higher. This is more analogous to the high end, sealed game collector.

The comics collectors also love first prints, variants, etc. That's why you see people trying to bring that sort of mentality into videogame collecting.

The thing is, that mentality of high end video game collecting has always been there since I started around 8-9 years ago (sealed, first prints, variants, mint). It’s just that now it’s been hyped up like there’s no tomorrow.

[silverjazzzoo | 1]

Do American garbage yards dig into piles like they do in Mexico? I am talking about 30 years ago, but I would think that a person would sell a game rather than throw it out. 90% retention rate for every game made for NES and 16 bit era? Or am I nuts?

[hyrulevyse | 151]

23 hours ago, silverjazzzoo said:

Do American garbage yards dig into piles like they do in Mexico? I am talking about 30 years ago, but I would think that a person would sell a game rather than throw it out. 90% retention rate for every game made for NES and 16 bit era? Or am I nuts?

yeah I think that's nuts. I have no idea what the right percentage is but it has to be under 50.  These games weren't always 'worth something' and with no internet click bait articles around to educate people, most just threw em away like any other toy that gets outgrown.  

[ALTQQ | 87]

On 1/8/2020 at 8:13 PM, hyrulevyse said:

yeah I think that's nuts. I have no idea what the right percentage is but it has to be under 50.  These games weren't always 'worth something' and with no internet click bait articles around to educate people, most just threw em away like any other toy that gets outgrown.  

I've only encountered a recycling bin full of nes tapes once. I'd imagine a ton got thrown out but I think most unwanted ones cycled through a garage sale, got donated traded for store credit or are just stuffed in a box lost in an attic/garage/basement/closet long forgotten and waiting for an estate sale.

[hyrulevyse | 151]

5 minutes ago, ALTQQ said:

I've only encountered a recycling bin full of nes tapes once. I'd imagine a ton got thrown out but I think most unwanted ones cycled through a garage sale, got donated traded for store credit or are just stuffed in a box lost in an attic/garage/basement/closet long forgotten and waiting for an estate sale.

They were garage sale fodder for sure but I don't think trading them in was even a thing until the mid 90's.  I could be wrong but high school for me was the earliest I can remember used game stores or whatnot.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

Fun fact: in Taiwan, it is quite common to find clone machines or legit video game consoles with the controller cables cut. The old folks dig them out of the trash, cut the chords and sell them (the chords) to a recycling shop for the scrap metal. So sad, but very very common.

[snes_collector | 56]

No one mentioned Magical Chase yet- that one has been rumored to be hoarded among a few collectors for probably a decade

[captmorgandrinker | 1,649]

On 1/8/2020 at 11:13 PM, hyrulevyse said:

yeah I think that's nuts. I have no idea what the right percentage is but it has to be under 50.  These games weren't always 'worth something' and with no internet click bait articles around to educate people, most just threw em away like any other toy that gets outgrown.  

I'd venture 25% or less from the SNES era back.   There's likely a higher percentage of people that just throw them away rather than bothering with a garage sale or donation.

[scaryice | 585]

No way have that many SNES games been thrown out, they were $60-70. I'll say around 1/3rd thrown away, and I'd be very shocked if it was over 50%.

Of course, I'm sure it varies by game and genre. Sports game, ok, those are probably over half. But a game like Wizardry, probably something really low like 10%.

Edited February 2, 2020 by scaryice