I'm kind of glad to see shit like this happen from time to time. It teaches people to collect for the enjoyment of what the hobby offers rather than collecting for the sake of monetary return. These aren't investment vehicles. People who attempt to cash in on a hobby, whether it's hockey cards or bennie babies are doomed to lose their shirts. And rightly so. The hobby has taken a turn in the last few years to many people getting into the hobby simply to try to cash in. And that pisses me off and i'm sure it pisses other people off as well. Many enjoy the hobby and want to play and enjoy the games, but many have since gone so far up in price as to become unattainable. So there you have it. Sooner or later, the players have to win out over the opportunistic profiteers. It's the opportunists who have caused even thrift stores to start jacking up their prices because the thrift stores now compare an item to ebay prices. Thus, even shitty games are getting costlier. Which is making the hobby less accessible for people on a budget. And in this economy, hobbies like this help people get through tough times.
Hey! I'm the gent who ended up getting this oddity, it was a really, really incredible situation that was absolutely unprecedented, and I had absolutely no choice but to simply look at this box and laugh out loud. Great show on this, but yeah, it was a super bizarre situation. Also, the guy who DID bring them in ended up buying them at a flea market from a gent who DID seemingly work at Blockbuster. He didn't have much else besides this en masse, but the dude who traded in these had a lot of other games as well, but more standard stuff (Sega CDs, Vay, GCN component cables, Moonwalkers, etc), as he used to own another game store about 15 years ago.. As for the games, I've actually sold a huge quantity of them, and I was tossing most of them out for around $15 a pop, and we still have a pretty decent amount. I didn't want to ebay any of them because I don't want to take the time to do that. It's kind of fun being the dudes who have copies of Night Trap, but I'm not out to gouge so I've been letting them go for a pretty reasonable price that has been working. If there are more questions, totally let me know!
I work at a video game store. In the early 2000's we bought a crate of Atlus games that they had found. Musta had 100 copies of Persona 2 sealed in it.
thats why i only collected the games I liked and would play. not just fluff to fill up a collection to say you have a complete. I just dont have room for fluff.
Im from Albuquerque and I got one of the complete ones. There weren't that many complete copies. I can say that what the owner of the store did was sell them (he sold them for fairly cheap) to get them in the hands of people who wanted to play them.
Once I was in Antwerp when I was a kid here in Belgium, (I live on the other side of the country) and a guy walked in with a bin of Sega master system, like, I'm talking like an entire bag / bin full of this shit, guy asks "hey can I sell this here?" clerk responds with "Sorry we dont do retro", mon visage when I remember that shit and clearly see all the games in boxed state and whatnot. What i'd give to go back in time and stop all these distribution centers from either burrying these games or destroying them, since that's what still happens with overstock today to computers for example, shit just gets binned yo. Also around 2008 when I was in the local game shop, a guy came in with a briefcase that had a Sega Saturn and a Sega Dreamcast, I instantly flipped a shit, and so did the clerk, but had to coldly answer they didnt do retro aswell. We spent the entire fucking day talking about how that guy had like the biggest stash of shit and obviously didnt know what he was holding, sadly, we both had no money at the time. It's quite amazing to know that one man's thrash is another man's treasure. Just imagine all the shit that's stocked away on attics, I know I recently picked up some shit from a guy who cleaned out his attic.
speaking of closed video rental stores: I recently met a friend who told me that the video rental store he was working for for the last 11 years just threw tons of tons of ps1-games away that was stored for nearly 15 years in the basement. However, at that time I was not into old video games and for the store it was cheaper to throw them away than to sell them because almost all of the games were around 1 buck
You know what blows my mind about Night Trap? Five Nights at Freddy's. It's basically the same game, and it probably even could have been executed (pretty well, at least) on the same hardware. And I think a lot less went into it. But it's a much better execution of the concept.
I've met a few collectors like this that have tubs of stuff, much of which they have no idea what they have, and are holding onto it for pretty much no other reason than to say they have a bunch of old video games. I met one guy who used to be a manager at Blockbuster from early 90s until around 2000 who said he used to buy most of there video games when they were clearencing them out to make room. He wasn't sure, but he said he probably has Hagane and a few other titles very rare games. I gave him my phone number to to me know if he did and if he wanted to sell any of his games, but he never got back to me :(
I got my SF3 3rd Strike and Power Stone 2 at a Blockbuster clearance. $10 a piece. Only one they wanted over $10 for was Sonic Adventure 2, (which at that time was still going for its original retail price).
***** video games are not antique items. Antiques are usually one of a kind or very very rare. Games on the other hand have a good few thousand or more depending on the game. if everyone was to suddenly sell all their collections off, the market would crash and prices would drop, allowing people to buy for cheap to sell high when the market booms again. its more inlines of the housing market.
***** A game could be considered antique if most original copies have been thrown away, lost or just plain rare and old enough. It's not just old furniture. If the game has history behind it and enough people want it there's a chance they will be considered antique in a few decades.
Tripcore digital version kill the value permanently. take ff7 was $1500+, now with the digital releases you can have a factory sealed version and maybe get $150.
The retro market is heavily based on nostalgia. I wonder when nes/snes generation all die, will these games be as valuable then? There is also a chance that these kind of possessions will mean nothing in the future. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace. 3D printers can already print at a nano scale. How long will it take until these printers are printing electronics and available on the market? Oooh I am thinking too hard again, sorry.
Then there are these auction houses as well, that basically buy anything that goes wholesale because they have the storage space and just sit on it. I know about 10 years back there was this local auction house that for no apparent reason started selling NOS copies of super punch-out for like a dollar. I asked why and the owner said that he bought a bunch of games from a local video store that was closing and forgot about it. I asked if there were any more games like that and he said he honestly didn't know because their warehouse is always jammed packed. It was a slow month for inventory so he went through a few boxes.
I have a few someone just wanted to unload and didn't care about the profit stories to tell. I have a friend that met someone on Craigslist that for 100 dollars my friend bought at least 12 fairly big totes filled with loose action figures and one tote was filled with display stands and props. These were really nice figures, ones you would buy at toy conventions. This guy selling them the wife threatened to leave him if he didn't get rid of them. He spent all his free time on message boards and then he would go to conventions. He had these figures displayed on shelves. Their was one tote that was filled with Xmen figures. And he had various comic book figures and anime figures. One funny thing about the totes, one had a VHS tape in it that was labeled honeymoon night. It was obviously a porn the guy and the wife made together. My friend didn't dare watch it, and thought about returning it because he remembered where this guy lived. But then my friend decided not to. Also this particular friend bought about 10 huge shopping bags filled with build a bear plush toys and 2-3 bags filled with outfits and accessories. If you don't know anything about build a bear, those are very expensive. He bought them for 50 dollars because this woman was making room for more of them. A bear in the store, with an outfit and two accessories can be around 60-70 dollars. Also this friend (I am sorry I know that is annoying) for 100 dollars bought several boxes filled with organized and some sealed trading cards. This boy that was 18-22 years old was from a rich family and was huge into trading cards. He wasn't into that anymore, and so he wanted to get rid of them. They were at least 8 full sets of cards in mint condition, organized. And a lot of them were sealed. Some were trading cards, some were in a magic the gathering playing type series. A lot of them had anime characters, and then some were super heroes and comic book characters.
It's like model railroading. Prices rose and rose, collectors bought everything double, one to keep pristine, one to use. And in the last 10-20 years, they all died away and lot's of collection flooded the market. This will happen with video games too, but may not be that big of a hit price wise, because this is more world wide than model railroading. But when it's going to happen, most of us wanting to play these games, will be older too ;)
+Œlk Stadtbahner that's a great point. Lots of nostalgia collectibles peak in various waves, and diminish. Some peak at 30 years after, some at 60, but after 100 years, prices on most things have stabilized. Even older stuff comes in to waves of popularity, then declines 20 years later.
The Aladdin deck enhancer is another good example of this. Was worth money, then a ton of unsold ones were found. Can buy it for $30 NEW (it's a 23 year old NES add on) to this very day.
I worked in a family owned rental store years ago and the upstairs store room was FULL of old games, NES, SNES, Gamecube, Genesis, 32bit etc. I have no clue what they did with all of them, but I would hope the owner didnt throw them away.
I have a friend whose mother worked at Blockbuster Headquarters in TX from 80's-around 2002 and my buddy had the coolest stuff given to him by his mom. Such as genesis special tournament carts, promo displays, and such. I ended up with a Blockbuster find myself around 2006 I purchased a Blockbuster Pokemon Snap station Kiosk (N64 kiosk made by nintendo and had tv and 2 remotes and a printer) at a flea market in Grand Prairie TX and paid $20 for it. I played super smash bros 64 and pilot wings with friends for awhile, but when it came time to try to sell this machine I couldn't find ANYONE that wanted it. Now I see that these kiosks have sold for over $1000 or more on ebay. Lesson learned.
I found a lady at my local flea market selling NES carts that were in storage from a closed video store she was sitting on & picked up Chiller & baby boomer for 50 cent each. They had the original clear plastic protector cases with the cheesie instruction labels. I bought 25 games with some other rare ones as well. I got lucky on the find since collecting with my luck before & since that day!
I was in a similar situation to what Ian is describing. When my dad died in 2010, pretty much all his stuff went to me, which included shelves and shelves of DVDs and CDs, many of them unopened. And since my dad and I had VASTLY different tastes in both, I had no use for them. It just sat in my house for years as clutter. Till about a year or so ago when I just traded it all in and got a few hundred dollars (it was over multiple trios, but I think it turned out to be $600-$700 altogether). I know that if I had gone through meticulously and sold each thing on eBay or something, I could have ended up with 3-4 times that, but I didn't care. I just wanted to declutter and have the space back.
I once met a guy who bought the entire warehouse inventory of an electronics store for a few thousand Euros, the guy was a Sega collector and he found all kind of shit in there, like sealed consoles from here (PAL) and also from other regions, mega drives, game gears, NES, SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast, controllers, official Dreamcast fighting sticks, games for all consoles all new and sealed, he even found two small arcade machines. He sold me a Dreamcast new sealed with two controllers, two VMU and the official RGB cable for 50€, a bargain.
a lot of people in my age group have tons of the retro gaming stuff just laying around. i am getting back into it but can tell you my attic has at minimum 15 - 20 boxes of tons and tons of systems and games. I am keeping my stuff and slowly getting back into it but still there is SO MUCH of this stuff around.
Fulgore Rhynehardt I'm 12 and I have a similar thing. To you and your Atari or original Nintendo is to me and my GameCube. I have a lot of good condition with manual and box GameCube games. I still enjoy them and someday I'll be telling my kids about the good old 80's and 90's and 2000's (the 2010's has it's good games but they aren't as plentiful)
No one probably remembers a chain of video stores called Fun Flix or Circus Circus? I got so many good deals when they went out of business. But they were my go to place as a kid to rent games. I miss those stores.
I've noticed that a lot of people are suddenly getting out of the hobby, I'm in a couple groups on Facebook for collectors and for several months it was all just people looking for stuff, had stuff for trade, or occasionally people posting small stacks of games (typically less than 10) that they just wanted to sell, but in the last few weeks it's been people posting things like "hey I'm getting out of the hobby and am selling off my collection, here's what I have tell me what you want and make me an offer."
I'm going through that "we just need the room" phase right now as I help my mom move to a new place. I have a huge collection of games stored at her place (everything from 2600 to tg16, snes, etc.) But I've moved from NYC to Europe and cant figure out the most economic way to ship it all over seas. Loath as I am to admit it I may simply have to do a bulk clear out sale cause I don't have the time for eBay (I fly back to Europe in a month) and air freight is crazy expensive. Turns out its true "the stuff we own winds up owning us".
+Josh G. (OtaconEmmerich) That Mountain Dew and Taco Bell diet does the deed. This happens with every hobby. A lot of collectible antiques are about to flood the market because they're held by 80 year olds.
+mattlamb I don't know why, but ask the guy from NintendoAge who bought every copy of Jurassic Park on SNES he could get his hands on and then sold them all in a fridge.
There was a NeoGeo Pocket Color game, Faselei!, that had a similar story. The game was never officially released, due to the system failing. But the game had been translated and manufactured, just never released, until someone found all of those copies and put them up for sale.
Hey Pat,I had a question for Ian. Since in some instances you mentioned Ultraman,Power Rangers/Super Sentai and Kamen Rider,Was wondering what are some of your favorite series of each franchise?
There was a recent finding of new PS1 and PS2 greatest hits Square Enix games. I think they discovered them and just need quick cash since I've only seen them on amazon, and exclusively sold by amazon itself, (Amazon LLC). FFIX is only 15, FF Anthology, and FF Origins for 10. Then I found KH for 12.50 and FFX for 13.50 as well. Theyre selling them at used market price, I just wonder how many they found...
I'm doing that now, I just want my space back. I'm getting rid of (slowly) all my tools. And, I have some nice tools but I'm letting them go for like 50% of used value. If I don't sell them, they will be donated.
there is only one game i have that i don't play on the snes which is the console i collect and play on with most of my retro purchases and that is Secret of Mana it is mostly because of the price it cost me and also that i have finished it on the wii VC so i don't need to play it much anymore so i guess it has become a part of my shelf collection so to speak but i am nearly done with my snes collection i have nearly all the rpg titles i want thankfully just need to get illusion of gaia now =(
Ian, what is the name of your store and where is it located? My apologies if you've covered this previously because I'm a fairly recent fan. Thanks for all of the entertaining content.
Once us old guys are gone the prices on retro games will crash. Just look at vintage stereo gear, or most vintage cars. Unless you grew up and feel nostalgia for it, it doesn't have the same value for you.
the high value of video games today is 100% cultural trend towards collecting that sorta thing. There will come a time in the future, probably sooner then later when that cultural trend starts to die off. I think by the mid 2020s the big fad of video game collecting will slowly start to die off and all these "expensive" games will really crash in value as the "collector" market starts to collapse and people only buy video games to play and not just to fill a collection. There will always be a collector somewhere but the number of serious hard core collectors will slowly dwindle as the years go by.
not really :( Here i had only found 1 Sega CD(Wonder Dog) Games in all my Years of Games Collecting :( And it was so scratched that i coudnt play it :/ it would be nice if i could find any Sega CD Games at all but it will not happen. i am pretty sure
RetroProGamer My SEGA CD couldn't even play scratch free CDs when it was new in 1993 :P I got about 2-3 plays out of a new CD on the stupid thing and then it can no longer read CDs.
Never give up the search. There's a small vintage retailer just down the street from me. I picked up almost a dozen Sega CD games for around $4 a pop. I even scored the 32X/Sega CD versions of Night Trap, Corpse Killer, Fahrenheit and Supreme Warrior for dirt cheap (under $8 each). That stuff is definitely out there.
Ron Rose Thanks but i collect Videogames for more than 10 Years and till today i got many Videogames but mostly the "common" stuff like sports games (but even these are hard to find here). For the not "so" usual Systems i got: 1 Sega CD Game (scratched) and the System, 1 CDi Game (i got as a quite expensive gift from someone who bought it from ebay) and the system(but no controller :/) and 2 Sega Saturn Games but i never saw the system in real life till today (except for Gamescom where they displayed many stuff). in the end i only find 1 or 2 Games a month (sometimes nothing at all). It is hard to find anything older than PS2. I visit 7-8 Flea Markets every week and around 50 miles there is only 1 Store i know who sells older Videogames but everytime you want to buy something he checks on Amazon and rounds up the average value
MrGencyExit64 Ha Ha then you had a dud. My original from 92' worked just fine right up to last year when it blew a fuse or something. Got it fixed and it's back in service working like a champ again.
I want a copy of Night Trap but not to hoard it...it's history between the console it was designed for and the console it ended up on make me want to play it...have to still wait on a Sega CD but I'd be patient lol...
I remember when you could buy nes games from cash converters in chatswood Sydney for Twenty bucks when if you walked next door to toys r us they would be three hundred
Thats how i got my copies of FF3, super punch out, and megaman x 3 all for snes for real cheap as a kid. When a hollywood video was going out of buisness. I also got a copy of Diddy Kong Racing and Harvest Moon for 64 there
Nice episode, guys. I truly commend you for being so driven with your game collecting hobby, but it's also true what you say: much like any other hobby, game collecting is also expendable; you love it today, maybe tomorrow you're just done. Who knows.
You would think someone would produce a television show about this kind of stuff, given the following some UA-camrs have. There's several viable platforms, prob even an 'American Pickers' style of show where a couple affable guys go hunting for little known stashes...
I have 103 copies of erthbound I haven't checked all but the 4 copies I have Played were excellent I bought them for resale but there's a baby on the way and I need the space I also have 20 sealed Gameboys, and around 200 copies of Super castlevania I have a lot more stuff but baby goes in the Nintendo room so the Nintendo crap has got to GO.
CC no I resell this stuff on eBay so I have really large amounts of everything I would usually sell them on eBay but baby Is do next month so it's either the garbage or mass sale.
Sexual Tyranasaurus yes the comic book market boomed their where a huge influx of new companies I think an issue of Action Comics Auctioned for a very high price so people started to collect thinking it would be worth a ton some day do to the sales the companies advanced their lines , started releasing multiple editions to the same books the demands was through the roof people started hording multiple copies until nothing new became rare because people had hundreds of issues of repeats.. The market flooded and then crashed with the books worth maybe 2-$300 a little over cover price, After people realized resell wasn't an option they pulled out leaving the fans that where their for comics for comics sake high and dry as our favorite companies vanished or merged,
+Sexual Tyranasaurus If you are still interested SF Debris did an almost feature length film on the subject. It is very scary to look at the parallels between gaming and 90's comics.
Wexter0083 also cards had the same thing happen magic for instance gougers bought and burnred 100s of Alpha series cards that were rare Black Lotus card for instance making them very costly. similar with sports cards.From nes too toys, gouger resalers ruin everything.Their not fans just oppertunist capatilists.
GameStop: "I'll give you $2.50 for all 203 copies."
justkeepitoriginal more than 1 cent per copy? good luck with that
lol still more that what gamestop would offer
He'd only get 2.50 is if he threw in his car. It would also be store credit only because the kid at the register needs to make sales.
justkeepitoriginal lmao
White Noise what?
I'm kind of glad to see shit like this happen from time to time. It teaches people to collect for the enjoyment of what the hobby offers rather than collecting for the sake of monetary return. These aren't investment vehicles. People who attempt to cash in on a hobby, whether it's hockey cards or bennie babies are doomed to lose their shirts. And rightly so.
The hobby has taken a turn in the last few years to many people getting into the hobby simply to try to cash in. And that pisses me off and i'm sure it pisses other people off as well. Many enjoy the hobby and want to play and enjoy the games, but many have since gone so far up in price as to become unattainable. So there you have it. Sooner or later, the players have to win out over the opportunistic profiteers.
It's the opportunists who have caused even thrift stores to start jacking up their prices because the thrift stores now compare an item to ebay prices. Thus, even shitty games are getting costlier. Which is making the hobby less accessible for people on a budget. And in this economy, hobbies like this help people get through tough times.
Hey! I'm the gent who ended up getting this oddity, it was a really, really incredible situation that was absolutely unprecedented, and I had absolutely no choice but to simply look at this box and laugh out loud. Great show on this, but yeah, it was a super bizarre situation. Also, the guy who DID bring them in ended up buying them at a flea market from a gent who DID seemingly work at Blockbuster. He didn't have much else besides this en masse, but the dude who traded in these had a lot of other games as well, but more standard stuff (Sega CDs, Vay, GCN component cables, Moonwalkers, etc), as he used to own another game store about 15 years ago.. As for the games, I've actually sold a huge quantity of them, and I was tossing most of them out for around $15 a pop, and we still have a pretty decent amount. I didn't want to ebay any of them because I don't want to take the time to do that. It's kind of fun being the dudes who have copies of Night Trap, but I'm not out to gouge so I've been letting them go for a pretty reasonable price that has been working. If there are more questions, totally let me know!
Sackula Was the place you worked at the one who went out of business?
Scott Spencer We're still kicking! Two Gamers Anonymous locations in Albuquerque. :)
Sackula How many copies do you have left?
@peliccan8597 You can't be when you have that many copies lol
4:16 "I have met a lot of people like this, people who come into me" - the hell's going on at that store?!
Next thing you know someone is bringing in 200 copies of Snatcher :O
With that dude that sells the fake CD's for them, you never know.
TenEightEP Or 200 copies of E.T.
some prince from dubai will probably buy all games in existence just to fuck with us
sistaledaren ??
I work at a video game store. In the early 2000's we bought a crate of Atlus games that they had found. Musta had 100 copies of Persona 2 sealed in it.
thats why i only collected the games I liked and would play. not just fluff to fill up a collection to say you have a complete. I just dont have room for fluff.
If this ever happened with Snatcher, and the price went down a bit, I would be so happy.
Im from Albuquerque and I got one of the complete ones. There weren't that many complete copies. I can say that what the owner of the store did was sell them (he sold them for fairly cheap) to get them in the hands of people who wanted to play them.
Once I was in Antwerp when I was a kid here in Belgium, (I live on the other side of the country) and a guy walked in with a bin of Sega master system, like, I'm talking like an entire bag / bin full of this shit, guy asks "hey can I sell this here?" clerk responds with "Sorry we dont do retro", mon visage when I remember that shit and clearly see all the games in boxed state and whatnot. What i'd give to go back in time and stop all these distribution centers from either burrying these games or destroying them, since that's what still happens with overstock today to computers for example, shit just gets binned yo.
Also around 2008 when I was in the local game shop, a guy came in with a briefcase that had a Sega Saturn and a Sega Dreamcast, I instantly flipped a shit, and so did the clerk, but had to coldly answer they didnt do retro aswell.
We spent the entire fucking day talking about how that guy had like the biggest stash of shit and obviously didnt know what he was holding, sadly, we both had no money at the time.
It's quite amazing to know that one man's thrash is another man's treasure. Just imagine all the shit that's stocked away on attics, I know I recently picked up some shit from a guy who cleaned out his attic.
speaking of closed video rental stores: I recently met a friend who told me that the video rental store he was working for for the last 11 years just threw tons of tons of ps1-games away that was stored for nearly 15 years in the basement. However, at that time I was not into old video games and for the store it was cheaper to throw them away than to sell them because almost all of the games were around 1 buck
I want somebody to find 500 copy's of super metroid.
holly fuck! I bought my copy years ago complete in box and didn't even spend as much as the prices I'm seeing now.
Jesus, when did Super Metroid become that expensive??
Nekumore Blame speedrunners
500 times super missles, missles, power bombs and energy tanks found. :D
copies*
You know what blows my mind about Night Trap?
Five Nights at Freddy's.
It's basically the same game, and it probably even could have been executed (pretty well, at least) on the same hardware. And I think a lot less went into it. But it's a much better execution of the concept.
I've met a few collectors like this that have tubs of stuff, much of which they have no idea what they have, and are holding onto it for pretty much no other reason than to say they have a bunch of old video games. I met one guy who used to be a manager at Blockbuster from early 90s until around 2000 who said he used to buy most of there video games when they were clearencing them out to make room. He wasn't sure, but he said he probably has Hagane and a few other titles very rare games. I gave him my phone number to to me know if he did and if he wanted to sell any of his games, but he never got back to me :(
I got my SF3 3rd Strike and Power Stone 2 at a Blockbuster clearance. $10 a piece. Only one they wanted over $10 for was Sonic Adventure 2, (which at that time was still going for its original retail price).
The bubble is gonna burst, I'm already seeing plenty of tubers calling it a day, trimming the collections down.
the day the bubble burst is when you will get a lot of new collectors coming in to the fray, and buying them up, ill be happy to see it happen.
***** video games are not antique items. Antiques are usually one of a kind or very very rare. Games on the other hand have a good few thousand or more depending on the game. if everyone was to suddenly sell all their collections off, the market would crash and prices would drop, allowing people to buy for cheap to sell high when the market booms again. its more inlines of the housing market.
*****
A game could be considered antique if most original copies have been thrown away, lost or just plain rare and old enough. It's not just old furniture. If the game has history behind it and enough people want it there's a chance they will be considered antique in a few decades.
Tripcore
digital version kill the value permanently. take ff7 was $1500+, now with the digital releases you can have a factory sealed version and maybe get $150.
The retro market is heavily based on nostalgia. I wonder when nes/snes generation all die, will these games be as valuable then? There is also a chance that these kind of possessions will mean nothing in the future. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace. 3D printers can already print at a nano scale. How long will it take until these printers are printing electronics and available on the market? Oooh I am thinking too hard again, sorry.
Then there are these auction houses as well, that basically buy anything that goes wholesale because they have the storage space and just sit on it.
I know about 10 years back there was this local auction house that for no apparent reason started selling NOS copies of super punch-out for like a dollar. I asked why and the owner said that he bought a bunch of games from a local video store that was closing and forgot about it. I asked if there were any more games like that and he said he honestly didn't know because their warehouse is always jammed packed. It was a slow month for inventory so he went through a few boxes.
Ian is rockin' that amish beard.
I have a few someone just wanted to unload and didn't care about the profit stories to tell. I have a friend that met someone on Craigslist that for 100 dollars my friend bought at least 12 fairly big totes filled with loose action figures and one tote was filled with display stands and props. These were really nice figures, ones you would buy at toy conventions. This guy selling them the wife threatened to leave him if he didn't get rid of them. He spent all his free time on message boards and then he would go to conventions. He had these figures displayed on shelves. Their was one tote that was filled with Xmen figures. And he had various comic book figures and anime figures.
One funny thing about the totes, one had a VHS tape in it that was labeled honeymoon night. It was obviously a porn the guy and the wife made together. My friend didn't dare watch it, and thought about returning it because he remembered where this guy lived. But then my friend decided not to.
Also this particular friend bought about 10 huge shopping bags filled with build a bear plush toys and 2-3 bags filled with outfits and accessories. If you don't know anything about build a bear, those are very expensive. He bought them for 50 dollars because this woman was making room for more of them. A bear in the store, with an outfit and two accessories can be around 60-70 dollars.
Also this friend (I am sorry I know that is annoying) for 100 dollars bought several boxes filled with organized and some sealed trading cards. This boy that was 18-22 years old was from a rich family and was huge into trading cards. He wasn't into that anymore, and so he wanted to get rid of them. They were at least 8 full sets of cards in mint condition, organized. And a lot of them were sealed. Some were trading cards, some were in a magic the gathering playing type series. A lot of them had anime characters, and then some were super heroes and comic book characters.
It's like model railroading. Prices rose and rose, collectors bought everything double, one to keep pristine, one to use.
And in the last 10-20 years, they all died away and lot's of collection flooded the market.
This will happen with video games too, but may not be that big of a hit price wise, because this is more world wide than model railroading. But when it's going to happen, most of us wanting to play these games, will be older too ;)
+Œlk Stadtbahner that's a great point. Lots of nostalgia collectibles peak in various waves, and diminish. Some peak at 30 years after, some at 60, but after 100 years, prices on most things have stabilized. Even older stuff comes in to waves of popularity, then declines 20 years later.
The Aladdin deck enhancer is another good example of this. Was worth money, then a ton of unsold ones were found. Can buy it for $30 NEW (it's a 23 year old NES add on) to this very day.
Is it bad that the last video renting store in the county I live in closed a year ago last week
Ian's wearing a daft punk shirt 😃
I worked in a family owned rental store years ago and the upstairs store room was FULL of old games, NES, SNES, Gamecube, Genesis, 32bit etc. I have no clue what they did with all of them, but I would hope the owner didnt throw them away.
I have a friend whose mother worked at Blockbuster Headquarters in TX from 80's-around 2002 and my buddy had the coolest stuff given to him by his mom. Such as genesis special tournament carts, promo displays, and such. I ended up with a Blockbuster find myself around 2006 I purchased a Blockbuster Pokemon Snap station Kiosk (N64 kiosk made by nintendo and had tv and 2 remotes and a printer) at a flea market in Grand Prairie TX and paid $20 for it. I played super smash bros 64 and pilot wings with friends for awhile, but when it came time to try to sell this machine I couldn't find ANYONE that wanted it. Now I see that these kiosks have sold for over $1000 or more on ebay. Lesson learned.
I found a lady at my local flea market selling NES carts that were in storage from a closed video store she was sitting on & picked up Chiller & baby boomer for 50 cent each. They had the original clear plastic protector cases with the cheesie instruction labels. I bought 25 games with some other rare ones as well. I got lucky on the find since collecting with my luck before & since that day!
I was in a similar situation to what Ian is describing. When my dad died in 2010, pretty much all his stuff went to me, which included shelves and shelves of DVDs and CDs, many of them unopened. And since my dad and I had VASTLY different tastes in both, I had no use for them. It just sat in my house for years as clutter. Till about a year or so ago when I just traded it all in and got a few hundred dollars (it was over multiple trios, but I think it turned out to be $600-$700 altogether). I know that if I had gone through meticulously and sold each thing on eBay or something, I could have ended up with 3-4 times that, but I didn't care. I just wanted to declutter and have the space back.
I once met a guy who bought the entire warehouse inventory of an electronics store for a few thousand Euros, the guy was a Sega collector and he found all kind of shit in there, like sealed consoles from here (PAL) and also from other regions, mega drives, game gears, NES, SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast, controllers, official Dreamcast fighting sticks, games for all consoles all new and sealed, he even found two small arcade machines. He sold me a Dreamcast new sealed with two controllers, two VMU and the official RGB cable for 50€, a bargain.
a lot of people in my age group have tons of the retro gaming stuff just laying around. i am getting back into it but can tell you my attic has at minimum 15 - 20 boxes of tons and tons of systems and games. I am keeping my stuff and slowly getting back into it but still there is SO MUCH of this stuff around.
Fulgore Rhynehardt I'm 12 and I have a similar thing. To you and your Atari or original Nintendo is to me and my GameCube. I have a lot of good condition with manual and box GameCube games. I still enjoy them and someday I'll be telling my kids about the good old 80's and 90's and 2000's (the 2010's has it's good games but they aren't as plentiful)
Good lord, Pat is great at quick math. I can't even figure out what operation to use in that time.
My uncle who worked at Blockbuster got me a ton of NES games when they were clearing them out at the end of the system's lifespan.
That Golgo print is dope, I want it!
Pat what equipment do you use to record your audio? Thanks :)
Christ Pat, Palmer Video....I swear you brought back so many memories.....
No one probably remembers a chain of video stores called Fun Flix or Circus Circus? I got so many good deals when they went out of business. But they were my go to place as a kid to rent games. I miss those stores.
I have 100 copy's of the game "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties!" Anyone interested in buying them?
I've noticed that a lot of people are suddenly getting out of the hobby, I'm in a couple groups on Facebook for collectors and for several months it was all just people looking for stuff, had stuff for trade, or occasionally people posting small stacks of games (typically less than 10) that they just wanted to sell, but in the last few weeks it's been people posting things like "hey I'm getting out of the hobby and am selling off my collection, here's what I have tell me what you want and make me an offer."
I'm going through that "we just need the room" phase right now as I help my mom move to a new place. I have a huge collection of games stored at her place (everything from 2600 to tg16, snes, etc.) But I've moved from NYC to Europe and cant figure out the most economic way to ship it all over seas. Loath as I am to admit it I may simply have to do a bulk clear out sale cause I don't have the time for eBay (I fly back to Europe in a month) and air freight is crazy expensive. Turns out its true "the stuff we own winds up owning us".
Sad to say I bet a lot of these influx of games will happen because some collectors will die.
+Josh G. (OtaconEmmerich) Good. bring the prices down. it is stupid how expensive some games are
+Josh G. (OtaconEmmerich) That Mountain Dew and Taco Bell diet does the deed.
This happens with every hobby. A lot of collectible antiques are about to flood the market because they're held by 80 year olds.
+Josh G. (OtaconEmmerich) IS anyone really collecting multiple copies of a game though? And if so, why?
+mattlamb to artificial inflate the price and sell at the inflated price is my only guess.
+mattlamb I don't know why, but ask the guy from NintendoAge who bought every copy of Jurassic Park on SNES he could get his hands on and then sold them all in a fridge.
There was a NeoGeo Pocket Color game, Faselei!, that had a similar story. The game was never officially released, due to the system failing. But the game had been translated and manufactured, just never released, until someone found all of those copies and put them up for sale.
Mega Man Zero Collection has someone selling like 50 sealed on E-bay, due to this I found a copy for a whopping total of around 12 dollars.
Hey Pat,I had a question for Ian. Since in some instances you mentioned Ultraman,Power Rangers/Super Sentai and Kamen Rider,Was wondering what are some of your favorite series of each franchise?
There was a recent finding of new PS1 and PS2 greatest hits Square Enix games. I think they discovered them and just need quick cash since I've only seen them on amazon, and exclusively sold by amazon itself, (Amazon LLC). FFIX is only 15, FF Anthology, and FF Origins for 10. Then I found KH for 12.50 and FFX for 13.50 as well. Theyre selling them at used market price, I just wonder how many they found...
Wat did pat the news punk say towards the end of the video of the 203 nighttrap games
Where do i go to watch the podcast?
I'm doing that now, I just want my space back. I'm getting rid of (slowly) all my tools. And, I have some nice tools but I'm letting them go for like 50% of used value. If I don't sell them, they will be donated.
hey pat what about you would you just ecver get rid of all your games? like if you just dont want them anymore
That Golgo 13 poster...I want it! Love it!
there is only one game i have that i don't play on the snes which is the console i collect and play on with most of my retro purchases and that is Secret of Mana it is mostly because of the price it cost me and also that i have finished it on the wii VC so i don't need to play it much anymore so i guess it has become a part of my shelf collection so to speak but i am nearly done with my snes collection i have nearly all the rpg titles i want thankfully just need to get illusion of gaia now =(
Ian, what is the name of your store and where is it located? My apologies if you've covered this previously because I'm a fairly recent fan. Thanks for all of the entertaining content.
Luna Video Games in San Diego.
2:50 Actually 17 years but that's some impressive mental math.
I hope this happens with Snatcher, for Sega CD. Then, I'd possibly be able to afford a copy lol.
Ebay is too much hassle for a one time sale?
If they have money to spare they could hire a storage box.
These guys aren't having a yard sale with their collections. They're taking them to a game store, so money is somewhat important to them.
Must have been an independent game store. Certain chain stores have rules against taking more than one copy of the same game.
So many reports of this and yet no address/web site/phone # :(
How sad
Hey, did the Pat actually got every NES game?
I've somehow never played Night Trap....might as well try to grab a cheap copy now!
Once us old guys are gone the prices on retro games will crash. Just look at vintage stereo gear, or most vintage cars. Unless you grew up and feel nostalgia for it, it doesn't have the same value for you.
Great discussion. Thanks guys informative stuff...love the cu podcast.
Ian's Daft Punk shirt~
If I get a lot of Battletoads, I will go to Vegas to the guys of Pawn Stars XD
I really hope a stash of Panzer Dragoon Saga comes on the market that would be so awesome xp, unless you own a copy.
I hope that one of those games that he has is snatcher on sega cd so that the price finally comes down enough for it to be affordable
the high value of video games today is 100% cultural trend towards collecting that sorta thing. There will come a time in the future, probably sooner then later when that cultural trend starts to die off. I think by the mid 2020s the big fad of video game collecting will slowly start to die off and all these "expensive" games will really crash in value as the "collector" market starts to collapse and people only buy video games to play and not just to fill a collection. There will always be a collector somewhere but the number of serious hard core collectors will slowly dwindle as the years go by.
and i will never even find one copy :/
not really :( Here i had only found 1 Sega CD(Wonder Dog) Games in all my Years of Games Collecting :( And it was so scratched that i coudnt play it :/ it would be nice if i could find any Sega CD Games at all but it will not happen. i am pretty sure
RetroProGamer My SEGA CD couldn't even play scratch free CDs when it was new in 1993 :P I got about 2-3 plays out of a new CD on the stupid thing and then it can no longer read CDs.
Never give up the search. There's a small vintage retailer just down the street from me. I picked up almost a dozen Sega CD games for around $4 a pop. I even scored the 32X/Sega CD versions of Night Trap, Corpse Killer, Fahrenheit and Supreme Warrior for dirt cheap (under $8 each). That stuff is definitely out there.
Ron Rose
Thanks but i collect Videogames for more than 10 Years and till today i got many Videogames but mostly the "common" stuff like sports games (but even these are hard to find here). For the not "so" usual Systems i got: 1 Sega CD Game (scratched) and the System, 1 CDi Game (i got as a quite expensive gift from someone who bought it from ebay) and the system(but no controller :/) and 2 Sega Saturn Games but i never saw the system in real life till today (except for Gamescom where they displayed many stuff). in the end i only find 1 or 2 Games a month (sometimes nothing at all). It is hard to find anything older than PS2. I visit 7-8 Flea Markets every week and around 50 miles there is only 1 Store i know who sells older Videogames but everytime you want to buy something he checks on Amazon and rounds up the average value
MrGencyExit64
Ha Ha then you had a dud. My original from 92' worked just fine right up to last year when it blew a fuse or something. Got it fixed and it's back in service working like a champ again.
I want a copy of Night Trap but not to hoard it...it's history between the console it was designed for and the console it ended up on make me want to play it...have to still wait on a Sega CD but I'd be patient lol...
I remember when you could buy nes games from cash converters in chatswood Sydney for Twenty bucks when if you walked next door to toys r us they would be three hundred
You'll get caught in the night.... NIGHT TRAP ! YEAH!
I bet the owner was happy
Night Trap was in 92 I believe
Market does not get hurt. People who actually want an original version to play get it.
(someone has a stash of Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn like this)
so the rare stuff didn't sell so it all must be gathering dust somewhere
Thats how i got my copies of FF3, super punch out, and megaman x 3 all for snes for real cheap as a kid. When a hollywood video was going out of buisness. I also got a copy of Diddy Kong Racing and Harvest Moon for 64 there
Nice episode, guys. I truly commend you for being so driven with your game collecting hobby, but it's also true what you say: much like any other hobby, game collecting is also expendable; you love it today, maybe tomorrow you're just done. Who knows.
Must have known limited run was doing nightrap on the ps4
Probably a recall for Mature stuff. The guy probably haven't others titles in his hands.
Ah, the Night Trap market
Night Trap! Shut your big yap! Night Trap! Get rid of my crap!
I want to find 203 copies of Stadium Events.
yea you never know someone could own 50 copies of Valkyrie profile from ps1.
You would think someone would produce a television show about this kind of stuff, given the following some UA-camrs have. There's several viable platforms, prob even an 'American Pickers' style of show where a couple affable guys go hunting for little known stashes...
Shows are totally fake, so its pointless.
Persona 2 is going for about $80 now.
The game store here is trying to sell Nigh Trap for 100+. Serious bullshit.
I remember this game it was great... wasnt dana playdo in this????
i got vectrex with 9ish games with box
Buy em all then destroy 202 of them.
by the way... i love this show
Daft Punk shirt!
What is NWC?
Nintendo World Championships
Too bad they don't talk about vintage computing.
I have 103 copies of erthbound I haven't checked all but the 4 copies I have Played were excellent I bought them for resale but there's a baby on the way and I need the space I also have 20 sealed Gameboys, and around 200 copies of Super castlevania I have a lot more stuff but baby goes in the Nintendo room so the Nintendo crap has got to GO.
+zayuran KightSpider LIES!
CC no I resell this stuff on eBay so I have really large amounts of everything I would usually sell them on eBay but baby Is do next month so it's either the garbage or mass sale.
Here's hoping (if you're telling the truth) that you cause a massive dip in a game's price soon.
RarefoilB it's a troll, mate. read it's G+ page.
CC what's with my page?
same shit happened with comics damn resellers and idiots ordering thousands of copies caused a near to complete crash of the market in the 1990s.
really
Sexual Tyranasaurus yes the comic book market boomed their where a huge influx of new companies I think an issue of Action Comics Auctioned for a very high price so people started to collect thinking it would be worth a ton some day do to the sales the companies advanced their lines , started releasing multiple editions to the same books the demands was through the roof people started hording multiple copies until nothing new became rare because people had hundreds of issues of repeats.. The market flooded and then crashed with the books worth maybe 2-$300 a little over cover price, After people realized resell wasn't an option they pulled out leaving the fans that where their for comics for comics sake high and dry as our favorite companies vanished or merged,
+Sexual Tyranasaurus If you are still interested SF Debris did an almost feature length film on the subject. It is very scary to look at the parallels between gaming and 90's comics.
Wexter0083 also cards had the same thing happen magic for instance gougers bought and burnred 100s of Alpha series cards that were rare Black Lotus card for instance making them very costly. similar with sports cards.From nes too toys, gouger resalers ruin everything.Their not fans just oppertunist capatilists.
You never know.
Ian, what kind of beer is that?
Looks like Ballast Point Big Eye.
what type? ipa, lager
+Stephen Tom IPA
Is there even 200 people left you want night trap but don't have it?
I love this show.
Luna had an NWC?
This is soooooooo old!