March 29, 2024, 02:23:26 am

How do you collect?

Started by Shumi Nagaremono, July 08, 2014, 06:42:10 pm

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Shumi Nagaremono

I'm just curious how other Famicom collectors go about, well, collecting. 

I began collecting when I lived in Fukuoka.  Most of my purchases came from second-hand resale shops like Hard-Off, Book-Off, and Geo.

A lot of these resale shops have a great selection of loose carts and hardware at really good prices.  Often, only 100-500 yen.  Even boxed/CiB games could be had for only a few hundred yen on occassion.  You wouldn't come across the *really* rare/expensive stuff very often, but you strike gold once in awhile.

For more rare, high-dollar items, I'd check out the Mandarake locations in Tenjin and Kokura.  Every now and then I'd check Amazon for loose carts, most often when I saw something that looked interesting at Mandarake...but didn't want to pay the store's price. 

When my wife took a job in Tokyo, I found that collecting is a whole lot different here. 

Places like Book-Off and Hard-Off are still around, but their selection isn't as impressive.  The prices are probably twice what the averages were in Fukuoka.  Boxed stuff, even more so. 

Most people seem to know that, if you're looking to sell your old hardware/software, Akihabara's the place to do it.  The result is that, in Akiba, on any given day, you could probably find *anything* you were after...if you were willing to pay for it.  Places like Mandarake, Super Potato, and Retro Game Center have damn near every cart ever released, and an eye-popping amount of hardware to boot.  But at prices hovering around what you'd see online.  Still, I have to pass through Akiba on my way home from work nearly every day, so if there *are* deals to find, I'm often in the right place at the right time. 

How do you folks collect?  What's your routine?     

P

Since I'm collecting import stuff, the only routine I have is checking Ebay and the local equivalent for what I'm currently looking (or sometimes just checking what's changed) either to get a good grasp what the prices are on those sites or see if I can get anything for a good price, sometimes I strike it lucky. My collection isn't that impressive for that reason (importing is expensive).

All local game stores I used to know are either gone or have become crappy so they are useless.

When I go to Japan I look in all Book-Offs and similar secondhand shops I see, far from all of those have games though. If I have something I've been looking for when I'm going to Akiba I buy it there despite the price. At least I won't find it in the same shape cheaper on Ebay anytime soon. You are lucky to be able to go there often enough to find deals there.

When you say that collecting is very different in Tokyo do you mean that in a bad way or good way? Or maybe both? I would think the selection is bigger but it's harder to find deals.

Shumi Nagaremono

In Tokyo (especially in Akiba) the selection is overwhelming.  With very few exceptions, you can find nearly anything that saw a retail release every day of the year.  But since just about every retailer knows *exactly* what they've got, *excellent* deals are few and far between. 

In the other places I've lived (Fukuoka, Kitakyushu, Hiroshima, and a few others) the selection isn't nearly as expansive, and you'll rarely find anything eye-popping, but the prices are far below what you'd expect to pay online.  I picked up a CiB Rockman 4 for 700 yen.  The first boxed Famicom I bought was 3,000 yen.  I snagged a first-run Gameboy console for under 1,000 yen.  I passed on a CiB Virtual Boy console for 5,000 yen last year.  If you're looking to start building a collection, doing so outside of Tokyo is a great idea. 

I'm going back to visit my family next month.  I am going to absolutely load up on game to bring back with me.  I didn't appreciate how incredible racks and racks full of 100-800 yen games were until I started working in Akiba.  The Book-Off here has about a dozen Famicom titles, and half of them are Mah-Jong...for 500 yen each.

(Not bagging on the Akiba Book-Off, btw.  Even if they're not the ideal place for Famicom stuff, I *did* see a boxed AV Famicom for 7,000 yen (loose ones fetch 13,000 these days).  And it's a FANTASTIC place if you're into PS1, or nearly any kind of book/manga.)

smeghead

i started by getting games i had and i enjoyed the most in my childhood, first i was buying on some market but there were not lot of games, then i started to look on the internet, i saw ch3ch3 webpage and couldn't belive how many cartridges he has, but when i found this awesome Famicom world forum , i succeed to collect all the games i wanted...

now i have so much cartridges and that's enough for whole life, but for sure there is more games that i never played and surely they're great , but i'm sorry that i didn't keep my personal cartridges which my parents were buying in late 90's , i gave all games to one kid and he gave to somebody else and i never saw them again...

senseiman

Quote from: Shumi Nagaremono on July 08, 2014, 06:42:10 pm

I began collecting when I lived in Fukuoka. 


LOL, that is funny, I began collecting when I lived in Fukuoka too!  Manuel too I think.

You are right, the shops down there, especially the Hard Offs and other recycle shops, had a really good selection at really good prices compared to Tokyo  or other larger cities. 

You must have lived there a few years ago, in around 2010 all the GEOs in Fukuoka liquidated their Famicom (and other pre-PS2) inventory.  My collection grew quite a bit while they had that sale!  I do miss living down there, it really was a great place for retro game collecting.  I suspect that other mid-sized cities are also pretty good, they don`t have as many collectors competing for stuff so its possible to find some bargains. 

Shumi Nagaremono

I lived in Fukuoka prefecture from 2006 until 2010. 

Did you ever visit the retro game store in Nishijin?  It was in between Don Kihote and the Hard Off/Off-House (which closed in maybe 2010?)  It was a *godsend* for certain harder to find SFC titles. 

And speaking of the Hard-Off nearby...crazy, right?

P

Quote from: Shumi Nagaremono on July 09, 2014, 04:18:55 am
(Not bagging on the Akiba Book-Off, btw.  Even if they're not the ideal place for Famicom stuff, I *did* see a boxed AV Famicom for 7,000 yen (loose ones fetch 13,000 these days).  And it's a FANTASTIC place if you're into PS1, or nearly any kind of book/manga.)

When I studied abroad in Tokyo we bought a cheap PS1 in a secondhand store and then went to book-off to get multiplayer games to play in the evenings. PS1 games was really easy to find. Before we went home we gave away the console and most of the games to other students.

tappybot

Shumi,

That's about my story too.

Moved to Nagoya and though I had earlier idea that I would stop collecting games, as I sold most of them before I left for Japan and thought I'd have a different lifestyle.
Went to an A-Too which is a mostly used game store, though they do sell a lot of the newer stuff too..  Anyway, they had some really inexpensive loose carts in a bin on the floor.

Dug out Kirby's Adventure among a few other things.. Sort of a memento.

Before I knew it, I was making trips there every weekend, along with every hardoff I could find.
I also found a Mandarake and a few others prime locations that were more expensive...   In the end, I ended up ordering anything I hadn't seen yet, or hadn't picked up yet, on Amazon.jp.


By the time I went back to the states, I had accrued probably about 1000 games... and sent them all back to the states for my return, ahead of time.


I'm full on crazy now.   :crazy:


Keep in mind though, the huge majority of my collection consists of games I picked up within that 105-525yen range, leaning toward the former.
Very proud of it.  Even have a number of good boxed stuff.

Bob-Bob

I buy everything from people on here. Particularly Senseiman, whose blog convinced me to start collecting Famicom in the first place.  :P

senseiman

Quote from: Shumi Nagaremono on July 09, 2014, 05:46:55 am
I lived in Fukuoka prefecture from 2006 until 2010. 

Did you ever visit the retro game store in Nishijin?  It was in between Don Kihote and the Hard Off/Off-House (which closed in maybe 2010?)  It was a *godsend* for certain harder to find SFC titles. 

And speaking of the Hard-Off nearby...crazy, right?


We would have overlapped then, I lived there from 2008 to 2012.

I think I know the shop you are talking about in Nishijin, kind of a smaller place?  I used to browse there sometimes but never bought anything.

My favorite was hte Omocha Souko in Kaizuka, which sadly went out of business in 2012.

The best Hard Off in Fukuoka was this one out in Higashi ku, kind of hard to get to.  It was near Costco in the suburbs.  It could be hit and miss depending on whether they had gotten any new stuff in (and whether they had priced it cheaply or not) but sometimes I hit the jackpot out there.

Shumi Nagaremono

Oh, cool!  Are you still teaching in Japan?

senseiman

Yeah, but sadly not in Fukuoka anymore.  I love that city, in part because it was a way better place to find games!

FamicomRetroGamer

I've got wishlists of the consoles I want to buy the games in the future for, so that way I can remember the ones I want.

In terms of 8th gen collection, I got about a dozen of Wii U games which I wanted although for PS4 still nothing because the games I want for it are yet to be released so I'll just get the console + games in 2015/16.

tappybot

Quote from: FamicomRetroGamer on July 11, 2014, 04:48:42 am
I've got wishlists of the consoles I want to buy the games in the future for, so that way I can remember the ones I want.

In terms of 8th gen collection, I got about a dozen of Wii U games which I wanted although for PS4 still nothing because the games I want for it are yet to be released so I'll just get the console + games in 2015/16.


Yeah man, save your money.  :bub:

FamicomRetroGamer

I wouldn't mind buying them but they're just so generic and bland it makes me wonder why anyone would want a PS4/XO at this stage considering its best games are still yet to be released.

I didn't buy into the PS4 hype like many others did because I'm a Nintendo guy that and it always comes down to "where are the games?".

Back in PS3's launch I remember playing MotorStorm and had a blast playing it, still to this day is a ton of fun and looks graphically great too.