Hi Guys.
Im a total newb to colelcting Famicom. I have decided to go for a complete set of official famicom games. Theres a great list on this site wich ive copied to Excel and plan to mark them off as i go.
Ive never emtemped a complete set before and i will prberbly ever acomplish my goal. But i would like a bit of advice.
Wich games in the famicom libary are going to be an utter slo to try and track down, and what are the most expensive??
Any advice from you uys would be great. Im now at the age and in the postition were i would like to persue this task but im going to need Advice and LOTS of it! :D
Post Merge: November 10, 2013, 05:10:29 am
Oh yes. Forot to add. Im going to start with collecting carts, Will pick up disk system games on the way but im mainly focusing on cart colelcting for now.
There are a lot of special edition and promo carts, if I understand things correctly. Those will cost you a pretty penny, if not make it even impossible to get everything.
Mr. Gimmick will cost you a bunch, same with Recca. Some of the more popular NES stuff has risen in price for Famicom as well, in part due to western gamers using the Famicom games as an alternative to the really expensive NES counterparts.
It is a large goal you have, and one which I wish I were brave enough to attempt; however, knowing that there are so many games in the Famicom library, I think this is a goal that few would actually be able to complete.
Good luck, and I will be interested in hearing how things go!
Yeah, there are some that are rare and/or expensive. Gimmick! and Recca: Summer Carnival '92 are a couple of notorious ones, as they're both solid action games that are widely wanted by collectors and gamers alike. There are a number of prize carts, with the gold version of Punch-Out!! probably being the most coveted.
You may want to do some visual research on the pricier carts, to make sure you don't buy one of the pirates that tend to be very common. They're usually easy to spot, but be careful.
I don't want to tell you how to collect, but I would ask you to maybe consider your priorities before going too nuts with this. Please realize that there are over 1,000 unique games in the licensed Famicom library. And that figure doesn't even include major label variants, prize/promo carts, and the other oddball stuff that would be included in some standards of completeness. And would you be going cart-only, or for a Complete-in-Box set? The latter can be interesting, but it's also harder and much more expensive.
Are you buying these just to look at their art, or are you planning to play all of them? Do you read Japanese? If not, you're not going to get much out of the hundreds of turn-based RPGs, strategy games, point and click adventures, and video-novel "adventure" games in the library. Are you really going to enjoy 50 different, obsolete baseball games? Do you need ten different gambling games where you bet on simulated horse races? Do you need dozens of mahjong games? (Do you even play mahjong?)
My FC collection stands at around 125 games, with 90% of them cart-only. (There's at most another 50 that I'd like to add before considering my licensed set complete.) I buy them to play them, so nearly all of them are action and puzzle games. Virtually all of them are games that are either not released in the US or Europe (as I also collect PAL NES), or are at least dramatically different from their US/PAL versions. My collection is less pricy and less ambitious than many of the others here, but I'm pretty satisfied with it because it serves my purposes.
I've often toyed with the idea of getting a full set of CIB Famicom games, especially since I already have about a hundred CIB games including some of the expensive titles like Gimmick and Recca. But then I remember that I would never play over 900 games of the Famicom's full library. All the sports games, mahjong games, games that are just plain bad, games that I can't play due to the language barrier...it would just be a huge money sink and very problematic to store.
Sturgeon's Law of "90% of everything is crap" very much applies to FC games as well.
For the really ridiculously expensive stuff you might need to acquire depending on your definition of "complete set", consider Kidō Senshi Z-Gundam: Hot Scramble - Final Version. Only a 1000 copies were ever made. You'd end up paying around a thousand dollars for a game that's not very fun.
Unless you live in Japan or have lots and lots and lots of money forget about it.
Yes, a complete collection is a gallant but misguided goal I'd say. Better to get an everdrive and all of the 'good' games. Otherwise you're spending thousands on tripe.
As it is you'll already be spending thousands...
Quote from: L___E___T on November 11, 2013, 07:32:00 am
Yes, a complete collection is a gallant but misguided goal I'd say. Better to get an everdrive and all of the 'good' games. Otherwise you're spending thousands on tripe.
As it is you'll already be spending thousands...
There will definitely be a lot of "fat" in that set, as well as "meat"; however, I think that if the op wants to do it, it is more than possible, if one would choose to go for a modified "complete" set (i.e. a set that is not complete, but only excludes limited edition carts, prize carts, stuff like that). Removing those things that are just terribly impossible to find, I would imagine that the common "swill" carts would go for little money. To go for a CIB collection would be foolish, I think, but a loose cart collection would be doable.
I would start with the games that interests me the most first and then see if I would want to continue.
Yeah i am intrested in the Everdrive. Any idea were to aquire one with cart label??
Post Merge: November 11, 2013, 10:21:22 am
Thanks for all the great comments guys!!!
I must agree that when i first looked at the list on the main page of this site, It didnt look like to much of mamoth task. but in truth most of you are right.
90% of the games in the entire libary are crap.
I think im going to start off getting the games that intrest me the most. Think ill try and get these CIB.
Number one on my list is Journey to silius. Ill mainly be going for the Rare/hard to find stuff to begin. Ones that actually play as great games. Like the Hal version of Ghostbusters 2. Man that games is awesome 8)
I think Let has a spare shell for Everdrive.
I haven't played every Famicom game, but I have played quite a lot of them past the years and I think 90% crap sounds too high. Famicom has a many quality titles and although you sometimes wonder how a certain crappy game could pass Nintendo's quality check, most games seems to me to have been worked on quite hard (which can't be said on some other consoles/computers by other companies). 90% are mediocre might be more accurate I think.
I also would not mind playing at least 50% of famicom games. And this means of ALL famicom games released, so among excluded games are baseball games, RPGs I can't read, text-adventure games, most sports game, and such.
Games such as Ninja Hattori Kun and Ikki are "kusoge" (which ironically means crap) but I could still play them a short amount of time... If you only play the 10% most popular items , you can not be a dedicated fan of anything... If you want 3D graphics and online multiplayer, play xbox or something else. f you like rock music for example, you would listen to that 90% too... if you like movies you would enjoy most of them...
only the occasional user would say that 90% is crap, for example I would say that most movies are crap. Although I think that usually the ratio that people say is typically 80/20
But it depends on the system. I don't enjoy pc engine so much and there are few games there I truly enjoy. I enjoy Saturn and famicom more and Game Boy most (although Saturn is closing in on game boy). But on Nintendo 64 I can't stand playing any game. On game boy, I'll play most Japanese games.
I do think that the Japanese library in general is superior to PAL and US, I think because they had less licensed crap. Even the licensed titles in Japan were surprisingly playable, as P said most of them seem to have been worked on, which you can't say for some NES LJN crap.
For example, Zippy Race is kind of fun, Sqoon also. But Mach Rider is painful to play. Lum is playable. Even GeGeGe no Kitarou is playable (I made a video of it, and have spent a couple of hours with it).
I do have a spare Everdrive cart shell - I have several.
In terms of collecting, I would take Satohi Matrix's top 100 as a starting point, then expand:
http://satoshimatrix.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/top-100-nesfamicom-games-list-a-visual-recap/
Collecting all the carts is actually a quest I have been on for almost 5 years now. I have close to 800 (out of about 1050 or so).
The above advice is all pretty accurate. I live in Japan and thus have an advantage, but even here it is pretty hard. The first 500 were easy to collect since I was mostly getting the common ones. After that.....progress slowed to a crawl as I had to start getting some of the more expensive ones and actually investing (though I was really lucky with a couple like GImmick that I found for super cheap).
I don`t go for any of the gold-version carts and I have about 200 CIB, but for the collection goal I say it is good enough to have them loose (mainly for cost reasons, but also for space in my apartment reasons!)
If you do undertake this noble project, I wish you luck!!
Quote from: senseiman on November 12, 2013, 06:02:59 pm
Collecting all the carts is actually a quest I have been on for almost 5 years now. I have close to 800 (out of about 1050 or so).
The above advice is all pretty accurate. I live in Japan and thus have an advantage, but even here it is pretty hard. The first 500 were easy to collect since I was mostly getting the common ones. After that.....progress slowed to a crawl as I had to start getting some of the more expensive ones and actually investing (though I was really lucky with a couple like GImmick that I found for super cheap).
I don`t go for any of the gold-version carts and I have about 200 CIB, but for the collection goal I say it is good enough to have them loose (mainly for cost reasons, but also for space in my apartment reasons!)
If you do undertake this noble project, I wish you luck!!
Haha, please don't say things like "The first 500 were easy to collect". Things like that make me really consider going for an abridged full set of Famicom games myself, excluding the gold cartridges and promos, those things that are nice but in NWC caliber for rarity and cost.
Japan is not so far away from me, so I could easily see myself sometime going over there for a few weeks and just going crazy picking up games, as I have been obsessed with (wanting) a Famicom and carts since I was a little kid.
I've always pondered this goal myself, but instead opted to go for a complete set of unlicensed Famicom carts, which I am nearly done with.
Who knows, in the future I might be looking for a new collecting challenge.
LOL, sorry to implant ideas in your mind ;D
You should make a trip to Japan someday, but be sure to bring lots of cash (or perhaps it would be better not to....)
Quote from: senseiman on November 13, 2013, 02:41:39 am
LOL, sorry to implant ideas in your mind ;D
You should make a trip to Japan someday, but be sure to bring lots of cash (or perhaps it would be better not to....)
Yeah ever since reading from the OP and now your posts, I can't get this damned idea of a Famicom full set out of my mind, something I had been toying with for a long time. This might be a fun project to start next year, depending on funds and the like.
I just checked on my official Famicom carts, which is not many. I have about 2.5% of the collection done already, heh. If you ever want to sell a cheapish, large lot of official FC games, maybe I would be interested, heh.
Man, I am not feeling this "90% are crap" thing going around this thread. I'd say I'm only interested in about 20% of the Famicom library, but I also have the US or PAL versions of virtually all of the good games that got an NES release. There are definitely a few mediocre games in my collection, but they're all still worth playing or I wouldn't bother keeping them around.
If I weren't an NES collector, I could see myself owning 1/3 of the Famicom library. And that number would be potentially higher if I were able to actually read Japanese to enjoy some of those RPGs. (As it is, I've just bought translated NES repros of the most interesting ones.) There's undoubtedly some solid games there, even if I can't enjoy them for language reasons.
But yeah, as was said earlier in the thread, if you're going to collect start with stuff that you know you'll enjoy. You can always expand from there in any way that makes sense for you.
Quote from: lobdale on November 11, 2013, 06:12:53 am
Unless you live in Japan or and have lots and lots and lots of money forget about it.
fixed
Quote from: fcgamer on November 14, 2013, 10:09:46 am
Quote from: senseiman on November 13, 2013, 02:41:39 am
LOL, sorry to implant ideas in your mind ;D
You should make a trip to Japan someday, but be sure to bring lots of cash (or perhaps it would be better not to....)
Yeah ever since reading from the OP and now your posts, I can't get this damned idea of a Famicom full set out of my mind, something I had been toying with for a long time. This might be a fun project to start next year, depending on funds and the like.
I just checked on my official Famicom carts, which is not many. I have about 2.5% of the collection done already, heh. If you ever want to sell a cheapish, large lot of official FC games, maybe I would be interested, heh.
I have a ton of doubles that I could do in a cheapish, large lot so if you are ever interested just shoot me a PM!
Quote from: 80sFREAK on November 14, 2013, 11:47:39 pm
Quote from: lobdale on November 11, 2013, 06:12:53 am
Unless you live in Japan or and have lots and lots and lots of money forget about it.
fixed
I dunno, my Excel sheet tracker here says I have spent just shy of $1200 total on my Famicom collection (~260 boxed and loose FC/FDS games, average cost about five bucks a game, slightly higher for FDS), and that's boxed square-button and AV Famicom systems, a boxed gun, the whole set of Nintendo-published Famicom and FDS boxed and complete, most of everything Konami put out, carts of every Mega Man, both Contras, all the Castlevanias, Gimmick, Gold Punch-Out, Ghostbusters 2, Hebereke, Battletoads, all the Ninja Ryukendens, Splatterhouse, Bionic Commando, RAF World, and a ton of complete Konami FDS stuff (Green Beret, Final Command, Almana no Kiseki)...
If you wait for deals and lots, comb through lots of auctions, frequent small game shops and pawn shops, sell off your extras and pick up good reselling carts to offload to collectors, AND are patient, AND live in Japan, you can do it without having a ton of money. Even though it took me almost three years and a lot of time spent on Yahoo, I think my entire collection ended up nearly paying for itself, or pretty close to it over time, simply from picking up doubles when I saw a good price or rooting through the Hard-Off stuff for things I already had but would be able to resell. Combined shipping costs, due diligence, and a healthy dose of a lucky find or two don't hurt.
Well done, lobdale. That sound very similar to the way I beefed up my NES collection 2-4 years ago. I did end up breaking even about a year ago by reselling doubles, and still wound up with at least $6000 US worth of new games and accessories for the collection. (I'm back in the red currently, though, as I've been buying more than selling since then.)
Quote from: senseiman on November 15, 2013, 02:16:21 am
Quote from: fcgamer on November 14, 2013, 10:09:46 am
Quote from: senseiman on November 13, 2013, 02:41:39 am
LOL, sorry to implant ideas in your mind ;D
You should make a trip to Japan someday, but be sure to bring lots of cash (or perhaps it would be better not to....)
Yeah ever since reading from the OP and now your posts, I can't get this damned idea of a Famicom full set out of my mind, something I had been toying with for a long time. This might be a fun project to start next year, depending on funds and the like.
I just checked on my official Famicom carts, which is not many. I have about 2.5% of the collection done already, heh. If you ever want to sell a cheapish, large lot of official FC games, maybe I would be interested, heh.
I have a ton of doubles that I could do in a cheapish, large lot so if you are ever interested just shoot me a PM!
Pm'd
Post Merge: November 15, 2013, 01:52:53 pm
Quote from: lobdale on November 15, 2013, 06:00:06 am
Quote from: 80sFREAK on November 14, 2013, 11:47:39 pm
Quote from: lobdale on November 11, 2013, 06:12:53 am
Unless you live in Japan or and have lots and lots and lots of money forget about it.
fixed
I dunno, my Excel sheet tracker here says I have spent just shy of $1200 total on my Famicom collection (~260 boxed and loose FC/FDS games, average cost about five bucks a game, slightly higher for FDS), and that's boxed square-button and AV Famicom systems, a boxed gun, the whole set of Nintendo-published Famicom and FDS boxed and complete, most of everything Konami put out, carts of every Mega Man, both Contras, all the Castlevanias, Gimmick, Gold Punch-Out, Ghostbusters 2, Hebereke, Battletoads, all the Ninja Ryukendens, Splatterhouse, Bionic Commando, RAF World, and a ton of complete Konami FDS stuff (Green Beret, Final Command, Almana no Kiseki)...
If you wait for deals and lots, comb through lots of auctions, frequent small game shops and pawn shops, sell off your extras and pick up good reselling carts to offload to collectors, AND are patient, AND live in Japan, you can do it without having a ton of money. Even though it took me almost three years and a lot of time spent on Yahoo, I think my entire collection ended up nearly paying for itself, or pretty close to it over time, simply from picking up doubles when I saw a good price or rooting through the Hard-Off stuff for things I already had but would be able to resell. Combined shipping costs, due diligence, and a healthy dose of a lucky find or two don't hurt.
Ahhh excel. The collectors friend :)
Dosnt sound like to much of an investment for the amount fo stuff that you have managed to acumulate. With the cost of the pound to the dollar, it works out about £700. About the price of a banger of a car haha
God I shudder to think what I've spent over these years. Only recently have I reigned it in.
Quote from: lobdale on November 15, 2013, 06:00:06 am
Quote from: 80sFREAK on November 14, 2013, 11:47:39 pm
Quote from: lobdale on November 11, 2013, 06:12:53 am
Unless you live in Japan or and have lots and lots and lots of money forget about it.
fixed
I dunno, my Excel sheet tracker here says I have spent just shy of $1200 total on my Famicom collection (~260 boxed and loose FC/FDS games, average cost about five bucks a game, slightly higher for FDS), and that's boxed square-button and AV Famicom systems, a boxed gun, the whole set of Nintendo-published Famicom and FDS boxed and complete, most of everything Konami put out, carts of every Mega Man, both Contras, all the Castlevanias, Gimmick, Gold Punch-Out, Ghostbusters 2, Hebereke, Battletoads, all the Ninja Ryukendens, Splatterhouse, Bionic Commando, RAF World, and a ton of complete Konami FDS stuff (Green Beret, Final Command, Almana no Kiseki)...
If you wait for deals and lots, comb through lots of auctions, frequent small game shops and pawn shops, sell off your extras and pick up good reselling carts to offload to collectors, AND are patient, AND live in Japan, you can do it without having a ton of money. Even though it took me almost three years and a lot of time spent on Yahoo, I think my entire collection ended up nearly paying for itself, or pretty close to it over time, simply from picking up doubles when I saw a good price or rooting through the Hard-Off stuff for things I already had but would be able to resell. Combined shipping costs, due diligence, and a healthy dose of a lucky find or two don't hurt.
Still ong way to go ???
Quote from: lobdale on November 15, 2013, 06:00:06 am
If you wait for deals and lots, comb through lots of auctions, frequent small game shops and pawn shops, sell off your extras and pick up good reselling carts to offload to collectors, AND are patient, AND live in Japan, you can do it without having a ton of money. Even though it took me almost three years and a lot of time spent on Yahoo, I think my entire collection ended up nearly paying for itself, or pretty close to it over time, simply from picking up doubles when I saw a good price or rooting through the Hard-Off stuff for things I already had but would be able to resell. Combined shipping costs, due diligence, and a healthy dose of a lucky find or two don't hurt.
This was my experience too for the first 4 years of my collecting when I lived in Fukuoka. Just being patient and looking for deals allowed me to get some expensive games for surprisingly cheap. My collection hasn`t paid for itself, though I have spent a lot on it ;D
It seems though that in the past year it has gotten a lot harder to stumble into deals. Partly this is because I now live in a city where none of the recycle shops have bargains (and neither do any of the Hard Offs or retro game shops), but it also is really evident on Yahoo Auctions, where prices have absolutely skyrocketed in the past year or so. I think people here have cottoned on to the fact that Famicom games have some value and so are just much less likely to be dumping them at bargain prices like they used to.
Hey sensaiman, you'll probably need to edit your last post and fix your quote box as your comments are also in it.
But I could see that being true in Japan, though I don't know much about the situation there. I do know that prices are way up on Famicom stuff on the internet, but that probably has to do with demand from importers.
I do know that cheap Nintendo stuff has gotten harder to find here in the States as well. There was a prevalent attitude for about 10 years after the demise of the NES and SNES that the games and accessories were just "old junk." That attitude does still exist, but it's not nearly as common as it used to be. With the high demand for vintage cart systems among collectors, nostalgic gamers, and even Nintendo fanboys, it's become apparent to many that their old Nintendo in the closet is worth some money. Every time a boxed Stadium Events or Nintendo World Championships goes up for sale, it makes national headlines after it sells for $10,000+. Even people who don't know or care about video games still hear about that, and they're more likely to throw their old Nintendo up on Craigslist for $100 than dump it on a thrift store or yard sale now. There are still people living under a rock who don't realize this, but there's also tons more scavengers and resellers hitting those thrifts and yard sales looking for the deals. My favorite thrift store in town has actually started doing online research for the prices on their games, probably because they caught on with how many people were coming there just for Nintendo stuff.
Again, this is an American example but I could see this happening in Japan too.
i'm only collecting the games that really enjoyable for me :yoshi:
there is #1 world best famicom collection http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=6522.0
i safely assume that every other collection definitely sucks :bub:
Quote from: nerdynebraskan on November 16, 2013, 08:45:07 am
Hey sensaiman, you'll probably need to edit your last post and fix your quote box as your comments are also in it.
But I could see that being true in Japan, though I don't know much about the situation there. I do know that prices are way up on Famicom stuff on the internet, but that probably has to do with demand from importers.
I do know that cheap Nintendo stuff has gotten harder to find here in the States as well. There was a prevalent attitude for about 10 years after the demise of the NES and SNES that the games and accessories were just "old junk." That attitude does still exist, but it's not nearly as common as it used to be. With the high demand for vintage cart systems among collectors, nostalgic gamers, and even Nintendo fanboys, it's become apparent to many that their old Nintendo in the closet is worth some money. Every time a boxed Stadium Events or Nintendo World Championships goes up for sale, it makes national headlines after it sells for $10,000+. Even people who don't know or care about video games still hear about that, and they're more likely to throw their old Nintendo up on Craigslist for $100 than dump it on a thrift store or yard sale now. There are still people living under a rock who don't realize this, but there's also tons more scavengers
Yeah, I have a feeling that something similar is happening over here. There are now even national TV shows devoting entire episodes to the value of Famicom games (see this: http://famicomblog.blogspot.jp/2013/11/famicom-price-is-right-antiques.html ) so I think the word is out. Plus with the low value of the Yen this year there are definitely a lot more overseas buyers taking advantage and driving the prices up. The good old days of finding super valuable games in junk bins are probably nearing an end!
It's not so much that the day is over, but that we probably won't get to rely on bargains in the wild anymore. There's still maybe a quarter of the goodies still winding up in thrift stores and yard sales, but there's also five times as many people out there actively checking the same sources. I'm glad my NES collection is practically complete, because I can't compete with the relentlessness of some of the other scavengers I know in my city. I rarely bother showing up for a yard sale that advertises "Nintendo" or "video games" anymore, because nine times out of ten if there was anything interesting and/or cheap it got bought up two hours before they officially opened by someone waiting outside their door at 6 AM.
I think the recession here has also played a part in game prices rising. There are more people shunning modern consoles because they don't have $50 to drop on every new game, and there are also the new professional scavengers. There are a lot of people raiding the cheap sources of games (or books, movies, etc.) that don't even collect or play them: they just know that they can make money flipping them locally or on Ebay/Amazon.
The game show that you mention in your blog is definitely similar to some of the TV/tabloid media attention that the American game collecting scene is starting to get. I know Pat the NES Punk was a guest on a recent episode of one those junk-flipper type shows. A lot of people who are having trouble making ends meet right now are watching these shows, or reading about the Stadium Events that sold at a Goodwill for $7 and was going to resell on Ebay for $15,000, and they're thinking: "Man, I should start flipping video games!"
It was also kind of funny how the contestants on that show were having difficulty deciding which games were truly the most valuable. That's definitely true of a lot of the newly-minted flippers today. It's so common for the guy who pulled an NES out of his garage and put it up excitedly on Craigslist to think his Legend of Zelda is worth big bucks because it's a recognizable name in a GOLD CARTRIDGE!!!
Yes, it does sound similar. The only difference is that there are no garage sales in Japan, so everyone gets rid of their old junk at second hand shops.
Some of those shops used to employ people who didn`t know anything about retro games and would just dump stuff into junk bins for a hundred yen each or something. Even big chains did that, when GEO (kind of a Japanese version of Blockbuster) decided to stop selling pre-PS2 gen games 3 years ago they did a chain-wide `dump` and put everything at 100 yen, regardless of the title (that was one of the greatest shopping experiences of my life, I visited 7 or 8 of their locations and got a massive haul of good Famicom titles for next to nothing).
Not many of them seem to do that anymore, and if there are any out there that do they probably get picked over in about 2 seconds. Sadly I no longer have the free time necessary to go on treasure hunts like I used to, it just takes up way too much time and there just doesn`t seem to be much out there anymore.
The situation seems very similar to what happened with baseball cards about 30 years ago. In the early 70s baseball cards were just thought of as disposable old junk. Then a group of collectors started to form and they created a niche collectors market for the rare older ones amongst themselves. They would go around to all of the garage sales and flea markets they could, getting huge hauls of what would become valuable old cards for next to nothing. By about 1980 the value of those cards had risen to the point that the mainstream media began to take notice and suddenly everyone stopped selling old cards at garage sales because they now knew they were worth something, even though the average person didn`t know what they were worth and would tend to assume that any old card was worth a fortune.
Yes I read your baseball blog post and really enjoyed it. As a European we don't have that culture at all. Stamp collecting and coin collecting is that closest I can think of.
I think something can only get valuable if people throw out all their old stuff. And there's still so many famicom games that I don't think prices will skyrocket actually. Even games like rockman. I've personally seen prices decline recently, I think because of the new generation consoles coming out and people want money and space. Or maybe because everyone wants to sell their "rarities" drives prices down. So keep on telling people their crap is worth $$$ please. ;D
But some boxed games and rarities have increased in value, I think.
Some famicom games are really hard to find, especially boxed.
I recently sold my most expensive famicom game: a bubble bobble part 2 for 100$ (loose cart) and soon hope to sell Captain Saver for a nice sum... I have a customer who buys my rarities, luckily for me...
Now with Game driving up prices I think we could expect a little bubble that will burst eventually. I don't mind, I'll keep on doing my stuff regardless.
One of the most concrete examples I have of the rise in prices of the Japanese retro-gaming market, even though it's still anecdotal, and deals specifically with Yahoo auctions in Japan, is my own copy of Gimmick, which I didn't get any sort of deal on or find in a lot or at a little store, but just on the open market on Yahoo.
Two weeks after my birthday in November of 2011, I put in a bid on one (of three) available Gimmick carts, which was cart only, and had an opening bid of 4999 yen (at the time, due to the strong yen, $64.92 if you were to convert it to dollars). Not entirely expecting to win it, I took it for that bid, the only bid, unopposed. A couple of weeks before I had passed on a complete one, with manual and box and card and all that, because I don't collect boxed non-Nintendo published, for 9000 yen ($112).
By April of 2012, when I had some time off for spring break at my job and spent a little time diggin' through stuff for my collection, on the only occasions I could even find one for sale, it was routinely selling, cart-only, for nearly $200.
There is right now a complete one on Yahoo auctions, buy it now, for 28000 yen, roughly $300. The last cart-only copy on eBay sold for $335, the last complete one for $637.
Copies of games that I took for under 1000 yen each back in 2011 (Crisis Force, Akumajou Densetsu, Contra/Contra Force, Rockman) on Yahoo now command 2.5x/3x those prices. People are finally starting to catch on to the collector's market in the States.
Okay, but Gimmick is Gimmick, the most sought after game possibly.
Like I suggested, the rare ones go up in price. Also Crisis Force etc.
On eBay I see several BIN of Rockman 4 & Rockman 5 for around 15$.... Even Rockman 2 for 15$... And one auction of Rockman 1 that ended yesterday at 22$ (+7$ shipping) and Rockman 6 ending at 10$. Games like wai wai world ending at 6$... These games are not rare, but there used to be some price to them anyways. I think there are more and more ebay items from Japan, but not higher demand
I've found some great deals in the last days from Japan too. :D Maybe I'm one of the "international buyers" that picks up all the good stuff. But actually I think prices are the same or lower as they were a year ago -- even in yen. For the stuff I am buying.
But I have to say that prices seem to go up and down... I think that sometimes Japanese people decide for a "closet cleaning" and then after a while it dies down and prices rise again. It is frustrating for a reseller like me, because you worry that the market is collapsing and stop buying, then prices go up up and you can't afford to buy, LOL.
I agree about the more common games not going up in value much (or at all). It is true that there are still a ton of Famicom games out there since people didn`t throw them out, though it seems once a collector`s market gets established in any hobby those people figure out what there is a lot of and what is rare and assign value accordingly. CIB stuff in nice condition for example isactually is pretty hard to come by even if the game by itself isn`t since most people threw the boxes out back in the day.
It is interesting to hear about Ebay since I don`t follow the prices there much. I`m mainly talking about things in Japan, which is all I know.
I`ve noticed the same thing as Lobdale with respect to Gimmick here. I picked up a loose copy of that at Mandarake 2 years ago for 4,000 yen (abotu $50 at the time). 3 weeks ago I was in the same store and they had one for 16,800 yen, four times more.
It isn`t just rare stuff, I bid on games in lots of 50 or 100 when they come up on Yahoo and whereas I used to win them all the time nowadays they easily go for 50% more than my highest bid even though I am bidding higher than I used to.
ANother thing that is almost impossible to find cheap now is consoles. A couple of years ago I could sell working Famicoms (console only) on here for $15 each because I could get them easily either at my local store or through Yahoo Auctions for less than that. Now it is absolutely impossible to find Famicoms for that cheap. When they come up on Yahoo Auction in lots the price to me to buy them (with shipping and the risk that some won`t work) usually works out to closer to $20 each now.
Yeah, there's always going to be a lot of common, low-demand games for any popular system that will be cheap forever. But on a library as big as the Famicom's, they're still going to add up a bit. It's the rares and the cult favorites that will cost a ton for any in-demand system.