Slashdot Mirror
The Ultimate Video Game Library up for Auction
Nerds writes "There's an auction on eBay for a console game library that goes back to about 1986. The seller has included all of the boxes and manuals for over 13 systems and a few hundred games. Everything from the NES to the Virtual Boy to the Dreamcast is represented, along with several systems I'd never heard of. Current bid: $15,000. " Its got tons of normal stuff (NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis etc) and a phenomonal number of games. Even a 3DO (when I was a kid, god I wanted one of those things... course now it doesn't even hold up). I hope you get a little jolt of warm memories when you read it too.
Everyone knows you start with small sales. A piece of software here. A movie there. Build up a feedback profile by buying small goods.
Then you can be trusted to sell more expensive goods.
$15,000+ to someone who's never sold anything to eBay, and may pocket the money and run? Fat chance.
And please, a 10 feedback is absolutely nothing. I wouldn't trust you with a $15,000 auction, not by a long shot. Get somewhere in the 1000-5000+ feedback range and we'll talk.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
>I wonder, is the 'geek' community especcially
>prone to overbearing sentimentality?
Have you SEEN what people are willing to pay for beenie babies (and other assorted crap) on EBay?
Not even Elite. You can't call something an "Ultimate Video Game Library" unless it has Elite. This guy is very console-oriented, but the NES version is said to be one of the best.
...on treatments for his repetitive stress injury he must have gotten from typing all those titles out :)
Yup... MAME. And it ain't gonna be cheap. I'd say a PII minimum.
h tm l
http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade_examples.s
Wow! Vectrex. Aeons before Erol's became an ISP, they sold TVs, VCRs, and eventually video games out of what's now their corporate office. This other guy and I would go up there and play their Vectrex demo model until they kicked us out. Nobody I know ever bought one.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I haven't checked out the auction, but my primary fear is whether this auction is legitimate.
Assuming it is, this is the kind of stuff that belongs in a real museam. I'd hope that whoever wins will set up some sort of public display. That way everyone can enjoy it.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Because you missed the keywords, "a console game library that goes back to about 1986."
IIRC, the NES was released in 1985 and 1986 thru 1989 were the NES's prime years. In that time, the Atari (et al) were pretty much forgotten while everyone was busy hailing the Almighty Nintendo and Sega. It is indeed an impressive collection nontheless.
Ideal systems would include: Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, DreamCast, and Playstation.
IMHO, I would probably modify that list to include the TG16 and remove the Dreamcast. It simply hasn't been around long enough to prove itself to be worth anything. For all we know, it could be the next Jaguar. The Saturn can stay, because it's a great example of that one system that almost everyone wanted at one point but is glad they didn't actually buy.
Also, I am of the adamant opinion that no video game collection is complete without at least a representative collection of Japanese consoles and games.
what's the point of setting the initial price to $500 if the reserve is >$17K
In a scam auction, the goal is to set the reserve higher than anyone will bid. When someone wins the auction, the seller can tell the high bidder that they will sell it to them for the high bid even though the reserve price wasn't met. Because the high bidder did not meet the reserve price, eBay will do nothing to help them when they get scammed since they did not win the auction.
You can avoid the neck pain problems if you lay flat on your back and set the unit such that the stand rests on your chest. I've had many hours of pain-free fun that way (bought a VB for $30 brand new after Nintendo abandoned it). Now if I could just do something about the horrible disorientation experienced upon standing up after playing Red Alarm for a couple hours...
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
I'll admit to not having read the parent post, I agree that you have to start somewhere, I think people should get a moderate feedback rating as a bidder first because that raises the amount of trust I have in the seller. You'll still get bids but they won't be as high as they could be. I REALLY recommend that sellers photograph their item if they want to get their money's worth, I've seen auction differences by up to 50% that can only be explained by whether or not there is an original photograph (i.e., not ripped from somewhere else on the net).
With no negatives (even with no rating at all) no good seller has good cause to turn you down. There are some sellers that do get touchy about it but they have things planted where the sun don't shine, but one must also understand that there are a LOT of deadbeat bidders that make the effort of listing and paying for a listing not worthwhile just so a bidder can "pretend" to buy stuff with "play money" or whatever the motivation is for not paying when their number is up.
I only get about 5-10% deadbeat bidders, and half the time I end up selling to the next highest bidder. I wonder if there are certain items that just attract deadbeat-ness or what.
Frankly bidding $15,000 on an "item" that has so many questionable entries with a seller of ZERO feedback is touchy at best.
I really wanted a lynx though. Portable color! I ended up with a Game Gear (and the master gear converter) though, 'cause I liked Sega's hardware. I wonder why there's no lynx listed there (let alone the Atari's and the Intellivision) in his wonderful collection.
ME: yo, you should put a picture up on that auction, lots of people on slashdot think you are a fraud :-(
Baybuy1: nope not at all
Baybuy1: and ill only sell if my reserves met
ME: but why no picture?
Baybuy1: if not real how would i know names of all those games??
Baybuy1: no scanner or dig camera
ME: why are you selling?
Baybuy1: just want to need money
So what do we learn from this? Apparently there aren't any sites with lists of tons of old games out there. And he really wants to need money???
I suggested going to kinko's to use a scanner, he said he wouldn't be able to before it ended... 4 days, no kinko's hmmmm
tony
It's been a while since I sold anything on ebay, so some things could be different now, but the price you pay to have the auction posted is a percentage of the starting price. I never did a reserve auction, so I don't know if that is also factored into the auction fee. So, I suppose it is possible that you set a low starting price but high reserve to save on the auction fee.
Additionally, if the item in question has a lot of emotional value, the seller may still be questioning his desire to sell, and want the ability to gracefully back out.
And yes, there will always be speculators, testing the waters in many markets and pissing people off left and right.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
"Mint" condition has been kind of bastardized in the Ebay world. It now usually means "The condition you would expect if you purchased this item when it was new and did no damage to it between then and now". I'm sure all the coin collectors are up in arms, but that's just what I've noticed. But honestly, most of this stuff hasn't been manufactured in a decade. What this guy appears to be offering is the best condition that you're going to find almost any of those games.
-B
Yes, rec.toys.lego is the OTHER newsgroup I stopped going to. I wanted to talk Technic, but that ng and other hobby-oriented groups are all-ebay nowadays.
You want to look at feedback when you're buying something like a CPU or graphics card that you're going to stick in your computer and will want to work, since you're (usually) paying less than if you just bought it new at an online retailer. You're putting your trust in them to send you a working product for a low price.
When buying something rare that costs a lot of money, you EXPECT that it'll be legit. Afterall, you can't just make a simple PayPal payment for tens, hundreds of thousands, or even a few million dollars. Both the buyers and seller will have to go through a few more ropes to finalize the sale.
Too lazy to log in. Any way - :) (I've beaten Symphony of the Night on the Playstation *and* Saturn)
http://psx.ign.com/games/336.html - kinda hard
for a game that doesn't exist to have codes and reviews
You are right however, he doesn't have Street Fighter on the NeoGeo. That's probably (read : definately) because it's made by Capcom, SNK's (who makes / made the NeoGeo) biggest rival in the 2d fighting game market. Street Fighter came out for the Capcom Play System 2 arcade board, *not* the NeoGeo.
http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/
This link may shed some light on whether this guy is legit or not - it's a request form to get his most recent seller ID. It's the rating of THAT ID you'd want to go by. I didn't check it myself, quite frankly I don't care that much :P
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Hey VA, get your money's worth, make the seller kick in a little scratch before you let /. post stories like this in the future :P
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Hate to say this but the guy's seller rating is zero, there is a good chance he's not legit. Besides this is a heck of a lot of stuff all said to be in mint condition, or so he claims.
I'd be wary...
I live right nere this guy in Minnesota. I have already sent him a friendly offer to come take some pictures gratis for him to attach to his listing to increase his credibility. If he takes me up on the offer I'll greatly enjoy seeing this collection before it most likely leaves the area. Sure wish I'd known about this before. Woulda made friends with the guy :)
Ah, memories. I used to have the original Star Fighter 3K for the Archimedes. Don't know how it compares to the 3DO version, but it was far more playable than the later PSX version. I wonder if emulation has reached the point where I can play this one on my PC now...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
I wonder, is the 'geek' community especcially prone to overbearing sentimentality? One might have thought that they would be more rational than the community at large, but they seem to lose that rationality when confronted with some 1980's video games, just like they do when confronted with a ballot box. (joke!)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
I need to see product before purchase, hot dammit!...
If you have $15,000+ to blow on this, i think not having a picture is the least of your worries.
Who the hell thought that we could /. ebay!
Eh...
And why do collectors collect everything under the sun in mint condition and keep all boxes, manuals, reciepts, etc? If that supposiviely is so they'll still have value later as collectors items, then it would make sense to conclude that someday in the future they might want to sell it for all that money its "worth".
:)
Its possible he's hit a snag in his life and needs a lot of money. Or maybe he's looking for a down payment on a house and has no funds available because all his life he's spent every spare penny on video games. Maybe he's looking at his priorities and is deciding that its time to let this childhood fetish go and get on with his life,
while he can still profit from it. From the way the auction is going, it looks like his plan is succeeding well. Still, I'm curious how much he actually wants for it, considering the reserve hasn't been met yet.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
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Fall 1993 actually. At least in NYC.
(Lord knows I've submitted enough posts to /. where I wished *I* had hit the preview button!)
Also FWIW, those two were European releases, so they do NOT have the digital signature required to run on an unmodified USA 7800.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
He's got the one that counts. :-)
How much longer until that 2.0 is ready, Matt?
(When I read the headline, I actually thought for a moment it was going to be your auction!)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Oops. I found my backup. They're NTSC after all.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
If anyone else ever frequents r.g.v.c, you know what I'm talking about, and who Bira Bira and Sum Guy are.
All praise Bira Bira! Death to Mr. Friendly! Cart Dreams of the Reef Store for everyone! Never stop Chasing that Chuckwagon!
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
We are sorry, but our site is temporarily unavailable. We are working to bring the system back up as quickly as possible.
Please check the Announcement Board at http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml for updates. We will keep you posted as work progresses. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.
Regards,
eBay
Hey, what a great way to keep people from outbidding you... just post about it on /. and beat ebay into the ground until the auction is over! (just kidding about this one, but it really isn't a half bad idea for the less ethically-minded)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Kinda makes me wonder, what's the point of setting the initial price to $500 if the reserve is >$17K.. Why let people bid on it for days before even reaching the real starting point?!
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Well it's at $17,400 right now, reserve not yet met, which means this dude feels that this is worth a lot more than that.
Maybe it is though. That Neo-Geo collection is probably worth $2000 alone.
But me thinks that if anything, Slashdot just made this dude very rich, whether the games are worth it or not.
Played Paperboy at my cousin's house at Thanksgiving, along with some other games (the yearly conquests to beat Rad Racer, Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Island & Mystery Mansion all in one sitting). Too bad I left A Boy and His Blob at my place... what a game... mmmm.... jellybeans....
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I'm sure whoever drops $60k+ on this thing could afford an RF switchbox... most of the consoles have that as part of the std equip, but even so, they aren't all that hard to find. You could always use an old C=64 monitor, too 8^)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
For 60,000 i'd expect much more than just those systems, which are all fairly recent.
damm how much does this guy want?
maybe i'll start collecting video games and game systems, then in a 30 years sell the whole thing for 500K
this is my sig.
How old are you anyway, CmdrTaco? As I recall the 3DO came out in 1994...
I have to admit, it is an impressive collection. Also if you figure you play each game for 2 hours, and play 8 hours a day, it would take you about a year to play them all. Impressive.
Of course its hard to put a price on fulfilling a childhood fantasy like this one.
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Do you have insurance? against theft, fire, natural disaster etc? Will you be heart broken if any of these were to happen to your collection?
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
It's getting harder and harder to find a lot of the older systems, and rare carts are even harder. Throw in that a lot of these systems have had years of punishment at the hands of many a child, and finding mint-condition equipment gets really difficult.
Yeah, most of us can relieve our nostalgia with emulators, or maybe picking up a beat-up-but-still-working 2600 and a handful of games at a flea market, but some people want more. Some people are collectors. And those people are willing to pay a premium for well maintained and functional equipment. You get this with a lot of things...it's really no different than any other sort of collector...comic book, beanie baby, whatever. Only reason anyone here cares in this case is the intersection of the Geek Set and the Gamer Set is fairly large.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Anyway, why is the seller selling?
I asked the same question when I originally saw this auction, and my coworkers spit out the answer almost simultaneously: "He just got married." Maybe, maybe not, but it was just funny that all of the married guys didn't even have to think about it.
My other
And where is the Atari 2600? You can't call a video game collection complete without the grandaddy of them all, the 2600.
All in all, this is an impressive collection, but how many of these games are crap? Quite a few. I would prefer a smaller collection with a focus on quality games.
Ideal systems would include: Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, DreamCast, and Playstation.
For interesting historical notes, include the Vectrex, Nintendo Virtual Boy, 3DO, Atari 5200, and Atari Jaguar.
Throw in some of the best, classic games for the above systems and that would do it for me. You can build such a collection on ebay for a hell of a lot less than 16 grand, if you are willing to spend a little time. Did I forget anything important
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
...since just yesterday my wife and I bought an old Genesis and some games to relive those happy memories of 16-bit gaming. Streets of Rage 2 is pretty much her "killer app" of the console market.
What's funny is that in some ways, those old games still look better than what's currently on the market. Sure, there was only one or a few fixed camera angles, with repetitive effects and so on, but on the other hand the people and objects didn't have all of those damn jagged corners that polygon-based 3D brought us. Polygon 3D is going to have to get about an order of magnitude better before I'll give up my bright, shiny, 2D sprite animation.
Of course, at this rate an order of magnitude is just a couple years :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I guess i really missed out, eh?
He either liked the current bid, got a side offer, or it was all fraud to begin with. I just checked it at 13:20 EST
He is probaly needs the money to buy a PS2!
Thinking BACK?! I still get serious over video games sometimes. Then again, I'm a collector as well (though at the low end of the spectrum). I love running a little super breakout (I have the arcade machine) tournament in my apartment. Well, used to anyway. One of the fuses on the power supply board went out...need to order a replacement. Thank god it was a generic part that blew.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
There's no way I'd actually buy these, but wow, reading the list is a great nostalgia trip. :-) It'd be cool also, to see a few pics, of some of the games. Not that I don't believe he's legit, more for the "wow, I haven't seen that in AGES" factor.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
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What's impressive about this collection is not the variety of console systems, because I'd guess there are a lot of spoiled kids who've had each one of the consoles, but the amount of games this guy has for each one.
My Atari 800, acquired a month or two ago, is my first and only gaming console, even though it qualifies as one of the original personal computers.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
I frequent rec.games.video.classic, a once-great newsgroup for talking about videogames of yesteryear.
Unfortunately, the newsgroup has turned into a market place. 70% of the newsgroup posts are conssting of "For sale" and "for auction" posts, and the remaining 30% are urls to ridiculous eBay auctions, such as $70 for Pac Man for the Atari 2600.
And now it's on here? Don't mod me down, but this article seems to be more of a "Check THIS ebay auction out!" post, or worse yet, an advertisement.
If anyone else ever frequents r.g.v.c, you know what I'm talking about, and who Bira Bira and Sum Guy are.
An "ultimate" collection would include the Odyssey2, Atari 2600 and 5200, Mattel Intellivision, Colecovision...gee whiz, is nobody here over 30? Now THOSE systems are CLASSICS. Adventure for the 2600! Donkey Kong on Colecovision! Pitfall, Kaboom! THOSE are CLASSICS!
A few other posters here mentioned they have seen collections that dwarf that one. I'm one of those people with such a collection. Alibet the focus of mine has been mostly pre-NES games. In fact, I have a few pictures of my "core" collection up on my web space.
.sig
collection closet 1
collection closet 2
collection closet 3
A rough inventory, not counting the consles themselves:
Atari 2600: 475+ different games, 1000+ "extra" (duplicate) cartridges
Atari 5200: 60+ released games. 100+ extras
Atari 7800: Everything ever Released (60+ titles), shrinkwrapped, times 3. 150+ extras
Colecovision: ~100 different titles, 300 extras
Intellivsion: ~85 different titles, 100 extras
APF M-1000/Imagination Machine: 10 of 12, released,5 extras
Fairchild Channel F: 23 of 26 released, 20 extras
Vectrex: 15 games, Multicart
Emerson Arcadia: 10 games
RCA Studio II: 8 games, 6 extras
Magnavox Odyssey: 5 complete games, 20 circuit boards
Magnavox Odyssey 2: all 50 US released titles, complete, 150+ extras
Phillips Videopac: 66 of 70 releases, Complete Chess and MS Basic modules, 30 extras.
and some more recent items:
Sega Master System + 40 games
NEC Turbographics 16 & Turboexpress + 20 games
Sega Game gear + 20 games
Sega Genesis + 80 games
JVC X'eye + 15 CD games
Atari Jaguar: All cart & CD releases through '99, complete.
and I am sure I forgot something there.
Oddly enough: not a single Nintendo until the N64.
In some ways, collecting for these systems is harder as I wasn't able to uses places like Funcoland and Blockbuster to get the collections going. Instead I've picked them up from flea markets, garage sales, and lots of trades and ebay.
What gets interesting about collecting pre-NES games is the distribution curve. The first 70% of the released games catalog isn't too hard to come by.. Then it starts getting progressivly harder and hard to find the more rare items. For example, Most Atari 2600 games can be had for a few dollars, but recently a boxed complete "Chase the Chuckwagon" went for over $1,000 on eBay. For collectors like myself, things slow down after a while as items you don't have don't come available very often, and when they do, you are bidding against other collectors in the same boat.
The ones that are the rarest are usually the ones that (a) sucked and didn't sell well, or (b) were released late, near the video game crash of 1983.
And that doesn't even begin to take into account unreleased and prototype games. For example, I own two unreleased Atari 7800 games: KLAX and (NTSC) Sentinel. A total of 9 and 8 copies respectively are known to exist. In 5 years only 1 of the 17 has been known to change hands.
After the NES era, companies like Nintendo and Sega exerted much more control over the manufacture and distribution of games for their consoles, and as a result you have fewer unbelievably rare released games like 'Chase the Chuckwagon' and 'Quadrun'. The few unlicensed NES games such as the color dreams stuff and tengen tetris are there though and command the rare premium.
For me it has been more fun colelcting pre-NES games because the industry was so new and didn't have the rules that it has now.
Finally, There are days I am tempted to turn my back on my collections and sell it all off. I can't help but wonder what sort of adventure that would be, and just wast sort of price it would fetch.
.sig? I don't need no stinkin'
Why, in a two story iMac, of course.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.