NES_Rules' Collection Blog

Playability vs Collectibility

The non-working but mint looking game

The working but defaced game

The mint looking one, but only if it's a game I'd never play

The working one, but only if it's a game I'd play the hell out of anyway

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Playability vs Collectibility

Let's say you bought a duplicate of a game, so now you've got two of the exact same game. One looks like garbage: the label is torn and dirty, but plays perfectly. On the other hand, the other one looks like it's in mint condition, but it just will not play. Which would you keep if you could only keep one?
For the sake of argument, let's say it's a game where you can not simply switch the boards from one game to another.
Would your opinion change if it was a game you know you would never play? Or a game that you'd play so much you'd certainly ruin the label anyway?

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #19

Posted on Sep 2nd 2008 at 04:09:47 PM by (NES_Rules)
Posted under Collecting, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones

Well, another week with a late blog post. Our county fair was this past week and I wasn't home from Friday until today, so this was the earliest I could get it written up. Unfortunately, because I was at the fair all weekend, I didn't get to go treasure hunting this weekend. My dad went without me, and he was instructed to call me if he found anything, but he supposedly didn't see anything.

However, I was able to stop at a sale between classes on Thursday. It was a massive "tent sale" but I didn't see much that I wanted. I got a pair of big old truck horns for $1 each, but neither ended up working. Luckily, before I left, the guy says that there is a Nintendo and an Xbox in a trailer outside the tent. So I walk over and find this stuff:

The SNES stuff was marked $25 for it all, the Xbox and hookups were $35 and the Xbox games were $1 each. All very acceptable prices, but I figured I could do better. I offered $50, which they accepted. However, since I wasn't planning on garage saling at that moment, I didn't have $50 on me, so I had them put it aside and told them I'd be back to pay. Which worked out pretty well because she didn't have the power cord, but by the time I came back with the cash, she had it.
So, now I finally have my own Xbox. All I need is a SMS and I'll be satisfied with the consoles I have for a long time now.

There was also three boxes with a boxed 4 switch VCS and a loose 6 switch, plus several boxed games and a couple dozen loose games (all commons, only a couple I don't have) and a few other old electronic stuff for $20. I thought about buying it, but it was just too dirty for me. I knew I would end throwing half of it away and the other half would need to be fumigated for cockroaches, so I left it.

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #18

Posted on Aug 26th 2008 at 07:45:59 AM by (NES_Rules)
Posted under Collecting, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones

This should be Treasure Hunt Chronicles #18, but I accidentally erased it, please forgive me. Although I guess it is 3 weeks old at this point, so why are you reading it anyway, go read the new one!

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #17

Posted on Aug 17th 2008 at 04:32:29 PM by (NES_Rules)
Posted under Collecting, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones, Dissapointments

This weekend turned out to be a very big letdown in terms of the trophies I found. The weather was absolutely perfect, not too hot, not too cold, sunny but not overly sunny. I knew, however that it wouldn't be a spectacular weekend simply because I could only put in half a day of saling on Saturday as we had to go to my uncle's for a cookout at 11:00. Oh well, I may not have gotten a lot of games, but I got drunk on free beer and had a fun night.

So, here are my treasures.

Playstation Games

Paid $5 for all of them.

Yep, that's all the gaming related swag from this weekend. The flea market had a ton of people, but none of them had anything good. Although I did see a loose Maxi 15, but it was $50, way too much for me.

Non-gaming related finds weren't much better.

Non-Gaming Finds

The Def Leppard CD was $1, the blanks CDs were in a trash can at one sale, so I grabbed them. They are all like new.

On the way to the flea market, we stopped at a single garage sale, everything was drastically marked down, things that were marked $2 were now marked $0.25, and they said everything was half what it was marked. These are the sales I LOVE, people just want to get rid of their extra stuff. There wasn't much there I wanted, except a large box of men's clothes, 99% of them are my close enough to my size, so I paid the $0.50 they wanted for the box. Some of the stuff is like new and nothing is in bad shape. But, once I got home, I realized there was some other things in the box. Like a couple old credit card statements (with these people's credit card and social security numbers and other stuff. Luckily for them, I shredded the stuff and then burned it. Same as I would do if it were mine. There were also a couple "personal" photos of them laugh

And some of you more astute readers, will notice that I changed my format quite a bit. Marriot_Guy really helped me out with it and I think it looks great, but I'd like to get an opinion from my readers of how you guys like the new format, so feel free to comment on that since my finds were so pitiful.

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Collector's Dilemma #2

Posted on Aug 17th 2008 at 04:26:15 PM by (NES_Rules)
Posted under Collectors Dillema, Collecting

To buy or not to buy?

Buy the game with the full intent of re-selling it

Leave it there for the next collector who does not already have the game

Getting poll results. Please wait...

To buy or not to buy, that is the question.
Sorry for the cliche title, but I just had to do it.

We've all been there. You're at your choice of establishment for game buying; garage sale, flea market, Goodwill, etc. You see a game on the shelf, you check your printed out RF Generation collection list and see that you already own a CIB mint condition copy of the game. But, you know the game is worth much more than what it is selling for at this establishment.
So here is the dilemma, buy the game with the full intent of re-selling it or leave it there for the next collector who does not already have the game.
For the sake of argument, let's say the price on the game is $1, would your opinion change if the game was a $10, $50, $100, $1000+ valued game?

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #16

Posted on Aug 10th 2008 at 02:42:03 PM by (NES_Rules)
Posted under Collection, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones

Once again, another spectacular weekend of bargains. And what I like the best, is I actually got a lot of games instead of a lot of extra consoles like I've been getting lately. So, here are my treasures from this weekend.

Once again, there were a ton of sales on Saturday, more than we could ever possibly get to.

One of the first sales had a box of NES games marked $4 each, I flipped through them and there were a few I needed and most of the others were good titles as well. But I didn't want to spend $4 a game so I counted a total of 24 games. I thought about offering $20 for them all, but I knew she wouldn't take it, so I offered $40 for them all. She thought about it for a little bit and I was expecting here to reject my offer, but she eventually accepted.

Uniracers
Batman Returns
SMB2
Bionic Commando
Castlevania
TMNT The Arcade Game
Alien Syndrome
Milon's Secret Castle
Pac-Man (licensed)
Castlevania III
Shadowgate
Donkey Kong Classics
Krusty's Fun House
Popeye
StarTropics
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Castlevania II
Dr. Mario
Yoshi
Superspike V'Ball/Nintendo World Cup
Astyanax
Spy Hunter
Dragon Warrior
Legacy of the Wizard
With the exception of Dr. Mario, they're all in excellent condition, so I should be able to replace a few bad labels I already had.

We went by an unadvertised yard sale and it didn't look like they had much, but we stopped anyway. I see a box of toys and start casually looking through it, when I spot a N64 cartridge, so I dug deeper and found 2 more. I asked the price, she said $0.10 each. I gave her $0.25 for all three, not because I wanted to save $0.05, but because she didn't want to make change.

South Park
Destruction Derby 64
1080 Snowboarding
They're in pretty bad shape, but I just couldn't leave them there.

Got these for $1 each:

I paid $0.25 for:

It was actually marked $0.10, but I gave her $0.25 and told her she could just keep the change. I'm not really into collecting for handhelds, but it's still sealed so it has to have some value in 10-20 years.

At one sale, I found this Dreamcast and stuff for $10.

She was asking $15, but once I got home, I realized the box was marked at $50. So I don't know if she said $50 and I heard $15 when I asked for the price or if it was just marked down a lot from the initial asking price. But, as I was paying for this stuff, I noticed a container on the floor with a Genesis game box sticking out. So I moved the stuff that piled on top of it and found a few more boxes. I opened a few and found games/manuals in them, so I asked a price. She said $5 for the box, which also contained a dozen+ VHS tapes. I paid the $5.

Super Baseball 2020
Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl
Clue
FIFA International Soccer
Streets of Rage 3
Mario Andretti Racing
WWF Royal Rumble
All CIB, I didn't even look at the VHS tapes when I was there so I was happily surprised when I saw the Doors video in there. The Browns tape is from when they first came back to Cleveland and is new, I'm giving it to my brother-in-law for Christmas or something. There was also a copy of Used Cars but it was MIA for the picture. The other tapes were mostly various sports bloopers videos, I tried selling them at the flea market today, but no one wanted to buy them, but I'll go back next week and try again.

At another sale, there were two across the street from one another, so I went to one while my dad went to the other. As I'm leaving mine to go to the other one, I see him smirking while walking down the driveway. As I get closer I realize he's holding two boxed NES games. I asked him if there was more and he said there was. Unfortunately, there were no more NES games, but I did grab these for $1 each.

The NES games he got were the box for for SMB2, a boxed Dr. Mario and a loose SMB. They're marked $1 on each of the boxes, so I'm thinking he paid $1 for both, but he won't tell me.

Another sale was one that I know I've been to before because everything looked familiar. Everything but these anyway,

They were marked $1 each, I got them all for $10. Would have been nice if there wasn't so many GH though.

I also got a nice Composite selector box for $1.

I don't really need it, but it never hurts to have spare on hand.

In non-gaming finds, I picked these up:

The Jeff Foxworthy book was $0.25, the Southpark CD was $1.

The flea market wasn't all that great. There were a few dark clouds out so I think a lot of vendors stayed away for fear of rain, but it never did rain.
All I bought was this for $1.

It's complete, but the paper insert isn't in the greatest of shape. They had a few more boxed games, but no others CIB and a stack of loose discs, but I passed on the rest.

I also talked to a vendor who has been there with video games nearly all summer. I asked him if he was interested in buying my duplicates. He said he was interested, so I'm emailing him the list so he can decide.

On the way home from the market a small garage sale produced this:

I paid $20 for it. It's more than I would have liked, but I've wanted a Guitar Hero game for along time now. The game disc was in a paper sleeve and the strap is missing, unfortunately.

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Collector's Dilemma #1: What to keep, oh what to keep?

Posted on Aug 6th 2008 at 08:03:53 PM by (NES_Rules)
Posted under Collectors Dillema, Collection, Polls, Opinions

Welcome to my newest blog series, happily called the "Collector's Dilemma". In this weekly series, I will give a short introduction and then turn to you, the readers, to get your opinions on a very important topic to the collecting community.

What to keep, oh what to keep?

What to keep, oh what to keep?

The treasured childhood memory

The near mint treasure

Getting poll results. Please wait...

As collectors, we all face the inevitable scenario of duplicates. Some of us insist on keeping everything just in case something happens to the other one, but most of sell or trade off one of the others. I don't know about the rest of you, but I scrutinize both pieces and first check for any variations; assuming they're both the same, I keep the higher quality one and sell the lesser one. However, with my recent acquisition of a near mint boxed Power Pad, I've come to a serious dilemma. See, the problem is that I already have a boxed Power Pad, though the box is in poor condition.
So now, you're probably wondering what the dilemma is. Keep the near mint one and sell the crappy one, case closed. But here's the kicker; the poor condition is the one from my childhood, yep the same Power Pad little 3 year old NES_Rules used to play World Class Track Meet on, also the same pad I learned that you can "run" with your hands a hell of a lot faster than you can with your feet.
So, this week's dilemma is: what to keep, the treasured childhood memory or the near mint treasure that looks a lot nicer on the shelf. So, members of RF Generation, which would YOU keep? Of course, one could just keep both, but for the sake of argument, let's say you can only keep one.

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #15

Posted on Aug 3rd 2008 at 11:15:45 AM by (NES_Rules)
Posted under Collection, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones

Saturday was an awesome day of sales, there was simply too many to get to them all so we had to hurry at each one to get to as many as we could. In total, we drove 50 miles of garage saling. But it was worth the $8 in gas for all the stuff we got. The very first house we stopped at had this stuff:

The Captain N and the Double Dragon next to it are still sealed. Everything was marked $1 each, I got my normal 6 for $5.
It was kind of funny getting that stuff, the guy had boxes of VHS tapes, PC games (mostly edutainment), and books. I just happened to see the Sonic R and then the Battletoads VHS so I dug a little deeper and kept pulling out the video game related VHS tapes. Oddly enough though, he didn't have any other video games.

There was a neighborhood sale in the same area but they had one a few weeks ago and it was expensive junk then so this week it was 1/2 off junk. We didn't even stop at the majority of them.

It was a while before I got anything else, but it was worth the wait. For $2:

There's actually 3 copies of Sewer Shark, I have no idea why though. The other game in the jewel case is Sherlock Holmes: consulting detective vol. II. The Genesis games are all CIB and I have no idea what that USB cord is for. I paid asking price on that one. The lady was nice and friendly so I didn't feel like ripping her off more than she already was.

We went to another sale that I knew we have been to before (had nothing the last time) but we were already there so I went up to it anyway and came back with these:

Nothing amazing, but it was only $2 for it all.

Next up was a huge neighborhood sale, two streets long and nearly every house was participating. Of course a lot of it was junk but I managed to find a couple treasures.

These were actually from two different houses. Both are factory sealed although the GBA game is missing some of it's shrink-wrap. I paid the asking price on Trouballs at $1, I offered $1 for the other, we settled on $1.50. Once I got home and peeled off the Trouballs price sticker there was a $0.75 sticker under the $1 sticker. Wish I had known that before, I would have peeled off the $1 sticker.

Also from that neighborhood sale:

Paid asking price of $1 each.

At one of the houses, as we walk up to the garage the woman asks "are you here for the garage sale" we tell her yes, expecting her to say it was closed. But she said that everything in a large pile was free and there was more at the curb. So I went and got the truck and we filled it up with boxes and bags of kids toys. Some of it will go to my niece but we'll probably sell the rest to a guy at the flea market for a few bucks. There was a couple things in there for me as well. The video game related stuff:

Most of the toys are circa 2002 but the Luigi on the cloud is from 1989.

Unfortunately, half way through this neighborhood sale, my mom called us. We had to take some stuff to a golf course for an outing we were having. So we stopped and left my dad's truck (which was pre-packed the night before) there and we continued our expedition.

On the way back to the sales, there was a small unadvertised yard sale but it didn't look like much so my dad wanted to just drive by, and I agreed until I saw a small black fabric case on the table and some cords hanging down. I know I've seen N64 system/game cases before and I just had a hunch that that was what this was. So I backed up to the sale and took a look. The cords turned out to be an old walkman and the case wasn't an N64 one. I was so disappointed that it didn't say N64 on it, I almost didn't see "Sega Game Gear" embroidered onto it. I asked the price, he said $10, that's what I paid.

The games:
T2: the arcade game
the lion king
dynamite headdy
Ecco the Dolphin
Batman Returns
Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude
Pac-Man
RoboCop versus Terminator
Star Wars
Taz-Mania
Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Sonic and Tails
Fatal Fury Special

IN noN video game related finds, I got some other goodies too.
For $1 I got this sweet trench coat:

Should be perfect if deer hunting season is as rainy as it was last season.

For $2.50 I got this sizeable box of miscellaneous wires:

She was asking $3, I offered $2, we settled on $2.50. I still have to go through it all. There's a lot of composite cables (some high end gold plated ones too), coax cables, and speaker wire.

CDs were from a couple different sales but were all $1 each.

And for $0.50 I got this antique coax switcher.

Will be perfect for my Genesis and 2600, no more unplugging and switching for me.

The flea market today wasn't spectacular but better than it has been in recent weeks. I'm seeing more and more vendors specializing in overpriced classic games though.

I did manage to get this off a woman for $4:

When I asked the price she whispered $4 and I thought she said $40 but when I asked her to repeat it, I heard her say $4, so I bought it for that. I was prepared to pay $5 for it though. The box is in excellent condition with just minor shelf wear and the pad itself is like new. Now I have to decide if I should keep this one or the one from my childhood which is not as nice condition. She also had what appeared to be a CIB Genesis 2 Core System, but it was $20 and boxed Genesis systems seem to be everywhere.

A few spots away was a guy with a bunch of random stuff but I spotted a PS1 with a couple games, he said $25 for it, I passed on it. But then I saw Caveman Games for the NES sticking out of a box, so I looked inside to see a pair of Genesis systems, a tangle of wires, and a few games. He said the whole box was $2, I didn't even bother looking to see what all the games were.

I guess this weekend was good enough to make up for the deplorable one last weekend. There wasn't anything one thing that was spectacular, but it was all priced very good and I managed to fill in a few holes in my collection so I guess it was a successful treasure hunt.

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