RF Generation Message Board

Sometimes when I am out looking for games, I always try and remember if I am getting a good deal or not. Well today I was looking at a few antique stores and I thought of something. What if I had a list of games on like my iPod in a .txt format (or another device) to carry around as a reference. Something like an electronic Digital Press Online Rarity Guide or a list of games you don't have.

I don't know I just thought of it and figured it might come in handy at times. Does anyone have one or know of something similar?

Something like that would be really nice to have, maybe the code monkeys here should get on that :laugh:

For now though, I printed out the DP lite lists for the 2600, NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64 last year as those are what I focus on, since then I've added the Dreamcast. I used the RFG list for PS1 because DP didn't have it and then by hand went through and added the rarities. It's worked out well, but adding the PS1 nearly doubled the number of pages it was, so it's losing it's portabilitiness.

You mean like the checklists we have?

http://www.rfgeneration.com/PHP/checklists.php

Something like that, but with prices and in a .txt format. I could make my own, but I figured I would ask here to see if there was one.

I thought about that a few years back in the peek of my hunting but its too much work, since I only focus on 1, sometimes 2, systems, i just keep a mental guide. I can see how people collectig vas systems would benefit from a small postable book though.....sadly, with the game market up and down, it would need updates every 3-6 monthes, not just annually

The problem I've always found with rarity guides, is that they can't/don't represent the region as a whole or it's subregions either. A game rare in say Midwestern US could be a dime a dozen in the New England states or Western Canada. I couldn't count how many times I've heard about games that someone will say they've seen 20 copies of that someone else has been seeking for years now.

A company like EB/GameStop can shift stock around the country and throw off the numbers in any given area. Last year the EB's in my area had a huge sale on Xbox titles and had a surplus of Xbox games so huge all of a sudden they had them stacked on the floor. In one week I found 30 or so titles considered hard to find all because of a stock shift. So cheap and common now I can't agree they are rare persay anymore.

You'd need monthly updates, market watches as well as regional trends if you want to play the odds when searching in the wild. Without a team of dozens spread out among each region you'll never have anything better than a wild hit or miss guess at rarity unless you base it purely on sales numbers and print runs. Then you have to contend with reprints and publisher propaganda.

It would be really nice to have an iPhone for something like this, where you could just throw a rarity guide on there and have it with you all the time.

I could put the same thing on my PSP, but heck if I am carrying that thing with me everywhere...

You're right Tan, but I was thinking more along the lines of how much it is worth (i.e. how much people are willing to pay on eBay or whatnot).

Let's say you see a game while hunting, let's say Super Mario RPG. They are selling it for $10 and you don't know if it's a good deal or not. You could look at a small list telling you an estimate of how much it is worth. Last time I checked, SMRPG was around the $40 price range. You would be getting a steal for $10.

Last week I went to a local electronic pawn shop type store and the guy had a bunch of games. The place was really small and packed with electronics including a bunch of consoles some still in the box. He had a case at the counter and it had some pretty great games. Some of the games he had were:

NES Kirby (boxed)
NES Gold Zelda
SNES Castlevania IV
SNES Mortal Kombat 2
N64 Mario Kart

I asked how much and he said $20 each. I can see a few of the games he had in there going for about $20, but he also had games that were worth like a $1 (N64 wrestling games, the Mortal Kombat 2). I laughed so hard in my head because this guy thought some of the games he had were worth a bunch. This is what actually brought me to posting this topic. If I could have a portable text file on my iPod to reference when I am out. I originally thought of using something like digitpress's online rarity guide with the scarcity and how much it's worth.

Edit - I hope I made sense and my sentence structure isn't too bad, I'm really tired.

I have a Treo 700p with internet access that I connect to RFGen, Digit Press, ebay to check on what I need and what's a good deal.  I also have a Palm DB application (that's sync's with an Access MDB on my desktop PC) that has rarity info for most of the common system's games and what I own.  I only use that in the event I can't get an internet connection or a site is down.

I have a kind of low tech and overly simplified solution that I use that I actually stole from Den  ;)

I have one of those 500 page little fat notebooks that I have written every game released for a bunch of systems.  Not only is it basically a portable list of every game I own, but I can also use it to help me keep an eye out for deals.  Any games that are rare or worth a decent amount of money I put a red star next too.  if they are worth somewhere between $10-20 I put a black star next to them.  Everything else I just assume goes for $5.  I generally don't pay much more than $4 a game anyways, but it helps when I am at a flea market or something similar that has a guy selling games for more than I would normally pay.

I have my entire collection printed off from Rfgen in a folder.  I have it tabbed by system in alpha by manufacturer.  If I'm unsure if I have something or not I flip to the page and double check.  I have to update it by penciling in finds and a few times a month I print off new sections.

I must be a freak as I generaly remember what games I have and what I dont.  It's sad though because I'm horrible with phone numbers, people's names, and my own drivers license number.  Christ, I cant even remember my own phone number some days.  As far as the price value goes, I'm always cheap.  Ebay tends to be too iffy for my taste.  Some days a game can be dirt cheap and yet at the same time another copy with even more time can be 2x-5x the price.  I've seen great games go for cheap and found myself scratching my head in wonder when a horribly common game goes for an extreme amount.

If you want a list, I'd sugest either doing what some have said.  Writing it down is very time consuming though.  You could even type up your own text file.  While that'd take a good amount of time as well you would gain three benefits from it.

1.The ability to narrow it down to systems your most likely to find games for in the wild.  Your chances may be good for finding TG-16 games but chances are, your more likely to find NES games.
2.It'll improve your typing skills drasticly in a short amount of time.
3.You'd do something and posibly make available something many others could use.

I always carry a copy of Video Game Collector, a quarterly mag that has made collecting SOOOOOO much easier lately.  It has good checklists, is thinner than a typical gaming mag, and very portable.

Just subscribed to this the other day. I'm anxiously awaiting my first issue :)

Do you mean NGD as in NationalGameDepot from NGD's NES list?  ;) 

I also for some reason tend to remember what I have and don't have fairly well.  There's no actual video game dealers at flea markets around here anyway, so whenever I come across some gaming stuff, it's usually from a general consumer who doesn't want that much for it, so I can almost always get stuff for quite a bit less than what they go for on the net. 

Back in the day, I also used to merge different price and rarity guides together to get a better idea as to the value of items.  After being in the hobby for a while, though, you get a pretty good idea of what's worth what just based on experience.  Although it definitely is handy to have a price list with you for those obscure items, though.  ;)