Game collecting - Expense and range charts?

Hi Everyone,

In terms of collecting games for the various systems (NES/SNES/PCE/GENESIS/etc), does anyone with experience know what the expenses and range should look like for the various machines?

For example, if you were to try and make a full-set of all the games for a particular console, what would the estimated values be? Which would be the cheapest/expensive to attack? And also, which system would have the most top-heavy rare items vs common games which can be found for cheap?

 

Collecting to 99% on most platforms will be easy and relatively inexpensive. NES, SNES, Megadrive - probably a couple of thousand as most games can be had for a few quid. That last 1% will kill you, though. Just recently Stadium Events (NES) sold on ebay for $22k, and apparently the transaction actually took place. Some of the rarer Megadrive games are into the thousands too, and that's if you can find them in the first place.

In terms of the ratio of expensive:cheap games, Virtual Boy has to be the most top-heavy. There aren't many games all told but quite a few of them cost in the hundreds of dollars range.

 

Most expensive has gotta be Neo Geo AES: most of the games will be at least a few dozen bucks, and the newer and rarer ones can be anything from $200-1000.

 

Well, the Neo might have a win in terms of price per unit, but then again how many games does it have on the system total? Maybe some lesser systems like the PSX might have cheaper games, but just a lot more of them to make the total value of the fullset worth more?

 

With the PSX it really depends on which region software you buy. The PAL and NTSC_U releases should pretty much all be relatively easy to find with no real heartbreakers price-wise but a full NTSC_J set would be a different story entirely with something like 2000 titles released, some in such small numbers as to be virtually non existent apparently. Factor in all the rereleases on ''Best'' label, ''Book'' label etc and you've got yourself the mother of all collecting jobs.

 

Where's Adol when we need him?

He might now a few things about this, considering all his full sets.

I bet 32x or 64DD (if you consider them "consoles" with their own libraries) should be the cheapest to get the fullset. However that doesn't mean it will be cheap for the quantiy of games, the 64DD fullset (inc. accessories) might set you back 1k or 1.5k (mostly because of Doshin 2 and that Golf game which I always forget the name), and you are getting like 9 games after all.

 

The Neo Geo AES (Japanese) fullset consists of 117 games not counting eventual re-releases like Metal Slug 3.

I don't think it's very reasonable to compare set prices because that's a really hard thing to determine. Are we counting bargains? Most collectors get a lot of them because they also buy a lot of items and watch the market attentively for good deals. That way lots of people got their hands on rare stuff for free (including myself) by buying rarities in huge lots and selling/trading off any doubles afterwards for a price that sometimes is higher than the initial cost for the entire set. So if you do it right, you end up getting a lot more for your money by just spending a lot instead of being a cheeseparing bargain-hunter that hunts down loose carts for 0.5$ each.

In terms of "complete collecting", I'd say the Neo Geo AES is probably one of the hardest challenges. You just have to keep motivated to spend hundreds of dollars on mediocre or unplayable (for non-jpn speaking people at least) games. Chibi Marukochan, Shougi no Tatsujin, Stakes Winner 1+2, stuff like that.

The Sega Mega Drive (jpn) is not to be underestimated either. There may be only around 450 games available, but the last 10 are a hassle to get. Acclaim and modem-titles are your keywords... hundreds of dollars each, 7x (iirc) Acclaim and 3 very expensive modem games. Tetris is a holy grail, but since it was not released it's rather an extra than an essential part of a complete collection.

PC-Engine makes you do some cruel purchases as well. There is the unfortunate Akiyamajin which is an absolutely useless title (math trainer) and costs well over 1500$ if you can find it outside Super Potato in the first place.

The Nintendo Famicom is a heaven and hell at the same time. There are LOTS of games that go for more than 100$ and also LOTS that cost you more than 400$, if you can find them (counting in the FC Disk system btw). Rereleases in silver boxes (Popeye no Eigo Asobi), Famicom Disk-writer rereleases (I saw CluClu Land fetching a 4-digit sum once, came with a manual), semi-hibaihin games (promo/recalled stuff) like All-Night-Nippon Mario Bros or the first version of Spartan X, "Kung Fu". And then there's all the prize carts in gold by various companies...! Some games are also very, very hard to find at all, like the clamshell re-releases of some early Namco-titles (Galaga, Dig Dug, Galaxian, etc) or late Konami re-releases of former Disk-only titles (Bokutte Upa for example).

 

Also, as seen with many well-known rarities such as Stadium Events, the cost skyrockets even in situations where only a particular region's version is rare or there is a version out there of particular interest to the collector.

On the flip-side though, there are situations where their value is inversed: take, for example, the curious case of the grey Legend Of Zelda NES cartridge, which in popular circles doesn't sell for very much as the 'gold' cartridge is perceived to be the 'rare' one.

Personally, if I was collecting a format, I would avoid being a completest around ones with no easily traceable supply chain or quality assurance (such as 80s home computers) - despite many games being cheap, you'll likely burn yourself out trying to chase them all down and be stuck with a rather volatile and deteriorating format of unknown quality. I have examples of ZX Spectrum games that have physically 'gone off' after 10 years of typical home storage, so I would probably stick to more common and easily storable games. However, don't let my opinions stop you from collecting obscure formats - the world *needs* software conservators!

 

I agree with ave, it is hard to determine a set price, though it would be somewhat easy to determine the difficulty of getting a fullset of any given console.

 

Was doing a bit of thinking.

If you remove the really really obscure stuff and exclude the Neo.

You can probably put down £20 x the number of games and find it averages out quite nicely.

So you can then say it will cost X amount + an additional Y for whatever obscure titles stand out.

 

If you remove the obscure, hard-to-find stuff then for most platforms it's drastically lower than £20 a game. A few quid on average. Unless you mean obscure platforms, but even then... it's only the small number of "wildcard" games for each that cost lots and the number of them and value per platform is different in each case.

 

I always thought a complete US N64 set wouldn't be too terrible to complete. It'd be a fun set to have for sure. I can't imagine it costing too much either. Nothing ultra rare comes to mind, for the US region anyways.

 

Perfect-condition boxed copies of Resident Evil 2, Paper Mario, Conkers, Smash Bros can all go for ~£60 on ebay here. I think the Mario Party games get up there too. That's PAL, mind.

You're right, anyway. Nothing ultra-rare and expensive comes to mind though, not like other platforms.

 

N64 doesn't have as many rarities as other platforms, but there weren't that many games either. 200, 250? Not much. Even the htf-games go for reasonable amounts, like 75 Euro for a Conker (that's not even the retail price). If you're into JPN Dreamcast, Saturn or PC-Engine, there are lots of 50 Euro-games. The N64 has like 5-10 in each region, most of which can be obtained for much less if you wait for a bargain.

That's probably due to the N64's serious lack of games that have aged well. There are almost no pure 2D games and next to no arcade ports. What's left are those who feel nostalgic with blurry and foggy 3D polygon worlds and that's not an awful lot of people.

 

Hrm... Some really good points. I assume if you removed all rare/hard to get items, systems like the Famicom/NES would have the most games for cheap? That is, on average to make a 80% to 90% complete set, it is the cheapest system to hit up? Or is the volume of titles just too much to make it cheaper than something else, like the Mega Drive or Master System?

 

It also depends on your ambitions in terms of condition. If you're collecting loose carts, it's pretty easy and affordable to acquire complete N64/NES/SNES collections, the same goes for Famicom/SFC/N64 jpn et cetera. Loose Famicom games are worth next to nothing, you can buy huge bulkloads for a few dollars. Even the really rare carts almost never break 10'000yen in loose condition.

But honestly, collecting loose stuff wouldn't make me happy. I want to look at artworks, read manuals and have the experience that people had when the game was released. That's why I collect neither sealed nor loose games. So may it be a little harder and more expensive to get the complete set, but it'll be much more satisfying than sitting on a complete Famicom collection with 50% dirty labels.

 

I've given up on collecting any old system (I'm working on a PSP US complete set, but that's hardly for collector's value), but there's many good points made here-
One of the bigger ones I find is that it's almost guaranteed that for any system out there, the expenditure of time to track down missing games is probably worth more than any potential future value-

I end up solely going after older games I'm passionate about or "mini-collections" thematic or developer-linked usually...

As someone who likes to play games, I also can't bring myself to leave the stuff sealed.
Anyhow... Neo-Geo suffers from a bit of an issue of bootlegs which simply expounds upon the problems of tracking down a full set...

Playstation US and JP are, imho, actually quite easily accomplished, again, if you want to take the time- there's a lot in the JP library, but they also go for near dirt-cheap- assuming you just want games, and not boxsets, etc.
PS PAL i'd say is a bit harder given some of the varied regions and alternate packaging options out there for the localization which only got worse in newer Sony systems... (ie 2-5 different versions for the europe regions alone on many PSP games.

I refuse to buy any game unless the rarity is ridiculously high (or i need a replacement) if it's loose, but there's a lot to be had out there in the way of complete games if you take the time.

 

5 at least! Go Net, Mega Anser, Nagoya, Sumitomo, Osaka. Grats to those with all 5! I'll get there one day.....

 

I'd say for Non obscure consoles, the easiest for a full set is N64.

Semi-Obscure probably a virtual boy, since it's like 12 titles. lol

 

There are only half a dozen or so MegaCD 32X games, those should be quite easy (albeit expensive) to pick up a set.

Night Trap
Fahrenheit
Corpse Killer
Supreme Warrior
Slam City with Scottie Pippen
Surgical Strike (Brazil only)