I picked up some old Atari 2600 and NES carts today from a 2nd hand shop. I bought a lot of 25 carts (19 Atari, 6 NES) for next to nothing. I don't expect them to be worth much, but after checking eBay, I stand to make a small profit. One auction left me puzzled, NES Duck Hunt rare 5 screw cart 1st edition. I thought this was the most common NES game ever. I assume it's another case of "everything on eBay is rare". Is there any truth to what he is saying, are 5 screw version carts any more collectable than regular 3 screw versions. I also picked up a 5 screw version of Gyromite... Link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NINTENDO-...ideo_Games_Video_Games_JS&hash=item334a005696
Seems like he has so many with the history of 4 sold, I'm no NES expert unlike a few members here... but I doubt it's insanely rare.
theyre marginally rarer, as they are generally among the first NES carts released in the states, and some of them can fetch a decent price amongst collectors who are going after a true complete set, but I wouldnt really label any of them super rare. You may wanna open them up just to see if they have Famicom to NES adapters inside, some of the first NES carts nintendo just re-used old stock famicom boards and threw an adapter into the cart to convert the pinout
I found a 5 screw variant of a cart in my collection the other day. If you're a whore for completeness you'll want them all.
I believe that is one of the carts with a high probability of a Famicom->NES converter inside. While it's likely not rare or valuable, if you can get one, it's worth gutting it for a cheap converter.
Gyromite is the most commonly found cart to have a converter, short of stack-up(all stack up carts have a converter). I have several(something like 20) different titled carts that have a converter in them. Generally they aren't worth more than the price of the converter. 5/3 screw variants can sell for more than a standard cart but there are very few "rare" variants out there. Duck hunt is definately not one of them.
A few extremely early NES games were literally just the japanese PCB inside of an american cart with this converter inside. You can pop out the converter and run other famicom games on a US NES, but I believe some of the pins on the cart aren't wired up, and thus it has problems with a few more modern games.
In order to meet demand for a holiday season I believe, that is when Nintendo just reused Famicom boards with adapters. It should work with most Famicom games. Of course any expansion sound won't work without modding both the adapter and Nintendo. I do know for a fact that fairly advanced mappers like the Konami VRC4 work as I have a cartridge with that in it using one of these adapters.
There are videos on youtube showing the whole process of removal, and getting an import game working.
Age of an item makes it seem rare. Same way you think an old postcard from 1900's seems rare and exotic, yet they made hundreds of millions of them.
I opened both Duck Hunt and Gyromite, neither have the converter. They are PAL version carts if that makes a difference?
Yes it does. I don't think any PAL carts would have the converter in them. By the time the PAL launch happened they may not have had supply issues. But I could be wrong. But I've never heard of them in PAL carts.
