Sculptured Software : The story of the giant sale Part 1. Not 56K safe.

Discussion in 'Industry News' started by ASSEMbler, Jan 20, 2008.

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  1. ASSEMbler

    ASSEMbler Administrator Staff Member

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    The giant sale. It seemed like a painless and easy thing to do. Visit the
    storage, pull out some items and sell them on ebay. Easy right? Hardly.

    Some of the senior site members will remember that in the past, I have
    acquired the assets of several game companies. There has been some
    fifteen companies over the years, but with my busy life, I would usually
    marel at the items, and then pack away the whole lot, untouched for some
    day in the future.

    I'll be the first to admit that I am a packrat verging on obsessive compulsive.
    The sale was supposed to be the first attempt at thinning my collection.

    So his was the plan: a few beers, some music and a camera. Prepackage the
    items with for Ebay. Easy right? Wrong... The problem was that this stuff
    had been sitting untouched since 2005. I didn't even remember what was in
    the crates. So wednesday, I started sometime after dinner.

    Three days passed.

    [​IMG]

    What you're looking at is only the Sony assets of Sculptured Sculptors. I kept all the pre 1994 hardware, and to keep the mental torture to a
    minimum, I won't go into detail. I'll just post some emoticons.

    :eek:h: :drool: :pray:

    What we have is a full range of hardware, from very early to last generation
    dev cards. The most interesting is the early hardware:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    This is a very early PSX dev card, there was only one of these in the whole
    lot. It's so early that the Sony chip isn't even maked yet, it just has a fab
    lot number on the chip. It's card number 606, and has numerous by hand
    corrections to the board. It doesn't even have a proper Sony catalog
    numbers.

    [​IMG]

    Lots of drive boxes, some alpha hardware. Several sound artist cards,
    and best of all some nice graphic artist boards.

    [​IMG]

    Also in the lot were some CD writer maserting cards for the sony 1x/2x
    writer.

    [​IMG]

    This represents about half of the first lot. Right now ebay is pretty weak,
    and I don't think people understand how hard it is to get this hardware. I
    wasn't able to sell them at a decent price to make a profit, so it's all going
    back into storage. In short, it's hard to sell what no one knows about.
    I can probably count on two hands the non industry people who know about
    this hardware.

    However for now I will offer one kit, just to keep something like this available to someone. What you will instead see coming up for sale is stuff like artwork and post 1995 hardware, which I haven't even touched yet. I hope the delay in the sale is now understood.

    I decided to do a step by step article of my building up a psone
    dev station using this hardware so that people can understand it more.
    I already have the motherboard and other parts. It would be great to
    have a community of sony amature developers.

    More pictures to follow as I wrap up the Sony hardware and move onto Sega hardware.

    I also made some nice wallpapers:
    2560 pixels wallpaper
    2560 pixels blue
    2560 pixels red
    1900 pixels wallpaper
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 27, 2008
    ASSEMbler, Jan 20, 2008 Report
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  2. Tomcat

    Tomcat Familiar Face

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    Impressive lol if you need a hand sorting out your store you only have to ask....
     
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  3. ConsoleFun

    ConsoleFun Gutsy Member

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    Awesome stuff. Thx for sharing!!

    CF
     
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  4. kammedo

    kammedo and the lost N64 Hardware Docs

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    Impressive, truly!
    Ok, lets start with A :
    Amazing
     
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  5. ASSEMbler

    ASSEMbler Administrator Staff Member

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    I'm moving on past psone as it was a failure on ebay, and will be putting up
    xbox and sega saturn items.
     
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  6. Bojay1997

    Bojay1997 Spirited Member

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    I appreciate your candor and willingness to share with all of us. Just two things though, could part of the problem on Ebay have been the fact that without a number of other components and software packages, the development boards are really of little interest to even the most hardcore development kit collectors? I've seen full dev kits on Ebay before and they always sell for a good amount. I've never seen the development cards go for much on their own and doubt they will go up much in value down the road unless other individual dev kit pieces start popping up.

    What about deciding on what you think is a fair price and just listing the full packages you are talking about here on the forums? Obviously, if nobody is willing to pay those prices, you wouldn't have to sell. In reading your original post, I didn't see any reference to Ebay, so I just assumed this was going to be a sale for forum members. Isn't it still pretty hard to sell dev stuff on Ebay just because of their blanket policy against "possibly infringing items"?

    I hope you understand that all of us appreciate everything you have done to build and maintain this site and for collectors of rare video games in general. I also hope you don't ever feel like we expect you to sell items or do anything more than you have already done for all of us. Having said that, I know some of us feel frustrated when we see these upcoming sale posts from time to time and then they end up not happening.
     
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  7. ASSEMbler

    ASSEMbler Administrator Staff Member

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    It's still happening I am working like crazy right now. It's just slower than expected. lots going up soon.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 21, 2008
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  8. babu

    babu Mamihlapinatapai

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    nice :clap: :pray:
    Is that the same sofa from the awesome acclaim pic you posted some year ago? I wish my sofa contained stuff like that :D
     
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  9. smf

    smf mamedev

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    I don't suppose you took a picture of the other board that went with it?
    I'm quite interested in early PSX development stuff, mainly to help documenting bits and pieces for the MAME/MESS project.
     
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  10. ASSEMbler

    ASSEMbler Administrator Staff Member

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    I tried to scan it, but the shitty hp made a blurry mess.
     
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  11. Festerfly

    Festerfly Resolute Member

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    Kev!

    WOW!!!

    End Of...
     
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  12. karsten

    karsten Member of The Cult Of Kefka

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    will you post the links of the items you'll be putting on ebay?

    also what are those black cd readers behind the debug?
     
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  13. Parris

    Parris I'm only here to observe...

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    I don't think the prices were particularly high, in fact I was seriously interested, but from my point of view the recent 1mth wait (not your fault granted!) just put me off sending / buying from the US. Oh, that and I hit my PayPal limit lol.

    There is some confusion here though as I initially thought that the sale was only on AG and not on eBay. I noticed immediately that it was you, however others didn't click and I think you might have missed a few sales because people thought that someone was lifting your images and using them on eBay!

    If you have stuff on eBay then I think people will initially chance their arm on eBay because they will try to get the units at the cheapest price possible. It also put me off as I thought 'If I buy it at the fixed price on AG and someone gets (for example) the Nintendo for considerably less on eBay then I'd be miffed!'

    It would be sad to see all of that material returned to cold storage, but it's your collection and your say at the end of the day. The sale had a couple of false starts, a few other AG members waited with baited breath and then it all seemed to go quiet. You were ill, and a MASS of items appeared in the Marketplace to fill the wake!

    So, in other words...start again and the people will come! ;-)

    I for one am interested in the CD writer mastering card & Sound artist board. If you are keen to offload then please post price here and I'll consider it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2008
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  14. babu

    babu Mamihlapinatapai

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    Well I for one wanted to buy one of them.. but I didn't havd the money at the moment, and wont until friday. That's why I didn't bid.
     
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  15. ASSEMbler

    ASSEMbler Administrator Staff Member

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    Well timing can't be helped.
     
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  16. Borman

    Borman Digital Games Curator

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    Mind if I ask what the black boxes on the couch are?
     
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  17. klarth

    klarth Rapidly Rising Member

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    ditto here :icon_bigg

    borman - those black boxes are cd drives for the ISA cards. It lets them boot games off of cdr or retail discs.
     
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  18. The Awoken One

    The Awoken One Peppy Member

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    I think the problem was that everyone wanted to wait for what came next instead of buying psone stuff.
    The sale was so overhyped that everyone expected golden debug units or something.
    I for one would love some ps1 stuff but funds are limited


    just my 2 cents
     
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  19. Festerfly

    Festerfly Resolute Member

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    i wanted the PS1 kits but was keen to know what else there was....
     
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  20. ASSEMbler

    ASSEMbler Administrator Staff Member

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    Apologies but RL issues are more important than anything game related.
     
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