Even when you remove the pal auctions theres still quite a few ntsc ones. For a game to be supposedly this rare they should come up once in a blue moon.
exactly. I'd rather pay the money for Recca Summer Carnival 92. I still shake my head at my chance to have it at 125 dollars. blah I've never seen it that low since.
Pretty much all of them you might add, ur unboxed US carts. A possible reason they seem to pop up all at once could be that it gained sudden popularity due to the initial 13k$ auction for an opened copy a couple of weeks ago. Otherwise we would probably not see two sealed copies in a row, or even one.
For 10k, I am sure someone would spend the time and effort to fake a sealed cartridge. For 40k it's unlikely anyone would ever open the box...
I haven't read through all the thread, because I didn't want to put up with the conspiracy argument crap. But for those of you that believe it's a conspiracy to drive prices up, let me propose this to you in terms that I understand (that being cars that were produced well before my time): In 1970, Ford Australia produced the Falcon XY GTHO Phase III, these were sold at a price of up to $~5300, there were 800 cars of these cars recorded to be produced at 276kWs. Over the years many collectors bought the dime-a-dozen Falcon 500, (which had the exact same chassis and basic exterior/interior lacked the power and nice-ities of the GTHO) and in an attempt to cash in on the GTHO's demand from collectors, made replicas - because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? This put the demand for the genuine GTHOs higher, and made them more valuable to collectors, as it is truley an effort to find a (dare I say, mint in box? ) genuine GTHO. A genuine GTHO sold for $200000 some years ago, when the seller didn't realise what (she?) was selling. Up until recently, the record was $683650 - this was broken by an Anonymous bidder, who purchased one for well over $750000. And I remember when this made the news headlines. For those that can't keep up, replace the Falcon 500 with the PAL Stadium Events (or Repros, if they ever pop up), the GTHO with the NTSC Stadium events, the daft GTHO seller with the daft eBay seller, and the demand for rare things with the demand for rare things. There's no conspiracy. People with endless amounts of cash will pay whatever the demand is for the item that they want, be it a car or a video game, the same reason why the odd copy of Final Fantasy 7 sells for $200. And as for the media having a hold on demand, media grabs a hold of anything that will get people to listen to their shit, they just want to report the story first.
Also, we've hit 100k. http://cgi.ebay.com/Stadium-Events-...1029QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Vintage_Video_Games Next week a GTHO will sell for $1,000,000. I can feel it.
I refuse to believe this is serious. 6 people bid over $40000 on the first sealed auction. And now 5 completely different people are bidding well over $40000 on this new one, and none of the original 6. Where were these people before? While no one ever went broke overestimating the insanity of game collectors, I'm not sure I believe there are that many lunatics out there with $40K+ to spend on Stadium Events.
I read on Kotaku (not the most reliable source, I know) that in the first auction the price was bidded up 17 times in a row by the same person- surely price fixing? (this person didn't win). TBH at first I found the whole "it's a conspiracy" argument quite irritating, and while I certaionly don't think anyone has the evidence to categorically refute that there are people who are genuinely willing to pay these prices for NES carts (I am sure there are) I am beginning to think in this instance there may be some foul play. Perhaps there is one genuine sealed cart in the hands of a person/group. They auction it a few times through different accounts, each time winning the auction with another account one of them owns. After the price has consistently finished at over 50k, they auction the cart 'for real'- they're pretty much guaranteed to make 50K, whereas just auctioning it the first time would have made around 15K. I'm pretty certain nobody is going to pay 100K for a game that was 13k a month ago- especially with MORE copies apparently becoming available, including more than one sealed.
Why not check it yourself? http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=140384097750 Ebay's bid list isn't very enlightening though because it's sorted by price rather than time, and retractions are separated. The guy who was bidding it up was bidding against a retracted bid of $224,500.00 which lasted from February 25-26 before being retracted. I'm making up an Excel sheet to see more clearly what kind of shenanigans may or may not have gone on.
It's indeed hard to imagine. The only possible explanation I could think of is that now all the rich guys who got outbid in the last second are all over this second sealed copy.
$800,200? Who dares outbid me!? It's suddenly so unaffordable for me. Guess I'm waiting for the next one.
