The Australian retro hunting rant thread

i've just spend the last 3 days zombified searching for obscure and 'cheap' ps2 games on Ebay, both Australian and International.
I did find some pretty cheap and rare stuff but the majority of games and titles were so overpriced i'm amazed the idiots who are posting these things aren't laughing at themselves.

Now that I found out about mcboot i'm seriously reconsidering the whole 'purist' collection of titles and just settle for digital copies of things -_-
Just wish I could find a reliable place to buy a working Dreamcast console

And totally agree with you about the op shops just being filled with clothes and poop. Sad state of affairs.

 

... you guys are 12-18 months too late...
about 1.5-2 years ago xbox/PS2 titles were cheap and chip and had wide selection inc. title I'd never seen before

 

new zealand is the worst place in the world to find games in the wild

 

Pretty much it, however some take in lamps and so on :/

 

surprisingly ever since my little rant on here I grabbed around 10 'rare' ps2 gems off ebay for around 10 bucks each, some even as low as $6 inc postage from the UK
Some decent sellers on there who even consider offers made

I did find a warehouse joint in Tullamarine which supposedly has 300 ps2 titles selling for 3 for $20 or 10 bucks each. They also have heaps of other console games too, will check it out soon and let anyone who's interested what it's all about.

 

I've only just discovered this thread, and I've got to say, I echo everything in here 100%. I'm lucky in that I did most of my collecting back around 2005. Even then, I often imported from the UK. Since then, it's pretty much a wasteland. I wanted to buy a bog-standard Master System II recently. No cables, no games, no controllers, just the unit. Think I could fine one? Not a chance. I mean, look at this:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/181270883433
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/231115439950
People are buying those too at those prices. It looks like the last couple of years, demand has outstripped supply. What's crazy is, I can buy and ship from the UK and pay $50 postage, and still have change left over vs what it would cost me here.

 

Buying locally has stopped for me a long time ago..

 

Those eBay auctions aren't the average price, I've sold both of those systems on eBay for less than half those prices in the past 6 months. Just keep looking.

 

Damn and i thought Collecting in Canada was a pain. I feel you man the prices of games are just ridiculous everywhere. In my area there are not one, not two, but five "retro" video games stores. The one is particularly bad they over charge for everything even higher then most ebay prices, to make it worse they don't even bother trying to clean up the games or anything. All the ps2 games still have the EB games ( Gamestop in Canada) stickers on them they are all dirty and cracked. And he still has the gall to overprice them. It sucks even worse because they are the only store in the area that does any sort of online marketing on facebook and twitter and all that, so all the hipsters buy their games there and pay the ridiculous prices and everyone selling off their stuff goes there because it's all over the internet. They have most of the games in the damn city. I have to go 2 or 3 cities out to find any sort of deals or even stuff at a decent price. Ive basically resorted to buying everything off Ebay since it's actually cheaper. But i know that eventually this retro video game craze will die off and things will go down in price it may take like 5 or 10 years but i have faith it will happen eventually.

 

I'm still yukking about my local cash converters having a Megadrive 2 for $75NZD. No cables as far as I can tell.

On trademe I have picked up 3 of the things for a total of roughly $30.

 

I have not found anything in the wild for a long time now. I've been told of a few places but they are all a really far drive for me and most times it ends up being crap anyway. I pretty much buy exclusively from the internet now. It takes the fun out of hunting for the stuff and I'm over coming home empty handed and wasting my weekend time!!

 

And I thought prices for games like these were bad in my area... Personally I think there really shouldn't be an excuse to not have hook ups for a system when you're selling it unless you honestly lost them. Most people around my area try to sell a snes alone for $35, then hook ups are around $10 and then another $10 for a yellow smelly controller (yuck >_<)

 

That's the issue I have too, everything that's "pick up" is 2-3 hours drive -_-

 

Hey guys sorry wayyyyyyy late to the party, but I'm looking at trying to get the collection of all things Super Nintendo I'm guessing I'm gonna pay a fair bit but where would you recommend? As we all know these things don't get sold in store anymore any help would be amazing!!!! Thanks

 

You aren't going to find anything really decently priced in any pawn or charity shops in Australia because stuff (even if broken) have been ridiculously priced for a couple of years now.

One local store has a broken MegaDrive and a few boxed games, they want $300 for the MD and then have stickered the games for $80 each and couldn't understand why the obvious gamers looked at the glass cabinet and walked off chuckling.

Your best bet would be to import, check garage sales/flea markets or do some Want To Buy topics on here and other major forums as for whatever you may pay on here and shipping is likely to be cheaper than what you'd pay elsewhere in this rip-off of a country to be doing any vintage/retro collecting in!

At most, all I'm finding in my closest charity shop are weird Asian releases and bootlegs of stuff. Found some sort of weird looking bootleg of Biohazard 3 for PC.

 

My local cashcons actually had two NES consoles for $15 each (console only in "for parts or repair" condition sells for $40+ on ebay). I was shocked since all the other video game items in that store were priced close or above ebay prices.

There was a less yellow one but someone bought it before I had a chance.

The PS3 price is the typical rip off that I expect (more than ebay price).

 

Thanks very much for your reply mate, yeah I remember the days when video games heaven was the BEST place out and stocked everything! ANY online sites you would recommend or somewhere to start? I've seen heaps of cheap pop up sites that I'm not sure I can trust, maybe I will try post in the want to buy section, although I'm guessing a lot of people want the same thing lol. I just glad I kept my N64 with 4 controls and 20 pros games! Maybe I. Better off trying to collect N64 stuff too? Oh god I'm gonna blow the bank acc hahaha

 

I hoped you picked up the NES! If not, go get it!

As for the general tone in this thread, I think it can be summed up for me best when I look at ebay.com buy now prices for games and think the prices are cheap compared to NZ, the unfortunate part is having to double to prices due to shipping. The only retro consoles vaguely worth collecting here are Master System and Mega Drive.

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I need to go to Australia, I'll make a fortune.

 

Do you have send or anything for sale? Sounds like you may haha