+1

I collect games especially NES because it has sentimental values to me, plus the NES system was a gift from my late father for my birthday in 1989 when I was aged 12. I still keep it until now and never sold it to anyone else even I got some fellow offering me for the console. That is my pledge to my father during he was dying at my side before he breathe his last breath.

I like my collection and even I got some others saying that I am outdated, I just don’t bother it.

Why bother have a forum then. Might as well make a website with the databases and such.

i hate games. i collect them so nobody else can play them.

I don't enjoy them anymore.  I used to, and I'm not saying I "grew out of it", but there was a certain point in my life where I still got excited about buying the latest, greatest system, but after I did so, it sat and collected dust like a $300 dead weight in my entertainment console (and, at the time I had a 1080p projector on a 92" screen, so when I did play the games, which was rarely, it was epic).

My whole point here is that the games SHOULD be enjoyed. 

The people who have written about sentimental reasons, or a yearning to play the games of their youth, or play the games they weren't able to in their youth - YEAH!!!  That's awesome.  I don't like doing it any longer, but I don't begrudge those who do, and in fact, those are EXACTLY the people I believe should be doing this for a hobby.

It's the people who, as Br81zad so elequently put it, drill a hole in their sealed, graded games and have sex with them that I don't understand and take some issue with.

If you like them and you play them and you use it as a social outlet, then I think that game collecting is really cool for you.  If you do it to impress a bunch of random strangers in a forum because you have low self esteem, then I suppose on some level, I feel sorry for you, and I also think you're a douchebag (NOT you, necessarily...just that type of person).

In the end, I know many people who are interested in many things I find mundane and silly, but if the person is into it, they make it exciting, and even though I'm not necessarily going to share their passion in the long run, I am able to share their enthusiasm in the moment, and in that moment, I think the hobby/whatever is awesome.

That's all I was saying...

If you had a vagina, I'd make sweet, sweet love to you.

I collect games so I can play games that I miss out growing up.

I collect games primarily because I love playing games. I don't collect any sealed games, though. I have a few sealed ones, but only because I haven't gotten around to playing them yet. I fully intend to open them.

The reason I buy so many is because I like the idea of having a huge library of games that can accommodate any mood I'm in. I'll probably never finish all my games, but that's okay. Having a large library is like having a portal to all these different worlds, and I can look at them and pick which one I want to go to. I also like to share that collection with my friends and family. When and if I have kids, I'd like them to enjoy my collection as well.

So, why are you wasting your time on a game collecting forum when you "don't enjoy them anymore".  Surely you have some attachment to gaming beyond profit.  It would be far more profitable to focus your time on traditional forms of investing if that was not the case.

Nope...I've been learning a lot by combing the older posts (sweet SNES mod coming, btw), but I'm strictly here to attract attention with my
dope shit for sale, and figure out what's hot, or what's gonna get hot, before people who use tools on eBay but have no feel for the 
community to which they are catering.  Call me a leech if you will, but I hide nothing about my intentions.

I also like forums in general, so there's that.  Right now, because this forum holds the info I most need, this is my main hangout.

Make no mistake, though, I want to use the info I get here to find you the games you want so I can sell them to you at a price you
will accept which makes me a profit I can accept.  If I meet some cool people along the way, all the better, but that's not my 
main focus.

Sorry if that offends you, but at least I'm not blowing sunshine up your ass while having the same motive for being here.

Malcolm, this post poses one question for me which by the answer, will cause me to post again or stop altogether. I'm sure I know the answer but we'll see.

Let's say, hypothetically, you comes into a $700 game for $50. As your post says, you are looking to make a profit but also sell it for a price that someone would accept. Would you take a $300 on the game or hold out trying to make the $700 that it's worth?

Depends on who's buying it.  If the person is cool and seems genuinely excited to play the game, and is perhaps someone who has bought from me before, $300 is fine.

If it's obviously someone who covets the collector's item of the game, or is likely to resell it themselves, I'd want $700.

I just sold Mario RPG and Mario Kart to someone who has bought a bunch of stuff from me before for $20, total (total for both games, so $10 each).

Conversely, some asshole was trying to buy Faria from me last night and I wouldn't go a penny below $40 because of what a dick this guy was.

I have no idea if that answers your question, but it's the best I got.

i feel the same way about your hypothetical vagina now. great response. i literally give games away to people that are cool, and i charge full price or refuse to sell to people that are dicks.

I'm that way about most things.  Too many people in this world get rewarded for being pushy douchebags.  I like to reward politeness and understanding and punish people who feel entitled because they simply have a lot of money.

I'm cool with people who have a lot of money, but their money doesn't buy my integrity, nor my complacency. 

That's every aspect of my life, though, not just video games.

It answers it as best as it probably could. I was just curious. Me, personally, I'm a collector which is why I am here, but I am also a big gamer. I have a few fairly rare games that I actually play on a regular basis (Fire N' Ice being one of them.) Whereas I enjoy preserving the games and making sure they stay in the best condition that they possibly can, I do tend to play them as much as possible.

Yeah...I'm here to sell, but I'm not a money grubbing prick.

I negotiated a guy at a thrift store from $220 down to $50 for Earthbound yesterday.  A friend was with me, and I had already found all kinds of cool stuff on our travels, and my friend piped in (after I had worked this guy to get this awesome deal) and said, "I'll take it."

I was a little miffed at first since I had done all that work to get the deal, but then I realized that I had scored a bunch of shit that day and he had almost nothing, so I just let him have it.

It stung a little, but some things are more important than money.

And, I got lunch out of it, so whatever.

Well I can identify with being bewildered by the video game collectors who pursue mint and sealed games and systems. The monetary valuation of a lot of this stuff seems to be based more on rarity than demand. So while a boxed and sealed game may be no more useful than a good condition loose game, (in fact LESS useful since it is likely to never be played), it is indeed an endangered item and extremely limited in supply.

I tend to disagree (with Malcolm) at least a little bit though on the potential relevance of the collectors. It really is NOT the case that every game that ever existed is already archived and preserved. ... In the case of video games, it has often been the case that the individuals and companies who produced the material have not kept comprehensive records or made serious attempts to preserve their work. There are CERTAINLY games that we have ROMs of today, which were either unknown or thought completely lost 10 years ago.

This is a bit more clear to someone like me who is into VECTOR GAMES, because there is such a small number of them and they are no longer being produced (except for Vectrex homebrews) and these types of games are so substantially different from their raster counterparts, or anything being produced today. So it really is special when a new game surfaces from the past. There were fewer than 50 different vector graphics arcade games produced. More than 10% of these are unreleased prototypes, some of which are now available in ROM form, and others of which are only known at all because collectors have discovered them, either in the flesh or through research.

... With console gaming there's some stuff, especially hardware, that it is not unreasonable to seek in mint condition WITH THE INTENTION OF OPENING IT UP AND PLAYING WITH IT. For example with Vectrex, there have been a decent number of new in box consoles available in the recent past for around $700 - about 4 or 5 times what any working used one would cost. This hardware is pretty distinctive, and has several routine ways of failing over time, with use, and the opportunity to start with a fresh one at this price is not a ridiculous endeavor for someone who loves this console. ... An even more extreme example of this is the Adventure Vision, because the machine is so rare and so fragile, (and so original), that the opportunity to be the first one to play the perfect condition item, and possess the entire working life of the machine, is a quantitatively bigger experience of Adventure Vision than salvaging the console used.

I "collect" games to play them and on occasion I collect them to modify or hack them. I'm not interested in what most collectors call "completeness", (except with Vectrex because it's my favorite, it can't be emulated and because it happens to have a fairly small library). With other consoles I only want a satisfying set-up to play with or display - in fact would prefer NOT to even have the lesser games in the repertoire at all.

I think it's kind of silly that there are large numbers of people spending large amounts of money on obscure and mint items and honestly I'd be a bit embarrassed to do that myself. ... But I don't really see the difference between doing that with video games and doing that with any of the number of other things that people commonly do this with. It's a lot cheaper than collecting cars or art.

... What I really don't understand though is why a person who doesn't like video games and doesn't play video games would choose to DEAL in video games or why that person would participate to this extent in a conversation about it. Perhaps it's because you spent so much of your life playing with them?

I think it could be interesting for such an unsentimental person as MalcomXY to get involved in modding and hacking, as he has suggested he might in another one of his threads. However, I think it's pretty outrageous to ask for a "mentor" in this endeavor. You can't be an apprentice if you don't like or respect the craft.

I collect games for 2 reasons,because I like video games and because I play them.

I like the "flavor" of the older games; sometimes rolling with 3D and the polygons gets old after a while. I do creative writing as well--so the whole character of the box art, manuals, and cultural context becomes mindfood for me. Another thing is I enjoy learning about the seemingly not-successful platforms like the Turbografx and the Amiga; these were ahead of their time I think and a big "What could have been" if other companies hadn't dominated the market.

Yeah, for me I'd say it's a three-way combination between gaming, money-making, and lore. Other aspects like sealed collecting, going for full sets, and console paint-jobs are boring to me in comparison.

There are differences in terms of ease of use; to me a physical manual is more immediate and easier to read than shuffling through a scan in pdf form. The same goes for cartridges vs. emulations in most cases; I'll admit there's a few RPGs which benefit from save states, however for action games or platformers the original hardware is where it's at. There's a bunch of other variables which go with the pc use too: hunched posture, internet noise, having to configure or use different controls. If enough nonsense gets in the way of the pure experience then emulation just isn't worth it.

I believe, if taken in context, my quote went to the ridiculous claim of keeping sealed games for the sake of preservation and posterity, and had nothing to do with the practicality for the everyday collector/gamer.

I'm down with the collecting and playing on the original hardware (it's not for me anymore, but I think it's perfectly cool for those who choose to do it). 

Going back to my statement in context, however - I'd still say it's easier to read a .pdf of a game manual than it would be to rip open a $5,000 sealed game, when doing so would reduce it's value by 90%.

Also, it's been a while since I've used NESter, or even had it on my PC, but I seem to remember easy, savable settings, and with the advent of USB classic controllers from nearly all systems, I fail to see how, with a $15 controller and 2 minutes of one's time, the experience of playing a ROM file via an emulator would be different than playing a cartridge with a ROM chip/board on your TV (internet noise?  the ROM should be on a local storage device like a hard drive, DVD-ROM or a thumb drive...what internet noise???).

Obviously this doesn't apply to games which use a zapper or similar such device, and also, I understand that CRT can be different than LED, et al, but otherwise, where's this difference of which you speak?  (Put the monitor/laptop somewhere that it is at the same height as your TV, or at least the same height as your TV relative to where you typically sit in front of the TV when gaming on it, and on a PC with an emulator..."hunching" problem solved.  That'll be $.05, please.)

Until your last paragraph, I was in complete agreement with you.  One comment I didn't make was that if the game you have is on punchcards or 8" floppy disks, then yeah...preserving  it is potentially important.

And, obviously, CIB Vectrex games, as well as certain Colecovision, Intellivision, Arcadia (and all the various clones), and any other systems that required screen or controller overlays, are a different animal as not having the complete item could be the difference between the game being playable and unpolayable.

HOWEVER

How does my lack of respect for the Golem-esque, sealed game collector who jerks off in a dark room with his precious, sealed treasures have anything to do with my thoughts about those who use their time and abilities to create something new out of these oft forgetten games of yore?

I have basically hung out in the "finders keepers" room, the "everything else" room, the "price check" room and the "the brewery" room (with this thread, and my initial intro threads, being the most common exceptions to those rooms).  I got so excited and happy for the dude who made the Tyson Playchoice10 console cartridge that I went out and used one of my creative skills, photoshop (paintshop pro, actually...I hate Adobe), to make him a new cartridge label, which I had no expectation he would ever use, simply to show how cool I thought his creation was.

You assume too much.

Definitely, I can understand the "save money" aspect; though there's a bit of a range between those who light hundred dollar bills to smoke their cigars and forking out just a little cash for the experience. I'm not so much of a purist for example that I can't go with the ps1 reprint of Ogre Battle over the SNES version. I'll try different formats for sure, though there's a lot of cases where the older and physical is best.

Part of the reason could be that I purchased many of these games years ago, so it takes no extra effort to use what I have. My USB controller only seems to be compatible with Silent Hill games--as such most of my emulation picks had to be keyboard-friendly. Titles like Lufia 2, Arcana, and Harvest Moon were the ones I tried out. I'd like to mention too that the most stable emulator at the time (this was a couple of years ago) gave me a tiny, Gameboy-sized playing screen. There was no way to blow up the picture either without getting serious blurring and distortions to the picture quality.

As for moving the monitor, I'm one of these people who has space issues in their living area. If I was going to do anything, I'd get a video output card and a wireless mouse to run pc games through the tv--this would be after upgrading to a new pc mind you.

Hey man, hey.. they make me happy. on the inside

Well, I chose my words carefully, (mostly out of vanity and other self gratifying tendencies, but also in an effort to address what I saw as a choatic and slanderous situation with my own measure of sobriety).

You just seem like an asshole to me, which makes me think that you probably are an asshole.

I don't care one way or another, as long as you have no control over anything that I care about.

If you actually do some interesting mods I will be happy to see them.

I appreciate that you are reading all these posts and apparently very attentive to all of the comments. It's crazy how active this thread has been. ... I wish that it was a more substantive thread about something else.