Hi everyone - I'm relatively new to the site, mainly just read posts here and at DP.  I started collecting to collect back in December, originally just to buy the carts I wanted to play.  Not long after, I decided I really liked the idea of getting CIB over cart only.  So, I have transforming the carts I have into CIBs, and buy mainly CIB now.

Currently, I am about to hit the 100 CIB mark, with about 40 cart/manual combo's just waiting on a boxed home.  My question is this: for those of you out there collecting CIB, how far into it did you find it easy to make good progress?  How quickly did you progress?  At what point(s) did you hit a wall, and what was the reason?  Rarities, financial, other?

Just curious what kind of road lies ahead of me  

 

I decided to go CIB pretty early on, and ended up buying exclusively CIB. Then I didn't find all that much around town, so I said to hell with it and bought whatever I could find. CIB still takes presidence over carts, but I have pieced together a few good CIB titles...Superman, Conan (which I traded after I opened my sealed copy), and many other CIB games I gathered piecemeal. But yeah, I always wanted my games CIB, just realized all the good stuff I've missed when I passed over loose games entirely.

I started out collecting cart only too.  About 350 games in I have hit a wall.  I guess I've got all the really common stuff now, so its getting harder to find stuff I need at flea markets.  I used to but big lots of like 25 carts on ebay and I needed 20 out of the 25, now I buy a lot of 25 and I'm lucky if 1 of them is something I need.  I recently started going after boxes, because it was getting harder to find carts I needed, and I very quickly have around 150 boxes.

I started off as a cart-only collector like many did, but I "caught the bug" so to speak for getting them CIB. It doesn't take long to get a lot of them CIB if you buy in lots. Buying the boxes/manuals even before you get the game is also smart if you come by a bunch of them you need. I know a few collectors here that do that (justabum does this, and it's damn smart). If you think about it, the boxes and manuals in most cases are rarer than the carts, so getting any and all that you can find cheap is the way to go.

Once you get to the 400+ mark, it starts getting a little harder and a LOT more expensive. I'd recommend buying them in lots and selling off extras. At a certain point, you'll actually start turning a profit that you can later use to buy the more expensive games that simply don't go down in value. It's taken me about 2 years to get almost all the boxes and manuals, but I've been collecting for around 7 years. I've hit my "wall" recently -- I'm down to need only a few items and they're a bitch to find. Some collectors buy the rarer stuff first, but I personally wouldn't recommend buying all the rares upfront. You'll go broke (or in debt) and wind up burning out more quickly. If you plan on getting the ultra rare games "eventually," just make a few collecting goals: try to get maybe one of them a year or two if you can afford to.

-Dain

Oh yeah, and try to get all maps and custom inserts BEFORE you get to the end of your collection I made that mistake, and now I've had to buy the games CIB again just to get the maps.

Hey Dain...

You know what would help this guy with his collecting? A COLLECTION TOOL!

LOL... don't make me turn into the Soup Nazi! "No soup for you!"

I'll be good!

On topic - Just buy stuff in larger lots to keep the prices down, or make good friends with someone that does. A lot of the time you can find collectors with an abundance of box duplicates that they'd sell you at their cost just to recoup some funds.

I started off as cart only, but made the directional change after I hit about 400 carts. Once my latest lots come in, I'll be at 475 games and 350 boxes (rough numbers because I don't have a collection tool to help me out!).

I also started as a cart only collector. I had about 700 carts before I got into wanting boxes and manuals. I have recently hit a wall finding them myself. The ebay market isn't great right now and boxes are at a premium price. I need less than 90 boxes and about 195 manuals. Money is an issue for me now though cause I am unemployed right now and have little income to spend on NES, hopefully that will change soon....
~~NGD

Why Chris, my Canadian brother from another mother, whatever do you mean...
:-)

I'll never tell!

Send me your list man. I got plenty of orphan/dupe boxes/manuals.

I went for loose carts only to start to..sold off all the boxes and manuals i had. then decided to go for complete games. I got lucky and scored a lot of 350 some boxed games in one chunck so that helped. I was also lucky enough I had almost all mine cib before the market took a big jump.

pretty much same here, now its a bitch to rebuy a bunch of games just for the boxes. It'd be so much easier if there wasn't so much competition to buy all the box and cib lots off ebay.   but yea, lots are the way to go for sure, and sell off the dups. good luck

I made the decision to collect CIB pretty much from the get go. Dain is right about me, I pretty much hunt for boxes, manuals and cib's. I fill in the carts as they come. I figure with the exception of maybe the 5-8 rarest titles I can get a cart pretty much anytime I want either on ebay or through gaming sites if I'm willing to pay the price. So the only time I aquire carts anymore is because it is cheap or conveinent. At some point I'll have to start filling some of my empty boxes but as I aquire more and more stuff my trade list becomes larger and larger and should make it easier to trade for what I need in the end. I found very early on that in order to get a box or manual I would end up buying it cib and then have a duplicate cart anyways. All in all I pretty much buy anything that seems cheap to me, fill in what I need in my collection, and trade/resell the dups. Thats my thoughts anyway......I'll let you know in a year or so how it worked out .

Another thing that can make collecting a bit more rewarding is focusing on subsets, then it doesnt get too overwhelming or feel like you aren't getting anywhere. Like collect all the koei games or the tengen games, or the color dream games etc. My latest subset was maps...which I can finally proudly say I finished.

Bryan

Thanks for all the info everyone.  I actually have been starting to look into lots.  Main focus of current purchases is to get the stuff I have up to CIB, and then pretty much buy any boxes/CIB lots or otherwise that I can find cost effectively.

I want to start getting some of the big titles out of the way, but I'm still at that stage where I am buying games that I have to have since they are just higher up on my want list.  For example, I really want to get my CIB Drag War 2-4 done soon, and those alone will set me back near $200 if I have to go the ebay route.

I've also considered setting some mini goals like justabum suggested, but haven't figured what to go for first.  Since I am also going for a complete Sega CD collection on the side, whenever I need a false sense of accomplishment I buy a few of those...the smaller library makes every purchase that much more upilfting