Yep I guess...

@Dochrohan: Its probably around that but there hasn't been a copy for sale in ages so it's hard to say for sure

Finally I received my copy of NCAA Basketball 2010 for the PS3. I saw it for sale at an online store for only 15€ (20$) and grabbed it instantly. For those of you that don't know: EA discontinued the NCAA Basketball series only three months after the release of this game. Going along with that they stopped printing and distributing this game. So it was only available for about three months and that's it. I don't think it's exactly rare yet but it's already quite expensive especially if you want a sealed copy. With most rarish current gen games the prices are all over the place ranging from 30$-60$ for opened copies and 50$-90$ for a sealed one.
I pretty much had the best possible outcome. I knew it wouldn't come sealed but the copy I received looks nearly brand new. Flawless disc and manual and the silver sticker on the front 100% intact. Those stickers are a good indication whether or not the case is a replacement because they are pretty much impossible to take of without doing significant damage to it. Happy to knock this one of the list especially being that this game isn't really available over here .

Finally back from a 10 day christmas vacation . First time that we had christmas with basically the whole family in seven years or so. Very fun time. Played tons of Mario Kart: Double Dash with my sister, brother and my sisters boyfriend. Also got some video game gifts and found some amazing deals at the local gamestore. That store is one of the things I'm really missing. Here's all the stuff I got.



The Classic Home Video Games book and the three PS3 games were christmas presents. The games are all still sealed of course. The other stuff is from that local game store and I got amazing deals on them. I actually went twice. The first time I picked up three things: Flintstones for 4,95€, Hydro Thunder for 3,95€ and Vigilante 8 2nd Offense for 3€ which was probably the best deal on that day. Retail price for that game is around 15€ so I was happy to pick up a second copy for 3,95€ when I went there a few days later. On that day I also got Super International Cricket for 2,95€, San Francisco Rush for 2,95€ and Top Gear Hyper Bike for 5€ which were all pretty good deals. Also picked up the first Final Fantasy for the PSP for 12,95€ and the Silent Hill movie on Blu-Ray for 5€. Happy to pick those up for that price especially the FF for PSP. That game is pretty uncommon .
The best deal by far though was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night CIB for the Playstation. That thing is in very nice shape and I couldn't believe the price: 29,95€. That's about half of what the game is worth. Definitely a very uncommon title for the PS1 for the PAL regions. A lot harder to find than in America

Damn, if you do not need the castlevania, I'm willing to trade.

By the way, brother in law is back on the 1st so I'll get an updated list of stuff to you this week sometime.

He is right, that game is tough to find in the wild.

Sorry man I'm definitely keeping that Castlevania. It's the first one I've seen in the wild ever and I know I'll probably never find it again. I have a nice updated list of stuff as well. Tons of Videopac games if you're interested in starting a collection of those

I bet you find 2 tombis before 1 castlevania.

Also, if you come across a spare jumper pack or a few, i need some

Funny you say that because I actually found disc-only copies of Tombi 1 and 2 last summer lol. Sold them though because I don't want to keep loose discs


So since I'm back from vacation I started looking at the local classifieds again. I basically ignored them for almost all of december because it was just clustered with PS4 and Xbox One stuff so it was impossible to find anything.
Now everything cooled down a little and I've actually seen some decent PS2 and PS1 lots but I already had most the good games of said lots and I don't take a 40-50 minute trip just to make a profit of 20-30€ and don't end up keeping anything for myself. Yesterday though I saw a N64 lot that caught my eye. The price was set quite high at first glance but I think I got a very sweet deal out of this. Price paid for everything pictured: 160€. Pretty sweet deal considering the guy who selled it actually knew it was worth more. He just didn't want to sell everything individually. I guess he just moved to that place with his girlfriend so he didn't have much spare time. Nice guy for sure




It should be pretty obvious what caught my eye there lol. Of course I'm talking about the CIB Smoke Grey system. It was complete with the cables, controller and manuals. What I didn't know beforehand was that the box also contained some precauton booklets as well as manuals for the expansion pak, Donkey Kong 64 and Smash Bros. They aren't in the best shape but since I didn't know they'd come with the deal I can't complain. What I also didn't know was that the jumper pak was still in the box. So I could take the expansion pak out of the system and put it in the empty box I have already. Always nice when things work out like this . The joystick of the controller wasn't in the best shape but that's pretty much it for complains. The system and the styrofoam are like new. The box has a little wear but I can get over that. For PAL regions this system is very difficult to find boxed as well. I couldn't find any current listings or ones that recently sold so I really don't have an idea regarding the value.

Also included in the deal was an ice blue controller. These are pretty uncommon to find in Europe as well because they weren't sold individually but only with the ice blue system. I asked the guy if he remembered how he got it. He said he traded it with a friend who must have had an ice blue system. The stick is fairly good on this controller .

Of course there where games included as well. Some of which I've been looking for since I started collecting for the N64. I just never was willing to pay eBay prices for any of them because I know that they aren't rare at all. The seven games on top are the ones I'm keeping and I'm especially happy to get Mario Party 3. That game is crazy right now on eBay. On auction they sell for upwards of 60€ loose. It's probably because everybody has money at the moment but jeez. No way I would've paid that much for it. Same goes for Smash Bros. which clocks in at 35€-40€ at the moment. The other ones I'm adding to the collection are all good titles which is very nice for a change . I now have every Mario game for the system except for Paper Mario. I also passed the 100 games for my N64 collection with a bang.
The games I'll be selling should give me about 60€ of my money back and I'll be a very happy man. Today was a good day

I just found a big lot of PS1+PS2 stuff almost all mint/near mint, feel free to check that out beefore I get you list. Probably going to have a trade list up by end of tomorrow or tonight. 

The pickup is on Playstationcollecting

Waiting for the list

So two days ago somebody posted a Playstation lot with a system and a nice stack of PS1 and PS2 games for 85€ OBO. I messaged the seller rather quickly because of the quality stack of titles. I didn't hear back until about two hours later. Then the lady messaged me back saying all the PS1 games would be reserved for somebody and I was really bummed. I told her I wouldn't take just the PS2 stuff and kinda moved on. Yesterday she messages me again and said if I'd come today I could have it all for 80€. I guess the guy who reserved the PS1 games couldn't meet up until the weekend or later. So today I picked everything up and I'm fairly pleased. Some of the better titles have some scratches on the discs but it's not terrible at all. Two games are missing manuals but they're titles I already had anyway. So here's the games I got in the deal. The system and the accessories (three third party controllers, first party multitap and EyeToy camera) aren't pictured because of space. The games that stand up in the back are the ones I won't be keeping. The stack of PS1 games are just common sports titles to fill in the collection.




Pretty amazing deal considering the three Digimon games are worth the 80€ alone. Maybe even more. Definitely happy to get this deal

i just got digimon world, I'll def be in for those final fantasy titles =). Give me 2 hours and you will get a list

Usually eBay prices over here are quite ridiculous even for common CIB SNES titles. Lucky for me though a lot of people don't know much about the more obscure and uncommon SNES titles that were only released in the US.
So one guy on eBay sells some CIB NTSC SNES games and I managed to snag these two:

Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 CIB (missing the map): 10€
Home Improvement CIB (missing poster): 16€

Great score expecially on the CIB Home Improvement. Cartridges and manuals for both games are in fabulous condition as is the box for Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2. The box for Home Improvement isn't perfect but still pretty nice.

Today one of my best eBay finds arrived.
It's a lot of Game Boy boxes and manuals and at the end I payed around 50 cents each for the manuals and boxes which is amazing.
There were some games included but the seller said none of them was working. At the end there were only four games I couldn't get to work and seven that did work.

The three games at the top came CIB with working games.
The main part of the boxes are all with inlays and manuals.
The seven boxes that are sperated at the bottom left are missing manuals and inlays.



I have tons of extra manuals now and quite a few boxes to fill with games. The only games I already had that I could put in their boxes were Battletoads, Battletoads in Ragnarok's World, Speedball 2, Burgertime Deluxe and Quarth.
A few of these are quite uncommon boxes like Altered Space, Mercenary Force and Swamp Thing.
Also the King Rock Treasure Island appears to be a US version which would be incredible. I posted better pictures of that in the Game Boy box rarity topic in the Collector's Corner so if you're knowledgable please tell me it's the real US version . I'm a little concerned still because the design is different from the ones I've found so far.

Incredible score at .50 each my man. Congrats. Seeing all these Gameboy collections is almost enough to make me want to collect Gameboy. I already have enough to hunt for though.

man there is a lot of very cool things here! as a Nintendo collector the Duck tales 2 in the box is wicked sweet but I gotta show some love to the Atari case. That is really cool and i have never seen one before. Maybe that is where Nintendo got the item to stamp there seal of quality that came threw the door. Also Manhunt for PS2 is a crazy.. crazy game, i remember my mom being non to happy i was playing it. Creepy game. Overall awesome finds, i also find it hard not to get jealous sometimes

I also am not that big of a Game Boy collector and certainly not CIB but I knew this could end up being an awesome deal. I wasn't really expecting to win it but surprisingly I did.
With that haul my CIB Game Boy collection more than doubled and there are quite a few games that will get added sooner or later .
In general though I'm not actively looking for Game Boy games.

@Dilts: I'm jealous all the time when I read about some of the finds people are getting here like the Aero Fighters at Goodwill for a couple bucks and so on. I get some good deals here and there but very rarely something on the supercrazy scale

The TurboGrafx 16 wasn't properly released here in Europe but there are quite a few sealed games floating around. Old stock that was supposed to be released together with the systems that eventually surfaced.
Most sellers don't really have a clue what these games are worth so they are either way too expensive or decently priced. Got Dragon Spirit factory sealed on amazon for 14€ (18$) which is a nice score. Since I don't care for factory sealed games and my Turbo Grafx library is small anyway I will open this very soon
Also somebody just posted some non factory sealed games on the german eBay and I'm trying to get some of them. They are fairly expensive though

So I talked about this one online store before but this time I scored super big.
That online store doesn't focus on retro games at all and just does all that on the side so at any given time they only have like ten different NES games and maybe 50 different SNES and N64 games in stock. The prices are all over the place and kinda weird. That actually is a good thing because it seems they didn't bother looking up games that they don't get in often. That way you can get crazy good deals. Also they don't tell you whether the cartridge games come with the box and/or the manuals or just loose. So I only buy the games if the price is good for the loose cart and am happy if I get a manual or a box as an extra.
A few days ago I was browsing the site and they just added some NES games for amazing prices. When they arrived today I was absolutely amazed. Every single of the five games I bought was boxed and only two games were missing the manuals. Also all the boxes are in pretty nice shape except for some wear.
So here is what I got:

Days of Thunder (CB): 3,89€
Trojan (CIB): 3,49€
Metal Gear (CIB): 4,99€
Donkey Kong 3 (CB): 0,99€
Wrecking Crew (CIB): 0,99€

That's right. DK3 and WC were both 99 cents each. Considering they have a combined value of around 80€ this is probably the best deal I ever got online. Of course the other games were super cheap as well. I already had Metal Gear loose but knew that 4,99€ for the loose copy was a nice deal.
By the way: The small boxes are to my knowledge the only PAL games that are 5 screws

Wow I didn't know Europe got Metal Gear in a Konami silver box. And those mini black boxes are always awesome.

The small black boxes are wicked awesome . I'd like to get them all but most of them are quite hard to get so it will be a rough task. Also those two were my first two

i hate how readily available sega master system stuff is everywhere but here :[

Nice Donkey Kong 3 and Wrecking Crew. What an amazing deal, I'm jealous.

Finally one theard where i can see pal games...i have feeling that this friend from USA don't understand what hard job we have here to find pal retro items

The downside is that some games were only released in certain countries which makes some of them very hard to get depending on your location. This also especially goes for SNES games. The Master System was very popular in Europe and I think it sold more than three times the consoles that were sold in North America and it had three times more games in PAL. Finding MS games has gotten a little harder now but I think it's still easier than in the US

@babywuchki: Thx I don't think I'll get a deal like this again anytime soon

@BigBucky: I agree. Funny that Surprise at Dinosaur Peak is the second rarest licensed NTSC game according to most people but still you can find several copies on eBay at any point in time. We PAL guys laugh about that kind of "rarity" . You can still find stuff if you're patient but you have to deal with an extreme amount of resellers and dickheads

i appreciate 1 PAL collector who have 50 games then some NTSC guy how have 400 , back in time people here where i live (not germany i'm just born there) don't have too much money so they are buying 1-2 game per family and in USA for example family back in time can buy sometime 100 games for his children, because of that now find something here is 100 time harder then in USA where you can still find old stock stuff and family's still have "old junk" you can pick up

i find last week 15 boxed NES games some of the very rare and i think in next few years no one will fidn better here where i live ))

i collectin only for one year and i have big collection because i have lot's of time to do that , my gold is collect all NES PAL B cartriges and i'm on good way to do that, soon i will post only my NES collection here on forum