I am curious about the rarity levels that are used in the engine. I know you've got one of the most massive collections, Dain, and probably have assigned the numbers from personal experience...but perhaps I assume too much. It just seems that there's a glut of 7's though...drawing a tangent to Atariage, a 7 is pretty f'in scarce.

Are the rarity numbers up for debate? I was thinking rarities based on eBay sold items. I have access to "marketplace research" a powerful tool that lets me search, filter, and compare three months worth of sold items on a bunch of variables. Without any sort of consistent source of production numbers, this seems to be to be the next best thing - aftermarket resale numbers.

I'm as good as one can be with getting the most out of the eBay search engine, and although it's a huge order, I can probably get very accurate resale quantities on all NTSC releases. Perhaps I can post them here, we'll get a relative feel for what's a 10 vs what's a 1, and set dividing lines? This is something we can update after...well, after three months

I realize this breaks down a bit with lots, some resellers will just cram a bunch of commons in a lot and let it go cheap. This will add a sort of X-factor...but as with Atariage, whenever a rarity comes into question, discussion and a nudge in one direction or another happens.

Anyways I'm preoccupied with this since it's different everywhere and seemingly completely subjective. Just trying to add a little science to it. -Dan

I'm not sure how the rarity is determined but I believe it to be by market and collector's opinions. Some of the rarities I'm not real sure about such as Championship Pool. As I have found several copies of the game (including a sealed copy for very cheap) and it has an 8 rarity rating.

Also, just because it's a 7 doesn't mean it's unbelievabley rare. Just a game that was produced in small amounts but still tends to be able to get around to collectors. My thoughts on it anyways

As with just about everything else on this site, the rarity is in need serious need of updating. The current rarities, IMO, are WAY off. In fact, 10's, 9's, and 8's were re-done, so those should be fairly accurate -- that's why there are so many 7's in there. Essentially I would "shift" a game down a rarity, until all of that rarity (say 9's) were done. Then, I'd look over the 8's, shift some down to 7's, etc... I left off on 7's, so a ton of those will be shifted to 6's, and further down.

I really hope people aren't using this site yet as any kind of "standard," as things really are in the early works (which is why I've got an Alpha designation). I'd say within a few weeks, most of the standard information will be up-to-date, and things should go smoothly from there.

OH, I almost forgot to mention...

You were talking about market research, etc. Well, I had created a tool about a year ago (a spider using the ebay SDK) that catalogs all NES games/lots/etc listed on ebay. Essentially, every 30 seconds, the spider would see if new games were added, and if so, enter them into my database. The spider has built in logic to find within a 90%+ approximation of what the item being listed is (ie, if it's a game, what game? if it's a lot, mark it as a lot; if it's an accessory, which one?, junk? etc....). I was able to use this tool to see over a 6 month period of time (and over 1 million listings) of what games were rarer than others, based on frequency of listing.

The spider also had a back-tracker that would find the auction, based on auction ID, and fetch the closing price. This happened only if the spider was able to match the game to a known NES game with 90% accuracy. I have various reports that show the average closing cost of a game (with shipping, if known, factored into it).

Granted, this couldn't account for bulk lots, lots or more than 1 cart, or mis-listed items, but it did show a really interesting spectrum of games, frequency, and price. My plan is to add that tool to this site (way down the road).

For example, the 10 most frequently listed games on ebay (US) are:

Super Mario Bros 3
Legend Zelda
Super Mario Bros
Tetris
Super Mario Bros Duck Hunt
Dr Mario
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mike Tysons PunchOut
Metroid
Contra

Tied for the most infrequently listed games during that time period are:

Caltron 6 in 1
Marios Time Machine
Myriad 6 in 1
Little Samson
Last Action Hero
Rad Racket
Flintstones Surprise Dino Peak
Bases Loaded 4
Die Hard
Godzilla 2
Dragon Strike
Hillsfar
Thrillas Surfari
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters
Baby Boomer
Bible Buffet
Super Cars
Kid Klown
Fisher Price Firehouse Rescue
Cheetahmen 2
Widget
King Neptunes Adventure
Stadium Events
Lempereur
Game Action Replay
Power Blade 2
Nigel Mansells World Championship
Challenge of the Dragon

At any rate, it fluctuates, but as you can see from the items it found, it was pretty accurate.

Interesting tool there Dain. I'm surprised that Wayne's World didn't make the infrequent list. Doesn't seem to show up much at all.

Wayne's World, Pro Sport Hockey, Tecmo Cup Soccer, etc, we're all tied for second-to-last in frequency, so it wasn't far off. It all fluctuates, where sometimes you'll see 3-4 NTSC Stadium Events in a month, then you won't see any for 6 months -- but if we use this tool over the course of, say, 1 full year, we'd get a very decent idea of the true frequency.

>opens mouth<
>inserts foot<

lol Dain, I promise I'll let you do your work from now on. That tool sounds interesting, even to see a report from much less to actually be able to use!

nigel mansell racing is one that you wouldnt think as hard to find but is.

Definitely, especially the box for it. If anyone here collects PAL games, there's also a PAL version that has a completely different box, manual and label.

You can see it here:

http://www.nintendoage.com/ind...=NES.Game&Game_ID=1118

would be interesting to have a box and manual rarity list....some of the boxes and manuals make finding the cart a piece of cake.maybe one day in the future.

It's already in the game plan I've just been experimenting with page "logistics" so as to not overwhelm visitors with too much information. Box rarity is a biggie in my book. Take Chubby Cherrub, Clu Clu Land, DK Jr. Math, etc -- the boxes are a 9/10, whereas the games are cheap.

Just out of curiousity, as a collector, how would you like to see that information on the game page? Or should it be in the search results? Or both? I'm struggling with how to do it in the most efficient way possible.

-Dain

I'd think the search results for something as simple as a rarity number...

How about combining the Rarity and the Scans sections and making them all independently sortable...it's not that useful for me to click on a rarity-6 and see all other rarity-6 carts, that's an advanced option at best. So if you set it up like

|Reg|Title................|Code|Publisher|Year|Cart|Box|Book
-------------------------------------------------------------------
|.....|Chubby Cherub|........|Bandai...|......| [7] | [9] | [8]

...and when a user clicks the rarity number, it pops up the scan. Perhaps the box front/back scans could pop up on the same page? Or just the front and the user can get the back scan in the game page if they want. To distinguish where scans are not available, the rarity # could be in a black/white box or an empty box (just number no color fill), no link, that has alt="No scan exists".

I like your idea about combining the 3 on the results page, and then I'd have them again on the game page with more info. But about clicking on the rarity for an image, that seems counterintuitive a bit to me -- I personally like to click on the rarity to see other games with the same rarity. If you look closely on the search results page, there's a greyed out link that says "Extended View" -- I might use that to put more information. It going to be a persistent Cookie so that until you change views, you'll be in normal or extended view.

-Dain

That would be cool there are a lot of boxes that are 10times rarer than the carts and a few manuals in the same boat..

One more small thing...if you do a global sort by rarity it counts (?,1,10,2,3...) would changing the value for 10 to "A" fix the problem? Also, changing the punctuation ? to a "B" would put unreleaseds after the 10's where the prolly belong...

Hey Dain, this ebay spider you made, that is very cool. Could it be possible to link that tool up to the site somehow and have it dynamically update the rarity and even the typical going price for a game? Then you would have a fairly accurate rating and price even as the market changes without having to do a thing!

Hey Mark, that's actually what I'm gunning for in the long run -- use it for price estimation/worth as well as rarity by frequency. I think eventually, I'd like to add a popularity index, and if I can figure out a decent muliplier, use it to gauge the popularity-to-cost ratio as well as frequency-to-cost ratio. As we know, Bubble Bobble 2 isn't necessarily super rare, but it's popular enough to where it goes for the same price as some games that are super rare. Stuff like that -- I want to figure out how to quantify it in real-life data, instead of using the guessing system to rate rarity and price.

-Dain

Bubble Bobble 2, ugh yes I just shelled out $74.80 this afternoon. Had to get it over with sooner or later

sad thing is that's a fair price from what I've seen the past month or so. It's getting steep :/ I'll just procrastinate on mine if it goes up to $100+ owell I guess I'll kick myself later

Yeah, $75 is about right -- maybe even slightly cheap, as many have gone for $80-85 in the last few months.

-Dain

Damn me and my need to have everything CIB. Istill need to get Bubble Bobble 2.
Probably going to run me 200 +

I know what you mean. Some guy over at nesworld bought one a few months back off ebay and it cost him over $300. Of course, he knew he overpaid but he wanted it. I think he bought another complete copy for like $250 or something like that a few weeks back. I too am a CIB freak. I need this game complete and sealed :-/