That's a great point.  I've seen both a Star Wars and a TMNT prototype sell to non-Nintendo collectors due to the strength of each franchise.

The mock-up box for Hulk for the 2600 went to a Hulk fan, too.

It seems to me that it is all supply and demand. The supply for all prototypes is very small. The demand for these different types of proto collecting (corner stone V. unreleased) are going to work in different ways. We all know at least one person with a shrine to Zelda. It is not surprising that demand was high because the interest of non-prototype collectors. I am kind of curious to see where there will be growth. I do not think that the Zelda proto will ever sell for more money than it did a few weeks ago, but because supply is so low, as few as 5 new "serious" collectors could make the proto market jump.

On a different but related note: I think one of the things that hurts prototypes is that there are not enough of them for complete set collecting. It seems like all the usual ideas of value go out the window when someone is trying to fill that last slot.

Mark: "Technically" I owned Arcadia VI and War on Wheels at the same time as well before I sold you Arcadia VI =P

I still have my War on Wheels, though =)

My point being is with the rampant number of sales I have had lately, yes, my prices have not changed much but I've been GETTING the prices I was asking originally and that's a big deal.

Trimming the sports games and games that don't matter to me down and selling the stuff everyone wants is working thus far.

Now, if tomorrow rolls around and I don't have payment info for these Mega Man protos for NES (2, 3, 4, and 5) that I have been holding since the beginning of the year, those are going to be back on the market....just felt the need to bring that up since "bigger" franchises are being talked about but definitely the trend was everyone getting the bigger franchise games, and a handful of collectors still wanting the unreleased stuff..

I've probably sold around 150-200 protos across the board in the last 3 months and I am just happy collectors are finally starting to get into these a lot more due to their historical significance....

Let me tell you something if I have not already babbled about this... I was doing screenshot of NES games in a project long time ago... and I stumbled on Barbie in my batch of games to take a screenshot of... and I got stuck after playing a little bit with it... and I guess I saw this as a challenge... some hours later, as weird as it may sound... I had finished the game and did not dislike the experience. It was interesting, at least at that time. I won't replay it as I replayed games like Contra or SMB gazillion times... but still it was a fun one-time experience and I can say that I finished it! Respect. I don't remember much of it, except that it was more interesting than it looked like at first glance with some puzzle and stuff I think. Who else have finished Barbie here?

I don't collect prototypes*, but I feel it's really important for unreleased protos to be dumped and differences to at the very least be catalgued with some nice before and after mouse over pics.

Personally I really want to play SimCity on the NES for some reason...I don't really know why, but whenever I think of a prototype I always think of SimCity on the NES...

*Not in physical form, I don't feel I have a right to own them, can't handle the responsibility.

^ I agree that it's important but you have to remember the people that acquire the protos do so at a price. It's hard to justify spending thousands of dollars in some cases and then turning around and dumping them for free. Unless of course you strictly mean dumping to backup and catalog. That is a different story.

It depends if you value the item or the content of the item. Dumping Stadium Events does not make it any less rare item wise. Of course, as it has been said, most proto are just not as nice aesthetically as a released game, so that is probably why its content is highly valued.

I wonder in a thousand years if the video games of the first era will be something collectors dig and which title will be see as a Mona Lisa. Maybe brand new SMB or Zelda will be the thing people really want aside from rarity.

The problem with that is you have to have extensive knowledge of each game sometimes...

I can't begin to tell you how many times people ask me what the differences are and with all the games I have how on earth would I know? People still ask me that to this day. Unless it is blatantly obvious there is abolutely no way possible I have spare time to dig out copies and play for a week to see what all the differences are in games....

This is why proto collecting is so strange sometimes, I think beggars can't be choosers because if there is only "1" of a certain game, how is someone going to "hold out" for a "different" copy of a game that is never going to show up? 

To me, it's a variety of factors. In order of things that would interest me and I would pay the most for.

1) Unreleased major title (EX: Sim city for NES)
2) A good unreleased finished game
3) A proto of a popular franchise (Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy) would rank higher with major differences
4) Any unreleased game, crappy or not
5) Run of the mill protos regardless of differences (The ceasar's palace mentioned earlier is a good example)

Agreed.  If a difference is obvious (screen title, music, naked sprites) that's one thing but if people expect you to know everything about every proto, that's just unrealistic.

I can't speak for everyone, but it my case it would be simply because I'm not looking for a certain game, I'm looking for protos with interesting differences in them.

The  problem is you need to do a full play through with each and every proto to truly know if there are any differences.  The game could be the same up until say the last level and the characters are different etc.

As far as we know nobody has ever done a play through of the Zelda Proto.  There very well could be differences...

You just need to dump the roms and do a file compare.

Edit:
Doing a full playthrough might not even help you depending on what the changes are.. Imagine if there was some new item or other secret in your Zelda prototype that you could get if you looked under the right bush..  You'd probably never find it doing a playthrough, but running a file difference will tell you.  It would take a bit of work that way to find out exactly what differences there are, but it would only take 2 seconds to confirm whether they are identical roms or not.

True, Agreed

I agree that doing a dump and a file comparison is a great tool in the tool box. I have found, however, that figuring out what those differeances translate into for game play to be a bit difficult.

And on top of all this a "File Dump" is not exactly "2 seconds" either.

I don't have any emulators.

I don't have a way to "dump" these games.

CopyNES (even the USB ones) are still difficult for me and you need to find the ROMS online, etc.

All of this takes TIME.

And as Xerxes said, comparing data won't find you everything.

People want to know PRECISELY what the differences are. You are EXPECTED to know.

This is the one problem with protos; I liked acquiring them but I don't have the time to dedicate to researching each and every one of them