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Selling The Collection

Sunday, June 30th, 2019

Yesterday I sold 6 game consoles and 152 games. For this I was paid a considerable amount of money, but it was like parting with a piece of my personal history.

In recent years the market value of ‘retro’ games has been skyrocketing. In particular certain systems and game genres have seen prices rise to borderline unbelievable levels. I own(ed) many of these, and therefore the value of my collection had risen as well.

Over the last few years I’ve written quite a few ‘My Collection‘ blog posts, and more than once as I set up the systems and spent a day playing I wondered if I’d ever want to play those particular games again. I questioned the wisdom of storing them away for another decade or more.

I still love games and still buy loads of them. In the last year or so I started to recognize that in all likelihood I wouldn’t be playing certain old ones ever again. Furthermore the collection was just too large (>1600 console games) and it was time to focus.

So I decided to sell. For this first wave I settled on six older systems, and all the games I had for them: Genesis, Sega-CD, Saturn, Dreamcast, Turbografx and XBox. Last week I sent a list to a local store I know and trust, and they quickly responded with a generous offer, which I accepted.

In total what I sold filled the seven boxes you see above. It took a few nostalgic hours to sort and pack them up and it took the two owners of the store another two hours to unpack and assess everything. They were astonished by the condition. One guy said he rarely sees any Sega-CD or Saturn games (from 20-25 years ago) without disc scratches: I sold him almost eighty, all in pristine condition complete with all packaging. Virtually everything I sold was the highest quality. I think they were more excited by the sale than I was!

Several of the games I sold are amongst the rarest on their systems. The one above (yes that’s the original receipt) they may sell for $800 or more, and I sold two others even more valuable. I hope they make good money on this sale, and I hope my games – some of which are ‘holy grails’ end up making other collectors very happy.

The guys told me I should become a streamer or write a book. They were amazed by my history as a gamer, the depth of my collection and the gaming knowledge I had. Also the fact I could give details about virtually every game including when and where I bought it as well as mini-reviews. But I’ve never collected for it’s own sake: every game I buy is simply because I want to play it.

Although I sold a lot of games, it represented less than 10% of my total collection. I’m still buying games of course, but going forward will increasingly concentrate on Nintendo and/or handheld systems. While I will very likely sell more of my collection, I can’t see myself ever parting with the (sizable) Gameboy/DS portion.

Am I sad about this? Do I feel regret? No I’m not and I don’t. I got a good price, I sold to a store that understands and respects the hobby and will find all my games new homes. I personally bought every one of the games myself, played them all, and cared for them for over two decades. They were precious to me but it was now time to pass them on. I hope their new owners love them as much as I did.

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My Collection: Saturn

Friday, June 21st, 2019

In late 1994 Sega of Japan launched the Saturn console, their long-awaited followup to the Megadrive. Sega was starting to struggle in the market after the failure of the Sega-CD and 32X addons, and their hope was the Saturn would fight off the looming threat of Sony’s entrance into the home console market. As history now tells us, it didn’t.

I bought my Saturn on the day of US launch: May 11 1995. Famously Sega launched ‘early’ with only one day advance notice and while I was planning on buying a Saturn I never expected I’d have it in my house several months before the originally stated launch date. As we now know the early launched failed: there weren’t enough compelling games ready and consumers weren’t interested.

But I loved the Saturn. Mostly this was for the very reason it failed: the Saturn was a machine that was very poor at 3D graphics, but very good at 2D. This meant it got all the ports of Capcom arcade fighters, which I greatly enjoyed back then. For me therefore, the Saturn was an arcade in my home.

That’s a portion of my collection. I quickly got my Saturn modified to play Japanese games and it became my intro to ‘import gaming’. I played the hell out of the above, and loved them all.

That’s the remainder of my current collection, and back in the day I had more but traded some in during the late 90s. I bought more games for my Saturn than for any other non-Nintendo system.

And it wasn’t just 2D fighters. The above show Quake and an Egyptian turned FPS called Powerslave which is easily the better game. I also bought driving games, puzzle games, RPGs (alas not enough were released) and all sorts of other weird games (such as a horse racing simulator). During the failing days of the system I bought just about anything I saw for cheap, which was often as little as $5 brand new! I didn’t want to see this console die.

The Saturn was never a great success, and it laid the groundwork for Sega’s ultimate departure from the hardware market. But it’s treasured by retro gamers and as such some of its rarer games now fetch astonishing prices. Collectively the three shown above would probably fetch $1500 or more, which is more than I paid in total for my system and all the games. Collecting for the Saturn these days is a rich man’s hobby!

The above shows a save file I found when I was looking through my games earlier. Over 22 years ago, and 12:30 am no less. Younger me played well into the night! In the mid to late 90s I often played my Saturn much more than my PlayStation or N64 and my save files go all the way up to 2000.

But as with all consoles it would eventually be obsoleted – followed up by the Dreamcast in 1999 – and less than a year later I packed mine away and put it into ‘deep’ storage. Here’s where I usually say I had fun looking through my collection but it’s going back into storage for another XX years, never to be sold… but not this time…

Because this time things are different, since for the first time ever I’m very seriously considering selling a portion of my collection. Indeed I’ve started the process, and whether or not it actually happens depends on a few factors, not the least being the offer I receive.

Rest assured if it does happen you’ll be able to read about it here.

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My Collection: Virtual Boy

Friday, May 24th, 2019

In 1995 Nintendo released their Virtual Boy console. It utilized monochrome red stereoscopic 3D graphics and became a legendary failure, being pulled from the market in under a year. The launch price was $180; eight months after launch I bought mine – an ex-rental – for $30.

When assembled for use it looks like this:

And is played like this:

While playing you view two screens – one each eye – which form a 3D image via parallax. It’s very effective – ‘true’ 3D – and almost impossible to photograph. But I tried:

While the 3D effect is convincing, there are three significant problems with the device:
1) The games are poor.
2) The posture required to actually play it is painful.
3) Playing hurts the eyes and for most people (myself included) causes headaches in only minutes.

It’s incredible this was ever released since these serious issues are obvious after even casual use. I remember after it launched I knew it would fail, and was never seriously interested in buying one even after the first price cut (this is an advert I kept from a late 1995 comic):

Only 14 games were released in the USA (22 worldwide) and I own four:

All of these were purchased brand new for $10 apiece (games were $30 at launch). I got Red Alarm the day I got the system, and the others about six months later. I recall playing the Wario game to completion but barely played the others.

The cartridges are large but very thin, and quite collectible today. The game shown above may be my priciest single game, with boxed copies on eBay right now for $900 (yes, nine hundred). It’s notable for being the last and rarest game for the system and for being linked to the Persona series.

I only paid $70 for my system and games. I could probably sell it all for $1000+ today. Not bad for one of the biggest failures in video game history.

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Happy Birthday Game Boy!

Sunday, April 21st, 2019

30 years ago today Nintendo released their first portable game system: the Game Boy.

That’s a very early Japanese advert touting the ‘handy game machine’ (being played by young boys obviously lost/abandoned in the Australian outback)! As you see the system was very much marketed at children, but as we know now went on to become beloved by players of all ages.

The Game Boy went on to sell almost 120 million units in the fourteen years it was sold, and directly led into the followup Game Boy Advance and then DS series. Many competing handheld consoles came and went, but none made much of a dent in a market absolutely dominated by Nintendo’s Game Boys.

I’ve loved this device since it was released, and to this day handhelds (especially Nintendo ones) are my favorite game systems. Between the Game Boy and it’s followups I own over twenty pieces of hardware and over six hundred games! Needless to say the release of the Game Boy 30 years back had a direct effect on my life 🙂

I’ve written about my (original model) Game Boy collection before. You can read that here (and yes I misspelled the console name throughout). In preparing this post I dug out my collection for another look-see. Here’s a shot of a portion of the game boxes I mentioned five years ago:

And here’s another shot of all five of my Game Boys (all of which still work):

I was looking for a particular game to feature, and found these four Japanese release Pokémon games I bought to play since I couldn’t wait for the USA releases:

(Yes I ended up buying all the USA versions as well, except for Pokémon Card 2 which was never localized!)

And since my original post I’ve added a few more games to my collection, including two more beautiful Wizardry games:

And this guy, bought for ¥100 in Japan last January:

I fired up the above just now on one of my Game Boy Pockets just for some nostalgia…

It was terrible 🙂

The Game Boy may be ‘obsolete’ now, but it will never be forgotten. It’s legacy includes not just numerous followup systems, but also a library of amazing games many of which are still great fun today. The systems themselves are notoriously robust so if you’ve got one in an attic somewhere why not get it out, pop in some batteries, and fire up Tetris again for some late 80’s gaming nostalgia?

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My Collection: Game Gear

Saturday, March 23rd, 2019

Sega released their Game Gear handheld console in 1990 as their answer to Nintendo’s Gameboy. It was marketed heavily on the strength of its full colour backlit screen, but poor software support coupled with the market dominance of the Gameboy led to the Game Gear never becoming a true hit.

This is my Game Gear. I never bought the system myself – I wasn’t interested in any of its games – but JAF (ie. KLS’s mum) bought herself one. Specifically on June 27, 1993 for $129.99. I know this because I still have the receipt, which shows the rechargeable battery pack ($49.99) and ‘Super Wide Gear’ magnifier ($29.99) were bought at the same time.

Joyce would eventually bequeath the system to me along with the few games she had bought. I myself had bought one game (shown above) but when I inherited it in 1994 I put it into storage and essentially ignored it for 24 years.

Then last year in Scotland I found a large collection of Game Gear games being sold at a CEX used game store and bought them all! Eighteen games in total cost me £18, which was a steal even considering they were unboxed. I was eager to try them, and when I returned to the USA I powered the system up for the first time in decades and saw this:

Yes it had broken and the screen just displayed garbage. There were sound problems as well. I wasn’t particularly surprised by this because in the decades since release the Game Gear has become infamous for the lousy quality that Sega chose to cut costs. Many components are second-rate, and the capacitors in particular are known to be the worst ever placed in a game console.

In short, all the capacitors (about 30) needed to be replaced. I bought tools and a capacitor kit, then did nothing for four months! This was because I knew it wasn’t going to be easy at all (leaky surface mounted capacitors needed to be replaced with wired ones) and because the cost of paying someone to do it was cheaper than my time. Eventually that’s what I did, and $30 and one month of work later my Game Gear was fixed.

Now it works we can see the other flaw. The much-marketed full colour screen? It’s terrible! Very washed out, with a slow refresh rate and very limited viewing angle it makes playing anything a bit of a chore in the day of OLED invisible pixel displays!

In short: all games look bad on it, and don’t even have the retro appeal of (for instance) a Gameboy.

Things are slightly better using the magnifier, even if it does make the system less portable. It also reduces the viewing angle quite notably, so you’re better off putting it on a table if you want to use it.

Let’s not discuss the absurd battery pack (top left in the above photo), which gives only about an hours battery life at the expense of a heavy eggplant-sized unit that clips onto your belt. Less expensive I suppose than 6 AA batteries every three hours, but once again something that makes us question how portable this system actually was?

The above is most of my library. I forgot to take a game out of the system (Columns) and of course Shining Force isn’t included. Game Gear games aren’t particularly valuable compared to other handhelds, mostly because if you’re interested in playing them you’ll almost always be emulating. The most valuable game in my collection (Shining Force) is ‘worth’ only about what I paid for it 25 years ago.

This system is a curiosity these days. It had very few good games at the time, and almost none worth seriously playing today. The systems themselves are unreliable, and even when repaired are frustrating to use unless you spent too much to replace the screen with an LED upgrade. This is very much a system just for my collection, and I reckon it could be decades before I turn it on again…

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