REAL collecting history... What's the story?
I've grown up playing games all my life and been actively collecting them for almost as long. However, I was very young when the NES was in its prime, and never took an active role in the collecting community until a few years ago.
So my question is... Where does this collecting community stem from, and what are the significant milestones that have occurred over the decades to build to the huge collecting community we see today? Are the big time collectors today the same people who were buying this stuff new as it released? How did a definitive full set list come about, was it simply updated as games came out, or did it grow organically from people confirming releases after the fact? What about rarities for certain games, how do we actually know what is rare? Unlicensed must be a whole other story!
I'm looking for stories and information about the building blocks of this hobby, specifically Nintendo collecting. This is such a huge and diverse and disjointed scene these days, I wanna hear about the olden days way before the madness we see today, when Nintendo collecting wasn't a thing!
If we don't pass on these stories and record them, if we don't repeat them to younger collectors, then they will surely vanish. They are worth repeating just as much as any game is worth saving imo! Please enlighten us young innocent children (I'm 30 btw, lol!).
So my question is... Where does this collecting community stem from, and what are the significant milestones that have occurred over the decades to build to the huge collecting community we see today? Are the big time collectors today the same people who were buying this stuff new as it released? How did a definitive full set list come about, was it simply updated as games came out, or did it grow organically from people confirming releases after the fact? What about rarities for certain games, how do we actually know what is rare? Unlicensed must be a whole other story!
I'm looking for stories and information about the building blocks of this hobby, specifically Nintendo collecting. This is such a huge and diverse and disjointed scene these days, I wanna hear about the olden days way before the madness we see today, when Nintendo collecting wasn't a thing!
If we don't pass on these stories and record them, if we don't repeat them to younger collectors, then they will surely vanish. They are worth repeating just as much as any game is worth saving imo! Please enlighten us young innocent children (I'm 30 btw, lol!).
Comments
I started playing NES when I was three years old, in 1989, then continued buying NES games through the mid 90s, also later getting a SNES, N64, etc. NES was always my favorite though. Then a store (Funcoland) had moved in about an hour from my house, which was considered close by American standards. I was just entering my teenage years at this point, and my brother was around 18 or 19, and my parents used to have dance classes in that same area, so they'd drop us off to the plaza with the game shop, and we'd buy a large sack of games and then sit next door at the pizza shop while waiting for them to finish up. Great fun.
The internet was starting to become more mainstream at this time, being around 1998 or so, and I used to always use the Mike Etler game guide to track what I did and didn't have. Etler is a game store owner, and he compiled the original rarity list, I think he had based it off of experience, having owned a game store and what not.
How did a definitive full set list come about, was it simply updated as games came out, or did it grow organically from people confirming releases after the fact? What about rarities for certain games, how do we actually know what is rare?
I wasn't trading Nintendo game lists on Usenet back in the 90s, but check out some of the lists on http://www.neshq.com/lists/.
Also poke around Usenet posts from the mid to late 90s in rec.games.video.nintendo and rec.games.video.classic. Mike Etler made a popular list that was passed around a lot. Rarities were just guesses refined over time. I love seeing what games everyone was clearly wrong about and how things were priced.
some highlights:
Little Samson: $1 trade-in value, $5 sell price
Flintstones 2: $1 trade-in, $5 sell
Dragon Warrior: $2 trade-in, $8 sell
Super Dodge Ball: $10 trade-in, $40 sell (LOL WUT?)
always makes me laugh
When I interviewed one of the first Earthbound prototype owners for NES, he was making rounds in the early 90s and that was why he got it. Game store owner held it for him because he came around all the time and they knew each other. He said it was only a couple guys in the Seattle area that were collecting that early on. And then same old story, sold the set for wife, kids, and a house. Still, in the nineties. That shit blew my mind.
Anyways though, videogame collecting has been a thing since before the World Wide Web modern Internet even existed, and before most members here were even born. The earliest collectors were a few who got the original Waves of systems (fun fact: early 80's game and trade magazines referred to the upcoming Colecovision and 5200 as part of the "third wave" of systems- the much later and arbitrary Wikipedia classification of system "Generations" puts it in the "Second Generation"), in many cases already being adults by the time of the "Crash" around '83-84 that allowed anybody with a few bucks to buy huge amounts of sealed games for mere fractions of what they had recently sold for. The flood of drastically marked-down inventory around that time is when videogame collecting first really took off, and a lot of prominent collectors got started around then. A lot of those same folks also had home computers and were among the relatively few (compared to the general US population) that had access to BBS's, and those early computer discussion lists and mailing groups (physical, Post Office mail and newslettters, as email really wasnt a thing yet) provided a seed for the later Forums and collector groups. As the NES and succeeding systems came out and revitalized the US market, and the computer market continued to mature, a greater community of like-minded individuals interested in all these game and systems started keeping in touch, eventually leading to small conventions and eventually various email and online Forums when the Internet took off. An early one is Digital Press, which started with newsletters as far back as '91, which can be seen here:
https://www.digitpress.com/library/newsletters/digitalpress/
...I really like how the first one talks about the new Neo Geo system- and that was over a quarter-Century ago now! So as demand and interest grew in games, so did stores dedicated to selling them. Babbages, Software Etc, Funcoland, Electronics Boutique, etc- they all had used game sections (or at least all the locations around here did) that allowed for healthy new and used markets to feed each other symbiotically. I've been collecting since the 90's, and let me tell you almost all of the stuff that's "rare" and "valuable" now was widely available and quite affordable back then for those who even cared. As the 90's progressed and more and newer systems came out as tech got better and more advanced, so too did the means to talk about it and buy and sell games as part of a greater community than before, including via newfangled sites like Ebay and the early Forums like Digital Press. Those of us who've been on Ebay will remember that originally usernames were NOT hidden from other bidders on auctions, among other things.
Anyways, though, the 90's is when system game lists first really started to get put together, and most systems had completed lists by the end of the decade. As other systems came out and ended their retail lives, it was a much simpler matter to simply create lists for systems as games came out. The only systems that have any real uncertainty as to what was released, and even then with only a few titles usually, are older systems from before the NES that had short retail lives from before there were many collectors talking to each other. This is how there's no doubt about what games were released for say, the Jaguar and the Dreamcast, but there's still uncertainty regarding releases for the likes of the RCA Studio II and the Arcadia 2001. NES sort of straddles this line, having come out when collecting was still only on a few BBS's and paper newsletters and having its last release in '94. For example, the claim (likely spurious) about "only 200 copies" of Stadium Events existing dates to around then. I recall having heard it even in the late 90's and even then nobody had any solid backing for it. There's no shortage of lore like that that simply gets repeated over and over to the point that nobody can trace it back to an actual source if there even was one.
Thanks especially for the links to the old forums and newsletters... it looks like I'm going to be in for a very interesting couple of days/weeks pouring into these sources! It'd be an awesome project to perhaps write a proper history of the growth of collecting, it would make for a fascinating book I think!
So, a few more questions: how many people in the early days had full sets? Was that a common collecting goal back then, as it is today? Obviously finding the games would have been much harder, with no internet, but at the same time sooooooo much cheaper! I wonder how many people there are out there right now with full NES sets today? And as you guys said above, many may have had the full set once, then just sold it off! Amazing stories.
http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/nesrarec.txt
I got an nes for christmas 89'... I loved it to bits. summer 92'(around june 20th right before my birthday) I got a sega genesis model 2 with sonic 2 for my 8th birthday. I was a big sega head for the first few months, but I only had 2 games. after I would become bored of them I would fire up my nes(with 18 game library!)... I started collecting "retro" in 1994 when blockbuster started selling CIB nes games for $7.99.. I did stupidly sell my collection for $80 to buy 2 sega saturn games and a saturn light gun sometime around mid 1996. in 1998 I discovered tsr's nes archive;
http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/
I was only 14 but I was already nostalgic about nes even though it was only 4 years since the last titles hit the shelves. from that point on I grabbed every nes game I came across. the average price was $1 all day. the only game that was pricey was gold zelda because old people are stupid and speculated it was rare. that was usually $10. by 2005 I had about 400 games
I would imagine compiling a rarity list is a combination of looking up all the old magazines, discussion amongst collectors from personal experiences, discussions with past store owners, and past Nintendo employees. Rarity is rather a loose definition, because it's constantly changing.
For example, a previously thought to be common game, was bought by one collector by the thousands (he has a severe case of OCD and needs multiple copies). This once common game, has now become really scarce and unavailable for purchase through the public domain. Thus "common" has now become "ultra rare".
At that time there wasn't a lot of info on all PAL releases though. It has been just a matter of time before collectors compiled a complete list together.
Also sort of a common price rule back than was that for a CIB you could add like 10% more to the price than that of a loose cart.
Originally posted by: OptOut
So, a few more questions: how many people in the early days had full sets? Was that a common collecting goal back then, as it is today?
I started setting out to do it in 1997, that was when I first had the thought of owning every single cart. I never achieved it though. But honestly, even online, I never heard another person say that they were trying to do the same thing back then. It wasn't the hobby it is now. Back then people mostly just thought they were supposed to be looking for Tengen Tetris. ROMs and emulators were a new thing so most people were migrating to that fad in the late 90s
At that time there wasn't a lot of info on all PAL releases though.
i still feel that people get this wrong way too often...
yes... for unique pal-b games there might be 339?
but it's weird to me when people leave out re-releases or ones labled "classic version"
and even the people who do include those AND go for pal-a as well ,
often seem to completely overlook games such as "10-Yard Fight" & "Mario Bros. Original Arcade Classic Series"
So, a few more questions: how many people in the early days had full sets? Was that a common collecting goal back then, as it is today? Obviously finding the games would have been much harder, with no internet, but at the same time sooooooo much cheaper! I wonder how many people there are out there right now with full NES sets today? And as you guys said above, many may have had the full set once, then just sold it off! Amazing stories.
[/quote]
Well, in the earliest years the first collectors were those who simply bought games for their systems as they came out or became available at their local stores, and there weren't all that many games available for most systems. Odyssey 1- 12 games. Telstar Arcade- 4 or 5 games. Studio II- 10 games (11 if Bingo actually was sold somewhere, which it wasn't). Arcadia 2001- 22 to 24 games. Channel F- 26 games. For most of collecting history, it was easy to get full sets for a lot of the earlier systems. But good luck doing that nowadays. Nowadays it's very different, as getting full libraries for some of those earlier systems is MORE difficult than it would be to complete sets for newer systems, including the NES. So much time has passed (decades!) that many of the rarest games for older consoles simply cannot be had at all until a particular copy turns up on Ebay or a Forum (the rarest items for Studio II, Odyssey 1, and Channel F are rarer than ANY NES game, including Stadium Events, for example), while full sets for newer systems are simply a matter of having sufficient funds available.