Collecting motives
What got you into collecting, how long have you been collecting, what are your goals, biggest peeves about collecting.
What got me into collecting...A friend at work gave me a atari 2600 and some games about 9 years ago and got me started playing again. I was around before the first console ever came out.We spent our time playing board games so I was able to experience the true awe of the beginging of video gaming. I did own a atari 2600 and colecovision when they first came out but they were sold in yard sales long ago. After finding other games at yard sales I discovered the internet and atariage. If it wasnt for AA I would have never known all the games that were out there, Then I discovered ebay and the collecting bug hit me.
Although I had a atari back in the late 70s and a colecvision in 1982 I didnt really start collecting until 9 years ago.
Goal is to one day have a complete collection of atari 2600, 5200, 7800. intellivision, colecovision, nes, nintendo 64 games. with the 2600 and colecovision titles being loose. Ive started to late in the game to try and get those complete.
My biggest peeves would have to be all the look at me collectors .The ones that have to have all the rare carts. which they run the prices up to redicilous levels and then post on all the message boards about their rare games...then fade away and have to sell off everything because they cant pay there credit card bills. But when they do sell, some other noob does the same thing driving the prices even higher.
What got me into collecting...A friend at work gave me a atari 2600 and some games about 9 years ago and got me started playing again. I was around before the first console ever came out.We spent our time playing board games so I was able to experience the true awe of the beginging of video gaming. I did own a atari 2600 and colecovision when they first came out but they were sold in yard sales long ago. After finding other games at yard sales I discovered the internet and atariage. If it wasnt for AA I would have never known all the games that were out there, Then I discovered ebay and the collecting bug hit me.
Although I had a atari back in the late 70s and a colecvision in 1982 I didnt really start collecting until 9 years ago.
Goal is to one day have a complete collection of atari 2600, 5200, 7800. intellivision, colecovision, nes, nintendo 64 games. with the 2600 and colecovision titles being loose. Ive started to late in the game to try and get those complete.
My biggest peeves would have to be all the look at me collectors .The ones that have to have all the rare carts. which they run the prices up to redicilous levels and then post on all the message boards about their rare games...then fade away and have to sell off everything because they cant pay there credit card bills. But when they do sell, some other noob does the same thing driving the prices even higher.
Comments
Like you, I too was around before the very first console, and remember the day we talked my dad into buying an Atari 2600. A store near our house called Woolworth's was going out of business, and they had the systems and games on clearance. The prices were so good in fact that my dad picked up the system and about 15 games!! This was a few years after the Atari was released, likely in '80 or '81. Up until that point, we used to bribe our neighbor into letting us play his Atari. We spent hours and hours playing Berzerk (with my dad!) until my mom finally came downstairs and made us all go to bed. Had she not, we likely would not have slept that night. My fondest memories of the Atari are playing 4-player Warlords with friends for what seemed like ages.
Years later, and unfortunately after my parents divorced (no, it wasn't because of the Atari
About 7 or 8 years ago, I was living in Raleigh, NC and remotely working in Atlanta, GA. I didn't have a girlfriend at the time and I was bored sick. I had a weird recollection one day about "the good ol' days" of playing Nintendo and decided to pick one up on ebay cheaply. I got it home, popped in SMB, and again played for hours on end. That was it -- I had the bug again (and now the means) to finally buy all those games my parent's couldn't afford when I was younger. Unfortunately, two years later I got laid off, and wound up selling my collection, save for my PAL games. It's only been in the last two and a half years or so that I've started back collecting again.
-Dain
I have loved the NES ever since I first laid hands on it back around '86 I guess. I have really been collecting for about 4 years now I guess, hard to keep track. I started after I got my first job and have some extra cash to spend. At first I was just picking up the popular titles, Zelda, Excitebike, MTPO, Contra....... My brother got his NES before I did, and was not very good about letting me play it, in fact I would have to sneak in to play it when he wasn't around. I used to fake being sick just so I could stay home and play it. I finally got my own the next X-mas I guess around '87, but only got a few games. My parents coudln't afford to buy very many, so I only had a few games, maybe 20. I would get one for my B-day, X-mas, and sometimes are a present for a good report card or something. Once I has extra money I could spend, I just started picking up games that I found for cheap. Then I just picked up games no matter the cost if I didn't have them, keep in mind that it was from pawn shops, flea markets and local cheap game stores. Around this time I got turned onto Ebay, and my paychecks haven't been the same since.
My initial goal was to get one copy of every game, as most of you know I accomphished that about a year ago. So now my new goal is a full CIB collection. I am prob a little over 3/4 of the way there now already. I have also started on PAL games some, mainly HES and the PAL exclusives for right now though. I guess my long term goal is to find a copy of every game for every region worldwide CIB, but that may never be completed.
Pet peeves, Hmm!!!! I agree with you about n00bs spending huge amounts and then disappearing, that gets old quick and we have all seen it 100 times over. Luckily I have all the top 7 games, but I still need boxes and manuals for many of them sadly. Another one would be gettign scammed over, that makes me irrate. It has only happened a few times, but i see red for days after it happens. I still get angry anytime anyones metions NES_GAME_FREAK (ebay s/n) to me. I think it also gets old when a n00b shows up on the forums, asked 100's of questions, learns there stuff a little after you have coached them along, then disappears. This kinda goes along with the first thing I said about the high end games too. I guess once they get a taste of knowledge they want to show off the fact they used it to get something rare. Sadly most of them have to sale it off after paying to much, then I guess they get embarassed and just fad away. . . . . .
~~NGD
I didn't start collecting games until about 6 months ago during the drought of games not being released. I figured I was saving money by not buying new releases and started buying classic games that I had owned years earlier. After I had a pile of them, I decided that it wasn't enough. I wanted them all. Little did I know that there was THAT many of them!!
Since then, I have turned from playing games to collecting them. I haven't played a current gen game in a long time. Most of my spare time is spent on the hunt around town for games. I expect this time to get reallocated to playing Wii starting this weekend though...
My immediate collecting goal is to complete an NES set. I just purchased my 260th NES game, so I've got a little ways to go. I also clean every game that I get (inside and out) and seal them up in a baggie. I like just being able to look at them and know that in 20 years time I could whip them out and play em with my kids.
Pet Peeves include people at flea markets who think they know how much a game is worth, but really have no idea, but wont listen to reason when you try and talk to them about the games. I just feel like telling them "The reason why you cant sell any games is because you are charging 5x the going price. The games that you have on your table have been here for months without any change, and they will be here for many more until you price them right!"
I also hate the guys that beat you to a find and buy it only for the purpose of reselling it...
When my brother went off to college in 1998, he took the NES and all our games with him. Within a couple of months, he sold it and our Power Glove to pay his long distance phone bill (long distance relationship). It wasn't until this year that I got an interest in playing again. I had found our NES games in the garage, and I bought an NES at a flea market.
I don't like to call myself a collector. I like to play the games, and I only buy the games that are recommended as good. Every once in a while I pick up a game I haven't heard much about, just to try it out -- and I keep or get rid of it depending upon how much it strikes my fancy. I only collect NES and Famicom, with in recent months more of a focus on the latter. If there's anything I "collect" it would be the Famicom holy grails, of which there are four different ones. But these are much, much cheaper than the NES holy grail, because 10,000 of each were made.
I don't think there's much that gets to me. I tend not to understand variant collecting, though it's been explained to me before. It's seems like such a strange -- and tedious -- branch of collecting to get involved in. Oh, I also hate that it's so difficult to tap into foreign markets, particularly Brazil and Asia, because I love pirates. But I guess that can be a good thing, too, because when you finally get a game or two from those places, it's that much better.
My goal was to initially collect every Nintendo game ever made. I didn't realize what that really meant ten years ago. After doing all kinds of reading on the internet over the last five years or so, I still don't really know what that means. So it's kind of an open-ended collecting process.
I agree with everyone's pet peeves so far. I do have to say that it has always annoyed me that there aren't specific production numbers for every game. I know that somewhere someone has to know how many of each game were produced. It would make pricing so much easier instead of the guessing game that it is now. This site will have the most up-to-date NES rarities available, but they're still just ballpark guesses based on our own collecting experiences. But then again, that's half of the fun of collecting.
I guess my long term goal is to find a copy of every game for every region worldwide CIB, but that may never be completed.
You asshole, that's MY long term goal...you didn't even think that until I mentioned it
I'll try and keep this short...key word: TRY.
Anyway, I have been gaming as long as I can remember. Got my NES in '89 or so, didn't really pay much attention, but I got TMNT with it, and it'd just came out not long before, so I suppose that would be the year. Anyway, we didn't have much for funds, so I pretty much lived with SMB/DH and TMNT for two years. Finally, I got a new game: Metroid. Took me 10 years to finally beat that one...kept getting fed up until one day I just sat down and beat the piss out of it. Anyway, after that one, I only got the occasional ex-rental or garage sale cart until around '97...had about 12 games at that point, with only a small number of decent titles. At that point, I started working. And what did I do with the money? Well, when everyone else was feeding their Saturn and SNES addictions, I was still building my NES collection. A couple years later, I bought my buddy's SNES so he could buy an N64, which I ended up buying off him when he bought a PlayStation. All the while I started building up games for my NES. It wasn't until around 1999/2000 that I actually started thinking about collecting games. Although my focus has long been the NES, I've always branched into other systems. I just hate to close doors on myself. My NES collection is hovering around 410 uniques, give or take, and if you include regional variants, or miscellaneous variants that I've stumbled across, it pushes around 475-500. I also have sizable SNES (around 80), Genesis (120 or so), and Xbox (50-55) collections, and a half-dozen or so other systems with 20 or more titles. All this on a somewhat strict budget, and 3 major (6 month +) bouts of unemployment. I've been hard up for cash, and have sold a few individual titles because of it, but I've never once considered selling it off. Which brings me to my biggest peeve: People that come in, buy a shitload of games and have to sell them all off three months down the road. If you can't afford to buy it, DON'T BUY IT! I've passed up several decent deals simply because I didn't have the money to go through with it. And every last one of the games I've passed up I've eventually laid my hands on. It's not that hard to walk away people!
And yet you collect sealed games [IMG][/IMG] Can't play it when it's sealed lol [IMG][/IMG]
Speaking of sealed games, ordinarily I don't pay more than $20 for one, but last night I decided to splurge and spent $50-ish on a sealed Tecmo Cup Soccer. That game CIB is tough to find, and I don't recall ever seeing a sealed one for sale. Bronty, how many times have you seen that one sealed?
-Dain
Then there are freaks like me who have a few hundred sealed games AND all the loose games. Ironically, there are about 30 games I have sealed that I don't have the normal box and/or manual for, so I have those listed as "needing a box or manual" [IMG][/IMG]
Speaking of sealed games, ordinarily I don't pay more than $20 for one, but last night I decided to splurge and spent $50-ish on a sealed Tecmo Cup Soccer. That game CIB is tough to find, and I don't recall ever seeing a sealed one for sale. Bronty, how many times have you seen that one sealed?
-Dain
Probably three or four times in the last two years. Before that it was under my radar. It is kind of a tough one sealed - my copy is pretty beat up
Congrats on the buy
-Dain
I've seen some lesser-rare sealed games recently sell for insane amounts, and thought I'd get outbid.
-Dain
Like what, out of curiosity?
-Dain
Superman, a few copies of Namco Pac-Man, Cowboy Kid, all of which fetched around or over $100. Then there have been ones that baffle me like Muppet Adventures, which recently sold for over $75. Seems like a lot of games that normally fetch $20-30 are fetching $50+.
-Dain
yeah, that was my superman and my muppets. Mind you, muppets hasn't been paid for yet
You're right though. Stuff like the simpsons titles have been selling for more than usual.
And if that Muppets doesn't sell, how much would you be looking to get for it? I won't pay $75 for it, but I'd pay a fair price for it.
Superman's a bitch anyway...lucky I got it CIB
And if that Muppets doesn't sell, how much would you be looking to get for it? I won't pay $75 for it, but I'd pay a fair price for it.
it looks like it will eventually be paid for, most likely. I'll drop you a line if not though. But as of right now the buyer has indicated an intent to pay.
Before i got an NES I was rollin' Atari 2600 styles. My uncle got an NES for my brother and I in 89'. I loved it!! over the years the NES started to collect dust in my closet as other systems came my way (like genesis, PS1 and Xbox)
But one day I pulled it out and started to play some of the games i had. I forgot how amazing it was!!
none of the newer systems i have seem to hold my interest like NES does and i love that i get to revisit a great part of my childhood!!
I decided to buy some of the games I wanted to get as a kid but my parents either could not afford or wouldnt buy me (unfortunatley i wasnt a spoiled kid).
I found that the games were fairly easy to find at pawn shops, garage sales or online and the collecting bug had hit!
That was about a year ago and I now have a decent size collection!
I have 365 games thus far 20 of which are complete. My goal is to one day have a complete NES collection (or nearly complete anyway...there is alot of stuff to collect out there)
I suppose my pet peeve would be these sellers on ebay who have rediculously high shipping rates. Its like...you win the game for .99 cents, but then you pay like 10 bucks U.S to ship it. (which translates to even more for us canucks) Then you get it and see it cost them 1.50 to ship it and its in a bubble envelope!! God forbid you should win more than one game. I understand the need to make a profit but there is a difference between that and flat out ripping ppl off.
Someone (anyone who is new to the scene or just doesnt know any better) could potentialy end up paying 10 to 15 bucks a game (or more) for titles that can easily be found at pawn shops, garage sales or even from other ebay sellers for MUCH cheaper.
eBay is what got me into collecting. I used to go flea market hunting with my Mom and brother and just look for stuff (mostly video games) that I could buy for cheap and re-sell on eBay. Keep in mind I was like 13 when I started doing this. For the longest time I just popped everything I got on eBay. I guess eventually after going through a bunch of games all the time, I decided to collect, and I chose NES to start with because (like many of you) it's what I grew up with as a child. I'm 20 now, so I guess I've been at it for around 2 years now.
My current goal is a complete NES set. My long term goal is to own a complete SNES and N64 set too. At one point, if I am collecting for years and years, I want to own every Nintendo game ever released, although I highly doubt I'll ever get to that point.
One of my peeves is when people don't communicate well when I deal with them. I also don't like when people constantly sell all their stuff only to buy it back again (ie NintendoNut). Another peeve of mine is when I buy from people locally and they don't do local pickup. What idiots!
Laters-
-Nick
Then I printed off the list of NES games from Nintendo's website, circled about 60 of them that I wanted, and started picking them up. I asked all my friends and family, sent out myspace bulletins, etc, asking for any old NES games. I got probably 100 this way. Then I thought, shit, if I've gotten this many already, I may as well go for all the games. Little did I know there were over 700, some of which fetch over $200 a piece.
So here I am a year and a half later, struggling to continue.
I remember a local videogame shop that closed down and I bought RC Pro AM and raced my bro for hours on end.
I remember being about 6 and I was in a shop in Chester, a local city to me and where I was born, and I was playing captain skyhawk on the display system and there was masses of people watching (I had this game at home, lol, so knew a bit about it, cunningly making myself look good) and the manager of the store came over when I had finished and said he'd never seen anything like it with regards to how many people were watching and how far I had gotten through the game. He said he played that game almost everynight after the store had closed but still couldn't get anywhere near where I was.
My main motivations for collecting nintendo stuff are the memories it brings back, the way the games look altogether stacked up on shelves neatly and the thrill of the hunt in finding a bunch of games for little amounts of money, even if there not the best games.
My current goals are to complete the PAL collections for the NES & N64, and to find the last 2 VB & 64DD games I need for the entire set's. I'm also concentrating heavily of the master system, up to 80 games now I think.
Nintendo's, and in particular the NES, have brought me some brilliant memories and I think of myself as being extremely lucky to own a fair bit of the stuff for it/them with games etc and being able to share it with all the guys on here at NA.
These forums really have breathed a lot of new life into that old grey box for me and its great to remember those old days as a youngster and to know that it was happening right across the globe all at the sme time.
I started my list simply by looking at NES websites and adding games I fondly remembered. I had a list, I had a goal, I was now a collector. I stuck mainly to finding stuff in the wild, but there were a couple of games that I just could not find, so I bought my first couple of games off ebay. With further research on websites and ebay, I then became aware of these so-called "rare" games. Now I had a second list.
With my two lists in hand came the reason I still collect today: The thrill of the hunt. I love trying to find that game I still need for a great deal. There is nothing I love more than my Sunday morning trip to the local flea markets. Rummaging through box after box searching for games. Sometimes I hit the jackpot, other times I find very little, but the hunt is always what keeps it interesting.
Last year I finished my NES list and achieved a complete cart only licensed set. The next logical step in my video game collection was the SNES, at which I am at the half way point. Further and further down the line I don't know what I will collect, but I do know I've been bitten by the video game collecting bug. I know there will always be games to collect, lists to make, and the thrill of the hunt! -Dan
Then there are freaks like me who have a few hundred sealed games AND all the loose games. Ironically, there are about 30 games I have sealed that I don't have the normal box and/or manual for, so I have those listed as "needing a box or manual" [IMG][/IMG] Speaking of sealed games, ordinarily I don't pay more than $20 for one, but last night I decided to splurge and spent $50-ish on a sealed Tecmo Cup Soccer. That game CIB is tough to find, and I don't recall ever seeing a sealed one for sale. Bronty, how many times have you seen that one sealed? -Dain
thats a pretty good deal, i've actually scored a few factory sealed games for decent prices on ebay- one being a sealed conan
I got a Gameboy and it was fun but after a while I began to miss my NES.
Then a couple of years ago I bought a NES with SMB and DH to relive my childhood memories.
Then I bought some other NES games I loved playing when I was young and then I got bitten by the colletor bug.
But theres no system in my collecting, I've got some loose carts, some CIB and some sealed, I like to be able to play my games so I've tried to get loose carts of my sealed games.
But to have both sealed and loose carts can become expesive
I've also started to collect Gameboy, but it's not my main priority.