Far-fetched suggestion for collection tool

buttheadrulesagain

I was thinking that it would be cool if the collection tool could calculate the price of our collections using the price information on the magazine. I know the guide only gives prices for loose carts, but maybe some kind of algorithm can do for most cases (excluding cases where the box is incredibly rarer than the cart, or not super-rare, but very demanded). I don't know if, in most cases, there is a linear relationship between loose cart value and box and/or manual value. Even some rough approximate would do.

Even the cart only info would work for us collectors that collect these solely.

Oh! and I want to push the idea for extending the accessories database (I would help in any way I could), and being able to put accessories in a collection.

EDIT: what about a time vs. price graphic for the last 6-10 months in each game's entry in the database?

Dendy

I think it is better to fetch prices directly from e-bay, won't be that difficult since you can use rss to fetch the data... If you do it with algorithm it wouldn

technicalfoul

That would be pretty cool. I'm going to try and total the value of my collection one day I think.

buttheadrulesagain

Originally posted by: Dendy

I think it is better to fetch prices directly from e-bay, won't be that difficult since you can use rss to fetch the data... If you do it with algorithm it wouldn't reflect market prices that good...

Fetching prices for a large collection is a hard and long task, and if Dangevin surveys market prices each two months or so already, it would be neat to just look at your collection to see how the price fluctuates. An algorithm is good if there's a true linear relationship for most games, with their respective boxes and manuals.

It would be a matter of doing some kind of analysis, and see if there's a way to estimate an expected box and/or manual price using just cart price. I recall Dangevin said that someone was doing a CIB list, but was incomplete. We could use this partial database to make a regression analysis. Even if there are some outliers (the exceptions I mentioned earlier, where carts are "cheap", but manuals are crazy expensive), I suppose that when cart goes down in price, box and manual follow in a predictive manner.

dangevin

^ Correct, and even if the CIB list is comprehensive, it will forever be "incomplete" since it would not account for different levels of completeness, and ranges of condition. Essentially, when you're talking about "CIB" or "Complete" there are so many more variables than with just a simple cart. The vast majority of cartridges are in "functionally excellent" condition, but boxes can fall all over the spectrum and are more scrutinized since it's really collectors interested in them, rather than someone who would pay full price just for a working copy of Zelda or whatever.



We'll see what we can accomplish with the database. It's long been a dream of mine to have the process automated, but at the very least I'd like to hardcode the numbers so that the guide would see more function than just as a printable "field guide."



Thanks for your input.

buttheadrulesagain

Condition could have an aditional algorithm in theory. You're welcome!

buttheadrulesagain

I'm using this old thread to, first of all, recognize the great efforts of the Nintendoage team to improve the great collections tool. This has been proven once again by the new partnership with Video Game Price Charting. Thank you guys!



The other thing is that I want to push a part of the original idea I posted here in 2010. I guess that this may not be even necessary, and probably Dain and company have already thought of implementing some form of this idea.



Nonetheless, I think it doesn't hurt. I'll rephrase it here: it'd be neat if we could use the videogame price charting information, to have an estimate of the value of our collections, even with a graph of price vs time. I don't know if this is possible, but we could make this more precisely if, taking the info on VGPC as a base, we could estimate value taking condition and completedness in account (as we can declare it for our own items). The creator of VGPC mentioned that he wanted to discriminate between cart only and CIB, so that would help in the future.



Even if this isn't possible, or if we can't see this in a very long time, I'll truly enjoy the new features we do have! Thanks again.

Redivivus

I would have guessed that the work Dangevin does for the NA price guide was humanly impossible to do. With that bit of knowledge, there MUST be some slick way of populating those values into the collection tool. *Spoken like someone who knows zero about this subject*

buttheadrulesagain

I always get wrong who does what, but I thank whoever were in charge of this change.

NESMASTER14

I was about to make a thread like this. I noticed that the collection tool now has support from the Price Charting website. It'd be cool if there was a way to add up the prices of games selected. For example, if you wanted to know how much it would roughly take to complete a loose black-box set, then you would add up all the black box games and it would total up the values based on the individual Price Chart costs data. Or, if you wanted to find out how much your unlicensed collection is worth, you would select all of the unlicensed games you own from your list, and have something that will total the costs based on the individual price chart ones, etc, etc. Endless possibilities, and can be very handy to use.



But regardless, I like the new database, and I thank everyone's hard work to make it so great and handy!

Dain

This is definitely on the near horizon. I just need to make sure the PC guys are cool with it because I didn't get permission to use the data in this way yet.