Define

ScarecrowScarecrow
in Collector's Corner
Does rare mean the total supply? Or does it mean the available supply?



It seems to me that the guide jumps around between the two definitions.



For instance, Mario's Time Machine is listed as a 7 but in terms of total supply there
is a decent amount of these cartridges out there. There is certainly far
more of them in existence than a game like Times of Lore that is listed as a 6
which would indicate that rare means available supply and not the total supply.

There is a bunch of cases like this too. TMNT: TF, Contra Force, Battletoads &
Double Dragon, Bubble Bobble 2 ect all of which don't have a super low
distribution number in comparison to a number of other games but have as
high or higher rarity values.



Then I look at Wayne's World with a rating of 8 and if you're like me you get totally
confused. Wayne's World doesn't have any more of a demand than a
lot of the other short printed NES games which would suggest that rare means
total supply rather than available supply.



Further here is my personal list of the top 10 licensed NES games with the shortest
overall supply(excluding SE which is obviously #1).



Fisher Price: Fire House Rescue(6)

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak!(7)

Mickey's Adventures in Numberland(6)

Motor City Patrol(7)

Nigel Mansell's World Championship Challenge(6)

Pro Sport Hockey(6)

Race America(6)

Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston(6)

Super Cars(6)

Times of Lore(6)



Some of these the demand is so non-existent you can buy them for next to nothing
on Ebay whenever you want but they are still listed as a 6+ in rarity which
again would suggest rare means total supply and not available supply.



So which is it?



Personally, I think there should be both a rarity rating to define total supply and a
scarcity rating to define available supply.



What do you think?

Comments

  • DainDain
    I think you're touching on some good points, but it's very difficult to gauge total supply simply because these numbers are not available. Other than SMB3, we don't have exact release numbers and NOA has been less than helpful in trying to obtain this information. An argument could be made that they should fluctuate, simply because some games show up in large numbers cyclically (ie, Pro Sport Hockey -- 6 months ago there were so many listed that you couldn't even sell them for $10, whereas a year ago, I was able to sell them easily for $25+ cart-only; same with Motor City Patrol -- lots of them are up these days).



    I think what we'll likely do is a hybrid system. There will be a scarcity (supply) scale and then a popularity (demand) scale. Prices are realistically based on those two criteria. How scarce is it? How popular is it? Games that are high on both of those scales tend to fetch high dollar, ie BB2. When I say scarcity, that will be based on concrete figures that we've obtained from spidering ebay over a long period of time (a database system that catalogs all newly-listed auctions and intelligently figures out what game is being listed). The spider will give us very realistic figures in terms of individually-listed games. The second scale, popularity, is 100% cyclical -- when the FF movie came out, the cart jumped in popularity and price as a result.



    -Dain
  • BattymoBattymo
    I think it would be a challenge to determine the total supply of a game with any kind of accuracy. You would have to know how many were produced in the beginning and how many survived the last 20 years... Is there a list of sales numbers somewhere for NES games?



    How would you determine available supply? Just by what comes up on eBay? I'm guessing that the majority of rare games never see the light of day on eBay. They might be sitting in a store somewhere, or in someone's attic, etc.



    I'm guessing it would be hard to come up with exact figures for both ideas... but you do raise an interesting point about which of those ideas rarity should be based on.



    At what point does a portion of the total supply become part of the available supply?
  • dangevindangevin
    Battymo, law of averages dictates that if a random sampling of cartridges is just "sitting in someone's attic" that it wouldn't affect parity of scarcities between cartridges. If 1 out of every 10 households has a random stash in the attic, you need to look at the statistical chance that they'd have any carts in their collection. The only way this random sampling would be useful is if we could say that over time, a percentage of these houses has a yard sale...let's say 10% a year. So 1 in 100 households will potentially put the NES out at the yard sale, let's say 25% chance. So 1 in 400 houses each year may have NES at the yard sale. Let's say an average 20 cartridges, with 15 being commons, 4 being uncommons and 1 approaching scarce. Even if you can bank on all of these numbers, it's all statistics, we have no way of knowing which one it is.



    This is different from players, and there still are players. That's what Dain and Scarecrow are trying to allude to, are the people that actively and consciously retain their NES for play purposes and keep/buy games based on their theme and play value. I think this represents a statistically minor portion of the population.



    The other two points that I can see about populatiry effecting scarcity is the amount of original buyers that kept their game, while trading in other suck titles. And finally, the games that were never purchased, either brand-new or from rental store clearances. These games eventually got shipped to clearing houses, and many of them are on eBay today, some by the original video stores that have had them in the back room for years. Both of these have a moderately higher effect on scarcity.



    But overall I think it's a mistake to blame owner retention on video game scarcity. Nobody keeps "Mario is Missing" because of its replay value. At least not after they turn 10 years old. It's just not as good as SMW, SMB3 or hundreds of other games for the system. The reason it is scarce is it was a late-release, when the SNES was on the market...and its counterpart on the SNES is significantly less valuable/scarce. Why? They just made more. Sure, people bought more because it said "Mario" on the label, but that's why they MADE more. And nothing stopped them from recirculating those games before the yard sales last week.



    I think popularity DOES have an effect on price (it seems for the most popular games it has a 1000% effect on price - SMB3 ($10) is as common as TMNT1 ($1) and Bubble Bobble 2 ($100) is as rare as Wayne's World ($10). But not on scarcity, it's _mostly_ random chance based on the actual quantity existing.



    BTW these things don't get thrown out or destroyed on any sort of massive scale. Most of them have "lasted" both because their construction is robust and because of their original value. They cost $40 when they were new. Moms throw out penny-pack baseball cards...they don't throw out the kid's #1 christmas gift that cost them hundreds of dollars over time.



    /sorry bout the rant. It's just...scarcity determines rarity, no matter what you seek. SMB3 is the "best" "most popular" game for the NES. It's still R1.
  • wrldstrmanwrldstrman
    supply and demand fuel prices if only one game was made and no one wanted it it would be worthless. Nes is in its hay day like atari was a few years ago. The big prices paid for most of the stuff will go way down in value..complete rare as in the top 50 rare will probally hold and a few of the top will increase but the market will bottom out....at this point the collectors can set the market prices because of the large demand but once the markets back to only die hard collectors that will change.



    I dont think you can set values along with rarity simply because something is only worth what ones willing to pay no matter how much we think something is worth.
  • dangevindangevin
    I like your observation about Atari, is important but it kind of sets prices on a "meta" level that is tough to account for in the short term. That's why Digital Press comes out with guides every few years...price trends for these games (and stamps, coins, etc) have a very LONG period (of fluctuation), unlike current-era sports cards and certain other collectibles (CCG's). There are some bi-weekly periodicals for some of these markets!



    I think it's a mistake to rely solely on rarity for prices as well...look at an R7 like Ultimate Air Combat, virtually worthless a $5 cart, but just as scarce as BB2 in terms of production quantity. My point was that even if the same number were made, they're equally likely to show up at a yard sale with the percent chance that their (unknown) production numbers would dictate, virtually independant of whether people like/liked the game or not.



    To break it down, it's a mistake to attempt to correlate supply WITH demand...they're two separate motivators. While some instances may show some tendencies for positive correlation (high demand with bubble bobble 2, and low supply of the cart may seem like a correlation), that's only isolated and looking at the other carts of similar scarcity (low demand for ultimate air combat, and equally low supply of the game) break the paradigm.



    Remember, highly-set market prices "draw out" items for sale. This is why the basic economic model works; "market price" is the price not only that a buyer is willing to pay, but most importantly the price a seller is willing to part with the item for! If the implication that BB2 was a popular game and that's why it was in short supply, it would be hard to find at ANY price. But it's equally difficult to find at MARKET price as games of similar scarcity. That's why using a rarity rating system based on ebay sales WORKS, because of the free-market economic model.



    In fact, if there was an argument against it, it would be that people are hesitatnt to post LOW-DEMAND, HIGH-SUPPLY items because it's not "worth the ebay fees" to have a $0.01 BIN copy of Ice Hockey item sit in a store for months. If the total supply of carts is skewed in any way, it's skewed away from these piddling R1's. Food for thought image Fortunately we're not looking for data like relational production numbers based on eBay sales (although we could and they'd be reasonably, workably accurate) we're just looking for relative scarcity.
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