I'm a relative newcomer to actually owning an AES, but I spent a lot of time a decade or so back lusting over eBay auctions, telling myself, "One day... one day."
And yeah, prices have gone insane, especially for American games. I always remembered Magician Lord as being the defacto cheap game, maybe like, $30 CIB, iirc. Good luck getting a boxed copy for under $100 now, though. Hell, even cart only copies have asking prices over $100 when they pop up on eBay
Interestingly, though, the Japanese cart seems to be more expensive in this instance; looks like most Japanese carts I see listed are $300+.
Not to derail the thread, but anybody have any theories/ideas as to why the Jap cart is more expensive for this one game? I'm guessing the obvious answer is "because they made less," but, you know, why did they do that? Assuming that it is even any less common.
I do know that a lot of the U.S. carts are Japanese carts with an English label pasted on top; maybe it just wasn't doing very well, so they took a lot of the extra stock and made it into the early U.S. carts before producing more for the American market, making it less common in Japan in the process.
That's a theory I pulled out of my ass with no real proof though, so I'd love to know what somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about would have to say on the matter.
And yeah, prices have gone insane, especially for American games. I always remembered Magician Lord as being the defacto cheap game, maybe like, $30 CIB, iirc. Good luck getting a boxed copy for under $100 now, though. Hell, even cart only copies have asking prices over $100 when they pop up on eBay
Interestingly, though, the Japanese cart seems to be more expensive in this instance; looks like most Japanese carts I see listed are $300+.
Not to derail the thread, but anybody have any theories/ideas as to why the Jap cart is more expensive for this one game? I'm guessing the obvious answer is "because they made less," but, you know, why did they do that? Assuming that it is even any less common.
I do know that a lot of the U.S. carts are Japanese carts with an English label pasted on top; maybe it just wasn't doing very well, so they took a lot of the extra stock and made it into the early U.S. carts before producing more for the American market, making it less common in Japan in the process.
That's a theory I pulled out of my ass with no real proof though, so I'd love to know what somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about would have to say on the matter.