Mint copy of Super Mario Bros. sells for $100,150

snes_collector

NAM-75 Vet
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Not defending this price at all-but this is a rare variant, one of the first copies sold either to the New York or Los Angeles market. Check the buyer list- one of them is the owner of Heritage Auctions, who not only owns the auction house who sold it but is gonna start auctioning video games according to this article: https://www.ha.com/heritage-auction...orld-record-price-of-100-150.s?releaseId=3583 This just feels like a lot of speculators to me or a ploy to drive interest to his site. Either way, It was a lot more fun to collect video games when the hobby wasn't so full of big timers and youtube braggers and no one cared.
 

NeoSneth

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
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...Check the buyer list- one of them is the owner of Heritage Auctions, who not only owns the auction house who sold it but is gonna start auctioning video games according to this article...

Yeah, I called bullshit from the price alone, but that pretty much confirms it.
He compares it to comics, but there's really only one comic that sells for more than that.
 

SouthtownKid

There are four lights
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Yeah, I called bullshit from the price alone, but that pretty much confirms it.
He compares it to comics, but there's really only one comic that sells for more than that.
I'm pretty sure Heritage Auctions has auctioned off a bunch of comics for more than 100k. I just saw an Action Comics #1 going for more than $500k. Fools and their money.
 

oldschool

Cock Killer with Ice D,
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The article didn't seem to mention much about WATA, the newer game grading service. If teaming up with Heritage Auctions helps destroy that other garbage company VGA, then it won't all be bad news. I'm not really interested in the service other than very particular items, but it all seems very pyramid scheme-ish.
 

oliverclaude

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Check the buyer list- one of them is the owner of Heritage Auctions, who not only owns the auction house who sold it but is gonna start auctioning video games [...] This just feels like a lot of speculators to me or a ploy to drive interest to his site.

...it all seems very pyramid scheme-ish.

Yep, it does and it's nothing that hasn't been done before. It'll either Damian Hirst or AF3.
 

Jon

Mr. Tater
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Buddy of mine has several ongoing auctions on that site.

The owner of Heritage Auctions personally drove to his house and bought $70k worth of sealed games, no joke. Basically, the guy is trying to get people to invest in sealed games as an alternative to art, comic books, baseball cards, etc. He sees it as the next big thing.

Once celebrities get involved in speculation, that may be it for game collecting, as a whole.

Jon
 

titchgamer

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Buddy of mine has several ongoing auctions on that site.

The owner of Heritage Auctions personally drove to his house and bought $70k worth of sealed games, no joke. Basically, the guy is trying to get people to invest in sealed games as an alternative to art, comic books, baseball cards, etc. He sees it as the next big thing.

Once celebrities get involved in speculation, that may be it for game collecting, as a whole.

Jon

If thats true we will all be priced out of the market by rich colectards who have no idea WTF they are buying!
 

titchgamer

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That's already happened. Check SNES, PCE, Neo and Saturn prices.

Well yeah they have raised prices, But what I mean is if they start selling them like art at 100k+ and it catches on then we would need to be millionaires to buy a single game.
Atleast I can afford to buy a game at £100 at the moment if needs be.
 

HornheaDD

Viewpoint Vigilante
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Clearly these are just rando garage sale finds they are trying to flip. None of the auctions even have the word "R4R3!!" in it.

#searchesforaerofighters3
 

LoneSage

A Broken Man
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Well yeah they have raised prices, But what I mean is if they start selling them like art at 100k+ and it catches on then we would need to be millionaires to buy a single game.
Atleast I can afford to buy a game at £100 at the moment if needs be.

Are you retarded titch
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
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If thats true we will all be priced out of the market by rich colectards who have no idea WTF they are buying!

Haha priced out of the market haha now that's where you use a flash cartridge and free yourself.
 

OMFG

The Portuguese Chop
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All I could picture is some single 20-40 year old living in their grandmother's basement or cramped studio, filling their wallspace with shit that they put on the same level as a Klimt, Moser or Kurzweil painting. Considering they pitched in as a group is even worse. Your sealed copy of SMB isn't going to be the focal point of dinner parties when dinner is served on the makeshift coffee table along with Dixie plates and Solo cups.

Here's something I posted a couple of years ago regarding the perceived mindset of this practice:

"Look guys, I don't know what's up with the sealed games hatred...

Whenever I throw dinner parties or host mixology sessions, I like to move the party over to my game viewing area. We discuss the vintage of my sealed game collection and a memory from when I first acquired that object. We laugh as I order the hor d'oeuvres to be served in our guests section of the complex. Should a guest like to view my rare titles such as my sealed home carts copies or special edition versions of Madden (throughout the years), I escort them in groups of two and place the item on my marble viewing podium. Many awe after seeing the lack of insertion marks. Coincidentally, I can tell that the female guests are quite moist after being shown a collection of this magnitude. Afterwards, we exit the game viewing area and discuss our joy of viewing said collection. Libations and cocaine is then passed around. Ever since I sold off my Klimt and Picasso collections, I've been never happier with the move towards sealed games."
- OMFG
 

lordnikon

Another Striker
Joined
Aug 7, 2003
Posts
324
Buddy of mine has several ongoing auctions on that site.

The owner of Heritage Auctions personally drove to his house and bought $70k worth of sealed games, no joke. Basically, the guy is trying to get people to invest in sealed games as an alternative to art, comic books, baseball cards, etc. He sees it as the next big thing.

Once celebrities get involved in speculation, that may be it for game collecting, as a whole.

Jon
I was into sports cards back in the day, but the scene around them is gone. Comics are still a thing, but the monitary value attached to them has plummeted as well. These genres had their day in the sun.

Now enter video games. A generation of kids finally have jobs and can afford to buy up all the games they wanted in their youth. Tack on the YT retro channels, and you have two demographics willing to pay almost any price for any game. It has created a bubble, and when you can identify a bubble, it usually means its going to pop.

After this wave comes and goes, there is nothing available to replace it. The interest level will drop off a cliff in 5-8 years causing that "gem mint" copy of Robot Alchemic Drive (PS2) to be worthless. Advances in technology are also obsoleting the console hardware. It gets harder to play older systems with each HDTV resolution shift.

For todays youth, digital services are the norm. Try telling a millenial they have to wait a week to play a game, "Prime" isn't available, and they have to fight someone else in a bidwar to get it. Also they need special hardware that isn't their laptop or phone to play it.

People are paying for fucking emotes in games for christ sake. They are spending gobs of money on trivial shit that anyone who played Starcraft/Quake would get for free from the community. The CS:GO knife skin shit is absolutely out of this world. People crying and sobbing when someone with mad youtube subs gifts them a texture asset? What in the fuck.

Eventually, there will be a generation of people who will look at you as if you are insane, when you say "But, you get to build a computer! And connect all these wires, and run spinning fans. Its just $2000!" As they unroll their 1mm thin tablet and begin streaming Assassins Creed Galaxies from a Cloud Server with Quad SLI Raytracing GPUs.
 

titchgamer

Guerilla Warrior
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This is all true.

The bubble will burst eventually and prices will fall.

If not due to people moving on it certainly will when our generation pops our clogs and dies out.

The next generation will not want big old clunky consoles or arcade cabs that have no nostalgic value to them.
Lets be honest thats the only reason any of us actually want to play or buy these games.

But in the mean time ebay sellers and idiots with to much disposable cash are driving up the prices.
 
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