Are you interested in helping me update the NGPC price and rarity chart?

Joined
Jun 24, 2019
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Longtime lurker, first time poster here. The NGPC guide linked on here asserts its last update is December 4, 2006 and video game collecting in general only really took off after that. The Complete/CIB prices are the very low end of Loose prices today. Would be good to know if contributors 2D, c.t.h, chohan and bokmeow are still in the scene.

I also posted on the NGPC subreddit and explained my intention to add Loose prices by going through 4 and 6 pack bundle pictures, NeoStore, PriceCharting, Yahoo! Japan and Amazon listings. CIB rare enough these days that it may be best not to quote a price for certain games.

I realize the owner of this website and NeoStore is one and seems to be an official vendor for SNK, so maybe actual print run or sales figure information is achievable.
 

Vectorman0

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A couple of those people are still around, but I can't speak to their interest in NGPC prices these days.

Are you going to have separate loose prices for every region? Region is everything when it comes to the price of Faselei, but not so much for Fatal Fury. Moreover, loose games are not plentiful for every title. As rare as Cotton is, it's even rarer to find a loose cart than a complete one. Which goes to your point that sales on certain games are so infrequent and volatile that any price you come up with isn't particularly useful. The price on these is more determined by how desperate the top two bidders are on ebay, than an actual "market".

The rarities from the original guide are for complete games. On average, the guide is still fairly accurate. There are some things that were wrong back then (US Magical Drop has always been one of the hardest to US games to come by), and things that have changed (US gambling games becoming much more scarce), but on the whole, it has held up quite well.

Anyway, whatever you do, don't use pricecharting for anything. It's very poorly maintained for non Sega or Nintendo systems. It's grouping games from incorrect regions, which is huge when it comes to NGPC prices. Amazon doesn't seem particularly useful to me either - you can't see sales data, I don't trust people listing games to have the region correct, the marketplace is not a good match for the market of buyers, etc. I guess you can use Neo Store as a price ceiling, but a listed price doesn't mean something is worth that much. I'm also not sure what the loose cart packs have to do with anything. Only a small fraction of games came that way years after the NGPC had died.

If you decide to do it, good luck.
 
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Thank you for the helpful response! My reply didn't get posted, trying again. Darn 25 year old BBS technology. Cool that some of the people are still around. I guess I wait out them posting here.

Yes, separate loose and complete prices for every region, with some necessary gaps due to insufficient information. Faselei is my favorite NGPC game. I've seen both US and UK versions in the 4 pack bundles so I don't consider one English version to be more valuable loose than the other. Cotton, I like how every iteration in that franchise is rare and valuable. I've never seen it loose so I have to agree with you there. Not sure how to work the chart when the loose copy is more rare but could leave blank.

Magical Drop, I've never seen the cart so, again, I have to agree with you. More rare than UC - Uncommon for sure. I have some other rarity discrepancies but the prices are way off now. I was lucky to get English Faselei loose for $30 in 2008 during a time with many more NGPC listings. UK complete was floating around $100-120 and no game complete is < $30 today.

Just say no to pricecharting :lolz: It does have its weaknesses but with less than 100 games on an obscure system, I can manually review every listing and factor region and box and manual condition. I really like your suggestion about Neo Store being a price ceiling and I'd want to use Amazon that way as well. Yeah, Metal Slug: 1st Mission UK complete is not $90.

Tracking the 4 and 6 game + system packs could be meaningless but my local game store's whole English NGPC presence is 3x of the 4 cart packs going for $199 apiece. That I see multiple system listings with 4 or 6 loose games (from the bundle game pool) suggests the packs are the source for a significant amount of game availability.

edit:
Finally, I think new prices should be in US dollars and British pounds as the UK is THE home of the most valuable English titles. I don't want to push my American cultural bias on the lucky UK collectors.
 
Last edited:
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Publicly editable spreadsheet is up and running. I saved a local copy in case a troll deletes it all.

  • Added all the system colors and and bundles and accessories I knew about as a separate chart.
  • Added new NEOP# 391 you can see here for US Neo Geo Cup '98 PLUS. Feels good to have a new discovery.
  • New price and rarity guide will have Loose prices but not rarity and denote if game was ever in the 4 and 6 pack bundles.
  • Sorting by NEOP# is counter-intuitive for most collectors, so I have sorted by English name instead.
  • No new prices yet. Wanted to finish formatting first.
 

McColbo

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Mar 3, 2016
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Publicly editable spreadsheet is up and running. I saved a local copy in case a troll deletes it all.

  • Added all the system colors and and bundles and accessories I knew about as a separate chart.
  • Added new NEOP# 391 you can see here for US Neo Geo Cup '98 PLUS. Feels good to have a new discovery.
  • New price and rarity guide will have Loose prices but not rarity and denote if game was ever in the 4 and 6 pack bundles.
  • Sorting by NEOP# is counter-intuitive for most collectors, so I have sorted by English name instead.
  • No new prices yet. Wanted to finish formatting first.

What sets the pricing and how do we go by this? Ebay pricing? A lot of these games are drying up on ebay, reddit, and forums. Ebay prices are insane on some stuff, but they aren't selling for those prices.

I've always wonder how you figure out high and low price ranges on values of stuff like this?
 
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What sets the pricing and how do we go by this? Ebay pricing? A lot of these games are drying up on ebay, reddit, and forums. Ebay prices are insane on some stuff, but they aren't selling for those prices.

You bring up my #1 and #2 concerns. My first wave of NGPC collecting was 2008-2009 when there were WAY more English game and system listings. Always a UK Complete Faselei, several systems and 4 game packs listings at a time from US sellers and no loose English game was over $40.

I think in the last 10 years that supply and demand have proportionally dropped for games outside of the Big Three - UK Cotton Complete, UK Faselei Complete and English Gals Fighters Complete, while demand for systems has dropped less. One for $70 boxed today is reasonable. The issue is how do we price some games with PriceCharting showing 1 completed listing a year or less?


  • We must accept more gaps in the price chart than before. Maybe collapse the Low and High prices for most games. Already adding Loose as it is.
  • Look at sold eBay listings that sites like PriceCharting archive that must be manually reviewed to factor in region, box/manual condition, etc. Number of sales per year doesn't prove a game's rarity but it is a factor.
  • Look at prices at local retro gaming stores that didn't exist 10 years ago and who certainly check market rates themselves. Also look at the very few online ships like NeoStore. These prices can become the High prices, with discretion. For instance, My LGS just had 20% off store-wide, so listing $40 JP Card Fighters Clash SNK Complete there suggests a $30-40 spread. Meanwhile, $90 for UK Metal Slug Complete is just wrong.
  • Look at the price differential with Buy It Now and other excessively high prices. For instance, ustrade lists Japanese Complete games for sale. Shanghai Mini for $65.90 is way too high but compared to Cool Cool Jam at $44.50, we might conclude its real price should be 50% higher. Chaining enough of these price differentials together, in theory, only requires one game to have a known price to calculate them all.
  • Scour Facebook Marketplace and Mercari (I had never heard of that site until this year). Unfortunately, I saw a Mercari bundle that that said SOLD for a sky high $520 that was listed on eBay for $400 unsold with the same seller name and pictures. So I think we can't go by SOLD prices there.
  • Scour Amazon, including Amazon JP, listings and Yahoo! Auctions for additional data points.
  • Track the 4 and 6 game bundle packs and get a rough count of the game distribution. Many auctions are for a system + 4 or 6 games, almost certainly by breaking up a bundle pack. Shouldn't be hard to narrow down rarity and price for these Loose. I believe these are the majority of all English games trading hands today.

Finally, I'm asking for help and feedback. Not saying my methodology is 100% correct or can't be improved upon.
 
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