Retro game prices on Ebay

[jperryss]

But snipes still are too ridiculously high. Sometimes I see prices double what was just sold, only bid at the last minute. A game that sold for $20 yesterday was sniped by an auto-bid for $30 today. Why?

Well yes, but the ending price is not a direct result of sniping, it's a result of someone willing to spend that much for the game, regardless of how they put that bid in.

Other people in this thread (not you) are blaming sniping for all of their eBay problems. As I said above, if anything, sniping is anti-seller as there are fewer bidding wars. It is not anti-other-bidder because they had ample opportunity to decide what their max bid was.

Also, unrelated: I emailed you back the other day re: pcefx.com, did you get it?

[bb_hood]

But snipes still are too ridiculously high. Sometimes I see prices double what was just sold, only bid at the last minute. A game that sold for $20 yesterday was sniped by an auto-bid for $30 today. Why?

Some people are just willing to pay more than others, its how bidding on ebay works. Highest bid wins. Can't expect to win everything for what you want to pay.
If you question is 'why DO people pay so much?', well I have no clue.
It also works both ways, sometimes stuff ends cheap and the seller gets 'screwed'.
Many people wait till the end of the auction to place bids. It makes sense, why bid on something that ends in 3-7 days when something else might come along that is cheaper or in better condition. Its often best just to wait.

[o.pwuaioc]

Every auction is a new market of bidders. In your example, the currently leading bidder is winning the auction at $20, but his max bid is $29.50. If no one else bids, he wins at the price from yesterday. Instead someone else put a max bid of $30+ in the last seconds and won. Auctions depend on who is in the market for whatever item at that given time. Trying to use completed auction history as a concrete market value is flawed.

Sometimes that $20 bid is mine! I understand the market, but it's not always the case. I see the point, though.

Well yes, but the ending price is not a direct result of sniping, it's a result of someone willing to spend that much for the game, regardless of how they put that bid in.

Other people in this thread (not you) are blaming sniping for all of their eBay problems. As I said above, if anything, sniping is anti-seller as there are fewer bidding wars. It is not anti-other-bidder because they had ample opportunity to decide what their max bid was.

Also, unrelated: I emailed you back the other day re: pcefx.com, did you get it?

I didn't mean to implicate sniping, I was just saying that sniping doesn't really solve the problem.

Also, no, I didn't. I am not sure I'm getting all my PMs on that forum. And I got one a day after the guy sent it. It's been weird.

[Gentlegamer]

Sometimes that $20 bid is mine! I understand the market, but it's not always the case. I see the point, though.

That's why when there is 8 hours remaining, and the current high bid is $10, you save your max $20 bid until the last few seconds. See how it works?

[bb_hood]

That's why when there is 8 hours remaining, and the current high bid is $10, you save your max $20 bid until the last few seconds. See how it works?

Often I just place my max bid right away though, sometimes I just forget to bid and end up missing the auction completely.
Many times I have fallen asleep while waiting for something to end.

[Tanooki]

What part of this are you not understanding? Highest bid wins. Sniping doesn't change that. If an auction is at $20, and you put in a max bid of $40, and then I snipe with $35, you still win.

The only overall affect sniping has on prices is maybe keeping them lower by reducing the possibility of "gotta have it" bidding wars.

In my last example, suppose my max bid is $45. I snipe the auction at the last second and beat your $40 max bid to win. What's the issue? If I'd put that bid an hour earlier, you might have gone in and put in a $50 max bid, even though you already told yourself $40 was your max bid. It's stupid! But everyone does it. Sniping avoids that completely.

Make sense?

Look I can't help your willing to ignore one simple concept, but that's not my problem. Yes in theory you're right, you set your max bid, that's it and in theory whoever snipes the most they are willing to pay most likely (given no page, internet or otherwise hiccups) should get it. Ever gone to or watched a true auction? They don't just wheel an item up on stage and tell people they can flash those little numbered cards exactly until 6:38:44PST and that's it. You bid until you're done. And often you'll see people who hesitate, perhaps talk it over with a signficant other or partner, then throw another bid on the pile again. In ebayland you can't do that. It's one and done on the nose, last snipe in before the millisecond the clock hits zero wins. That's exactly why sniping is asinine and ebay would be better off with true bidding to completion. I know I'm not alone on it, over at NA a good many of the site hosted auctions go until the bids are truly done with minute or two extensions. Sniping solves nothing, it just creates another problem situation.

[Gentlegamer]

It's one and done on the nose, last snipe in before the millisecond the clock hits zero wins.

That's not true. The snipe only wins if it can beat the current high bidder's max bid. Everyone has an opportunity to give a max bid at any time during the auction. The reason you shouldn't is that all it takes is someone outbidding you by a measly 50 cents to become high bidder. Why give them any time to decide to up their max bid, possibly by as little as 50 cents, to beat you? They had their chance to bid more long before you did in the last seconds.

Before the ubiquity of smart phones and tablets, the two smart ways to bid were: last 30 seconds or so (allowing for internet hiccups), or if you couldnt be at a computer to babysit the auction, place your max bid at the latest time possible and check it later. I used to win a lot of auctions that way because people foolishly don't place max bids, just try to beat the current high bid. They'd wait until close to the end of the auction, trying to outbid me, but ebay auto bids up to your max, so they may have made me pay more, but I still won because they were bidding against me (what was showing on the screen) and not making honest max bids based on their own value of the item.

Now that everyone has the internet in their pockets, bidding at the last moment is best, or use a bid sniper app.

[RetroCynical]

Definitely supply and demand just as stated by others before. I've noticed some games that got jacked up in price gradually decrease a little. A great example would be Chiller for NES. At first it was somewhere between 30-50 on ebay then jumped between 60-100 and has gone back down again because though it was a rare find before, ebay all of a sudden became flooded with people selling copies of the game.

[Rickstilwell1]

The thing sniping does sometimes is makes a person change their mind on how much they are willing to spend. Especially if there is only one listing of the item the person is looking for and time is running out. It causes people to bid higher out of desperation.

I have also noticed that on auctions that have no bids, it is still best to snipe because once somebody sees that another person is willing to buy the item, all of a sudden other people want it too. If you leave it with no bids till near the end, it makes other potential buyers think "oh nobody is willing to pay this seller's asking price, I'll wait till they relist it for cheaper"

[MarioMania]

I got Bonk's Adventure on the NES here for $38

Now look at it, $300

[Tanooki]

Yeah that one got out of control fast.

About 5 years ago I paid $50 via craigslist for a 13 game lot with a NES and 4 controllers, one of those pleather game carriers with Nintendo's logo, some manuals and wires and it was in there. Sold all but like 3 of the games, a couple controllers and the case. In time I then as a favor sold the cart for $75 (retailed $100 then) to a NA member that was a friend/local to me thinking I'd be getting a TG16 shortly(oops, it just shot up to 100s in value and Bonk got ugly too.) Eventually I found one when it was doing 350 on ebay for 300 on NA shipped but that 300 was nothing out of pocket it was profit from other stuff.

I have no idea what I have into it. Was in $50, sold the system, most the games for like over a $100, then bonk for $75, then got back Bonk later. Maybe I'm a $100 into it? :P It's a really fun game that gets a bad wrap for having some lesser than TG16 visuals and some shortcut stages but it's fun fun fun.

Sad story is, you can buy the famicom version for like $20 I think. Hell even $500 Little Samson as Lickle you can get for $80-90.

[PizzaKat]

A few years I saw it for 90 and I thought that was insane. Whatever, emulation is the way to go in glorious HD

[Gatucaman]

Oh Fuck My Life, Seems that the Famicom Cart version of Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is uncommon..............and the only guy who has one for sale is Non Japanese.............yeah..............

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bio-Miracle-...item19ecb2c59e

Even the Fricking Crappy Family bootleg carts are overpriced!, just because they have a pretty faulty Adapter, with the less expensive being 95 USD.

And then there's this cretin.....



115 USD starting bid...................0 bids, or you can pay 150 USD if you wanna NAOOOUUU!!!!!, all for a bootleg.........

The site is mostly shit, and you have to dig for the gems, but pray that the sniper shillbidders don't ruin your dreams. (some douche got a the last 2 seconds and won me my Rockman 5 i was trying to get under 12 USD, so out of desperation, i say fuck it and found one at 14 USD, and had to pay in total 10 USD for shipping to mexico, but the other guy asked for 7 bucks without Tracking unless i either payed 6 bucks more just to make sure it came safe here in this coutry , but i guess i will still end paying up 24 Bucks for that game at the end (i pay more for shipping, but again, i am no american :P)

[JSoup]

Didn't that game being Baby Mario anything get dis proven as a translation error or some crap years ago?

[Tanooki]

Yeah Baby Mario was ferreted out entirely, but seeing that those crazy Chinese pirates wanted to call it that and a lot of them have a sticker with english/symbols side by side on the top end of the cart say such, the lame name sticks around.

Upa was a FDS game and since that thing kinda tanked and stunk, the higher quality well received stuff in later years got famicom cart releases after the SFC popped up. While the FDS of this game is super cheap, the Famicom cart is like a $140~ game. For some reason a lot of these Baby Mario games come out of Canada I've seen on ebay and they were sold by some company in a cheeze clamshell with an adapter attached to it, and on ebay they go straight up for around $100. I got SUPER lucky on this about 3 weeks ago, some woman in Washington had it on an auction and also Golden mario (SMB2j fds->nes hack) on a cart. Each with 1 awful picture, distance, can't make out the adapter just that it and the game are there with a generic (Nintendo) clamshell. I put a pair of bids down for each one, the reinforced baby mario before bed as I wasn't going to stay up until 3am my time.

I won it, and the Mario game.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Nin...-/171308858677
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Nin...-/171308860013

I got one for 12, the other 8 1/2, then with shipping it was 26.50~ for the pair. IT's fantastic, and best of all, both the adapters were honeybees.

I buy famiclones for ripoff priced famicom carts. I've also got Moon Crystal (real cart is like $110) and Crisis Force ($50 cart.) All of them are chinese stolen off the line chips on boards except Moon Crystal which is glop top style. They all work great and are good fun and I save hundreds of dollars. Moon Crystal and Crisis Force I got for $50 out of Taiwan so you can see the savings there too. I like to mostly buy real ones, but for the stupid priced I'm not above bootlegs and I'd be the same if someone could make me a beautiful real board copy of Little Samson as $500 is fucking garbage.

[Gatucaman]

Yeah Baby Mario was ferreted out entirely, but seeing that those crazy Chinese pirates wanted to call it that and a lot of them have a sticker with english/symbols side by side on the top end of the cart say such, the lame name sticks around.

Upa was a FDS game and since that thing kinda tanked and stunk, the higher quality well received stuff in later years got famicom cart releases after the SFC popped up. While the FDS of this game is super cheap, the Famicom cart is like a $140~ game. For some reason a lot of these Baby Mario games come out of Canada I've seen on ebay and they were sold by some company in a cheeze clamshell with an adapter attached to it, and on ebay they go straight up for around $100. I got SUPER lucky on this about 3 weeks ago, some woman in Washington had it on an auction and also Golden mario (SMB2j fds->nes hack) on a cart. Each with 1 awful picture, distance, can't make out the adapter just that it and the game are there with a generic (Nintendo) clamshell. I put a pair of bids down for each one, the reinforced baby mario before bed as I wasn't going to stay up until 3am my time.

I won it, and the Mario game.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Nin...-/171308858677
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Nin...-/171308860013

I got one for 12, the other 8 1/2, then with shipping it was 26.50~ for the pair. IT's fantastic, and best of all, both the adapters were honeybees.

I buy famiclones for ripoff priced famicom carts. I've also got Moon Crystal (real cart is like $110) and Crisis Force ($50 cart.) All of them are chinese stolen off the line chips on boards except Moon Crystal which is glop top style. They all work great and are good fun and I save hundreds of dollars. Moon Crystal and Crisis Force I got for $50 out of Taiwan so you can see the savings there too. I like to mostly buy real ones, but for the stupid priced I'm not above bootlegs and I'd be the same if someone could make me a beautiful real board copy of Little Samson as $500 is fucking garbage.

Ill admit, i am attempted to buy some of those just to have some of the games that are normally unobtainable, mainly Upa and Snow Bros............but i am kinda afraid.

Also, where did you find that auction, since Ebay didnt showed me that when i searched yesterday, also since i live in mexico, i feel Ebay automatically removes some of the results.

[Tanooki]

Well unless you were looking in the ebay sold listings I got it a recently, not yesterday.

Getting the adapter is the best choice, they should run you around $30 for one. All you do is plug your famicom game into it, backwards(Weird I know) and then slot that into the NIntendo and it just works like a normal NES game. It's painless and you avoid dealing with importing a Famicom, buying a US power adapter, and also having to be sure your TV can handle channel 95/96 so it will pick up the RF feed. Or you can pay a good bit more, get the 'toploader' version the AV Famicom, but that still needs the US power plug to work.

I've got about 20 famicom titles, then another 2 of them in retrousb new board/NES shells (Kid Dracula and Gradius II) and it's the best investment. Most slimeball resellers will not touch famicom, and the few large scale sellers in the US (pal, shishou and retro saikou) have fair to good prices that match or beat what it costs to buy them from Japan and pay those garbage shipping prices.

[Gentlegamer]

What's a good place to get an adapter?

[Tanooki]

Got all them I've come across on ebay. The first was a new ntdec one in the box for $30 shipped, then got 2 more honeybees on those games I linked up. Kept one, and sold the other at cost to someone else as I had intended to put a place holder $10 bid on the Mario game, but no one oddly cared to bid on it so I won it. He didn't want the game so I kept it and forwarded the guy the adapter for $20 shipped.

I've seen them pop up on nintendoage in the seller forum for not a heap either but it's not too common and usually they have a famicom multicart attached which helps chop the cost down since you're getting a nice little packet of games on there.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

I no longer collect very much for this very reason. I collect from retro game stores more than eBay but still, what a game goes for on eBay is going to likely be the range that it will be selling for at a retro store. That and my favorite retro game store closed in July 2009, so probably 80+% of my retro collection was bought before July 2009. There is another retro game store where I live, but it is overpriced. Probably because it's the only retro game store in town now. At least the selection is awesome though. But in the 2006-2009 period when I got most of my games, it seems like a lot of them were half the price they go for now. We probably paid around $5,000 in total for my whole retro collection. It's about 600 retro games and about 39 retro systems. I wouldn't be surprised if it's worth over 8 grand now. But I love my collection too much to sell it.