Space Invaders SNES, Virtual League Baseball, and Game & Watch Collection Club Nintendo US are the only two factory sealed games I have.
Space Invaders SNES, Virtual League Baseball, and Game & Watch Collection Club Nintendo US are the only two factory sealed games I have.
Last edited by nensondubois; 01-28-2010 at 02:41 PM.
I don't get why people have such a problem with sealed collecting. It's no different than collecting comic books you'll never read or just about any other type of modern collectible that doesn't have any utilitarian value. I mean people collect coins they'll never spend and stamps they'll never use to send anything, so it's no different. I know plenty of people who own thousands of non-sealed games they will never play, so I don't really see much difference. I do agree that the grading and price inflation on Ebay is ridiculous, but I don't think there is anything wrong with sealed collecting if you can afford it.Originally Posted by MarioMania
That's really the bulk of it. That, and sealed games take the game out of game collecting. Sure, we may never play even 10% of the games we have but we can still play them if we choose.
Sure and a sealed collector can always open the games they buy and play them as well someday. I know in my own personal case, I have thousands of sealed games, but if I want to play a game, I open it.
A dedicated sealed collector would never open their games (as an example, rarebucky). I have a ton of sealed games as well, most of which I would open too. You won't see a sealed collector opening a copy of FFVII just to play it though.
The ones I wouldn't open, in most cases, I have play copies of. :P
I think you are confusing the profiteers/VGA promoters/Ebay resellers like Rarebucky with the rest of us who collect sealed games, but also enjoy playing games. The vast majority of sealed collectors do not just collect sealed games for the sake of reselling or some naive notion of investment.
Hmmm...... I myslef took German for 3 years, I should have no problem with that site. I'll take a look at it.
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I see rarebucky as strictly a reseller (vga whore) and not a collector. I have no problem if you want to pay someone (we don't know what makes them qualified) to grade your game, but it's hurts real collectors. Their more worried about a number than the game itself. I'm just happy to have legit sealed games from the era.
Hi Platinum ...
The site is 100% English ... so noone should have a problem with it
http://www.sealedgameheaven.com - news about upcoming limited and collectors editions.
http://forum.sealedgameheaven.com - your resource for factory sealed games and informations.
http://www.sealedgameauctions.com - 100% free auction platform for video games!
I was just about to say the same thing.
It's not as if these collector's are opting to choose between buying sealed games or eating / paying bills. That would just be silly. They're not heroin addicts you know! They're normal people, with families, girlfriends, social lives etc... It just means they're not wasting as much of their time playing the games, and probably have more of a social life than most "Normal" videogame collector's / gamers
Very true. They're there and can be played at any time we choose, which is entirely different to them not being there at all... Having a game there which we choose not to play is entirely different from not having a game to play in the first place. The games are bought with the intention to be used - They just haven't been used yet...
There are probably collector's out there who buy cart only NES games and choose not to play them - How is that any different? I would even bet that there are even collector's out there who enjoy collecting the games for a system which they may not even own!!! I personally enjoy collecting coloured vinyl records, yet I no longer own a record player, but that doesn't mean I can't still collect.
I still don't understand why being a collector of sealed videogames carries such a taboo? It's only within the last few years that it's began to gain acceptance, but even now it's still quite a taboo subject amongst collector's circles.
For example, Jay Leno has a garage full of classic cars and motorcycles which he doesn't use - How is that any different? Yet being a classic car collector isn't taboo. Likewise, stamp collecting is a very popular hobby, yet many stamps are used and / or no longer legal to use or from other countries, but nobody critisizes stamp collector's for their chosen hobby, despite how pointless it may seem to some
Last edited by Gemini-Phoenix; 02-09-2010 at 01:39 AM.
I generally agree with your points above, although I think as someone pointed out earlier, the taboo and anger some people have with it has been against the rise of this small group of collectors essentially slabbing and reselling to each other, resulting in greedy sellers posting games on Amazon and Ebay at equal prices which never sell. Unfortunately, the forum which was announced in this thread is the hub of this whole movement which has to a lesser extent spilled over to Nintendoage. Outside of those two sites and literally a couple dozen collectors, I don't know anyone who slabs or overpays for sealed stuff.
I should also note that you are incorrect about Jay Leno. He actually switches cars just about every day and even drives the ones that make no sense to drive like a steam powered one from the early 1900s. Having worked on the NBC lot for a while, it was always fun to walk by his reserved space every afternoon to see which one of his hundreds of cars he had driven into work that day.
I don't think I have any right to judge people for how much they charge for their items nor how much they spend on their hobbies unless it somehow interferes with their own well being or the well being of people around them.
If somebody wants to put a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 up on Ebay with a Buy-It-Now of $15,000 then so be it. Market forces will dictate what a fair price is. Likewise, if somebody with too much money to burn pays $15,000 for it then so be it. That's his choice.
What bothers me is when these two forces come together in what is essentially collusion and price fixing.
You get a service like VGA. If the market works as it should then if VGA's service is worthwhile it'll succeed and competitors will try to do the same thing. Competition will drive quality up, drive costs down, and everybody wins. If VGA's service is not worthwhile then it'll crash and burn and that will be the end of it.
But what happens if these high priced deals are set up to give the impression that the reason these sealed games are worth so much is because they have that VGA goodness? It would basically be a tactic to convince the world that without the VGA rating, your item is less valuable.
This kills two birds with one stone:
First, it gets everybody to pay the entry fee to get their item slabbed so VGA is making money hand over foot that way. After all, without the slabbing they'll never get those prices that they see without realizing they were fixed from the start. Likewise, buyers will figure that a slabbed game actually is worth the asking price so they'll buy into it, too.
Second, it eliminates the possibility of competition because what you established is that it's the VGA slabbing that matters, not just any slabbing. So you kill off potential competition before it starts.
Then once enough people get sucked in you can stop price fixing because enough time will pass that even if the prices go down nobody will attribute it to the slabbing being worthless. They'll just think "general market forces at work" and "well, if it wasn't slabbed it would just be worth even less." Then people actually start believing it to the point where games that aren't slabbed actually do go for less which creates a perpetual cycle.
Not a bad business model, right? You basically trick the world into thinking that not only is your service indispensable, but your company is the sole provider worth a damn.
While not being quite the same, it's similar to what the Mafia does when it invades the construction industry.
What the hell is slabbling ?
Getting something graded and it being encased in plastic.
Because it makes no attempt to be great, it is therefore extremely great.
Some of My Game Collection Mah Mac n' Cheese Blog
Ok, thank's PapaStu.
......dude, look at this sealed game I got today......it's an 90.......no it's zelda.......no dude it's a 90. Ok, are we collecting games or numbers. Resellers are evil
Last edited by Nescollector; 02-09-2010 at 09:04 PM.
I have no problem with resellers. If somebody can flip a purchase to make some dough then more power to them. Market forces will dictate whether or not they can pull it off.
I do have a problem with collusion, price fixing, and market manipulation.
Part of me wants to send in something to be graded, get it back, crack open the slab, resubmit it, and see if it comes back with a different rating. Because, frankly, I'm convinced the "service" VGA provides is mostly common sense. People can generally tell with a naked eye an item's condition but the difference between an 80 and 85 is probably a good bit of bullshit. So what are people really paying for other than a pretty plastic case and a number that might be arbitrary to begin with?
Imagine if you show me a copy of Super Mario World in great condition. I know it's in great condition and everybody else does too. It's obvious. Now X number of people are willing to pay, say, $200 for it because of how great it is. Now imagine if I told you that your copy of Super Mario World is an 80 but that guy's there is an 85. You, nor any potential buyer, can tell the difference between the two. Then I tell you that your copy is now only worth $150 while his is worth the full $200. I also say that my word is law and you can't really argue about it since now people have that shiny number to look at rather than the product itself. If it says 80 on the package then that's what they'll use to determine value.
I'd bet you'd think me to be quite the asshat. After all, I'm telling you that your copy is worth less because of some flaw that nobody can see with a naked eye, a flaw that nobody will know exactly how to locate, mind you, since my specific methods are a trade secret that can't be duplicated for lack of disclosure.
Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 02-09-2010 at 09:35 PM.
I agree, I was directing my statment at the bin / vga craziness.
pascal is gone...he is no more...he sold up and fucked off!
i am you new host of sgh....the bald brit! come and join my forum, we welcome all closet homos, homeless people, idiots that dont collect but like to hang about like a bad smell!
come and join the fun!!
your sealed destiny awaits you ming mongs!
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