Recent NES black box sales

[jonebone]

Collectors pick which systems to collect not based on what they enjoy or had as a kid but what everyone else is collecting. What is hot and what is not. The N64 is the best example of this. The N64 was the worst of the generation but it is Nintendo and has Mario and Zelda and many guys who never touched the system when it was available collect or resell for it today. I know a long time local collector who has never played a single game of Mario on any system. He played Doom and then Halo and COD but for right now at least Nintendo is where the money is.

Well you can speak for yourself there. I would part with every single item in my collection before parting with a few N64 games, it was my favorite system by far, and will always be my favorite system to collect for. With such a small library though, you run out of things to collect and eventually have to branch out, or stop collecting. So many of us branch out.

You favorites get you into the hobby, but at some point value does influence your purchases. I would collect Sega Genesis / WWF Wrestling VHS / and a few other things if value was all created equal. But it's not, so as you mention, I tend to focus on most things Nintendo.

So after you finish your favorites, most people continue to collect instead of stopping entirely. At that point you realize that your time is worth money, so you might as well collect things that have value associated with them. I don't think that makes it "all about the money though". When I think of "all about the money", it's the people who are a slave to eBay every single day in and out, with a continuous rotating stock of items for sale. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there are definitely more people like that now, than 4 years ago when I started. And probably even less back in the 90s.

[Buyatari]

Well you can speak for yourself there. I would part with every single item in my collection before parting with a few N64 games, it was my favorite system by far, and will always be my favorite system to collect for. With such a small library though, you run out of things to collect and eventually have to branch out, or stop collecting. So many of us branch out.

You favorites get you into the hobby, but at some point value does influence your purchases. I would collect Sega Genesis / WWF Wrestling VHS / and a few other things if value was all created equal. But it's not, so as you mention, I tend to focus on most things Nintendo.

So after you finish your favorites, most people continue to collect instead of stopping entirely. At that point you realize that your time is worth money, so you might as well collect things that have value associated with them. I don't think that makes it "all about the money though". When I think of "all about the money", it's the people who are a slave to eBay every single day in and out, with a continuous rotating stock of items for sale. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there are definitely more people like that now, than 4 years ago when I started. And probably even less back in the 90s.

Perhaps you were a kid when N64 was released.

I owned retail gamestores when this system was current if you weren't a kid this was not your main system. Playstation was king. Of course I speak in general terms and there are always exceptions but when teenagers ,20 something or 30 something year old males walked into the store you just knew they wouldn't be asking for the latest N64 games. Now those same customers are asking if we have Harvest Moon and Conkers and I know they don't own the system. They played one system and collect/resell something totally different.

It will be curious to see if all these COD and Gears of War nuts ask about rare and expensive Wii games one day.