How to detirmine the rarity & value of pirates, reproductions, clones, hacked games?

[buzz_n64]

Some sites I go to say they should be considered worthless, or in the $10 range, but I beg to differ. Some pirate carts are newly programmed games or inspired by popular franchises , like Super Mario World for NES, which is extremely hard to come by (I WANT IT BAD) and sell for a pretty penny, but are unlicensed and don’t meet the highest quality standards. Reproductions on the other hand can be made from recycled NES carts, and can be made over and over again. Those I would consider less valuable, but still cost from $25-$40. For playing, a great option, but hard to count it as the real thing. Clones, specifically cloned consoles, like the famicom clones, the most famous being the 100 in 1 N64 controller looking clone are not worth much, but saves the wear and tear on your real systems. Hacked games, again, great to play, but reproduced carts or back-up discs are the only way to play these babies on the real system. Also no rarity scale is given at most places for these games. I value these items, but would like to know the opinions of others.

[Icarus Moonsight]

How to determine value: Sell item on the open market.

How to determine rarity: How many can you get?

You're welcome. I worked on this for hours, just for you. :p

[Gaara_Of_the_Sand]

They need to all be burned IMO.

[buzz_n64]

I'm not talking about straight up cd-rs, or multi-carts. I don't care about those at all, but some games are unobtainable in the traditional released cart manner. Star Fox 2, Battle Kid: Fortress of Perill (NES), Super Mario World (NES). Many also purchase those Retrocon3 and other clone systems which I think are incredibly overpriced, and over rated.

[BetaWolf47]

Like anything, it depends on the buyer. My friend FamicomFreak, a fellow member on these boards, collects pirate games, mostly for Game Boy and Famicom. While I wouldn't spend my money on anything like that, he enjoys it, and there are some gems in there. "Super Bros." is a good one, which is Don Doko Don 2 hacked with Mario sprites.

[old_skoolin_jim]

They definitely have tangible value to those of us who wanted to play unreleased/hacked games on real systems.
case in point: I recently paid fair monies for StarFox 2 and Megamman: The Wily Wars carts to play on my SNES & Genesis.
Were they worth it to me? Definitely- who else can say they have these games on a cartridge? Very, very, few, and the fact it's not a "legit" game makes it all the more worthwhile to me.
"IT'S ALL ABOUT THE RARITY BAY-BEE"
And sure, while the numbers of these carts will definitely increase over time, the odds of finding these repros at a neighborhood shop or flea market are still slim-to-nil.

[Kiddo]

"Value" and "Rarity" for reproduction carts is a bit silly to think about, due to their very nature - reproduction carts are usually ROMs burned into a cartridge. Most the repro-cart makers I know do them for themselves as an arts-n-crafts-esque hobby, and the people who sell the carts sell them more as a "service" than as anything remotely resembling a "collector's market". (The only real exception I can recall is RetroUSB's variants for things like NWC 1990 repro carts, and I don't think the old variants have jumped much in collector's value or anything yet.)

Chinese pirates however are interesting, because of some of the strange Hong Kong Originals and Pirate Ports going around, the exact amount of copies of such being completely unknown, and whatnot. Many people will pay premium prices for, say, Famicom FFVII on eBay. However, it's impossible to know what a proper "condition" for these games to be in should be. Also, Chinese pirates are a bit of an area where ease/difficulty of emulation may affect prices, because many pirate games aren't rom dumped, or aren't emulatable, or have such obscure names that even if it is dumped and emulatable it's hard to track down.

[nebrazca78]

People generally won't pay much for a pirate unless it is a game that you can't get otherwise, like Tetris for the Genesis. And games like that are unlikely to ever be worth big money because they can be easily reproduced. The only thing in this general area that can be worth big bucks are undumped roms.