Retro game prices on Ebay

[Tanooki]

Wow that name is vaguely familiar but that is such a lie going on there. Pirating pricey, yeah right, whatever, if pirating was expensive people would buy a real one and to find a pirate at $20-30 of a snes game like that, sure whatever, the new one maybe would fall into that in nice shape. At least he seemed to want to fix it, and if he hasn't been on for that long of amount of time something probably did happen if he's not showing up as banned. They changed policy there to make it clear/embarrass banned people overlaying their avatar with a black body silhouette with banned in bold red over it to stand out. I'd contact a mod and post in the hall of shame, at least they'd get a chance to fix the damage if they come back, and if not, they have a black/red body thing for HOS fraudsters too making it very hard for people to buy/sell there once they screw around.


Girlgamer I get ya, but I've always wished that place took on a real auction format. True highest bid wins. It's not right someone has a better internet connection directly or with a bot so they can snake something. You should have to truly pay what it's worth, not what you can weasel lower with a lucky well loaded and timed click. I've got a box o' goodies auction over at NA now with an extension on it for bids.

[jperryss]

Girlgamer I get ya, but I've always wished that place took on a real auction format. True highest bid wins. It's not right someone has a better internet connection directly or with a bot so they can snake something. You should have to truly pay what it's worth, not what you can weasel lower with a lucky well loaded and timed click. I've got a box o' goodies auction over at NA now with an extension on it for bids.

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?

[bb_hood]

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


Make sense?

Yup, agreed.

[o.pwuaioc]

Yup, agreed.

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?

[Gentlegamer]

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?

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.

[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-Bokutte-Upa-Famicom-Nintendo-FC-NES-JP-Japan-Import-Baby-/111345321374?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=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.....

http://i.imgur.com/hgAgRR6.jpg

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-Nintendo-Video-game-NES-Baby-Mario-Japanese-with-adapter-/171308858677
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Nintendo-Video-game-NES-Golden-Mario-Japanese-with-adapter-/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. :D

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-Nintendo-Video-game-NES-Baby-Mario-Japanese-with-adapter-/171308858677
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Nintendo-Video-game-NES-Golden-Mario-Japanese-with-adapter-/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. :D

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.

[Tanooki]

Wow woke the dead didn't ya? Been 13 months and it was my post. I'll say this much in that time frame. Other than 1 game in Sept 2013, I gave up buying old 8/16bit games actively July of that year. Since that time I've kept up on prices, but I've just grabbed famicom stuff, and gb/gbc/gba stuff (gb/c recently in the last month alone.) I went towards lego, manga, and straight up avoided 8/16bit Nintendo carts because of things and I'm happier for it. There are a few I've picked up since then but they've been local deals if I find them and there was the CIB Civilzation on SNES last year on this board and that's really it. Once you realize how bad it is, and you decide to stop playing into other peoples petty scalping games it gets a lot less stressful and more fun. You'll find there's plenty on the shelf to screw around with, and you'll find enough of it just sucks or isn't worth the time on a matter of taste, and that can be sold for better things, like my high end gaming laptop I got last December.

ebay isn't the problem, it's just a symptom of a bigger issue of non-gamers seeing dollar signs and hosing others over who don't know better or just don't care because they have something the buyer wants and they'll fight other like minded people into blowing money. Same reason with the retail shops, if there weren't enough suckers, they'd be forced to lower prices or go out of business too. Just accept it, grab anything that rarely pops up on a deal, give up, or take the beating, as there's no real other options.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

I don't know, but it's a bunch of rancid bullshit. It seems like every time an original SG-1000 is on eBay it's more and more expensive. I've seen them for over $1,000 recently. I remember not getting one in the mid-late 2000s because they were $200 or so back then if you could find one. Now their prices are out of control. The SG-1000 II models are still available under $300, they seem to be slightly more expensive usually than the one I got at $233 in November 2011 but nothing ludicrous. An SG-1000 shouldn't cost as much as a working 15 year old car. I'm glad I collected a lot in the mid-late 2000s. Fuck this price bubble. Wasn't the 2000s the best time to collect.

[sfchakan]

No, the 90s were the golden time. No one gave a fuck and the majority of gamers "traded up" every generation causing a huge supply of retro stuff to flood second-hand stores, yard sales, gas stations, residences, warehouses, farmhouses, henhouses, outhouses and doghouses.

Now every Joe Blow thinks they're going to build a museum, shrine, or bitchin man cave and has to have every single game possible. So they're throwing money (or credit) at gobbling everything up.

It's fairly retarded since the majority of things are emulated well enough now to give you your nostalgia fix on everything from cellphones to tablets to laptops to desktops. One decked out computer with some good harddrives would save shitloads of money and space... but, hey, whatever.

I just can't wait for the day the johnny come latelies lose their interest and flood the market again. Only the truly rare or sought after games will be worth anything at all then.

[Tanooki]

Hell no the 90s and the 00s were, but more so the 90s. If you're getting into anything Nintendo cart based from the 20th century (gameboy aside), Sega oddball out of country stuff, other obscure systems (adventurevision for one), you're stone cold screwed if you want to do it now. All the scalpers trash are gobbling up stuff like it's their job to sell anything out there to you for an ever increasing higher price trying to outdo the next twit on ebay and amazon. The stuff I got in the 90s and early 00s and for the prices I paid would give a 201X's collector a woody just thinking of the stuff I had and how little it cost. Sure you had a few rare items throughout the 2000-2009 range that may have hit 3 digits, but it was few and far between, and so many of these so called faux rares and the few that really are weren't up there, definitely not in the $300-1000+ range you'll find in 2011-present. The problem is there's a still ever increasing pile of impatient fools and dolts with deep pockets (or no financial priorities in their lives) who just keep paying the piper and scooping up the stuff so they can make dumb online videos, blogs, and camera shots of their mighty wall of games and related merchandise. I mean it's nice to see when people find something truly obscure or cool, but the proliferation of it is giving way too much recognition and making stuff spiral out of control.

As he said just above, can't wait for the johnny come lately types to just get bored, sell off and wander off to the next thing to wreck. He's right, the only honestly rare stuff that has thousands, hundreds, or even dozens or less copies need to be priced how they are, but the stuff into the tens of thousands up into the hundreds of thousands that go for so much not only need but will crash. It happened with comics, sports cards, and other stuff. When the interest from the foolish and crooks vanishes, things change dramatically but some will never be the same again since the true rares are not unknowns now and they'll stay bloated, but at the least no one will be getting $30 for a Super Mario game cart at that rate. I've said it before, I quit, 2 years ago now buying stuff on ebay and the rest. I trade, find it cheap locally, or I don't bother as I'd rather keep up to date but not have my wallet raped. I found recently gameboy never got whacked with the ugly stick so I got back into that and it's fun.

[celerystalker]

The '90s up until about 2008 were pretty great, but the late '90s were incredible. FuncoLands were all over the place, and about a third of the NES library was under $2. I still have a couple of the old price lists. Bandit Kings of Ancient China? $0.29. Super Mario Duck Hunt? $0.09. I bought a boxed Gun Nac for $2.99, and SCAT for $1.49. The most expensive NES game on the list was Dragon Warrior IV at $40. Those rare and expensive Saturn games were $40 or less. I remember feeling like $20 was a lot for a perfect copy of Burning Rangers, and passing by tons of copies of Guardian Heroes new at Toys R Us for $5.

Games went on clearance at major retailers a lot faster then, and at better prices. I bought my Jaguar new at Kaybee Toys for $30. My Saturn and Virtual Boy systems for $25 at Wal-Mart. Copies of Earthbound could be found in stacks at Wal-Mart for $15, and Super Mario RPG at Toys R Us for $15, because nobody gave a shit.

Back then, I used to see copies of games like Bonk and Fire and Ice weekly, and I'd pass, because $7 seemed like a lot for a loose cart. Garage sales were even more awesome then. I got stuff like a Jaguar and Jaguar CD with about 30 games for $30 (my brother got all the duplicates for free), and a kid wanting to buy a PS1 sold me his Master System with more than 30 boxed games (including the likes of Ys, Phantasy Star, Wonder Boy III, and other hard to find games) for $30.

Now, while none of this was on ebay, what it does is illustrate how little most people cared about games at the time, which helped normalize prices in other outlets. Even better, though, was that so comparatively fewer people had decent internet access that competition at auction was absurdly low. Honestly, I never had to resort to ebay until about 2013, as the last truly awesome store around me closed, and I'd snapped up at least 1500 games for ridiculously cheap by 2004 when they were so plentiful and available in the wild. I wish I'dve had more money to spend on Neo Geo AES games at the time. I felt absurd paying $120 for Sengoku 3 in 2003, or $30 for Cyber Lip, but I bought up about 30 games, and the most I had to pay was $165... that thing bubbled up quickly.

[Tanooki]

Hah yeah you know it and I remember it. The local retail guy where I lived his most expensive game was Dragon Warrior IV at $50, but it was complete in the box, below that $10 less was Dragon Warrior III. I have an odd memory when it comes to what I pay on stuff when I cherish it enough when I get it. I can tell you in the upper-mid to late 90s I got a lot of gems people pay hundreds for now for nothing compared. Earthbound like new in the box for $20, $10 for Bubble Bobble 2 w/book, Aerofighers w/book+poster for $10, and the list goes along. The only game that never was for sale was Tengen Tetris, he wouldn't even take a $100 on it as one only ever came in and kept it. Shop sadly still exists today, but he's got mentally ill with greed and paranoia thinking people are out to get him and he charges by the piece (game, dust sleeve, poster, manual, other papers, box) and 2x or more over ebay too living off screwing marine corps boot camp people stuck on base and moms with screaming kids wanting something like real filth. If you're from northern san diego county you know the place and likely know the monster, not going to name the place but it is a dusty museum to many awesome games sane people won't pay anywhere near that amount for.

I never had much access to funco, the fools never opened up one until like 2000 in the area and it was getting later in their dumping the NES and having just SNES stuff around, but I still got some goodies there between them and the other clown. I found though the deal death of value in that area was in earlier 2012 at the flea markets out there. Suddenly people caught wise to collectors, started getting free data plan phones, and pricing crap on the highest asking(not paid) ebay value as a point to ask for, or as a good starting point. Before that point I could use a $20 and come back with a stack of NES, SNES and GB games, then it was maybe a game or two and not every week. I moved back here, half price books started to scam hard, so hard it cleared out the local shops shelves so they had to circle the toilet to compete, so this place went tits up mid 2013 too, and flea markets here don't have games much at all. I always kept up with ebay, saw where it was going to hell too, and I gave up buying nes/snes/n64 stuff completely because it was scalper battles. That's why you've seen me always selling off stuff. I'd rather have the money than the stress, it got me a huge high end laptop I custom built, a pinball machine too, tablet and various other useful things, even Legos as well, and I don't regret it a bit. Going forward I won't shy from a deal locally or the accidental online one, but I'm just going to keep up on prices, laugh at scum when they lose their asses on it when the bottom drops out, and I'll be there wiggling dollar bills instead of $20s and $100s at them to get the goods with a smile.