Which Strategy Guides Are Rare?

[tom]

The VCS strategy guides, because as a pack-in they are usually missing from the game.

Also the Gold boxes strategy guides, they were the best

[coreys429]

Earthbound Guide anyone?

[A Black Falcon]

I don't have too many guides, but of the few I have I have no idea if any are worth anything, I've never checked. Never made a list of the ones I have either, actually... hmm, let's see what I come up with from memory. Just talking about full book guides here.

Metroid Fusion (Nintendo Power guide)
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie's Double Trouble (Nintendo Power guide)
Donkey Kong Country (Nintendo Power guide)
SimCity 2000 (PC version guide, forget which guide it is specifically)
Caesar II (PC game, again I forget who made this guide... don't have these here to check at the moment. Invaluable book, that game was great but incredibly hard!)
Homeworld (PC, the guide that was packed in with the Game of the Year edition so I imagine it's quite common)
San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing (Prima's N64 version guide. It's a really good guide, has an interview with some of the developers in it and everything.)

Also, there are some smaller ones, pamphlet-size stuff... for intance I have the guide that you got for registering Hugo's House of Horrors (PC) that gives solutions to all the puzzles.

I remember seeing a few guides not too long ago for pretty cheap, but I didn't care about Tekken 3 or Ridge Racer V, which were two of them (I have Tekken 3, but don't think it's that great...), the Final Fantasy Tactics guide I saw was falling apart (a bunch of the pages had come out of the binding), and there was some Final Fantasy guide I think but I'm not sure which one it was for. No idea if those are still there, though.

[scottw182]

The Mario All-Stars guide is somewhat rare. It used to sell pretty high, like 30-50 in most cases, haven't followed it since I got my own copy.

[heybtbm]

Continuing an almost 7 year old thread? What the heck...

Final Fantasy VII Perfect Guide (Versus) still commands top dollar on ebay. Not necessarily rare, but still in demand.

A new one to watch is the Brady Guide for Star Ocean: 2nd Evolution (PSP). Getting upwards of $30-40 right now. I'm assuming a tiny print run. Amazon ran out of stock a few months after the game released...which is saying something.

[j1e]

Continuing an almost 7 year old thread? What the heck....

Why the hell not? Strats are still relevant to some of us

[maxlords]

There's a whole new generation of rare guides now. Since most stores aren't even bothering to stock em, it's only gonna get worse too. Very frustrating for those of us that buy em, especially for small releases. Stuff like Tales of Vesperia, Tales of the Abyss, Star Ocean: Second Evolution, and a bunch more are all shooting up. Other guides are staying consistently high, like Valkyrie Profile, Suikoden I and II, and a few others. It's a rapidly fluctuating market though.

IMO, don't expect any given guide to hold it's value for more than 6-12 months in general.

[GarrettCRW]

No Nintendo Power guide, save Mario Mania, which was pulled for the equally rare Mario All-Stars guide, and the Earthbound guide (which was packed in with the game), are not rare, as they were sold for ages directly by Nintendo. Some of the Super NES-era guides (Chrono Trigger and the Donkey Kong Country sequels, for instance) were even drastically reduced in price during the N64 era.

[Purkeynator]

A couple I have not seen mentioned that were high on my want list for a while were the Secret of Mana guide and the Arc the Lad Collection Vol 1 guides. I was able to snag a Mana guide in an auction for around $30 with some other random guides (which I turned around and resold again on ebay to cut my losses). I was able to get the Arc the Lad guide for around $30 as well in a lucky auction which nobody else bid on. The Arc guide was awesome, its a small hard bound book with very pretty and colorful pages. They were very limited in print run. The EB games I used to work at in 2002 only got one copy in and it sat forever without any buyers. Sadly Vol 2 which was to have Arc 3 in it was planned but never published. Cheapassgamer forums has a pretty lively trading guide thread which I have used numerous times. I have probably traded over 100 guides there over the past 5 years or so.

[Natty Bumppo]

This thread makes me glad I am somewhat of a packrat. I have a pretty large collection of guides (up until the gamecube) - including most of the rpgs mentioned in this thread. Most of these I picked up new when the games came out - just to have them (I tend to be a completist on this stuff) since I generally don't use them. I have dupes for some too since I would/will pick them up in thrift stores or used in game stores (back when you still could find cheaply priced stuff in them).

(Another nice one that I didn't see mentioned was for Vanguard Bandits.)

[backguard]

most of the guides people are citing were mass produced and available in stores. i haven't seen a single mention of an actually rare guide.

the truly rare guides are from the very early era of guides (nes and before) and that you had to special order from the manufacturer. again shadowgate comes to mind.

[maxlords]

Even some of the mail order guides are fairly easy to come by. I didn't have any trouble picking up the Phantasy Star III and IV guides, or the Dragon Warrior 1 guide myself.

There are some even more obscure ones out there too, D&D Warriors of the Eternal Flame (I think that's the title) for the Genesis had a guide for example. One I just picked up the other day I had NO idea had a guide - Brainlord for SNES. Anything 16 Bit or earlier, sure the guides were mail order or whatnot, and they're probably technically rarer, but the demand isn't there for a lot of em either.

The stuff I mentioned, I specifically related to demand, not actual print quantities. No one knows those. And for that matter, if you know much about the book market currently, print runs are dropping like crazy and bookstores are going out of business left and right. There are all kinds of huge problems with the book industry which are leading to smaller printings of a lot of things. Same for comics...print runs are the lowest they've been in 30 years there. Just cause it's new doesn't necessarily mean they printed half a million copies...

[Natty Bumppo]

Rarity is one of those rather slippery terms. For the purposes in this thread I suspect it translates to desirability - which in turn relates to the prices that something commands on ebay (or wherever). (This will also be related to how much disposable income a person has - so if Bill Gates decided to start collecting video game stuff virtually nothing would be rare (unless there were so few made that copies never came up for sale) from his perspective.

Once something stops being made (and the remaining retail/wholesale stock has been sold off) it perforce becomes more scarce (or a increase in degree of rarity if you will) since one can't go into a store and buy it. And this scarcity can only increase with time unless other factors intervene.

I suspect print runs of most rpg guides (like the runs of the games themselves) was smaller to begin with than more popular game guides - which is why rpgs and rpg guides often command higher prices than their non-rpg cousins (obviously there are going to be exceptions either way).

And not every guide printed is going to survive - and if they do they are going to likely suffer damage - which will push the better condition ones up in value as they will be more scarce than what a book collector would call "reading copies". (A guide that is expensive to begin with - such as the Lunar 2 hardbound will likely be treated by the owner more carefully than other cheaper guides - with the result that the cheaper guide in mint condition might well be equal to or greater than the value of the nicer guide -even if many more of the cheaper guide were produced originally.)

Even if something is fairly common it may still be desirable enough to command a fair price - for example there always seem to be copies of Brigandine (for the ps) available on ebay - yet a more or less intact copy will still command a good prce.



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[RASK1904]

I have 4 or 5 of the ones mentioned in my fs/ft thread as we speak for a couple bucks under what they go for. Check them out.

[calistarwind]

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne guide goes for a pretty decent price as well.

[wingzrow]

I'm going to go and say there's no such thing as a harvest moon 64 guide. I bought the game on release and haven't seen a copy in all these years.

[The 1 2 P]

The majority of PS1 rpg strategy guides are worth a decent amount($20+). Also, the Dreamcast strategy guide for Half-Life is worth alittle bit of coin because the game never was released for it.

[Gameguy]

Add this to the list of strategy guides I previously didn't know existed but now want. A Lolo 3 strategy guide. I don't remember this guide being mentioned before anywhere on this site.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/280946347316

[tom]

The SSI gold box games Strategy guides are very rare and collectable now.
Same with the Infocom guides

[jmjohnson85]

The rarest ones I know of (most rare to least rare):

Milon's Secret Castle (NO ISBN)
Killer Instinct 2 (0761505512)
Arena Codex Scientia (0929843304)
The Battlespire Athenaeum (0929843290)
Boogerman (1559587962)
Ultima Collection (0761514856)
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (0761501436)
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (NO ISBN)


Honorable mentions (most rare to least rare):

Koudelka (0761531025)
Mega Man (0874552419)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (UPC: 032020718092)
Mortal Kombat 4 Arcade (0761510761)
Revelations: Persona [GAMEFANS] (NO ISBN)
Lufia & the Fortress of Doom (1572800364)
Fallout (1566867134)
Mana Khemia 2 (1449560725)
Dragon Warrior II Unveiled Secrets (NO ISBN)
NiGHTS into Dreams... (076150866X)
Dragon Warrior Monsters (0761527303)
Dragon Quest V (0744010985)
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (0761525009)