It's always been fairly pricey, mainly because it had a low production run.Originally Posted by wiggyx
It's always been fairly pricey, mainly because it had a low production run.
My collection
I can remember passing it up when it was easily bought for about $40 BIN on ebay (maybe 5 years ago?).
Once it hit a hundred is when I bought a loose Sonic Wings for like $12.
As to why the poster found it for $5, was it in a time when shop owners didn't use ebay to set their prices on everything?
Have you seen how much the readily-available-on-Virtual-Console MUSHA goes for these days? Your Earthbound theory doesn't apply to that game at all (and I'm sure it's not the only one).
It had to be over 5 years ago, but it was at a thrift store. At the time most thrifts priced games at $2.99 or sometimes $1.99, this store priced it at $4.99 so I passed on it. For some reason I though the game was slightly rare but had no real demand or value, when I got home and checked I realized it was one of the rarest games on the system and was worth around $50-$80 at the time. It looks like a decent game so I wouldn't mind owning a copy, still not for too much money though. I used to come across plenty of rare or rarish games back then.
Uh, does no one look at the rarity guide anymore or keep up with the collectability of games? Collectors have been going on about the rarity of Aero Fighters for well over a decade. Unlike something like Earthbound, it's legitimately very rare (definitely NOT at the same level as something like Kendo Rage), and the price is a direct result of that, not a bunch of hype and demand. Even before it got really expensive, I remember many collectors going to great lengths to acquire a copy. Whenever the SNES market does settle down, don't expect much movement on stuff like Aero Fighters. Common games will lose value as the demand dies down, but the truly rare games continue to pull in decent money, whether they're great games that people want to play or total crap that'll just be a rare trophy piece.
It may surprise you, but at the time I didn't memorize the entire rarity guide for all consoles and games, memorizing all values for everything. I didn't have a SNES at the time so I was just starting to collect for it. I just barely remembered looking through the SNES section and at the very least I sort of remembered something about it so I considered buying it, rather than automatically thinking it was just another crap game.
Even so at an R8, is it really worth $300+ for a loose cartridge? Is the game really that good? There are plenty of R8s for other consoles that are barely worth anything at all.
Here's an R8 from the current guide, Chuck Norris Superkicks/Ghost Manor.
http://www.digitpress.com/video-game...o&gameid=23899
Here's a completed copy for that game ending at around $30. The guide valued it at $15.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ATARI-2600-X...3#ht_25wt_1047
Just might as well add, the current rarity guide lists Aero Fighters at a value of $40.
http://www.digitpress.com/video-game...o&gameid=13755
I'll also add that the game Chavez II has the same rarity of R8.
http://www.digitpress.com/video-game...o&gameid=13653
Why is Chavez II only selling for around $30 on ebay? Shouldn't it also be $300 going by the rarity?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chavez-Boxin...#ht_139wt_1285
http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHAVEZ-II-2-...#ht_132wt_1285
You said Aero Fighters is going for $300+ because of rarity, not hype or demand. Explain why Chavez II isn't then.
I wasn't replying to you directly, Gameguy. I'm just surprised by the general lack of knowledge in this topic considering that it used to be common knowledge around here that Aero Fighters is one of the rarest SNES releases. I don't expect anyone to memorize the rarity guide, but it's surprising when something as notable and well known as Aero Fighters is suddenly a mystery to everybody. It'd be like if there was a topic in which everybody was scratching their heads over why Stadium Events goes for so much. In the past, this was the kind of knowledge everybody picked up just from hearing about stuff on the board, regardless of your area of interest. Like I don't even own a single 2600 game, yet I still know of Air Raid and its rarity.
It really doesn't matter what a game's value was in the past or now. Rarity is the only thing that's set it stone, although it's not like there's one set value for each rarity level. I guess you could say that any reason that someone wants a game can be described as "demand", but what I was getting at is that there aren't a whole bunch of gamers who just love Aero Fighters, spreading the word of mouth of how great it is, wanting to buy it at any cost and that's what's making it expensive (or that it's speculators artificially increasing the price). That's what was erroneously being suggested in this topic. Anybody saying that is just plain wrong and making stuff up. Even before the price shot up, collectors recognized that it was one to track down now (that is, 10+ years ago) than later, that it was bound to get more expensive. If people want to complain about fans being stupid with their money or unscrupulous gougers, then complain about something like Earthbound, which isn't that rare and has been very artificially inflated; Aero Fighters, on the other hand, has gone down the natural path of collectability rooted in rarity.
As for why something like Chavez II is relatively cheap, it may just be behind Aero Fighters in its course of gaining value. Some collectors may be writing it off because it's a sports game, others may feel it's not a true part of a US set because it's in Spanish. But the reasons why collectors buy Aero Fighters and Chavez II are going to be more or less the same, in that they're mostly bought by collectors who want a full set or some such "complete" set of their own parameters.
For the fifth time this year (not in general, specifically you), NO.
It's not a theory, it's FACT. Earthbound's price has tumbled in the past 6 months, though it's still higher than it was 4 years ago. I kinda wish I'd sold mine before the VC version came out.
Here are several loose copies barely hitting $150, compared to $180-220 a few months ago.
And complete versions, which would go for $500-600 not even a year ago, are now going for around $300.
And here's one complete w/guide, stickers, and box (missing cardboard insert) sitting at $350 BIN.
My guess is there's less demand for Chavez II because it's a Mexican (Spanish) variant of a US (English) game (Riddick Bowe Boxing?), so probably only variant collectors will care.
Well, then I'm going to keep bringing it up so hopefully people can get energized about it again or at least pick up some knowledge SOMEWHERE because it's saddening how the collective knowledge of the board is only going down and down. I joined this board way back when because I was amazed at how knowledgeable many of its regulars were. I loved the give and take of sharing what I knew and learning so much more from others. Now, it's like the blind leading the blind around here and I'm left explaining what used to be common knowledge and learning nothing new myself in the process.
Then I say, for the third time this year, if people want the guide to be used, let's work on updating it and getting it back out there as the guide to use.
No arguments there, but whenever site updating is proposed, it always seems to be about the main site and writing more articles and stuff. I'd even be willing to help with the guide myself, but there are only a couple niche systems where I feel like I know the rarities and values of all the games well enough to pass as an "authority" for said system. But, yeah, we can't get anywhere until the people who know their stuff (those who are willing to contribute at least) have the tools to do something. Frankly, I have no idea who has access to editing the rarity database these days.
Well, now I've got something to go on. The last handful of times site updates were brought up, I've mentioned the rarity guide (in fact, I think I directly asked you how we might go about it in one topic), but it's been ignored. I figured that was largely due to people just not knowing how to go about it. I'd assume that having a perfect rarity guide is a dream, simply because of the nature of a sales and the fickleness of collectors. Assume we can be flexible on the end goal, one could pull a statistic based on current availability (collectors have become much more show-and-tell-ish in the last decade or so, what with social networking and such).
But then again, how many people are actually on board with this? And, more importantly, is it too little too late for Digital Press?
It hasn't always been pricy, in the 90s and earlier 00s it was cheap (and I mean $10-40 as far as cheap goes.) It's only in the last many years since people began monetizing games and looking for a reason to jack things high this one started to take the chomp, just like you could in the same period pick up shit like Little Samson and Bubble Bobble 2 (any of the post-SNES Taito and Capcom current high ballers) for like $20 or less.
I can't say we know for certain on Aerofighters how small or not the release of them were, NIntendo used to have a 10K minimum, but it also game out in 1993 I think, people didn't really run for the minimum until it was a bail out to make a few bucks period in like later 1995 through 97. Capcom put out minimum orders or near it on their last 5 games they stuffed out on the system after X2 arrived and look what those cost. They're not cheap, but they're not stupid prohibitive like Aerofighters. It's that Dilbert image for sure sells the reality, it's not just rarity, it's hype and bullshit that drives costs.
The main reason why Aero Fighters is valuable is because it's harder to find, and that it's also a shmup. Just like how RPGs are inflated, shmups are going for good money by fans. Just look at MUSHA, Grind Stormer, Thunder Force III, Ikaruga, etc. Sure, they're not all crazy expensive, but they're not all that rare either. They're still worth more than other games of the same rarity on the same systems. Still I doubt the demand will hold, eventually the prices will drop.
Most people were admitting to not knowing much about game rarity or value in the past, now they've learned from their mistakes. If anything peoples' knowledge is increasing despite the rarity guide becoming almost useless.
With people not getting why these games are worth so much now, you could say the same thing with graded games. Those sell for crazy amounts yet most collectors here don't understand why that is.
It's not a matter of not "getting" it. I could understand people saying that they don't "get" why fans are driving up the prices so high on very common games, but Aero Fighters is a whole different story. There's a very clear and obvious reason why Aero Fighters commands a premium, which used to be common knowledge around here, yet now everybody is ignoring the actual reason and fabricating up new ones just because it sounds more dramatic to suggest that fans are going crazy for it or sellers are toying with the market.
While certain shmups command a premium, most are still pretty reasonable, especially on SNES because most shmup diehards don't really give a damn about the system as a whole since it has such a small selection, with many being so-so and/or plagued with slowdown. In fact, the Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings series in general is considered pretty run-of-the-mill by most shmup fans, and for those who care, I'm sure they'd prefer to play the arcade versions of the games over a super-expensive and rare SNES port.
So again I say, the number one reason why Aero Fighters is so expensive is because it's very rare and collectors looking to acquire a full SNES library have to fight over what's available (granted, with SNES being so hot now, that doesn't help matters; there very well may be more collectors pursuing full sets now than in years past). And unlike Chavez II, a collector can't use technicalities to convince himself that Aero Fighters doesn't "count" and isn't needed for said full set.
There are equally rare games that fetch less than a quarter of what AF does. So how does that work again?
Aero Fighters is so rare there's only a half-dozen copies on ebay at any time. That must be why the value slightly increased from $40 to $300 in the last few years, purely by rarity alone.
It's a bit surprising why the rarity guide here listed it at $40, since it was always common knowledge that it was so rare it should never have been listed that cheap by default. The value should always have been listed at $300 in anticipation of it's future true value to come out, anything less than that would be delusional simply based on how rare this game is.
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