HIT JAPAN on Ebay, STAY AWAY!

[TheDeath]

Hi guys,
Please help me sharing this stuff happening on Ebay with a power seller knowed as HIT JAPAN.
I bought this "buy i now" super famicom game for 240$.
The seller immidiatly re-list it due to "wrong price" but mostly he had private offers for a price ranged 1000$, the game is uncommon and he probably being pointed that the price was too low for it.
We are not talking about what you can get for, we are talking about WHAT YOU CAN PAY FOR.
This stuff ruins video game collectors all over the world and must be stopped, games values decrease due to stupid sellers like this one.
Do not buy from him!!

[sfchakan]

I hate this type of stuff. I understand he doesn't want to lose out on $750, but he listed it for a price and should honor it.

A friend and I found him a Japanese copy of Maximum Carnage for the Mega Drive listed for a pretty low price a couple months ago. Likely a price it was going for years ago. Seller halted the sale in the same fashion via Amazon.


I've had good experience buying some things from Hit Japan before otherwise. I want to say I got my Duo-R from them and it arrived in great shape.

[ProjectCamaro]

If it were me I'd pay for the auction and then file a complaint with eBay if he refuses to ship it. I bet if you bid more than an item was worth he wouldn't allow you to back out of paying for it.

[SparTonberry]

I bought a ton of stuff from him over the years.
Sad to hear him doing this sort of thing.

(though in general, really shouldn't ebay prevent this sort of thing? I mean a real store can't do that.)

[badinsults]

The price of SFC stuff has skyrocketed during the past year, on account of probable price manipulation (i.e. someone buying all copies of a single game, then listing them at 3x as much). You'll see more of this kind of crap happening.

[RCM]

While this sucks and I understand why you're pissed, I've purchased thousands of dollars worth of games and systems from Hit Japan over the years. They've always been fair with me and I will continue doing business with 'em.

[byuu]

I just finished an SFC CIB set. It took me years and the help of a dozen people to do so.

If anyone else aspires to do the same (and if you are buying Power Rangers, you must be), you will have to buy about 75% of your collection from hit-japan and yamatoku-classic.

yamatoku-classic rates everything as "a few scratches, dirt" and you have a 50/50 chance of receiving a fair condition game, or a game that survived the apocalypse and seems like it will disintegrate if you touch it. One in a hundred games look brand new! You can almost never tell from the top-only scans what you will get.

hit-japan ... I am honestly really surprised he told you the real reason he wouldn't sell you a game. The dozen times he's done this to me, he just told me, "this item is out of stock, sorry." Within the hour the game is relisted for more money. A few times I didn't even receive a refund of my money.

But you have to suck up these losses. If you burn the two guys selling 90% of all SFC games in the US, you'll end up needing to use deputies, that will add $25 or 30% markup (whichever is greater) onto everything you buy. You will get destroyed trying to collect all the mahjong, pachinko, shougi, fishing, etc games.

He always tries to sell things for a 50% markup over their actual value. You can always offer him 25% less on anything and he will accept. Any more and he usually declines. He buys all of his stuff from suruga-ya for much less than he sells it for, but suruga-ya has a bad reputation selling internationally. Not even sure if they still do.

But just try and get ahead where you can. I recently picked up a CIB Iron Commando from him for $240 in good shape, this was after the last two copies sold for ~$1500 each:

http://page7.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g136114477 (142000Y) [dead link, use aucfan to find it]

http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d154007525 (162000Y)

There are much worse sellers you should avoid, though. neomars13 is probably the only SFC seller I have never bought a single thing from. neomars13 overprices things by about 400% minimum, and will not budge a penny on the price of anything. This wouldn't be a problem, if not for the fact that he buys up all the good items on Japanese sites before you can get them. I won't buy from him on principle. He's far worse than the sleaziest US sellers I've encountered.

Moving on to Power Rangers ... $1000 seems pretty insane. I bought mine for $180 from game5ya, after I was too slow on getting a $150 copy from suruga-ya. This was about 2-3 months ago. A price surge that quickly is possible, but seems rather unlikely.

badinsults is right, though. The SFC set has absolutely exploded in the last year. I always try and buy the most expensive games first, but sometimes I just don't have the funding or foolishly wait for a better deal. These have been my biggest failures:

Ghost Chaser Densei: could have paid $100, eventually paid $200
Pokonyan - Henpokorin Adventure: could have paid $150, eventually paid $800*
Rendering Ranger: could have paid $1000, eventually paid $1500**
Shounen Ninja Sasule: could have paid $250, eventually paid $500
Undercover Cops: could have paid $150, eventually paid $270

* Pokonyan's currently worth around $400. But it's about 5-10x as rare as Rendering Ranger. This was the only copy listed in the last two years, and another guy really went after me to fuck me over. But it was either pay $800 or not have a complete set until 2016 or so. (loose cart Pokonyan's are cheap, don't confuse them for CIB copies.)

** you can still get this for $1000, if you trust a seller in Taiwan or Spain. I have nothing against those countries, but there are lots of people selling fake RR2 boxes and manuals. I would never trust buying this from anyone but a highly rated Japanese seller.

There's been serious behind-the-scenes manipulation as of late.

gbd234567 has bought every last copy of Ghost Chaser Densei, pushing the price from $100 to $400 in Japan. He's won about six copies of the game now, and keeps bidding up every single one. I have the auction links to prove this if you don't believe me.

mitate_takeshi buys up every copy of Shounen Ninja Sasuke, and then lists them on amazon.co.jp for $2500 each. He has four or five copies now.

There are nasty schadenfreude buyers and shill bidders, both on eBay and on Yahoo! Japan. If you outbid them, they will keep bidding you up to 2-3x what you wanted to pay. If you lose, they just don't pay and the item relists. But when you're using a deputy to bid in Japan, you have no choice but to pay or lose your deputy. And Yahoo! has that five-minute extension system that allows these people to easily figure out your max bid and stop.

Sellers are even catching on to the "kusoge" (garbage) games that are actually insanely rare, and they are listing them for massive prices.

For instance, try finding Super Moero Pro Yakyuu, Chinhai, Nomark Baku Haitou, etc CIB. Go on, try. You won't be able to. They pop up once every 3-5 years each. In the rare instance they do come up, the sellers are asking hundreds of dollars for them, because they know how rare they are.

Honestly ... you have to be completely insane to try and build a CIB SFC set at this point.

The people who keep thinking SFC collecting is super cheap because Chrono Trigger is affordable there really annoy me. The SFC set is far more expensive and difficult to obtain than the US and EU SNES sets. And I would know, since I completed a US boxed set, too. Hell, just the raw shipping alone will set you back around $8000, and nobody ever includes international shipping fees into game valuations.

[Mayhem]

Wow... congrats on getting the full set though. Did Adol inspire you?

Makes the 130 Euros I paid for my CIB Rendering Ranger about 8-9 years ago look like a bargain heh.

I've bought from Hit Japan in the past with nary a problem, but I'm not surprised to see that people are making mistakes and not honouring them, especially with that much money at stake...

[Nz17]

Why not just buy from trusted-associate-of-Digital-Press, Japan Game Stock? They have over 600 SFC games in stock, mostly boxed, and they even have the game in question for a mere 12,000 JPY. The site doesn't profit from sales through there, but I believe I might have personally bought things from them before and they are good and trustworthy.

[byuu]

> Wow... congrats on getting the full set though. Did Adol inspire you?

I was already intending to build fullsets for every region. I tried to buy his set, offered him $25000 or so. He declined and said he wouldn't entertain < $40000, but wanted more like $50000+. Eventually he sold all of his sets to the Strong Museum for significantly less money.

I thought I could build the set for a lot less, because I was a bit fooled by how cheap some of the games were. I remember my first buy was 100 CIB games in a parking lot from a nice local guy for $6 each. Then I realized that every last "lot of 100+ SFC CIB games" was the same 300 or so titles.

I did eventually finish it, and it cost me somewhere around ~$35000-40000. About $10000 of it was shipping and deputy fees. I used SAL for < $20, registered AIR for < $100 and EMS insured for the rest. Used group shipping whenever I could (lots of savings at the beginning.) It took me two years. If you count the 1-2 hours a day, or ~1200 hours I put into tracking this all down, and you are in the camp that believes time is worth money (as I am), it was a bad choice. But I had fun doing it all the same.

My rules for a full set are a bit different than Adol's; compared to his set:
+ I have all modem related games, revisions and accessories (eg I have the JRA PAT manuals and the SPAT4 carts)
+ I have all box variants; all fukkokubans, all renkabans, all large and small versions (eg I have both big and small versions of all Sufami Turbo gear, which Adol did not)
= I have all licensed, official MaskROM games CIB
= I have all not for sale, prize contest, etc games; CIB where possible, some are only loose cart (Undake 30 and Kunio-Kun Tournament Special)
- I don't have a rule that I need 100% of pack-in material (eg registration cards); mostly because it's impossible to know which games came with what. I only require the cart+box+manual, but if I know it comes with mini-CDs or reg cards, I try and obtain them
- I don't collect Satellaview FlashROMs (I have all the MaskROMs) because it's completely impossible (Adol didn't collect these either)
- I don't collect Nintendo Power because the flash chips are already suffering from bit-rot (Adol lacked a full NP set too)
- I don't collect unlicensed games (read: loli games) because they're illegal to possess in the US (Adol did have these), and I find them distasteful

So at this point, I should now be the only person known to own a full SFC set. I haven't taken a fun picture spread like he has, but here are some older photos a few months before I finished:

http://i.imgur.com/V7FJrKV.jpg

And here's all the ridiculously expensive titles (Thracia 776 deluxe box is hiding behind the EMITs):

http://i.imgur.com/sxP0CHY.jpg

I'm planning on writing up an article once I get better pictures. Wanted to go over the challenges, the sellers involved, etc.

> Why not just buy from trusted-associate-of-Digital-Press, Japan Game Stock? They have over 600 SFC games in stock, mostly boxed, and they even have the game in question for a mere 12,000 JPY.

Yeah, see I knew $1000 for Power Rangers was BS. hit-japan was just being greedy as usual.

Japan Game Stock is run by a nice guy. The condition varies like with yamatoku-classic, but he takes honest pictures of the games by request before you pay, so you know exactly what you're getting.

He does need a better site search function, though. I often had to go through his entire catalog to see if he added any new games I needed.

[xelement5x]

Nice SFC fullset byuu. You have pulled off some amazing stuff with that SNES set and now this.

Anyway, I used to have decent luck with hit-japan until about a year or so ago. Recently his prices have been skyrocketing and the shipping is not worth it for most stuff as he seems to inflate that as well. I use a proxy for almost anything in Japan anymore as the prices are normally better. Yamatoku is a decent guy though from my experience, I can't knock someone who sets almost all auctions starting at 99c and just lets them run.

Oh, and if you're boycotting hit-japan, please note that he does run http://gameofjapan.com/ as well.

[Mayhem]

I've got the Thracia 776 deluxe set here, what's that currently running value wise? I imagine it's probably about the same since I bought it ($200-250).

[Adol]

> Wow... congrats on getting the full set though. Did Adol inspire you?

I was already intending to build fullsets for every region. I tried to buy his set, offered him $25000 or so. He declined and said he wouldn't entertain < $40000, but wanted more like $50000+. Eventually he sold all of his sets to the Strong Museum for significantly less money.

I sold them for way, WAY more than that. even $50k was a joke, considering 500-600 of my SFC games were BRAND NEW.
I had (and still have) all JRA Pat stuff.
I did have all big/small Sufami Turbo variants.
I had a lot of renkaban,etc..but maybe not all of them,since there is no serious list about them, i discovered at least 5 of them a year not listed anywhere.
I had a NP fullset, with ALL original instructions, even for Columns.
I didn't collect all Sateallaview games,only a few playable ones (Shubibinman Zero being the most fun one)

So far, to my opinion, the hardest one to get was Emit Value Set, by far. Got 10 Pokonyan faster than this one.

Anyway, SFC fullset was fun to collect. But i had 30 other fullsets to fullfill

PS: I still have about 800 different SFC titles, on hand at home, and still thousands of SFC games. I didn't sell everything,far from it.
And you're clearly not the only one with a SFC fullset, i know already 2 of them in my own country.
SFC fullset ain't that hard, comparing, for example, to japanese PC Engine factory sealed fullset. Some factory sealed titles are a pain in the ass to get.
but i needed a bigger challenge than SFC.

[byuu]

Oh hey Adol, glad you're still poking by these parts

> I sold them for way, WAY more than that. even $50k was a joke, considering 500-600 of my SFC games were BRAND NEW.

Ah. The video I watched from the Strong Museum that bought your set, the guy said they paid significantly less than the eBay auction amount. So I extrapolated that you must have accepted less for each set, hence less than the $40K for the individual set you were looking for.

New condition is great, but to me I just don't like that. I had about 50+ 'brand new' games, I would say probably only 10 at best of them were actually new. You can really tell, because that first time opening them, it feels like you're bending the cardboard. I am sure you know what I mean. The white seam lines on the crease point don't give it away, and the item conditions and smells inside and contact wear etc don't give it away, either.

Of course, you were buying back in the late '90s when they were literally new, so I believe you when you say most of yours were new. But trying that in 2012+ as I did would be kind of foolish because people lie all the time about things being new, and I wouldn't trust the actual games and manuals being inside the boxes if I didn't check them.

> I had (and still have) all JRA Pat stuff.

Do you (or did you) have these?

http://www.snescentral.com/cart.php?id=1026&num=0

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

If so, could you please release a dump of the latter? I have them both, but I can't and won't release images for legal reasons, but as far as I know, the latter is undumped. I know they're worthless for playing, but still.

Also, do you know if these two had manuals/boxes or anything for SPAT4? I have the really large manuals for the JRA PATs, and of course they came inside those SFC-Modem white boxes with the games and modems.

> I did have all big/small Sufami Turbo variants.

Ah, they weren't in that big photo shoot you did with the yellow table cloth. You had some big box variants and skipped them in the small box areas. I guess you filled in your set more after that.

> I had a lot of renkaban,etc..but maybe not all of them,since there is no serious list about them, i discovered at least 5 of them a year not listed anywhere.

Yeah, I found it hard to get information on them too. I suppose you're right and it's possible I am missing one. But if it does exist, it's rarer than any other game in existence, because I was unbelievably thorough with my set.

My favorite is that weird VHS case Koei used for Sangokushi II.

> I had a NP fullset, with ALL original instructions, even for Columns.

Ah, again you must have added it later. I read where you said you didn't.

While that's good that you collected those, I'd never do it. ChronoMoogle lost half of his NP carts due to bit-rot, and there's a guy on NESdev who can reflash any NP cart. So it's kind of silly to buy the $300+ games like Wizardry 1-2-3 when they can just be reflashed like a USB stick from a $20 game.

I did get the interesting tangible stuff like the Thracia 776 deluxe box and MSG stuff.

> I didn't collect all Sateallaview games,only a few playable ones (Shubibinman Zero being the most fun one)

Same deal. They're just fancy non-standard USB sticks that suffer bit-rot. And this set is truly impossible to complete =)

> So far, to my opinion, the hardest one to get was Emit Value Set, by far. Got 10 Pokonyan faster than this one.

That my have been the case when you made the set, but I came across three of them in the two years I was looking. Only one was priced crazy high.

Super rarity that doesn't equal super value is really fickle like that.

If you can believe it, the final missing game for my set was Honkaku Mahjong Tetsuman - Fukkokuban. Got it for $10 from a UK seller once it finally popped up. I also had to grossly overpay to get Super Moero Pro Yakyuu and Nomark Baku Haitou. Chinhai was also incredibly super hard to find. Other games I only encountered once were Momotarou Nishi Nihon, Tengai Makyou Shounen Jump, etc.

Pokonyan really set me back more than any other game. I skipped the first copy I saw in 2012 because I thought $150 was too much. The only copy to pop up again in the last two years set me back almost $800 after deputy fees. It's currently worth around $300, but I had to pay $800 to win it from another really determined [s]asshole[/s] collector. I could have passed, and ended up waiting two more years to see it again, then again it may have popped up a week later. On the bright side though, my copy is pristine.

> And you're clearly not the only one with a SFC fullset, i know already 2 of them in my own country.

I'd love to see photos. Otherwise I'll take it with a grain of salt

But yeah, I am sure there are people who have sets but say nothing.

> SFC fullset ain't that hard, comparing, for example, to japanese PC Engine factory sealed fullset.

Oh sure, it's probably a lot easier than a Pico or Playdia or hell even a Saturn sealed fullset. Sealed sets are, to me, stupid. But to each their own.

I didn't find it insanely difficult to do my SFC fullset. But that was in part thanks to about a dozen people really helping me out in tracking down obscure shops to get these games. Also keep in mind that an SFC fullset in 2000 was 20x easier than an SFC fullset in 2012.

...

By the way, can I ask a huge favor of you? Can you look over my list and tell me if I'm missing anything?

This is my graded collection: http://byuu.org/secret-sfc/super-famicom-ntsc/

(I forgot to include the two SPAT4s but have them, and intentionally didn't include the Sufami Turbo games or Satellaview MaskROM games. Those are separate lists.)

5 = mint, 1 = bad (crushed or faded a bit) but still okay for scanning and archiving. Anything < 1 (torn/missing pages/badly sunfaded/etc) I sold and replaced.

I know you probably have better things to do, but I had a lot of trouble with all lists out there, so I'd really appreciate any help if you could spare it. I took every English and Japanese made master lists that had serial#s, and I encountered lots and lots of serial# transcription errors and missing titles in each list. I also looked at all known dumped games, etc.

[Adol]

Ah. The video I watched from the Strong Museum that bought your set, the guy said they paid significantly less than the eBay auction amount. So I extrapolated that you must have accepted less for each set, hence less than the $40K for the individual set you were looking for.

I sold them as a whole, we never spoke prices for each set. Again, i sold them for several hundreds of thousands.

New condition is great, but to me I just don't like that. I had about 50+ 'brand new' games, I would say probably only 10 at best of them were actually new. You can really tell, because that first time opening them, it feels like you're bending the cardboard. I am sure you know what I mean. The white seam lines on the crease point don't give it away, and the item conditions and smells inside and contact wear etc don't give it away, either.

Yes,i perfectly know what you mean,and i say again: 500-600 of them were BRAND NEW, never opened.

Of course, you were buying back in the late '90s when they were literally new, so I believe you when you say most of yours were new. But trying that in 2012+ as I did would be kind of foolish because people lie all the time about things being new, and I wouldn't trust the actual games and manuals being inside the boxes if I didn't check them.

No, i bought them as well in the early 2000s, from japan, from YJA as well, but yes, most of them back in 1995-2000.

Do you (or did you) have these?
http://www.snescentral.com/cart.php?id=1026&num=0
http://i.imgur.com/EssGFBW.jpg
If so, could you please release a dump of the latter? I have them both, but I can't and won't release images for legal reasons, but as far as I know, the latter is undumped. I know they're worthless for playing, but still.
Also, do you know if these two had manuals/boxes or anything for SPAT4? I have the really large manuals for the JRA PATs, and of course they came inside those SFC-Modem white boxes with the games and modems.

I had both,but they're now in the Strong Museum hands.
So you can dump them, but don't want to do it for legal reasons, but WANT ME to do this illegal thing? Are you serious?

Never saw manuals for these.

Ah, they weren't in that big photo shoot you did with the yellow table cloth. You had some big box variants and skipped them in the small box areas. I guess you filled in your set more after that.

Yes,i still have hundreds of pictures of stuff i never published.
It's not like i owe someone those pictures.
But i tried, back in the day,to show the most possible,because a lot of people wanted it, and it helped them a lot for their researches/hunting. I was the very first ~15 years ago to do such fullsets, and many began by looking at it.
For exemple, on this very website, i began years ago to upload my JPN Gamecube Factory Sealed fullset, but stopped in the process (i wanted to upload picture of every title,1 by 1). I still have 200 or so pictures to upload, but not the time for it. It doesn't mean i don't have them.

By the way, did you make pictures of your alledged SFC fullset?

Yeah, I found it hard to get information on them too. I suppose you're right and it's possible I am missing one. But if it does exist, it's rarer than any other game in existence, because I was unbelievably thorough with my set.

You're certainly missing one, and so did i. There never was a clear list of those,and i discovered many of them in the last decade. No list, hard to say which ones exist, but it' not a major issue anyway

My favorite is that weird VHS case Koei used for Sangokushi II.

They used it as well for Teitoku no Ketsudan Fukkoku Ban, but you're confusing Fukkoku Ban editions with Renkaban ones, it's quite different.
Renkaban ones are like for Super Sokoban, or 4 Nin Mahjong: practically the same boxes, but with a different serial number,mostly like "SHVX -XXXX-1" instead of "SHVC-XXXX"

Ah, again you must have added it later. I read where you said you didn't.

I even have all manuals for the 8 volumes of Picross NP. Yes, i added a little since 2005, but again, it's not like i had to update pictures everywhere i go. Quite nice i did them in the first place.

While that's good that you collected those, I'd never do it.

They're rare,and costly, but to me they are NOT complete without them.

ChronoMoogle lost half of his NP carts due to bit-rot, and there's a guy on NESdev who can reflash any NP cart. So it's kind of silly to buy the $300+ games like Wizardry 1-2-3 when they can just be reflashed like a USB stick from a $20 game.

That's an arguable debate between free rom stuff and official stuff. If you're fine having ROMs in your SFC fullset, fine, but to me it's not a fullset then.

That my have been the case when you made the set, but I came across three of them in the two years I was looking. Only one was priced crazy high.
Super rarity that doesn't equal super value is really fickle like that.

And, as you just said, a game can be super rare for a pair of years (when you're looking for it),and not for the next years. My Emit Value Set was your Pokonyan, i guess. Hard to find.

If you can believe it, the final missing game for my set was Honkaku Mahjong Tetsuman - Fukkokuban. Got it for $10 from a UK seller once it finally popped up. I also had to grossly overpay to get Super Moero Pro Yakyuu and Nomark Baku Haitou. Chinhai was also incredibly super hard to find. Other games I only encountered once were Momotarou Nishi Nihon, Tengai Makyou Shounen Jump, etc.
Pokonyan really set me back more than any other game. I skipped the first copy I saw in 2012 because I thought $150 was too much. The only copy to pop up again in the last two years set me back almost $800 after deputy fees. It's currently worth around $300, but I had to pay $800 to win it from another really determined [s]asshole[/s] collector. I could have passed, and ended up waiting two more years to see it again, then again it may have popped up a week later. On the bright side though, my copy is pristine.

> And you're clearly not the only one with a SFC fullset, i know already 2 of them in my own country.

I'd love to see photos. Otherwise I'll take it with a grain of salt

They don't go on english forums, but ask zzooomm on this forum, if you can write in french:
http://www.gamopat-forum.com/t40992-...ection-du-zoom

But yeah, I am sure there are people who have sets but say nothing.

Oh sure, it's probably a lot easier than a Pico or Playdia or hell even a Saturn sealed fullset. Sealed sets are, to me, stupid. But to each their own.

That's because you're probably not open-minded enough. Think of it as a challenge. Like it's too easy to get a SFC fullset, then you go for a "brand new only" one. It's not a thing about money, or "mine is better than yours", personally i do'nt mind much about shrinkwrap, but i did it (for PCE,DC,GC..) because it was really too easy to get them in used condition. I needed more challenge.

I didn't find it insanely difficult to do my SFC fullset. But that was in part thanks to about a dozen people really helping me out in tracking down obscure shops to get these games. Also keep in mind that an SFC fullset in 2000 was 20x easier than an SFC fullset in 2012.

For the same person with the same kind of income, yes. But mostly, no.
To me,it's 20x easier to do a SFC fullset now than back in the day.
Just because i was a student (i was 15 in 1995),and not with the income i have know.
Hell,i just made a Neo Geo AES US "fullset" (except Kizuna&U11) within 6 months. Impossible back in the day for me.

By the way, can I ask a huge favor of you? Can you look over my list and tell me if I'm missing anything?

Sure,no problem. But i need time

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

If they wont honor the sale file a complaint and contact ebay customer support via phone to make sure the complaint is looked into via a actual person as opposed to the automated dispute system.

[byuu]

Sorry, late reply. Adol, your call, but we can use PM to keep from bumping old topics if you want.

> So you can dump them, but don't want to do it for legal reasons, but WANT ME to do this illegal thing? Are you serious?

I suppose that did sound bad, heh. Well, had to try

I guess it'll join CC'92 and PF'94 alternate scoring version in my private collection.

> It's not like i owe someone those pictures.

Didn't say you did, just said I didn't see it.

> By the way, did you make pictures of your alledged SFC fullset?

Mostly just http://i.imgur.com/V7FJrKV.jpg so far. I'll be doing the usual 600dpi scans of all the boxes and carts (not manuals, that's just ... too much for one man.)

> They used it as well for Teitoku no Ketsudan Fukkoku Ban

Interesting. My copy of Teitoku no Ketsudan - Fukkokuban is in the regular SNES box, although it is a different color. Yet I haven't seen a plain-box version of Sangokushi II Fukkokuban.

Maybe I'll try and track down the variant for fun

> Renkaban ones are like for Super Sokoban, or 4 Nin Mahjong: practically the same boxes, but with a different serial number,mostly like "SHVX -XXXX-1" instead of "SHVC-XXXX"

I only grabbed renkaban versions when the boxes actually said they were such on the labeling. They tended to have entirely different serials then, eg Pro Mahjong Tsuwamono was SHVC-AQZJ-JPN, and the Renkaban was SHVC-AQ2J-JPN. (fun side note: very hard to find either version of this title CIB.)

Just through natural lot purchases, I found lots of those -1 variants, but didn't bother keeping those. A lot of the -1 stuff are just regular fare re-releases, ROM revisions, etc. And I think one would lose their sanity trying to complete a all-revisions set, heh.

> They're rare,and costly, but to me they are NOT complete without them.

Then the world is in trouble, because probably 10-20% of those carts have died from flash memory bit-rot, and the rest will be joining them soon.

> That's an arguable debate between free rom stuff and official stuff. If you're fine having ROMs in your SFC fullset, fine, but to me it's not a fullset then.

Yes, but how can you *possibly* know the difference? You can't, because there literally is no difference. The items are physically 100% identical, and the bits on them are also a 100% digital match. It's actually a really big problem, and is one of many reasons I won't verify/hash any reprogrammable media.

> My Emit Value Set was your Pokonyan, i guess. Hard to find.

Absolutely! And I am sure both will be easy for a future fullset guy. It's all quite random. In fact, there's a gold Kunio-kun up on Y!J now for 79000 yen.

But what's clear is that anyone making the set will have at least 3-5 titles that won't come up for sale even once anywhere in the world for several years. And they'll have to really stay on the ball searching constantly to find them first when they do.

> Think of it as a challenge. Like it's too easy to get a SFC fullset, then you go for a "brand new only" one.

Yeah, that's a good point. If your goal is the challenge, that's definitely a good way to up the ante. Like collecting those prize-edition games, and then some.

By the way, the one collection so far that I gave up on completely was Nintendo Super System. Only 13 games, but holy shit. Aside from the stock 3 that come with the cabinet, they're a bloody nightmare to find. And when you do, they want stupid prices like $200+ for a loose board in untested condition.

And there *are* people reflashing those games already, thanks to nocash's info on how the anti-piracy stuff worked on those. I've seen auctions that outright stated they were reflashes.

> Just because i was a student (i was 15 in 1995),and not with the income i have know.

Oh well, yeah. Money changes everything. I was meaning with the same adjusted-for-inflation income, it's harder now due to scarcer, dwindling supply, and games going into gamer vaults who won't ever sell them individually (like all of my games now.) Some of the new ridiculously rare titles are kind of surprising: Chinhai, Super Moero Pro Yakyuu, Nomark Baku Haitou, Honkaku Mahjong Tetsuman Fukkokuban, etc.

If you had $100 billion, you could just pay a team to go door-to-door in Japan and have your set in no time. You wouldn't even have to spend millions, just offer five times what each game is actually worth on the market for each one. And 20x for the rarest ones.

It's kind of funny, people think that a rich person could just offer 100x bounties and get all their stuff. And they certainly could, but they're usually wealthy because they are fiscally responsible (read: frugal): they won't spend obscene markups just to get something, when they know they don't have to. The closest thing to the Honus Wagner in the game collecting scene are NWC'90, Stadium Events, and Air Raid, which cap around $20K. Absolute joke territory compared to the $2.1M you need for said baseball card.

> Sure,no problem. But i need time

Thanks, I really appreciate it! And no rush. Kind of enjoying my hourly auction searching break, actually.

There are indeed really comprehensive lists, but like you said, none are definitive. I've looked at all the major Japanese ones that even track publishing date, all the ones distributed around No-Intro and English-speaking collector communities, etc. I built them all into sets and cross-compared them.

So many serial errors, missing games, etc.