Truthfully, what would you expect one of these to sell for on Ebay or Amazon? I've checked price charting, and for both complete and new their volume shows as "rare" with no actual sold listings to show what one has gone for.
Any ideas?
Truthfully, what would you expect one of these to sell for on Ebay or Amazon? I've checked price charting, and for both complete and new their volume shows as "rare" with no actual sold listings to show what one has gone for.
Any ideas?
I would say between $1500 to $3000 for a easy sell, and maybe even more. Used ones sell anywhere from $400 to $600 in good working order. I forgot to say this is Ebay prices. I have also seen them go for $250 but not in the best of shape.
Last edited by retroman; 01-05-2015 at 09:01 PM.
Even sealed in the box chances are it has leaky caps rotting the board apart. I would pay more for one I knew had fresh caps and a clean board.
The cap kit would likely be needed, but I would assume the buyer of a sealed Turbo Duo would NOT be opening the system!
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That's what I'm saying, you would basically be paying a huge amount of money for something that is has never been opened, but more than likely broken. And the longer you don't address the caps the greater the chance of damage to the board itself, possibly making it impossible to repair.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
I wonder about that with systems that originally came with batteries, like the Game Boy.
If sealed, aren't the factory batteries likely to have corroded and leaked by this point?
Systems with packed in batteries or games with them (Super Mario World for example) have whatever the % of a chance there is x(times) the number of years it has been since it (the battery) was made for being blown out and leaking or already having destroyed the board it's attached to or the packaging (gameboy inside the styro area with that tight plastic around them) it is in. It comes down to a gambling game basically because you are gambling that the interior battery has not and hopefully will never blow/leak versus just die of old age peacefully.
I'd think any system from the SNES/Genesis/Gameboy forward that had packed in batteries in cart (SMW/Sonic 3) or in the box (Gameboy, Virtual Boy, etc) would need to be bought as a mint as possible unsealed setup that may or may not have ever been used, like the weird types who buy stuff, open and inspect it, then shelve it forever. I'd pay if I were into that insanity far more for an open unused/barely used but dead mint either way system (or even a game cart) versus something totally new. You're playing with fire and ultimately due to the risk of caps or batteries being a hot mess in there you're buying 'new' to never be opened ever because opening may expose a hot toxic mess that's dead.
If I ever decided I cared that much again and wanted to throw that kind of money at it I'd never buy a new/used game console that has batteries or known issues with caps (NEC stuff, some Sega, etc.) Ideally I'd take one someone else had new or open but unused and have them recap the thing before shipping it as a used(but unused?) system in that kind of shape is the best bet for safety reasons.
With the Duo in question perhaps some fool would pay up to 3K for a totally sealed one. Personally if I were into doing that much I'd buy an opened unused one that's recapped to last and throw that at it. Something totally new I'd value it at an as-is no returns/untested gamble system plus the value of the immaculate box/paperwork and accessories accordingly.
AAs leak a lot sooner than CR2032 or whatever.
As in, I've never seen a leaking save battery myself, but I've seen leaking AAs (and even had to clean my Tiger handheld Sonics when I decided to film them for youtube once).
I had a leaking capacitor in my original XBOX that I had to remove recently and it was starting to eat at the motherboard. Works great now though. Relevant I guess? haha Anyways leaky capacitors can get any system it seems and needs to be checked out more often.
Cool people I have bought stuff from on this board: orrimarrko kyosuke75 dave2236 video_game_addict cloudstrife29661 NESCollector75
Sealed game collecting is stupid to begin with, I won't deny that. My point is the system is sealed, and odds are most "sealed" buyers will leave it sealed, because they're insane. Sealed collecting is nuts.
I don't think the Gameboy came with any, but if it did they were probably sealed in a package.
Well the Xbox clock cap is big and leaks a LOT when it does. I think most of the Duo caps simply fail rather than leak.
The Paunch Stevenson Show free Internet podcast - www.paunchstevenson.com - DP FEEDBACK
Greg as I said in my other post, the Gameboy did come with them, all the original brick style as did the GB Pocket and I'm fairly certain the GBC and GBA did too. What they did was put a notch in the styrofoam (cardboard, whatever) and put 2 AA or AAAs in there tightly wrapped in a clear thin piece of plastic stretched over them with holes on each side so you could crack it off there. They're not extra bagged or anything so they're open to do whatever IF they leaked or exploded. Virtual Boy I can't remember if they had them, or just had a free battery voucher inside so you could go get 6 AAs to run the thing.
If someone had a launch gameboy that's still sealed, I'd be fairly surprised if the batteries hadn't cracked open over the last 25 years.
I have a sealed Gameboy Printer which says it comes with AA batteries. I have no intention of ever opening it. The appeal of owning anything brand new is that it's still new, free of wear and tear from use. It's mostly for a display piece. The collectors willing to pay significantly extra for rare new/sealed items aren't going to be using them. They're just for display within a collection.
It also depends on the quality of the batteries used. The batteries used for game saves are lithium, plenty don't leak or do serious damage even decades later, they just don't hold a charge anymore. Cheaper lithium batteries can leak and cause damage, I have seen some of these batteries leaking and damaged a circuit board. It personally wasn't in a game though, it was in a watch.
There are actually plenty of vintage batteries going all the way back from the 1950s still available for purchase online, they're dead but still intact and not corroded. Personally I have a pair of D alkaline batteries from the 1980s still working, currently installed in a flashlight. Found them packed away in a forgotten box of old batteries in the basement, everything in the box was corroded except for these 2 batteries from the same package. I was surprized they were still working but they still had a good charge.
Just to clear things up a bit, Sonic 3 uses a type of flash memory and not a battery for saving. I still had a copy with the saving broken, but it wasn't a battery issue. Any types of electronics can fail at some point from various problems, chips can fail and traces can rust or corrode through from environment conditions. Nothing will last forever, I'm just hoping to enjoy these things as long as I can.
I don't doubt you're wrong about that with lithium batteries, and while I have no idea about its earlier life before I found it, but months before moving back here a couple years ago I picked up within a couple months of each other two 'clean' 1st party Nintendo games (SNES-Punchout, N64-Smash Bros) where the batteries both blew and leaked out crap that crusted and rusted into the boards. Neither game was wrecked entirely, but even placing a new battery on them they'd never save again. At first I thought perhaps they got wet, but there were no signs of that inside or out on either game, and it would be dead obvious on a N64 title with those horribly cheap and flimsy labels that would fade or run the ink if they got wet at all. My thinking when writing that was again the percentage of the batteries that just die and go out with a bang or just dry up and fizzle. You just don't know and never will without seeing it, so there's that gamble.
Like you I had the same experience with a pair of batteries too, C cells though. When one of my grandma's died around 4 years ago she had this old 1920/30s old eveready metal flashlight and inside were these 80s energizers, and while not perfect (half dim) they worked. Batteries are just weird things, they expire and they kind of just choose the death they want -- explosive, crusty and rusty, or drop dead and retain their shape.
On sonic 3 I was guessing, I just knew it saved and was using mascots since I picked Mario. I've rarely ever opened up a Genesis game to clean one before.