The Collector's Quest

Hey, it's a new episode, we're alive! We're looking back at 2019 and ahead to 2020. What's the best stuff we bought, best stuff we recorded, some thoughts on collecting trends, new goals we have. It's a long episode to make up for our absence. Sorry about the "lost" Christmas episode, it will come out sometime later!

In this episode we're talking about some gifts related to game collecting. It's not really a gift guide, it's more like talking about how other people shop for you when they want to buy you something for the collection. Best gifts, worst gifts, how to make people happy shopping for you, and some thoughts on some stuff currently out there in the mass market.

The "$100k Mario" (does that name work anymore?) was recently on Pawn Stars and we're here to fight about it. Also we use the Sonic movie as an easy segue into some collectible movie games. If you're worried there's no Atari 2600 subsets in this episode, don't worry, I got your back -Tyler.

NintendoAge got shut down and so far partially moved to GoCollect, and while you might not have been a forum member, if you listen to this show you've probably used that database. iam8bit made some new games were contractually obligated to throw under the bus. And our real topic is talking about a few games with interesting pack-in items from action figures to empty plastic bags.

We're talking about our recent trip to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, what we found, who we saw, and Stephan's cool gameplay counselor museum and panel. After that we're talking about the definition of the word "collectible" because sometimes we throw around that we think things are and aren't collectible, so we have a short discussion on that.

Stephan, Tyler, and Johnny are talking about spooky collectible Famicom, Playstation, and Virtual Boy games that came from other countries, but I mean, mainly Japan. Come find us at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this weekend. Stephan has his Nintendo Game Counselor panel Saturday evening, otherwise we'll just be walking around like you regular rubes!

13 Collectible Halloween Games! For Halloween! Console games! PC games! Apple II games that were only sold in ziploc baggies! We have it all in this episode, except really just 13 games we wanted to talk about.

It's the 20 years in the making Dreamcast collecting primer episode of Collector's Quest, important games, variants, rarity, pricey games, all that stuff. We dig up everything we can that would be interesting to collect on DC, but even then it ends up getting compared to the N64. What could these two consoles with limited, inexpensive libraries and bad controllers possibly have in common?

On this show we've got 30 game collecting trivia questions we're asking each other from variants to launch titles to box art. And we're trying to keep it a little real here, not well known facts like "What is the Famicom game that SMB2 is based on?". Play along at home and let us know how much smarter you are on the spot than we are at the very thing we talk about week in and out! While it was fun...

Somewhere in the range of $100,000 of video games were stolen from Trade-N-Games. We're talking a bit about that and home security. Also Tyler made a video about some high end game companies that a couple people didn't like which was removed from NintendoAge and we talk about that. Also also, we invited Deniz from Wata Games to respond to video and talk about community engagement and some misconce...

Johnny and Tyler have argued over what the "true" first print of something is, until Johnny brought up the different between an edition and a print to Tyler and now they can exist in harmony and use correct terminology going forward! In this episode we're talking for just a bit about the difference between editions and prints as it relates to video games and collecting history. It was supposed to...

It's a mailbag episode and we have all sorts of topics from continuing discussion on the crazy, drop-of-a-hat Sonic 1 speculation, to where we cut off our collecting, and we even have an impromptu So You Want To Collect... episode within here for an entire console. Also why are we always wrong about first prints? Aren't we supposed to be a source of trusted information?

In this serious, hard hitting episode, we're running through a bunch of holiday dates and going over games you can post on social media to celebrate, as you do. It's very serious. GoCollect bought GameValueNow too! Is that good? Bad? Did anyone really care? Also Stephan continues to buy the entire company of Nintendo brick by literal brick.

The idea for this episode was to talk about some bad games that have little intrinsic value, but some amount of cachet in the collecting world, basically terrible games that collectors buy for *reasons*. You know, like Stadium Events. But we all kind of interpreted this episode in a different way, so some of us might be talking about questionably "bad" games... such as good games. Fixed 10 seconds...

In this show we're each talking about a few games that used to be worth a lot more money than they are now. This could be due to shifting interests, remakes, or new copies coming to market. We talk about Poop Slinger too but that's TOTALLY not related to the topic. Totally.

In this episode we're mostly continuing our last discussion and talking about the future of gaming collecting, changing attitudes towards what is important to collect, set collecting, speculation, the physical space needed to for collections full of bulk, modern games, art... The episode started out as the rising importance of pure demand vs. rarity in game prices, but we kind of go everywhere. If...

We're discussing the swings the game collecting hobby is taking. While cart prices are slowly cooling off this year, we've got record sales in the high end market, a new big auction house trying to capture that high end market, the specter of the Comic Book Man looming, black box mania, the death of physical media... And of course the cherry on top a new iam8bit multicart. It's a long one so if yo...

Tyler and Stephan are back with a bang talking about surely the hottest vintage console on the block, the Magnavox Odyssey 2: a console notable for having multiple loose SNES games that cost more than the entire CIB library! We're talking about why we've each collected it, some interested subsets within the library, rare games, all that, so join us! Update: Friend of the show @VGCollectaholic clar...

In this episode Johnny, Tyler, and Stephan are discussing a few games that share the same name but are entirely different games (and which one might the most collectible among them). We're doing a few big SNES vs. Genesis type deals, but also discussing arcade PCBs and Tiger LCD games as if anyone asked for that. Also don't forget to ask Johnny for an invite to the Pirates of Dark Water Rulzz club...

On this game show-ish episode, Johnny is asking Tyler and Stephan opinion-based questions and he's going to judge which answer he likes more. We'll have to justify our opinions on CIB vs loose collecting and perhaps even NWC vs. Stadium Events. Johnny says it's like the show Around the Horn which I (Tyler) have never heard of, so you'll have to take his word on that one.

In this episode we're responding to listener submitted topics and questions. We asked for these a couple weeks ago via Instagram but feel free to send us questions and topics so we can do this again in future. We're talking about Stephan's new NWC, worst purchases we've ever made, the hardest system to collect, and other such things.

We're doing a whole episode on what counts as part of a "complete set" and how people go about making their lists. It goes far beyond just what's licensed or what's unlicensed, we're talking about how people count certain kinds of budget releases, but not others, how we handle box sets, multipacks, improved re-releases, republished games, all sorts of nitty gritty, and importantly we talk about wh...

We're talking about collecting(mostly) US Sega Saturn games this week, from what's in the set, to rarities, to prices, to uncommon games that might not get enough coverage(spoilers, there aren't many!). Stephan is also talking about his recent undumped uWc Wrestling prototype pickup that received wide coverage and led to a bunch of new listeners. Welcome if this is your first or second episode!

We're talking with Deniz Kahn, the President of Wata Games, about certification, grading, and where the collector's market for video games may be headed. If you're not about encapsulating your games and think they're only meant to be played, we're still talking about Wata's educational efforts like their recent comprehensive NES black box guide, and tackling the classic issues like NWC vs Stadium...

Johnny, Tyler, and Stephan are here talking about some cool game variants you might not know about. Some are worth $100s and some are less than 10 bucks, you just have to be able to find them first. Variants are hot on the mind with the sticker seal Mario that just sold, so even though we recorded this show before that sale, we're on topic!