Something that I wonder about when I see the 'final' results like these NES cartridges sealed in a graded plastic box as a collectible.
Surely the market value of these will only hold up as long as they're within the normal lifespan of the people for whom the original NES is a nostalgia item?
For example: If you were born in 1978 and were 7 to 8 years old when your parents bought the original NES and brought it home with a small selection of games, that's probably a core memory for you. And probably exactly the same demographic now who will pay big money for these things.
But as this generation of people ages, do people who have no childhood memory of a NES (or SNES, or Genesis, etc) because they were born in 1999 consider these things to have any value? Will their value drop significantly when there's no longer a population of age-range-appropriate nostalgic collectors to buy them?
If these are being treated as some kind of "how many dollars per unit" valuable commodity to be traded/hoarded, is it the best possible solution to convert a collection of something like this into currency before the collectors age out of the market?
You get some inter generational nostalgia going on - I inherited my grandmothers NES which I have fond memories of playing any time I visited her.
I don’t play it as much as she did (I have modern games in my backlog to play as well) but I do occasionally buy more NES games to add to the collection.
Googling "psa graded 9.6 NES mario bros" turns up some absurd looking dollar values. I can totally see collecting old video game stuff as a hobby when we're talking about things that a teenager can get for free or nearly free. There's just a vast amount of consumer goods sloshing around North America and lots of peoples' aunts/uncles probably have a SEGA Genesis with some games in a cardboard box on a shelf in the basement.
Or for a few dollars/nominal cost. Sort of like the people who are buying and restoring 30-year old i386 gaming PCs for retro stuff, you can find the hardware for free if you talk to enough older people. Or find a way to intercept it before people literally huck it into a dumpster or take it to electronics recycling. Same for some people who luck into getting nice old 27 inch Sony Trinitron CRT TVs for free.
But when we're talking about thousands of dollars or more per unit for a sealed (so you can never actually open or play it without ruining its value and grading) game in a plastic box, that's a whole other ball game...
Define “high” here - I grew up collecting NES gear and games from the flea market as a teen (circa 2005) and it was perhaps $30 for a working NES console, most games were $5. Perhaps $10-20 for a Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. Few times a year some empty-nesters would hold a yard sale at the flea market and one could snatch up their grown children’s abandoned childhood games, negotiate $20 for the whole box.
Nowadays you go to the flea market it’s a full-time reseller charging e-Bay influenced prices on all products. There’s no deal to be had. Feels like a death of an era sadly.
My personal theory on that is that you bought all your stuff at a specific time (like 2005 or prior) before the population of original 1980s NES-game-owners became old enough, established in their careers and started having enough disposable income to buy back all their childhood favorites in a new collection, driving up the market price per piece.
For an anecdote in a different direction, my father bought a Ford model T a few years ago. Now, "classic" cars of the 60's and 70's are still very popular among those who lived through that time. Maybe your family had one or there was a particular car you wished you could have had. I don't think the model T works like that. Next year, all model T's will be 100 years old, so even if you are 95 today, when you started driving, the newest model T would have been a 20 year old car.
I've been with him to a couple of the local model T club meetings. The demographics are interesting. I was the youngest person there. My dad (late 60's) was the second youngest. But you have to remember that nobody alive, even the real geezers, has experienced a time when a Ford model T wasn't an old car. So by all means, it seems like this hobby should have died out decades ago, even as it continues to die out today. Very strange.
As it stands, it looks like a decent condition Model T can be bought these days for 10-20K, only a bit more than the inflation-adjusted original price. But, I don't really know what the collectors market was like at peak nostalgia.
Honestly, I don't think the average nostalgic Gen X-er is that interested in a sealed video game cartridge.
I think the "sealed, unopened, graded" flavor of collecting is always more of a niche thing, and the actual market potential of tapping into American Gen X video game nostalgia is more clear when you look at sales of the NES/SNES Mini plug and play consoles or the Nintendo Switch subscription for classic games.
Collecting is an absolute rabbit hole, and it's often intrinsically tied to the "lore" and history of the collection's theme/genre more so than a collector's personal feelings of nostalgia.
I don’t really have any doubt that these are ‘real’ - but the article author has, to me, a strange amount of confidence in video game ‘grading’, especially since he himself is an expert:
From what they could see, there was very little doubt that these games were real. Of course, the grading process would 100% confirm that, but at face value, this looked like the real deal.
confirming a game is real is one of the things psa is good at. the problem is a lot of graders act in suspicious ways when it comes to assigning scores at the high end.
you get a lot of reports about collectors sending a game in, getting a score thats obviously low for what they have and sending it again just to get what they originally expected. some of it might be human error but it could also be on purpose to make customers pay the fee twice.
there are also allegations of giving a high score like 9.6 or 9.8 to games that dont deserve it, like the record breaking mario bros cart a couple years back, to create artificial hype and get more volume at affiliated auction houses (i think karl jobst was the first one who reported on this).
and its basically confirmed that graders do "population management" where scores are based on the number and price of equal graded items on the market instead of just the quality. if high grades are too common prices go down, and if its too rare they get less trade volume and disappointed customers.
I'd love to hear about the game ROM. This post is just focusing on a new, slight variant of the packaging, as if the game is a collectible like a stamp or coin.
The physical quality of the cartridge itself: Some might have scratches or off-centered stickers for example.
While most of them would be pristine to a regular user, these small nitpicky details might matter to collectors and help differentiate between two of them.
I hate grading companies, they are a part of the retro industrial complex which made old consoles (ones that were manufactured in the millions, mind you!) and games so expensive. Old stuff should be sold at old stuff prices. Look at the New 3DS, it's approaching the launch price!
Should old stuff be cheaper because it's old, or should it be expensive because you can't get it anymore? I've seen many things turn into "vintage classic collectible" after being "cheap, outdated, old junk" for years. Old body style trucks, CRT Monitors, typewriters, Mosin-Nagant rifles.
Ultimately stuff is worth what people are willing to pay.
The proliferation of selling things online has probably driven up prices more than anything because it connects motivated buyers with sellers with low friction, and allows even a fairly unmotivated seller to do accurate market research.
If you want a good deal on something old, your best bet is thrift shops, garage sales, and FB marketplace.
I was expecting to read about a new variant of the game ROM itself. But, this just sounds like a new, slight variant of the packaging.
It almost feels more like stamp or coin collecting, than video game collecting as I understand it.
Something that I wonder about when I see the 'final' results like these NES cartridges sealed in a graded plastic box as a collectible.
Surely the market value of these will only hold up as long as they're within the normal lifespan of the people for whom the original NES is a nostalgia item?
For example: If you were born in 1978 and were 7 to 8 years old when your parents bought the original NES and brought it home with a small selection of games, that's probably a core memory for you. And probably exactly the same demographic now who will pay big money for these things.
But as this generation of people ages, do people who have no childhood memory of a NES (or SNES, or Genesis, etc) because they were born in 1999 consider these things to have any value? Will their value drop significantly when there's no longer a population of age-range-appropriate nostalgic collectors to buy them?
If these are being treated as some kind of "how many dollars per unit" valuable commodity to be traded/hoarded, is it the best possible solution to convert a collection of something like this into currency before the collectors age out of the market?
You get some inter generational nostalgia going on - I inherited my grandmothers NES which I have fond memories of playing any time I visited her.
I don’t play it as much as she did (I have modern games in my backlog to play as well) but I do occasionally buy more NES games to add to the collection.
My buddy's teenager has a collection of old systems, sort of does it as a hobby. I am not informed, but I guess they don't pay high for stuff.
Googling "psa graded 9.6 NES mario bros" turns up some absurd looking dollar values. I can totally see collecting old video game stuff as a hobby when we're talking about things that a teenager can get for free or nearly free. There's just a vast amount of consumer goods sloshing around North America and lots of peoples' aunts/uncles probably have a SEGA Genesis with some games in a cardboard box on a shelf in the basement.
Or for a few dollars/nominal cost. Sort of like the people who are buying and restoring 30-year old i386 gaming PCs for retro stuff, you can find the hardware for free if you talk to enough older people. Or find a way to intercept it before people literally huck it into a dumpster or take it to electronics recycling. Same for some people who luck into getting nice old 27 inch Sony Trinitron CRT TVs for free.
But when we're talking about thousands of dollars or more per unit for a sealed (so you can never actually open or play it without ruining its value and grading) game in a plastic box, that's a whole other ball game...
Define “high” here - I grew up collecting NES gear and games from the flea market as a teen (circa 2005) and it was perhaps $30 for a working NES console, most games were $5. Perhaps $10-20 for a Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. Few times a year some empty-nesters would hold a yard sale at the flea market and one could snatch up their grown children’s abandoned childhood games, negotiate $20 for the whole box.
Nowadays you go to the flea market it’s a full-time reseller charging e-Bay influenced prices on all products. There’s no deal to be had. Feels like a death of an era sadly.
My personal theory on that is that you bought all your stuff at a specific time (like 2005 or prior) before the population of original 1980s NES-game-owners became old enough, established in their careers and started having enough disposable income to buy back all their childhood favorites in a new collection, driving up the market price per piece.
For an anecdote in a different direction, my father bought a Ford model T a few years ago. Now, "classic" cars of the 60's and 70's are still very popular among those who lived through that time. Maybe your family had one or there was a particular car you wished you could have had. I don't think the model T works like that. Next year, all model T's will be 100 years old, so even if you are 95 today, when you started driving, the newest model T would have been a 20 year old car.
I've been with him to a couple of the local model T club meetings. The demographics are interesting. I was the youngest person there. My dad (late 60's) was the second youngest. But you have to remember that nobody alive, even the real geezers, has experienced a time when a Ford model T wasn't an old car. So by all means, it seems like this hobby should have died out decades ago, even as it continues to die out today. Very strange.
As it stands, it looks like a decent condition Model T can be bought these days for 10-20K, only a bit more than the inflation-adjusted original price. But, I don't really know what the collectors market was like at peak nostalgia.
I could see the NES being comparable to the Model T.
People are going to know what an NES or an “original Nintendo” is for decades, just like we all know what a Model T is.
Honestly, I don't think the average nostalgic Gen X-er is that interested in a sealed video game cartridge.
I think the "sealed, unopened, graded" flavor of collecting is always more of a niche thing, and the actual market potential of tapping into American Gen X video game nostalgia is more clear when you look at sales of the NES/SNES Mini plug and play consoles or the Nintendo Switch subscription for classic games.
Collecting is an absolute rabbit hole, and it's often intrinsically tied to the "lore" and history of the collection's theme/genre more so than a collector's personal feelings of nostalgia.
I don’t really have any doubt that these are ‘real’ - but the article author has, to me, a strange amount of confidence in video game ‘grading’, especially since he himself is an expert:
From what they could see, there was very little doubt that these games were real. Of course, the grading process would 100% confirm that, but at face value, this looked like the real deal.
confirming a game is real is one of the things psa is good at. the problem is a lot of graders act in suspicious ways when it comes to assigning scores at the high end.
you get a lot of reports about collectors sending a game in, getting a score thats obviously low for what they have and sending it again just to get what they originally expected. some of it might be human error but it could also be on purpose to make customers pay the fee twice.
there are also allegations of giving a high score like 9.6 or 9.8 to games that dont deserve it, like the record breaking mario bros cart a couple years back, to create artificial hype and get more volume at affiliated auction houses (i think karl jobst was the first one who reported on this).
and its basically confirmed that graders do "population management" where scores are based on the number and price of equal graded items on the market instead of just the quality. if high grades are too common prices go down, and if its too rare they get less trade volume and disappointed customers.
Do we know if the actual binary on the cartridge is the same ?
I'd love to hear about the game ROM. This post is just focusing on a new, slight variant of the packaging, as if the game is a collectible like a stamp or coin.
My first thought too. Someone dump the rom!
Talk about a barn find. According to ChatGPT, this box might be worth $1 million or more.
Good thing the owner talked to the author before putting them up for $15 each...
Is ChatGPT well known for its skills in appraising NES cartridges?
Why are some copies of the game "graded" higher than the others if they are all the same copy of the same game?
The physical quality of the cartridge itself: Some might have scratches or off-centered stickers for example.
While most of them would be pristine to a regular user, these small nitpicky details might matter to collectors and help differentiate between two of them.
Posted yesterday: "Unreleased Versions of Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt Discovered in Warehouse" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099113
I hate grading companies, they are a part of the retro industrial complex which made old consoles (ones that were manufactured in the millions, mind you!) and games so expensive. Old stuff should be sold at old stuff prices. Look at the New 3DS, it's approaching the launch price!
I have mixed feelings on this.
Should old stuff be cheaper because it's old, or should it be expensive because you can't get it anymore? I've seen many things turn into "vintage classic collectible" after being "cheap, outdated, old junk" for years. Old body style trucks, CRT Monitors, typewriters, Mosin-Nagant rifles.
Ultimately stuff is worth what people are willing to pay.
The proliferation of selling things online has probably driven up prices more than anything because it connects motivated buyers with sellers with low friction, and allows even a fairly unmotivated seller to do accurate market research.
If you want a good deal on something old, your best bet is thrift shops, garage sales, and FB marketplace.
Now that is a new variant I actually like to hear about. Thanks for the story behind it!
[dead]
TLDR: The new variant is that the word "repair" was changed to "service" in the user manual.