Why are Super Wild Cards still selling for $250 on eBay?

[Classicgamer]

Ok what am I missing? Why are people still buying and selling super Wild Cards for full RRP in 2019?

For those who don't know, these are the 3.5" floppy disc drives they sold for people to make "back-ups" of SNES games in the early 90's. They work like flash cards except with floppy discs instead of SD Cards. There were numerous models and brand names.

I personally owned a Super Magicom, a super DX Wildcard and a Double Game Doctor (which copied both SNES and Genesis games). I was the coolest nerd on the block as, unlike my friends who only had a small handful of carts, I had nearly every SNES and Genesis game ever made. But... that was in 1992.

Now, in 2019, you can buy flash cards for $50 that allow you to store the entire SNES library on a tiny SD card which can be accessed in seconds (instead of the minute it took to load a SNES game on 3.5" disc).

So... who is still buying these gaming obscurities and spending between $100 and $250? And why??? Surely these unofficial Chinese piracy boxes can't be considered collectors items? Can they?

[Gara]

It's not exactly a popular hobby but flash cart collecting is a thing. These old floppy disc drives are a fascinating look at what people had to go through to pirate a game. As far as I know there is no practical value. I don't think they have any kind of special dumping ability. They at least make for a great spectacle when you display them with your consoles. Rare + bizarre = valuable

Spoiler

Lots of old Chinese video game knock offs are worth money now. A good example are those third party colored replacement cases for PSX and Dreamcast. Those things were looked down upon when they were $20-$30. How they are now worth $80-$150 or more depending on the color is mind boggling. They have terrible build quality.

[spmbx]

Because anything thats teh rarez will be in demand and cost hundreds, it has nothing to do with practicality. That’s how people roll.

[Fudoh]

most expensive one of the old ones is the Magic Super Griffin for the PC Engine (by FFE, same company who did the Wild Card machines). Completely useless by today's standards, but it fetches around $1000, even more boxed.

[Classicgamer]

I guess people will collect anything these days. Still, I thought there was a line with things like Betamax video tapes and 3.5" floppy discs firmly on the other side.

At least things like a Dreamcast case still have a use. My wife would divorce me if I filled the house with useless junk like 3.5" floppy discs....

Ok... so why are the Wildcards selling for 2.5 times more than the Super Magicoms? I doubt they are any rarer and if they are not being purchased to use, the functionality is irrelavent. I should have kept my double game doctor. I bet that is the rarest of all now...

Seeing one on ebay did bring back memories though. Did any of you guys have one back in the day? Those things were surprisingly easy to use once the game was loaded it played like the cart in most cases.

[Classicgamer]

most expensive one of the old ones is the Magic Super Griffin for the PC Engine (by FFE, same company who did the Wild Card machines). Completely useless by today's standards, but it fetches around $1000, even more boxed.

I bet. I can't remember ever knowing someone who had one of those. Probably because I lived in Europe as a kid where there was no official PC Engine release.

There was also a Neo Geo model that now sells for over $1000. I can't even begin to imagine the horror of trying to load Art of Fighting 3 from floppy discs. It took nearly 3 minutes to load Street Fighter 2 on the SNES and it took 4 discs to hold that one game (or 5 for Super SF2). It would have taken a shoebox full of discs for each AES cart....

[Fudoh]

At least I've seen a few Griffins, but this one is REALLY rare - never seen one: the Adapter to use the Griffin on the SFC. Should actually exist, since the other one (MD Magic Drive on SFC) does.

[Classicgamer]

The double game doctor I had used removable cartridges. You just inserted the right one for the console you were using it with. It made it a bit of a pain in the ass to switch between SNES and Megadrive so I ended up only using it on the Megadrive and switching back to my Wild Card for SNES games.

The DGD had two cartridge slots on top (one for each console) as most of the earlier devices required an original cart to load disc games. That was really the only barrier to using the same device for multiple consoles. Inside they were generic flash memory and a floppy drive.

Come to think of it, my first Magicom used a seperate 3.5" drive connected by a parallel port cable. In theory you could have connected a PC instead of the floppy drive and run SNES games from the hard drive. I wasn't technically proficient enough for that when I was 11 though. It was the MS Dos days...

I bought my Jap Import 3.5" disc games from a Chinese guy known as "Ringo" who owned a store in the local market. He would download games using dial-up modems from "bulletins boards" which I believe were the equivalent of websites before the internet.

I paid 20 English pounds (all of my birthday money) for Ringo's hacked 3.5" version of SF2 on the SNES which allowed you to play as the bosses (years before Turbo came out). He also sold a Mortal Kombat blood version for the SNES. Good times.

[Classicgamer]

Correction, my SNES / Megadrive device was called the "Double Pro Fighter", not the "Double Game Doctor".

http://www.tototek.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... b31370ad3a

It's the bottom device in this pic.

Not sure how I got confused with the name. The Multi game doctor is a completely different device.

Check out this version with a Neo Geo AES adapter:

https://www.neostore.com/Multi-Game-Doc ... p/1489.htm

Are any worth more than that?

[Classicgamer]

Looks like there is still a use for them:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rxrRgifcEtA

Time to put on my orthopedic shoes so I can stand corrected...

If you can connect one to a PC to load games from the hard drive (reasonably quickly) then they are at least as useful as modern SD card based flash carts. In a way, it offers the advantages of PC emulators for people who prefer to use original hardware.

[gray117]

People buy antique pots, so why the hell not

I don't get it, but I love people are this passionate about even the obscure corners of the hobby. But yeah, never had one, and not feeling like I'm now missing out...

[Classicgamer]

People buy antique pots, so why the hell not

I don't get it, but I love people are this passionate about even the obscure corners of the hobby. But yeah, never had one, and not feeling like I'm now missing out...

I guess but I'm still not convinced of their intrinsic value or rarity as a collectable.

In my mind, if something is rare, it's hard to find. Rare stuff comes up for sale occasionally but there is no guarantee that one will be available at a given time. There is always dozens of these things on ebay.

Also, the market does not seem to have agreed that their value is way beyond their original RRP. While some ask $250 for a Wild Card, others seem happy to take $50.

The Wild Card was easily the most popular and common of the SNES drives in 1994 though and before that, the Magicom ruled for a while. I was far more than your average enthusiast back then and I have never even seen (or heard of) some of the ones Fudoh showed us. So... there are definately some rare models.

Either way, it is a niche of a niche of a niche at best.

I found one of the Double Pro Fighters I had on eBay and the seller is asking for over $500 (cost $250 new). I am curious to see if anyone buys it at that price.

[darcagn]

Lots of old Chinese video game knock offs are worth money now. A good example are those third party colored replacement cases for PSX and Dreamcast. Those things were looked down upon when they were $20-$30. How they are now worth $80-$150 or more depending on the color is mind boggling. They have terrible build quality.

I think that's exaggerating. I just got one of these knockoff clear blue cases for my girlfriend's Dreamcast for $100, if it weren't for clearly knockoff box and the missing logos I'd figure it was an official product. I've heard the plastic might be brittle at this age but so is the case for many vintage electronics.

If it weren't for the high price I would have picked up more of these shells.

[Classicgamer]

Lots of old Chinese video game knock offs are worth money now. A good example are those third party colored replacement cases for PSX and Dreamcast. Those things were looked down upon when they were $20-$30. How they are now worth $80-$150 or more depending on the color is mind boggling. They have terrible build quality.

I think that's exaggerating. I just got one of these knockoff clear blue cases for my girlfriend's Dreamcast for $100, if it weren't for clearly knockoff box and the missing logos I'd figure it was an official product. I've heard the plastic might be brittle at this age but so is the case for many vintage electronics.

If it weren't for the high price I would have picked up more of these shells.

Which bit are you saying is an exaggeration? Do you mean the part about "lots of Chinese knockoffs being worth money"?

I can think of a few examples but usually it's only stuff that is still useful and desirable like those CPS1 and CPS2 multi game PCBs that now fetch 10x the original rrp.

I can't think of many other examples of Chinese knockoffs of obsolete items that are still worth more than retail and espiecially not where better products exist and are still available new.