xorthen wrote:Comparing a preserved mummy to a piece of plastic and silicon chips. I wonder how long it would take for a SNES cart to deteriorate. I know CD's data doesn't have a long shelf life but I have never owned a CD that stopped working.
eh, professionally printed discs can last many decades if you treat them right.
Ed Oscuro wrote:
Despatche wrote:there is a proper way of enjoying something, but only for "manmade concepts"
Again, very Catholic. Who gets to decide? God? Shiggy "please don't draw pictures of mario and bowser kissing" Miyamoto? The Government of Experts?
whoever made the thing. the reason why manmade concepts have a proper way is because whoever created them had something in mind. never mind that the creator could be lying about the proper way, anything else is repurposing and not very "proper". this is no way religious and it certainly is in no way opinion.
Who was borrowing your account when they wrote this, then:
Squire Grooktook wrote:
Despatche wrote:
people are supposed to play games for challenge, that's what "game" means.
Not really. You can play a game for a sense of exploration, role playing, immersion, etc. There is no set in stone law that says games must or should be played for challenge, at least not one that applies to everyone.
No, "whoever made the thing" has absolutely no say in what I do with it. None, zilch, nada. And why should they?
Ed Oscuro wrote:The CD rot thing seems to be mostly a fable.
A silly urban legend about evaporating megaboots.
The weirdest thing happened to me once with a Firefly DVD. The audio stream suddenly stopped working and I was mystified how the heck sound could "fall off" a disc like that. It's not like I use property I spent my money on as an Everclear coaster or anything, geez.
The term "sealed game" is wrong. There are no "sealed games".
A game can be played. Sealed games can not. Therefore "sealed games" are not games. They have been stripped off their whole purpose, that is: being played. In addition to that you can't prove that there is actually a game in the cardbox because if you do it won't be sealed anymore. We should call them "sealed cardboxes of games with a high chance of the game actually being in the cardbox", shorter: "sealed cardboxes of games" or just "sealed cardboxes" because it's the only thing you can prove/see: that there is a cardbox being sealed.
Someone should think about it and find a more appropriate term maybe. For me personally only sealed cardboxes exist.
I think that people buy this shit because of two reasons: a) They are mentally underdeveloped and/or b) for speculation.
As for a) I think that there are people that want to have the "perfect copy" of a game that they love. It's a romantic concept of a beautiful virgin locked up in a tower that belongs all to you and that you could fuck everytime you wanted but you never do because she would not be a virgin anymore. It's a stupid mind game, a phantasy.
b) I get the speculation part. It is much like the stock market. Everyone trying to sell shit to anyone that is dumb enough to buy it. As long as noone questions the real value of the shit being sold the bubble grows.
kilauea wrote:I do feel for anyone expecting them to be investments though, as they will lose their cash in the long run. Nobody will give a toss in 20 years time that a game is sealed. If it can't be played (in the way say a rare and expensive northern soul record can today), then it will have no intrinsic value.
"Intrinsic value" has a meaning in certain philosophical debates. We're talking about an arbitrary assignment of value to things, based on supply and demand for items affected by entropy. Whatever the thing is doesn't matter - so long as there's a market for it. Years ago, even when I argued against buying into the Kizuna Encounter madness as investment vehicles, people could just point towards the speculators flipping a profit after a few years to rebut me. It's hard to argue with that. Thank goodness for the Neo Geo crew, always ready to burn (other people's) cash and make buying a game the dramatic event of your life!
It wasn't really a philosophical point. The value of the object is nearly nothing, its paper and plastic. Nobody knows if the thing actually performs its function or not or if it's even legit. The one I had in 2001 looked great, till I cracked open the seal and found a hi-score written in biro inside the manual! Sealing a game in plastic does not require the skills of a master forger
I've no doubt there are short terms gains to be had. If I had kept hold of some games I have passed on, I maybe would have made a few hundred pounds to a couple of grand today. But it's not really in the same league as art or other collectables in the long term. Media especially fares really badly when it cannot be enjoyed. Look at the really old piano rolls which aren't worth the paper they're punched into. Or 78rpm records or cylinder recordings. These are much older objects, made in smaller numbers, with a smaller market and often much greater cultural and historical significance. And yet bar the odd very rare exception, they are worth less than your games are today. And that's mostly because their content can (often ONLY) be enjoyed without owning the physical object or the means to play it - much like videogames and emulation / copying.
I'd also offer that a lot of the value in games currently is generated by content on the Internet. Which is great for now, but the Internet is piss poor at permanence. Is there going to be a groundswell of interest generated by online auctions, blog posts and articles about these games in 20 years? Is even the content of this forum going to be accessible to anyone in 10/20 years time? Maybe, but there a significant risk it will not. I really do hope more books are published to catalog these games.
I have been making some investments lately for my son's future. And when faced with making that decision for serious with fairly large sums - I couldn't in good conscious but a penny into games with the risk attached to them. However, I am not an expert (in very much!) and I am fairly risk averse. And I'd be as pleased as anyone to see an interest in these games in years to come and values reflecting that. As long as I don't have to pay that much to play them
ancestral-knowledge wrote:A game can be played. Sealed games can not. Therefore "sealed games" are not games.
I can get behind this kind of "an abstraction is not the thing" philosophy. It applies to a frightful number of things:
* Translations are impossible to render accurately. You can be semantically correct and boring, losing all nuance and subtlety (humor's always the first casualty) or you can convey the underlying essence but be technically inaccurate. Ex: What other language could capture both the meaning and obnoxiousness of the sentence: "I present to you this present in the present".
* Textual conversations on the internet. Without inflection and vital hand gestures (so vital even blind people use them) you really have no idea what the hell I'm saying here. Not that it'd help much. But everyone's gotta agree it's too easy to read things in the worst possible light.
* An arm removed from a body is not an arm. It's meat.
I recall there was a lot of interest early on in the mythical "H-seam." Personally I only could see the downside.
Sealed games for me have been - great, if I can get them for a good price (i.e., not really more than otherwise). I don't see myself making any business bets that require a game to be sealed, in part for the reason you mention, and in part due to my own skepticism (which is ramped up times a billion over @ the Neo Geo forums).
As to your point about whether games are in for some kind of crash - I don't see it. You need to postulate some kind of active force that decreases demand for old games. At the same time, the overall population of original games and systems is declining, and likely so does the population of games in the market - both add to pressure on demand. On the flip side, production of bootlegs seems to be constrained to things with easily available parts (like Neo Geo games, which require a shell which has been in production until recently, or otherwise can be made from cheap sacrificial carts; otherwise I think it's mostly off the shelf parts). I used to worry about that a bit; now I'm more hopeful that the right climate for retogaming sales might spur some companies to actually do real reissues of old games. Systems will fare even better in terms of being bootlegging-resistant, though they're also less likely to be reissued properly (i.e. with real ICs duplicating the functionality of the old, instead of nasty reimplementations that are kind of close but not really - or worse, emulation), and they're also some of the most vulnerable hardware out there. Reissues still probably wouldn't have any impact on the value of original games or systems, especially as we go further ahead in time. Things like the 'super late' Majesco reissue of the Game Gear end up still being desirable, because as it turns out what felt like a really late reissue of the system was just when that system's new market viability was lessened, and a lot more time has passed since.
@ BryanM / ancestral-knowledge:
So this is an abstraction that is easily mitigated by, umm, opening the game. Doesn't seem to have much value in it to me.
Also, the "an abstraction is not the thing" was precisely my point earlier on. The actual game is in part some kind of thing hovering off in the same place with Plato's solids. It requires physical instantiation to be played, of course, but the actual physical game is just a lump which also works for this purpose. But so could any other lump. There are so many ways of playing games available that fixating on the rare cases where a game is kept in a particular condition doesn't move me.
Btw, it's not just sealed games. If I don't want to use a game out of fear of marking up the shell or contacts then that is also lost. And don't we all introduce horrible market inefficiencies by holding onto games we don't play? Thank god for the ROMz - they allow us to stop worrying about setting up the perfect game lending society, and focus instead on this and that: It might be playing or it might be collecting / hoarding / whatever. The different aspects of the physical item really don't cramp your style.
Last edited by Ed Oscuro on Mon May 12, 2014 10:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
I'm feeling somewhat tempted to get a pro cellophane wrap on a rare game, stick a cd-r in there and a troll face piece of paper in there. Watch it show up in a few years to some guy who paid a fortune and watch him shit upon seeing it.
Nah, I would never do it. The thought just seemed amusing.
Currently Playing:Astebreed,Crimzon Clover, Valhellio
Savestate pointed directly at the "business reasons" dialogue, of course.
"Hey there little person with the big collecting ambitions. You shoulda bought the disc in my other auction. So what if it went for only $5 before shipping? That's money well earned."
Ed Oscuro wrote:I recall there was a lot of interest early on in the mythical "H-seam." Personally I only could see the downside.
Sealed games for me have been - great, if I can get them for a good price (i.e., not really more than otherwise). I don't see myself making any business bets that require a game to be sealed, in part for the reason you mention, and in part due to my own skepticism (which is ramped up times a billion over @ the Neo Geo forums).
As to your point about whether games are in for some kind of crash - I don't see it. You need to postulate some kind of active force that decreases demand for old games. At the same time, the overall population of original games and systems is declining, and likely so does the population of games in the market - both add to pressure on demand.
I don't think my post make it clear but I don't envisage a "crash" as such. But I think values will settle down over time rather than increase. The forces required are simple - lack of interest and lack of the ability to play them (consoles knackered, TV's not compatible etc).
It is possible that enough new players, not born when the games were released, could counter the attrition of older players who just stop playing or collecting. But I don't think it's very likely. And you have to take most of the profiteers and speculators out of the market who will have moved on to the next quick buck. And those that are only in it today because it gets media coverage ("Retro" publications and events). You get left with a small number of collectors so the games that exist go a bit further, even allowing for loss.
I don't think anyone is going to lose a lot of money, unless they are doing really stupid shit like that £5k dreamcast on ebay at the minute! But I don't see a profit in it either. And back on topic, in the long run the game being sealed is unlikely to have an effect on the value and in the short term should be eyed with at least some suspicion. You'd be better taking a video unsealing it, recording the contents, proving it works and then re-sealing it.
Ed Oscuro wrote:The CD rot thing seems to be mostly a fable.
unfortunately not, but in professionally pressed discs it's fairly uncommon. there are some cds from the early/mid 80's that have succumbed to bit-rot (also known as bronzing), but this has been traced to poor manufacturing by smaller print houses. the vast majority of discs from the 80's will still operate flawlessly assuming they have been taken care of properly, so we can assume the lifespan of cd media is greater than 30 years at this point.
Heh, the talk of CD rot reminds me of the laser-rot issue one had to contend with in the good old days of laserdiscs... but I digress.
I think in the case of certain eBay resellers, they have acquired the odd sealed title through people liquidating their personal collections. Certainly the sealed Battle Garegga on eBay at the moment comes from a reseller long established outside of eBay and known to buy as well as sell video game stock.
Does anyone here remember the UK Telegames store? 10 years ago or so they had tons on nos stock for lots of different systems, most of which ended up on eBay as I recall. I think, if anything, over the next few years nos games from the 1990's will become very hard to find and people will probably scrutinise claims of "original" factory sealed games. However, who knows what's out there stuck in warehouses or distribution centres around the world? There are always seems to be a good supply of nos CD's on Yahoo!Japan, perhaps some of these "rare" games are not really as rare as we think?
Overall though, I do not understand the mentality of collecting sealed games, it completely undermines the entire purpose of the product and how its maker intended it to be enjoyed. A sealed game is useless as you cannot play it! And I definitely do not understand why people are collecting pcb kits and never playing them... I'm sure there are better ways of tying up spare cash one has, and I sure as hell know they aren't pretty on the eye.
BIL wrote:Or a factory-pressed replica of the appropriate disc containing a self-booting NES emulator with complimentary Black Manta ROM!
God did I play that game too much in my callow youth. Last boss still remains one of the most lame ones ever - use four ninjutsu in a certain combination to win. As far as anti-climaxes go, I'd rather just hop on a goomba.
Which of course always brings up Mario games. Remember that hack that replaces the anti-climax bosses with guys like Romancing Saga bosses?
Tarma wrote:Does anyone here remember the UK Telegames store? 10 years ago or so they had tons on nos stock for lots of different systems, most of which ended up on eBay as I recall.
Yeah, it was all crap stuff I thought. I might have thrown away a folded black pamphlet from them with an ad for Soccer Kid on it. No idea what I bought from them.
Skykid wrote:
There are limits to how long these things survive. You're comparing globally released VHS tapes to Japanese only domestic releases with low print runs? Makes no sense.
No I was comparing them to sealed games in general.
You seem to be overly concerned (saw your other thread as well: Suicide Bullets: Anti Sealed Game Defence Force) and to draw a lot of conclusions about something you know almost nothing about. If you are so obsessed with sealed games maybe you should do some research so you know what you are talking about.
Suicide bullets thread bump was ill timed, and not by me.
I know everything I need to know about sealed games: they're pointless and idiotic.
I love how he implies that sealed games collecting is somehow a real hobby which must be taken seriously and that has "experts" who do "research"...
BIL wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 11:01 pm
Imagine a spilled cup of coffee totalling your dick and balls in one shot, sounds like the setup to a Death Wish sequel.
Ed Oscuro wrote:The CD rot thing seems to be mostly a fable.
unfortunately not, but in professionally pressed discs it's fairly uncommon. there are some cds from the early/mid 80's that have succumbed to bit-rot (also known as bronzing), but this has been traced to poor manufacturing by smaller print houses. the vast majority of discs from the 80's will still operate flawlessly assuming they have been taken care of properly, so we can assume the lifespan of cd media is greater than 30 years at this point.
One of my friends who grew up in Trinidad said this was a pretty common problem there actually. It happened to a few of his PS1 games, including his beloved copy of Brave Fencer Musashi.
So it's possible that it's more of a climate issue. Maybe tropical climates are hard on CDs
If I ever have too much money I will make a series of youtube videos opening several VGA graded items as a joint effort to make nerds cry and to see exactly what is put in these things.
I dont usually bother with these kinds of threads but I have one for the kid.
Annually there is a huge retrogames fair here in Sweden where I always sell my surplus collection stuff at, anyways this year (it was only 2 weeks ago) I had amongst other things a factory sealed super metroid with me, I'm not gonna lie, it was pricey. (not ridiculous VGA pricey but still, a bit over average what a CIB goes for)
Super metroid is always a sought after game so one guy comes up and says he wants it, can't find it anywhere else, he doesnt care about the price or collectability cause he's gonna open it and play it.
Before buying it he asks if I'm fine with him opening it, expecting a "no, it'll decrease in value!" answer and that I wont sell to him, but I'm under the delusion that once one owns something it is yours to do with as you please so ofcourse hes allowed to buy it.
Said and done the guy buys it, rips off the plastic, busts open the 10/10 carton and holds the cart up like the master sword, right then and there, must have been a dozen collectors around my table at the time with envyous jaws on the floor.
wish I'd have filmed that, was a great moment, mad props to the guy following his heart, I know he has many great hours ahead with the game.
the destruction of everything, is the beginning of something new. your whole world is on fire, and soon, you'll be too..
sven666 wrote:I dont usually bother with these kinds of threads but I have one for the kid.
Annually there is a huge retrogames fair here in Sweden where I always sell my surplus collection stuff at, anyways this year (it was only 2 weeks ago) I had amongst other things a factory sealed super metroid with me, I'm not gonna lie, it was pricey. (not ridiculous VGA pricey but still, a bit over average what a CIB goes for)
Super metroid is always a sought after game so one guy comes up and says he wants it, can't find it anywhere else, he doesnt care about the price or collectability cause he's gonna open it and play it.
Before buying it he asks if I'm fine with him opening it, expecting a "no, it'll decrease in value!" answer and that I wont sell to him, but I'm under the delusion that once one owns something it is yours to do with as you please so ofcourse hes allowed to buy it.
Said and done the guy buys it, rips off the plastic, busts open the 10/10 carton and holds the cart up like the master sword, right then and there, must have been a dozen collectors around my table at the time with envyous jaws on the floor.
wish I'd have filmed that, was a great moment, mad props to the guy following his heart, I know he has many great hours ahead with the game.
Great story. Especially reassuring after feeling sick because of Gaming Grannar episodes on Youtube.
Ed Oscuro wrote:No, "whoever made the thing" has absolutely no say in what I do with it. None, zilch, nada. And why should they?
because they made it? good job, you've thrown half the game out of the window just because.
the reason why people think that's not what games are about is because they don't actually want games, they want something else. the problem is that the term we have is "video games". how about come up with some new terms, since it's a problem on your end?
(that post only adds to what i'm trying to say, but ok)
sven666 wrote:I dont usually bother with these kinds of threads but I have one for the kid.
Annually there is a huge retrogames fair here in Sweden where I always sell my surplus collection stuff at, anyways this year (it was only 2 weeks ago) I had amongst other things a factory sealed super metroid with me, I'm not gonna lie, it was pricey. (not ridiculous VGA pricey but still, a bit over average what a CIB goes for)
Super metroid is always a sought after game so one guy comes up and says he wants it, can't find it anywhere else, he doesnt care about the price or collectability cause he's gonna open it and play it.
Before buying it he asks if I'm fine with him opening it, expecting a "no, it'll decrease in value!" answer and that I wont sell to him, but I'm under the delusion that once one owns something it is yours to do with as you please so ofcourse hes allowed to buy it.
Said and done the guy buys it, rips off the plastic, busts open the 10/10 carton and holds the cart up like the master sword, right then and there, must have been a dozen collectors around my table at the time with envyous jaws on the floor.
wish I'd have filmed that, was a great moment, mad props to the guy following his heart, I know he has many great hours ahead with the game.
Ha, cool story
I always have a smile on my face when I get hold of a nos game that collectors would covert (regardless of "value") which I then proceed to open and play... some of these guys would probably have a fit over some of the stuff I've cracked open, but hey, it's a game, it needs to be played and if you look after it, it can still be preserved!
Ed Oscuro wrote:Exceptional rebuttal, well worth the wait.
You know there's games that shouldn't be played the way the developers intended, too.
no, there really aren't
the few such games are either 1. broken and obviously not what the developer intended at all or 2. considered bad and noone plays them anyway
you don't know what "intent" is, you don't know what "experimentation" is, and you don't really know what "fun" is (for this and many other reasons) either
you don't have a case (you almost never do), and i don't know why i'm bothering with you
Astraea FGA Mk. I wrote:If I ever have too much money I will make a series of youtube videos opening several VGA graded items as a joint effort to make nerds cry and to see exactly what is put in these things.
We could crowd-fund that ourselves here. Of course, it'd have to be done anonymously so that we don't become targets of a shit-storm.
On a related note, when buying from third-party sellers on Amazon, I was twice sold a re-sealed used game with visible wear and tear underneath the shrink-wrap as new. In both cases I bought the game new because the used on was just a little bit cheaper, and I'd rather have it in a better condition.
I also once bought a game from one of the bigger videogame stores online, and what do I get: a f*cking resealed used game where I could see scratches on the plastic case underneath the wrapping.
Please note that in one case Amazon refunded me outright because the value of the game was too low, in the other case I had to settle with the seller. The one on Amazon at first tried to play dumb, how I would know it was resealed etc., so I sent them pictures, and then they tried to stall, so I told them they either refund/replace the item (funnily enough, they then were out of stock for that particular game, even though they were still listing them on Amazon), or I would report them to Amazon.
The case with the videogame store was similar. They told me they made a 'stock picking' error. Instead of taking a game from the stack with the new ones, they apparently took it from the "used and to be sold as new" stack. I got my money back, but it was a pain in the neck.
Since then I normally buy new directly from Amazon, or, if I don't care that much about the game, used off ebay.
Moral of the story: if some people are willing to scam you for 2 or 3 bucks, as in the three examples above, they are a hell of a lot more willing to scam you for a couple hundred.
Astraea FGA Mk. I wrote:If I ever have too much money I will make a series of youtube videos opening several VGA graded items as a joint effort to make nerds cry and to see exactly what is put in these things.
We could crowd-fund that ourselves here. Of course, it'd have to be done anonymously so that we don't become targets of a shit-storm.
(never sealed)
