Famicomblog

Last week I presented a list of sale prices from a massive auction that is taking place on Yahoo Auctions of CIB Famicom games. The seller is putting up over 1000 CIB Famicom games (which would be almost all of them, possibly all) at a rate of 300 per week. In the first sale, 88 of the games fetched prices over 5000 yen and I listed alll of those. The highlights were Recca Summer Carnival and Battle Formula, which both sold for a little over 100,000 yen each.

Yesterday round 2 of the auction finished and here I present the same thing - a list of the prices of all the games that went for over 5000 yen.

This week the results weren't as spectacular as last, in part because there were fewer big ticket items in this one. Only 57 games went for over 5000 yen, and most of those went for under 10000 yen. Not a single game went for over 50,000 yen in this week's group, but there were a few interesting highlights.

First off, the number one game was probably one you have never heard of - Karaoke Studio Top Hit 20 Vol. 2 - which went for 46,000 yen. That is a game made for the Karaoke Studio microphone accessory and is extremely hard to find CIB (or loose for that matter). One interesting aspect of that game landing at number 1 is that it is a game that is probably of no interest to people outside of Japan. One question people have been asking is the degree to which Famicom game prices are driven mainly by foreigners buying stuff up. A karaoke game like that, which is more or less unknown outside of Japan and of little interest (its all in Japanese) almost undoubtedly went to a Japanese collector, so the domestic market seems to be driving the prices too.

Number 2 on the list was the much more familiar Battletoads, which went for 30,000 yen (A few years ago I sold a CIB copy of that game for just 35,ドル albeit with a rougher box. I could kill my previous self for that act of stupidity).

There were a few games whose prices went for higher than I would have thought. Prisoner of War is a bit hard to find, but it surprised me to find it in the top 10 selling for more than Over Horizon.

A few games actually sold for prices which might be considered quite cheap. Barely making hte 5000 yen cut this week was Uchu Keibitai SDF at exactly 5,000 yen. That is a pretty popular and, while not rare, it isn't particularly easy to find. It must have slipped under the radar. 2010 Street Fighter and Abadox also went for lower than I thought they would.

Its also evident that new stuff was selling for a premium as most of the new games sold for prices higher, relative to the popularity/rarity of the game, than I would have thought.

The seller hasn't started round 3 yet but when he does, I'll post the results here.

Last night the two massive cardboard boxes pictured above arrived at my home. They were heavy, I had to lug them in one by one from the doorway after the deliveryman, who had used a push cart to get them to my place, dropped them off.

I left them in our spare room until this morning when I cut them open and out poured:

Obviously, Famicom carts.

These two boxes between them contained 440 Famicom carts, which is by far the most I have ever acquired at one time.

Why would I, a person who already has a gigantic mountain of Famicom carts, buy 440 more of them? This is where the ridiculous calculations of the serious (but woefully underfunded) collector come in. As it says in the blog description, I am actively trying to put together an entire set of Famicom carts. That is an expensive proposition since a few of the games are seriously rare and expensive to find.

Out of the 440 carts in these two box, 438 of them were ones that I already had. Of the remaining 2 that I needed, one was relatively easy to find on its own, but the other was one of the rarest and most expensive Famicom carts out there and basically it was the sole objective I had in mind when bidding on this lot.

Meet the newest addition to my Famicom collection. Yasuda Fire & Marine Safety Rally.
This game probably has a bit of an interesting story to it but I have to admit to having some trouble tracking down what exactly that is. It was not sold in stores but rather it was distributed by the Yasuda insurance company in 1989. It seems there were probably only a few hundred distributed. Beyond that, the Japanese language internet isn`t telling me much - particularly I am interested in finding out how it was distributed. Looks like something that might have been given out at a company event a la Pepsi Invaders for the Atari 2600 but I`m not sure.

Originally the game came with a plastic case and a map. Finding one complete, particularly with the map, is extremely difficult and there may only be a handful in existence. Loose copies like mine are a bit easier to come by but still command top dollar on their own - consensus seems to be in the 300ドル-500ドル range. Mandarake has a copy with the box, but no map, for 84,000 yen while Super Potato wants 170,640 Yen for a copy with both box and map.

So these prices were way more than I could possibly justify spending on one game. On 440 games though I could sort of justify dropping a somewhat sizeable load of cash, in the hope that by selling the 438 that I don`t need I could get back most of what I spent.

So I can cross one of the big ticket items off of my list of needed games. Oh and if anyone is in the market for Famicom games, uh (cough cough) , I`ll probably be updating my sales thread over on Famicom World with about 438 or so carts sometime soon.

I just picked the above Atari 2600 game up off of Yahoo Auctions. Gangster Alley is the name, shooting is the game. I am always on the prowl for Atari 2600 games to feed to my (admittedly difficult to use but nonetheless much beloved) Atari 2800 system.

This random Atari 2600 game though I think might be a really interesting discovery, a piece of video game history that I haven't been able to track any information down on the internet. It therefore intrigues me and I want to write a bit about it here.

First to rewind a bit. The Atari 2800 was Atari's disastrous attempt to introduce the 2600 to the Japanese market. They chose 1983 to do so, the same year the Famicom came out. You can guess who won that battle. So few Atari 2800s were sold that it is quite a rare console to find today.

The 2800's lifespan was so short that only 30 titles were officially released for it. These were all Atari 2600 carts that had Japan-specific boxes and manuals made for them, which are pretty cool and, like the console, very hard to find. Well, the loose carts are indistinguishable from 2600 carts, so really its just the boxes and manuals for the games that are rare.

This brings me to my new copy of Gangster Alley. Take a look at this list of Atari 2800 games. Note that Gangster Alley is not on it.

Now take a look at that box. Note that everything about it is the same as the Atari 2600 box for that game. Except the lower right hand corner, which has a label which says:

アタリ2800用
ビデオゲーム カートリジ

("Video Game Cartridge for use with the Atari 2800")

This seems to have been an Atari 2600 game that did not get a re-make for its box art but nonetheless was released in Japan for the 2800 with just a sticker applied to the box. I have looked around the internet, both English and Japanese (incidentally Japanese people almost never write or blog about the Atari 2800, it was that unpopular here) but haven't been able to come up with any information about this. It makes me wonder what other Atari 2600 games in addition to the standard 30 might have been released here.

Any Atari experts out there know anything about this?

As I mentioned in my last post, a seller on Yahoo Auctions has been putting up an amazing collection of CIB Famicom games with low starting bids. In fact he seems to be putting an almost complete set (over 1,000 games according to him and he has put up 600 different ones so far) - all CIB and all in nice condition.

Since an opportunity like this only comes once in a while, I thought this would provide a useful bit of information to record - just how much are all of these games, being auctioned at (almost) the same time in almost the same condition by the same guy going for?

While one sale isn`t enough information to form the basis for a price guide, at least this will give us a hint of what these games are roughly worth - virtually all the games got a fair amount of bidding so we know there weren`t any expensive ones going for unrealistically low prices, while at the same time the low starting bids meant no unrealistically high prices set by the seller (though of course that doesn`t mean everyone was bidding rationally).

The seller hasn`t quite been selling them all at once, in the first round he auctioned off 300 (and has a second round of 300 which will finish next week). The first round finished last night and these are the games which sold for over 5000 yen, which accounted for 88 out of the 300. I cut them off at 5000 yen partly to save myself some time and partly because the more expensive ones, having gotten the most bids and most attention from buyers, probably went for prices closer to their actual value.

I have listed these below, in order from most to least expensive. The values are in Yen and do not include shipping (which would have added 164 or 510 yen depending on the method of shipping chosen). To get a rough idea of the value in US ,ドル the exchange rate at the time of the auction was about 115 Yen to the Dollar.

All games are CIB and, while I didn`t closely look at all the pictures, the ones I did inspect were all in very good condition. Some of them were sold as new or never used, these are marked with `New` after the price.

There are a few interesting things. The most expensive game was Summer Carnival Recca at 104800 yen, almost one thousand dollars. Battle Formula, another rarity, was a close second and the only other one to breach the 100,000 Yen barrier. Taking third place was a game I had never heard of for the Datach called Battle Rush, which apparently is also quite hard to find CIB. Kung Fu (the scarce variant of Spartan X), Snow Bros and Lickle all got over 50,000, which isn`t surprising as they are all quite hard to find.

One game that did surprise me was #10, Double Dragon which sold for a whopping 36100 Yen. That is a great game but by no means is it rare (though CIB copies in nice shape are a bit hard to come by). It seems totally out of place wedged in between Adventure Island 4 and Moon Crystal, both of which are extremely hard to find. I have seen slightly worn copies selling at Mandarake for about 1/10th that price.

There are a few other super common games that made the list - Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo, Kakefu Kun and Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu seem completely out of place on a valuable game list but they were all new which might explain it (though I still think they went for too much). Mitsume ga Toru, a hard to find and very popular game, also seems out of place right next to Milon no Daibouken, which is a good game but extremely common.

There don`t seem to have been any steals among the games on this list (the ones that went under 5,000 yen were mostly unsurprising too). Kage and Taiku no Gen San seem a bit lower on the list than I think they deserve, but the prices paid for them aren`t much different from what they go for in shops.

I`ll update this again next week when round 2 of the sale finishes.

I was browsing through the Famicom listings on Yahoo Auctions yesterday when I noticed one seller, mad-masax, was without much fanfare putting up what looks like it may be one of the most impressive Famicom sales ever.

Currently he has 280 listings, each of them a different CIB Famicom game with a starting bid of 300 yen (about 3ドル). The selection he has so far is crazy, including some of the most sought after, hard to find titles out there - Battle Formula, Lickle, Moon Crystal, Gimmick, Recca, Snow Bros, Adventure Island 4, Kung Fu, Magical Doropie, etc etc. All CIB and all look like they are in (or near) top condition.

The thing that really teases me is that in the description he says he is planning to auction off a little over 1000 different games. Given that there are only 1051 (give or take) official Famicom carts out there, and also given the insane quantity of rarities he already has listed, this may mean that this seller is breaking up an entire, complete set of Famicom carts - all CIB! I should note that the seller doesn`t actually claim to be selling a complete set, but it looks like he might have one (or something very close to it).

A couple of years ago somebody did something similar on Ebay, where they received 1 million Euros for the whole collection (albeit that collection included some other consoles as well so it was quite a bit bigger and must go down as the most impressive Famicom sale ever). Other than that though, I`ve never seen a collection as impressive of this being sold off all at once. Definitely something worth watching if you are curious about what CIB Famicom rarities will go for, Battle Formula is currently the leader in the bidding at a little over 50,000 yen.

(note - the photo at the top of this post isn`t from the auction, but from my own meagre CIB collection! To see what he has, click on the link above, its way more impressive).