Quote Originally Posted by goatdan View Post
Here to toss in two cents real quick like...



You know though, these questions are what truly drives the value of this particular game. If the people behind Men-A-Vision suddenly come forward with the full story, suddenly the mystery behind this game disappears.

And so does the pricing of it.

Air Raid is worth huge money in no small part because of the story. It's a one-off cartridge that looks very unique, it is extremely uncommon even for rare games (hell, there are more known Gold NES Competition Carts out there) and the speculation about it's history and the rarity behind it *greatly* drive the value of the game.

The box is worth so much because it answers a couple questions, while creating many, many more. If the box had answered the question that there were tons of these made, or if the box had answered the question of exactly who ran the company, or anything like that -- it wouldn't have been worth so much. But for now, it's an extremely mysterious piece, and that really drives the interest in it.

Imagine if it turned out that the box was found, but the story was that Men-A-Vision created only 20 of them to give to stores as demos and not official releases, and then no stores picked them up? Suddenly, so many people that treat it as the rarest 2600 cart would look at it more like a prototype, and it's value would decline.

I would personally never collect this particular cart for the 2600 if I was big into collecting for the system. To me, the carts I would want are the Atari carts and the big companies -- Parker Bros, Activision, Coleco, Intellivision, Imagic. Manufacturers that made only one cartridge? Just seems odd to me, and with so few found, I have always believed these were demos sent to stores to get them to order games, and then the company folded well before they ever mass produced or shipped finished games.

I have *no* way of knowing that, but the box coming from a liquidator seems like it would work with that theory - a store gets the game, goes under, and when this Tuesday place comes in they get it in their bulk purchase.

But you know what -- the mystery remains, and I think it will for a long time with this cart, which will continue to drive interest in it and make it a worthy addition to any collector's collection, and a talking point for everyone like it is now.
But we know for a fact it's not a one-off (at least the cartridge with color label isn't since at least 12 are in the hands of collectors with possibly many more out there). I can't see how uncertainty necessarily drives the value of the item up. In my mind, it may actually be keeping it down. It keeps a lot of wealthy collectors from bidding because they don't know enough about it to make an educated determination of its value. I have heard more than one collector say that they expect a warehouse find of these to emerge or additional boxed copies to pop up. That may or may not happen, but it certainly keeps people from bidding.

It's not like the consensus in the collecting community is that the game is worth $31K. That's just something that a few wealthy collectors temporarily determined by their bidding war on Ebay. Nobody knows for sure what the next one will sell for or if this one will get anywhere close to $31K if the recent purchaser decides to sell someday. Who knows, if the full story comes out and there is only one boxed copy in existence, perhaps the value will be even higher. My point is just that for long-term valuation purposes, knowing the backstory and having some certainty about what we are dealing with is very, very important.