Recent NES black box sales

[Buyatari]

I don't know about that. My five year old nephew plays video games now, but everything he has ever played has been on an iPad and has never come on physical media. He also could care less about Mario since most of his TV watching involves stuff on various Disney channels and who knows if he will ever get a 3DS or WiiU. With mobile devices rapidly becoming equal in capabilities to dedicated portables, I suspect within one more generation Nintendo and other companies will simply be in the software business if they even exist at all. I also think the next generation of gamers is going to be far less into collecting physical "stuff" the same way current consumers have significantly cut back on buying new release DVDs and PC gamers have largely adopted digital downloading for new game purchases. I mean how many people collect CDs or records today? It's a lot less than five or ten years ago and considering most people are music fans of one sort or another, it would seem like the population of music collectors would be growing, but as a vinyl collector myself, I can tell you for certain that's not the case at all.

Sealed games are something that won't continue to appreciate long term simply because they decay over time. Have you ever seen old records or even toys with shrink wrap older than a few decades? They have a yellow or brown tinge and the paper and colors start to discolor. It's just not a permanent thing no matter how carefully you try to protect it. I myself am guilty of being a sealed collector, but I would never pay a premium for sealed stuff simply because I know it can't last over the long haul. People spending thousands for graded games are in for a sad reality 20 years from now when their plastic cases are filled with brown and sticky wrap and boxes that have begun to cave in. There's a reason libraries and museums which house software collections insist on removing the wrap. Plastic is very volatile because ultimately it's a petroleum product and it reacts with paper, glue, dyes, metal, etc...all of which are used in the printing and manufacturing processes for cartridge and disc based video games.

It doesn't matter what type of gaming he does. I would guess he plays more games than he reads comic books or flips baseball cards etc. It won't matter if consoles go by the way side. I feel that anyone interested in videogame history will be interested in the originals.

Speaking of losing out to digital media here is an article on a famous collectable Beatles record. I've linked the article below but here is the part I think you may find the most interesting.

So exactly how much are these butcher cover albums worth?: The 2007 (6th) edition of Price Guide For The Beatles American Records by Perry Cox and Frank Daniels gives us the following figures:

1) First state mono in near mint condition: $4000
2) First state mono promotional copy in near mint condition (w/Promotional Copy – Not For Sale stamp): $5000
3) First state stereo copy in near mint condition: $12,000
4) Second state (paste-over) mono copy in near mint condition: $800
5) Second state (paste-over) stereo copy in near mint condition: $1500
6) Third state (peeled) mono copy in near mint condition: $800
7) Third state (peeled) stereo copy in near mint condition: $1500

Of course, these figures are just guidelines, and to be honest, seem to me to be quite low in comparison with some recent sales I have seen. In the case of first and second state copies, if the albums are still sealed (i.e. unopened) in their original shrink wrap they can bring several times the price listed above.

http://www.thebeatlesrarity.com/2011...butcher-cover/


----edit-------

Here is a related article on a stash of 24 sealed butcher albums that were discovered. I am not a record collector but it seems that with this particular issue having it still sealed is a good thing not a bad thing.

Over the years there have been many great finds for Beatles record collectors, but probably the most significant was the discovery ten years ago of what ended up to be twenty-four original sealed first state Butcher cover albums.

It's hard to believe that it's been 8 years since the above information was written. It may be even harder to believe that during this time the value of premium butcher covers has more than tripled. The market value of the 24 Livingston butcher covers is now approaching an astonishing one million dollars!! Record prices of $85,000 for a stereo copy and $44,000 were set a couple of years ago. It looks like the sky is going to be the limit...

http://www.rarebeatles.com/album2/discog/livleter.htm

[Bojay1997]

It doesn't matter what type of gaming he does. I would guess he plays more games than he reads comic books or flips baseball cards etc. It won't matter if consoles go by the way side. I feel that anyone interested in videogame history will be interested in the originals.

Speaking of losing out to digital media here is an article on a famous collectable Beatles record. I've linked the article below but here is the part I think you may find the most interesting.



http://www.thebeatlesrarity.com/2011...butcher-cover/

But how many gamers really care about the history of games enough to go through the work of tracking down the original console and games? How willing are they going to be to do the work and spend the money to do so if the games are easily downloaded for low cost in near perfect versions? I'm sorry, but I know a lot of video game collectors nowadays who are open to buying digital copies because of money and more importantly space. Not everyone cares about physically inserting a cartridge or looking at a box or label.

My nephew actually watches more TV than anything else and he plays a lot of sports and builds legos and plays with lots of different action figures and other toys, just like a lot of kids. Video games are important and lots of kids play them, but it's not even close to the level it was when I was a kid when there was no such thing as hundreds of channels, DVDs, streaming media, the Internet and dozens of other things for even very young kids to do. Heck, most parents I know are steering their kids into other activities nowadays and frankly I know more parents that regularly play video games than their kids.

On the Beatles stuff, I'm not seeing the relevance. The Butcher Cover was not a mass produced item that was widely available. It's value is derived almost exclusively from its rarity and how out of character it seemed with the previous images of the band and what mainstream artists were putting on picture covers in that era. Similarly, the vast majority of even first pressing Beatles albums are not crazy valuable simply because so many were pressed and the music can still be purchased in a form identical to or in some cases better than it's original release format for a fraction of what it cost new. It doesn't change the fact that people aren't exactly flocking to the vinyl collecting hobby nor are masses of new Beatles collectors coming on the scene. I would also note that when I was collecting Beatles stuff and vinyl, the Butcher Cover was always in the thousands of dollars for a nice copy. It's not like these values suddenly exploded and they have certainly seen ups and downs in the past 20 years. I also have significant doubts that shrink wrap is going to last for decades, especially since most collectors don't have anything nearing a stable climate controlled environment in which to store their sealed items.

Like I said, I have no doubt that over time there will be some truly rare and valuable video games, but if you're considering this momentary spike in the value of a very small set of NES games mostly resulting from a handful of collectors with more money than sense to be the start of continuing growth in pricing, I am positive you are going to be very disappointed in a few years.

[Buyatari]

Actually, he watches more TV than anything else and he plays a lot of sports and builds legos and plays with lots of different action figures and other toys, just like a lot of kids. Video games are important and lots of kids play them, but it's not even close to the level it was when I was a kid when there was no such thing as hundreds of channels, DVDs, streaming media, the Internet and dozens of other things for even very young kids to do. Heck, most parents I know are steering their kids into other activities nowadays and frankly I know more parents that regularly play video games than their kids.

On the Beatles stuff, I'm not seeing the relevance. The Butcher Cover was not a mass produced item that was widely available. It's value is derived almost exclusively from its rarity and how out of character it seemed with the previous images of the band and what mainstream artists were putting on picture covers in that era. Similarly, the vast majority of even first pressing Beatles albums are not crazy valuable simply because so many were pressed and the music can still be purchased in a form identical to or in some cases better than it's original release format for a fraction of what it cost new. It doesn't change the fact that people aren't exactly flocking to the vinyl collecting hobby nor are masses of new Beatles collectors coming on the scene. I would also note that when I was collecting Beatles stuff and vinyl, the Butcher Cover was always in the thousands of dollars for a nice copy. It's not like these values suddenly exploded and they have certainly seen ups and downs in the past 20 years. I also have significant doubts that shrink wrap is going to last for decades, especially since most collectors don't have anything nearing a stable climate controlled environment in which to store their sealed items.

Like I said, I have no doubt that over time there will be some truly rare and valuable video games, but if you're considering this momentary spike in the value of a very small set of NES games mostly resulting from a handful of collectors with more money than sense to be the start of continuing growth in pricing, I am positive you are going to be very disappointed in a few years.

I'll be honest and tell you that I don't know this one five year old child. My stance on children and videogames still stands. Children spend more time playing them and parents spend more money buying them than they do any other hobby that I am aware of. The means may change if things go digital but gaming itself will not go away any time soon.

I know nothing of record collectors so when you posted that shrinkwrap was a bad thing for records I did a google search and found that article. In those articles and a few others I found after it was clear that having this particular album still sealed made that record much more valuable. The Beatles butcher album was recalled in 1966 and being about 20 years older than sealed NES games I thought it was relevant because you stated in 20 years all sealed games would be crap. So now we have something that is 20 years older than the selaed NES games we are talking about and it is much more valuable if it is still sealed.