The Collector's Quest

By Johnny, Tyler, & Stephan

What's The Collector's Quest about?

Listen to the Collector's Quest Podcast! Your resource for topics on game collecting, information, news, sets, variants, etc. If you collect retro games, or any video games, give us a listen!

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LAST EPISODE

CQ 186 - Physical Games in ...

01.16.2022

What will game companies to try to sell us to put on shelves once console physical media truly dies? Download codes with tchotchkes, some weird NFT thing, nothing at all? We're also talking about how companies like Konami are fleecing ...

The Collector's Quest episodes:

01.16.2022 CQ 186 - Physical Games in the Upcoming Post-Physical Media World What will game companies to try to sell us to put on shelves once console physical media truly dies? Download codes with tchotchkes, some weird NFT thing, nothing at all? We're also talking about how companies like Konami are fleecing ...
01.03.2022 CQ 185 - 2021: The Craziest Year in Game Collecting We're looking back at the year where many games doubled in price... again, continuing trends from 2020, best, worst, and shameful buys, best and worst trends, and probably more because this show is very long.
12.14.2021 Nightmare On My Shelf Nightmare On My Shelf by Johnny, Tyler, & Stephan
12.12.2021 CQ 184 - Obscure Games That Came with Presents! For the holiday season, we're talking about a bunch of games that came with pack-in toys, books, and novelties, the collectibility of these types of games on N64, and if there's a modern day equivalent to game collecting knick knacker ...
12.03.2021 CQ 183 - Anything Interesting in that Wata Pop Report? As a Hanukkah gift to the people desperate for any scrap of info from Wata games, they dropped the report of at least what sealed NES games they've graded. We're going through it to find any surprises and talking about ...
11.26.2021 CQ 182 - Collecting 10/10 Games for $10 Each For this year's Black Friday blowout we're focused on some interesting, popular, and historic complete in box games you can get for ten whole bucks! If you're only focused on the trendiest games, the best stuff may seem unaffordable so ...
11.15.2021 CQ 181 - Are the "Holy Grails" Even Worth It? We're talking about what the GRAILS are. Do people still overuse the term. Is it worth even saving up for them? Why don't we have the discipline to get them?
10.31.2021 CQ 180 - Collecting the History of Survival Horror Happy Halloween! We're talking about collecting the history of survival horror from pre-Resident Evil obscure computer games, to the game that changed the genre forever in the 2000s, to RE1 itself!
10.18.2021 CQ 179 - Collecting 13 Halloween Games for 2021 Number 7 is so spooky you might pass out!! It's our annual Halloween game collecting episode, with some of our most obscure and interesting picks yet. Have you been waiting for the first episode where we talk about a Dragon ...
10.05.2021 CQ 178 - Documenting Compulsive Collectors with Director Edward Payson We're talking with director and Sega collector Edward Payson about his upcoming film Rarity: Retro Game Collecting in The Modern Era! We're also picking 3 games we'd keep if we had to start our collections over, talking some Atari porn ...
09.19.2021 CQ 177 - Games Based on the Best Cartoon Ever Made It's Batman day! We're talking games based on Batman: The Animated Series aka The Adventures of Batman and Robin. A bunch of games with a same name that are different games, some have unappreciated collectability, and a couple games with ...
09.06.2021 CQ 176 - Finding Value in What the Market Doesn't Value We're talking about collecting the cheap stuff. There are different collecting categories and different ways of thinking you can use to find interesting games to collect that aren't some NES black box hangtab that costs $100s now. Find your own ...
08.29.2021 CQ 175 - Talking Karl Jobst's SCAM ALERT (also are pop reports an answer?) We're mostly talking about the Karl Jobst video on market manipulation and alleged fraud in the graded games market. If you haven't watched that video, go Google him and watch that first.
08.16.2021 Episode 174 - So you want to collect Turbografx-16 3 hours of collecting Hu Cards, pumping Soldier Blade, and dunking on Disney's Talespin: CQ attempts to find collecting nuance in a console where most people struggle to put together a library of less than 100 games.
08.01.2021 Episode 173 - You've completed "The Set". What now? So you finished the NES set (or... the licensed US cart only NES set minus SE). What can you do now in the hobby? We're talking things you can buy to better your set or things you can do to ...
07.18.2021 Episode 172 - Who's Buying Million Dollar Mario 64s? As very requested, we're discussing recent insane auction prices for graded games, who might've bought them and with what motivation, and talk high end market trends and how it might affect the real world game collecting market.
07.18.2021 Update: CQ is going back to an explicit rating Hi friends, quick update that the show is going back to an explicit rating and not bleeping swears. Not that CQ had the most kid-friendly language even bleeped, but this does make editing easier, is in line with other popular ...
07.10.2021 Episode 171 - Collecting the History of Mario Games In this episode we're going over the important and earliest releases, appearances, and ports of Mario games mostly from the early 80s in a new very-Tyler series called "Collecting the History of". We're talking arcades to Game & Watch to ...
06.24.2021 Episode 170 - E3 and Summer Announcements for Game Collectors We're talking about recent announcements that might interest game collectors from new Limited Run Games to the internet's mildest drama of Super Rare Games Shorts to Nintendo Special Editions to... Intellivision Amico? Someone out there is looking for an Amico ...
06.14.2021 Episode 169 - Collecting Light Gun Games (and some you can't collect) We're talking light guns from 1970s Nintendo electronic toys and arcades to Justifier variants to the PS2 Guncon set. Maybe we go on a small tangent about a certain "perfect condition" Wata game as well. Stephan back next week!
05.29.2021 Episode 168 - Six RPGs that Might Be Worth Collecting Right Now Johnny and Tyler just want to talk about some RPGs. This isn't some top 6 list or in any order, just some RPGs that either have interesting price history to talk about or otherwise might be worth talking about because ...
05.18.2021 Episode 167 - The Market is Euphoric, Should You Sell Out? With prices of many things increasing weekly, should you sell out? Should you try to sell and buy back in after "the bubble bursts"? Is there even an overall bubble? Or is it time to trade newly expensive games for ...
05.09.2021 Episode 166 - How Many Collectible Video Games Beat Inflation? If you just bought every game for a console as it came out, how many of those games appreciated to be worth more today even after accounting for inflation? We're talking about this and what consoles have surprising metrics in ...
04.24.2021 Episode 165 - What happens if all our physical Playstation games become coasters? We're discussing the CMOS battery issue that affects PS4 (and PS5) where in the far flung future it's possible that Playstation consoles won't play physical media unless they're hacked. Will this affect collecting for Playstation? Additionally, the PS3 PSN shut ...
04.11.2021 Episode 164 - NES Games Based on R-rated Movies Tyler and Johnny are talking about collecting the set of 20-25 NES games that are somewhat inexplicably based on R-rated movies. The most adult stuff you'll see from a company that told congress Night Trap would never be on a ...
03.28.2021 Episode 163 - The CQ Cut: Collecting DC Comics Games In honor of Johnny and Stephan's favorite filmmaker Zack Snyder, we're talking some DC comics games, including first appearances, the mostly lack of them up until the late 80s, multiple games based on 1990 TV shows Tyler didn't know existed, ...
03.21.2021 Episode 162 - Collector's Questions #1 It's a mailbag episode with a slick new title! Is Super Volley Ball the Stadium Events of Sega Genesis? What are our game store pet peeves? Is it better to have a ton of loose carts or very few CIB? ...
03.07.2021 Episode 161 - Rare and Collectible Zelda Games The RAREST! For the 35th Zelda thing, Johnny and Tyler are talking about a few high dollar, low production, or just desirable Zelda releases from obscure PAL big box releases to impossibly rare club Nintendo limited editions to the widely ...
02.23.2021 Episode 160 - Early Video Game Pack-ins What's the earliest STUFF that ever came with a game? A little bonus that wasn't necessary to include, but they did? In this episode we're looking back at some of the earliest examples of video game pack-ins from the late ...
02.07.2021 Episode 159 - Collectible Video Games with Trading Cards While other collectible hobbies like sports or Pokemon cards are currently past the moon and leaving the solar system with cards selling for $100,000s, we're instead talking about some video games that came with trading cards that are selling for ...
01.25.2021 Episode 158 - What is the Most Expensive, Most Common Nintendo Game? After somewhat raising an eyebrow at more silly auction prices, Tyler and Johnny go through all the bestselling games for early Nintendo platforms and see what are the most expensive and cheapest among them. The ultimate goal is to find ...
01.16.2021 Episode 157 - NES vs. Famicom Prices The majority of Famicom games are cheaper than their NES counterparts, but there are some interesting exceptions from games where the Famicom version is the definitive version to games that were censored for their US release. Johnny and Tyler are ...
01.06.2021 Episode 156 - Game Collecting in 2020 and Looking Ahead to 2021 Its our year end/beginning episode where we're talking about what we did last year, what the best and worst trends of the year were, and what we think 2021 might bring for both us personally and the hobby in general. ...
12.21.2020 Episode 155 - Five Golden Things On the fifth day of Christmas we are giving to you five golden things: five-ish collectibles that are made of solid gold (or spray paint) like Zelda carts and NWC but hopefully less obvious than that. We even discuss what ...
12.16.2020 Episode 154 - Don't Collect Video Game Food... but if you do... It's a feast of fetid forty-year-old food on the first episode of the CQ holiday season! We're talking about actual food people might have in their collections. Literal decades old, expired sustenance that has ceased to be. Mario Pepsi, Gunstar ...
11.23.2020 Episode 153 - The $1000 Modern Game Draft It's a game draft episode, where we each get $1000 to build the best possible collection by picking games one at a time! This time we're going from PS2 through the Wii U and it's very different from the vintage ...
11.01.2020 Episode 152 - So You Want to Collect Castlevania Games For Halloween this year Johnny, Tyler, and Stephan are collecting Castlevania games, or at least the most interesting Castlevania games from the 80s and 90s. From Famicom disk barcodes to NES hangtabs to the classic rock of this turbulent market: ...
10.12.2020 Episode 151 - So You Want to Collect Halloween Games 3 (Thirteen Spooky & Obscure Collectible Game) Hey, it's one of our annual CQs where we're talking spooky collectibles! We're got the mega hits you expect like Alice: An Interactive Museum, but to make sure we don't lose Gen Z interest, we're also talking about games like ...
09.27.2020 Episode 150 - Talking about Video Game Condition In this show we're talking our preferences related to game condition, box condition, disc rot, all that kind of stuff. Is it worth deal with condition issues for a good deal? To check a box? On really expensive stuff?
09.13.2020 Episode 149 - Flush With Plush (and Fractional Share Investing) It's finally time... for flush with plush. An episode that mostly exists because it's a nice rhyme and we've been joking about it for years. We're talking about some variants and LEs that came with plushies! Also is talk about ...
08.24.2020 Episode 148 - The "Bubble", The Next Big Console, Johnny Complains about Grades, and More! It's a mailbag episode, we have all sorts of listener questions you submitted and it's another very long show. We need to cut these back down to 2 hours. Until then enjoy hearing us talk about all different topics of ...
07.26.2020 Episode 147 - So You Want to Collect for the Super Nintendo Whoa, it's longest Collector's Quest ever! Make sure you have 3 hours for this one as we're discussing some collectible aspects of the Super Nintendo. We cover important games, expensive games, obscure games, plenty of variants, and other interesting aspects ...
07.05.2020 Episode 146 - How Game Collectors Can Collect Information In this episode, we're discussing various video game collecting resources and communities from wikis to Youtube to forums to individual websites. Where do we find information about video games, how reliable we think each of these sources are, and even ...
06.15.2020 Episode 145 - The Best & Worst Feelings in Game Collecting Tyler finds the time to finally edit yet another show of the CQ podcast where we're talking about some of the best and worst feelings in game collecting. Like you know when you piece together an NES prototype ROM from ...
05.29.2020 Episode 144 - What's The Deal With Collecting Sets? We're talking about collecting sets, our favorite thing! What does it mean to collect sets, do sets as we define them make sense, does it still make sense to collect sets? What are we all wrong about? It is a ...
05.15.2020 Episode 143 - Everyone is at Home Buying More Video Games! The world seems like it should be on the verge of collapse, but game collectors are OK because everyone seems to be inside not just enjoying their collections, but adding to it. We're talking about how the quarantine has already ...
05.03.2020 Episode 142 - Organic Collectibility vs. Manufactured Collectibility We're jumping at another chance to discuss the Trough of No Value, whereby a once discarded object becomes a desirable, organic collectible! We're talking about the difference between a Little Samson and a Beanie Baby Limited Run Games release or ...
04.13.2020 Episode 141 - All Your Video Game Lists Are Bad Is your app, spreadsheet, or database's list of video games perfect? It isn't, because it's either referencing a crowdsourced database, lumps disparate data into a single category, or the true full set of information just isn't known yet. In this ...
03.31.2020 Side Quest 3 - Collecting and Finishing the PS1 Set In this side quest, Johnny talks about his experience collection for the Playstation and eventually finishing the whole North American set.
03.27.2020 Episode 140 - Coronavirus Impact on the Video Game Market As the economy jolts to one of the most sudden halts ever and unemployment temporarily soars, we're discussing the short and medium term impact of the global pandemic on the collectible games market. Should you sell all your games!? Obviously ...

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