The Collector's Quest

In this show we're each talking about a few games that used to be worth a lot more money than they are now. This could be due to shifting interests, remakes, or new copies coming to market. We talk about Poop Slinger too but that's TOTALLY not related to the topic. Totally.

In this episode we're mostly continuing our last discussion and talking about the future of gaming collecting, changing attitudes towards what is important to collect, set collecting, speculation, the physical space needed to for collections full of bulk, modern games, art... The episode started out as the rising importance of pure demand vs. rarity in game prices, but we kind of go everywhere. If you like listening to us talk about this kind of thing, here's a whole lot more of it!

We're discussing the swings the game collecting hobby is taking. While cart prices are slowly cooling off this year, we've got record sales in the high end market, a new big auction house trying to capture that high end market, the specter of the Comic Book Man looming, black box mania, the death of physical media... And of course the cherry on top a new iam8bit multicart. It's a long one so if you need background noise, choose this one!

Tyler and Stephan are back with a bang talking about surely the hottest vintage console on the block, the Magnavox Odyssey 2: a console notable for having multiple loose SNES games that cost more than the entire CIB library! We're talking about why we've each collected it, some interested subsets within the library, rare games, all that, so join us!

Update: Friend of the show @VGCollectaholic clarified to us that there are 27 North American Phillips (NAP) publisher variants. After Philips absorbed Magnavox, around 1981/early 1982, the earlier games were republished with Philips branding. Each piece is specific to the NAP variant, even the catalog and they're generally much rarer than the Magnavox versions. Thanks buddy!

In this episode Johnny, Tyler, and Stephan are discussing a few games that share the same name but are entirely different games (and which one might the most collectible among them). We're doing a few big SNES vs. Genesis type deals, but also discussing arcade PCBs and Tiger LCD games as if anyone asked for that. Also don't forget to ask Johnny for an invite to the Pirates of Dark Water Rulzz club after listening to the episode.

On this game show-ish episode, Johnny is asking Tyler and Stephan opinion-based questions and he's going to judge which answer he likes more. We'll have to justify our opinions on CIB vs loose collecting and perhaps even NWC vs. Stadium Events. Johnny says it's like the show Around the Horn which I (Tyler) have never heard of, so you'll have to take his word on that one.

In this episode we're responding to listener submitted topics and questions. We asked for these a couple weeks ago via Instagram but feel free to send us questions and topics so we can do this again in future. We're talking about Stephan's new NWC, worst purchases we've ever made, the hardest system to collect, and other such things.

We're doing a whole episode on what counts as part of a "complete set" and how people go about making their lists. It goes far beyond just what's licensed or what's unlicensed, we're talking about how people count certain kinds of budget releases, but not others, how we handle box sets, multipacks, improved re-releases, republished games, all sorts of nitty gritty, and importantly we talk about why it might not be a good thing that the big vintage sets are so set in stone and immutable.

We're talking about collecting(mostly) US Sega Saturn games this week, from what's in the set, to rarities, to prices, to uncommon games that might not get enough coverage(spoilers, there aren't many!). Stephan is also talking about his recent undumped uWc Wrestling prototype pickup that received wide coverage and led to a bunch of new listeners. Welcome if this is your first or second episode!

We're talking with Deniz Kahn, the President of Wata Games, about certification, grading, and where the collector's market for video games may be headed. If you're not about encapsulating your games and think they're only meant to be played, we're still talking about Wata's educational efforts like their recent comprehensive NES black box guide, and tackling the classic issues like NWC vs Stadium Events. This episode is super long so I bet we also got an iam8bit Mega Man jab in there somewhere.

Also you can use coupon code "collectorsquest" for 10% off on a Wata submission. No, we don't get money from that, we just think it's cool. And we'll probably use it ourselves.