Do you have a fortune in rare video games in your garage?

[BobA]

Article from CNN about extraordinary expensive rare video game cartridges.

Link

[SavannahLion]

I could do without the brain dead commentary.

[Howard_Casto]

I never have understood why most of these games are rare. 

The neogeo ones in particular.  I mean I can play those two games in mame right now, so they aren't THAT rare.  Even if they are, as I said, I can play them in mame right now.  If I want to play them on a real that is equally easy.... I buy a cheaper, worthless cart and have new chips burnt onto it via the freely available mame roms. 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy odd-ball collectables as much as the next person and I'm willing to spend the extra money on them if I find them to be a ture work of art, but most of these games are either available in other forms or, lets be honest, just terrible games with horrible gameplay. 

Ewok adventure seems like the only valid candidate because by all accounts it is quite fun to play and it is legitimately rare.  But then again, I think you can get a rom of it as well. 

[SavannahLion]

Not to a collector. You can buy reproductions of Van Gogh for about $20-$50 a piece yet Starry Night still sits in a museum. Same thing here. These cartridges went through the hands of Atari/Nintendo/Neo Geo/whatever employees making the cartridges exemplars of bygone eras. To a gamer, MAME/MESS/whatever would suffice for playing the games, but a collector would want the actual cab.

The neogeo ones in particular.  I mean I can play those two games in mame right now, so they aren't THAT rare.  Even if they are, as I said, I can play them in mame right now.  If I want to play them on a real that is equally easy.... I buy a cheaper, worthless cart and have new chips burnt onto it via the freely available mame roms.

That's not the mentality of a collector, that's the mentality of a gamer.

I do think it's interesting that Neo Geo carts even made it onto the list. Dion Dakis would have you think that all collectors wanted 100% accurate game carts/boxes/manuals even though no other collecting field even remotely thinks like he does. Has his Neo Geo effacing empire finally collapsed and people are finally realizing what it means to be a collector?

[danny_galaga]

I never have understood why most of these games are rare. 

Because they didn't make many? It's not rocket science 

[northerngames]

I think I use to but my parents gave them away many years ago when I got a nintendo nes.

 I was a big time atari nut when I was little and I had 3-1/2 brown paper grocery bag's full to the rim of atari games, I had so many that I had 2-3 of the same in some case's.

 I am pretty sure I had atlantis II and I am pretty sure I had 1-3 air raid's I remeber wanting it becuase it sounded similair to river raid wich was one of my favorite's.

 I also remeber it was hard for anyone to find me something I did not already have I still nag them til this day and ask them why did you give away all my atarti stuff again.

it went to a kid that did not have much and the parents were alway's broke so my parents did it as a nce friendly thing but I really regret they did that becuase I would have never agreed to it lol.

 So in a way seeing that link makes me sick.

[SavannahLion]

it went to a kid that did not have much and the parents were alway's broke so my parents did it as a nce friendly thing but I really regret they did that becuase I would have never agreed to it lol.

When it comes to collectables. That's probably the number two reason why so many kids get pissed off at their parents. The number one is probably when that stuff was tossed out to the dump. My father always regretted the fact his mother threw out his shoebox of baseball cards. As it was, he says he took really good care of them, never putting them in his bicycle spokes or tossing them around like a lot of other kids did. He had amassed a nearly full shoebox until one day he came home. Discovered his mom cleaned his room and found his shoebox hidden under his bed. Tossed the whole damn thing out without a seconds thought.

Here's what rubbed me raw to this day, my father was born in 1921. That meant he was going to school from sometime around 1926 to 1939. Assuming he did his collecting in his tweens, do you even want to imagine what kind of baseball cards he had?

I try not to think about how that would've probably paid for my college ten times over.

[SavannahLion]

Before it comes up, this wasn't the kind of thing where he left that morning and came back that night to find mom tossed them in the trash. He went to a school where he got to come home about once a month.

[northerngames]

I mean I am glad they went to someone in need but they were mine and no way in hell would I have ever agreed to it with or without the rare one's