Faking Game Collections?

[Meteo Xavier]

A mild curiosity I've been having the last few months, but one I hadn't really seen anyone talk about.

Like, I'm sure, a lot of you, I'm subscribed to several general gaming pages on Facebook. Much of the content of these pages is devoted to one of many administrators posting a picture of their recent score at a flea market, yard sale, game store, etc. and they are some pretty good hauls. This guy today posted several pictures of his score including near-mint Dracula X, two Breath of Fire IVs, Suikoden III, IV, V, near-mint complete Lunar I and II plus plushie, Earthbound with strategy guide, NES-front loader, the Miracle piano full-in set, two near-mint Growlanser games, Castlevania Chronicles, Mega Man 64, Suikoden I, Suikoden II strategy guide... and the list just goes on and on. It really is a fucking king's ransom. You'd shit yourself if you saw all these together in one place!

And while this guy didn't say how much he spent on it, you've seen people post other scores like it with a final price that doesn't even realistically cover the cost of the most expensive title on the table.

So my question is... am I the only one thinking these are too good to be true? I frequent game stores all the time and I used to go yard sales and flea markets as well and I can tell you the chances of finding any of that stuff these days are quite small, even smaller still for $15 total or whatever. These days if you see an Earthbound cartridge, it's going to be for $150 (I saw one go for $240 at a CM Games in Maryville), and a young gamer of this era usually does not have the insane amount of money it takes to collect. A score like the one I described above would cost someone $800 through more conventional means.

I personally think it's someone getting out their already-established collections, taking pictures of them, and faking a story and price.

Granted, I live in East Tennessee where the gaming market is non-existent and a slim few people actually have a real collection of any kind. In that same market, I've found some incredulous deals back in my day. Valkyrie Profile for $10. Dragon Warriors III, IV and Earthbound for $100 total, $700 worth of Turbografx stuff with boxes and instructions and even old coupons for $40. $500 (current worth) of Dracula X SNES stuff for $19 total (that was back in the late 90s before it really took off), and my list goes on.

So I do believe some of these are real, but I also know they really don't happen as much as they used to. Hoarding and collecting is more prevalent now than it's ever been and everyone's wise to what games are worth and how desperate collectors are. You've seen Ebay, you know what I'm talking about.

The other possibility, and one that genuinely makes me ill as a gamer, was my wife's suggestion that because yard sales are generally made by middle-aged/older people (Moms, Grandmas, etc), these parents and grandparents are actually SELLING THEIR KIDS' COLLECTIONS without their permission... a huge presumable loss. That does answer the question of why people who would amass these collections in the first place would let them go for pennies, but it's a terrifying thought all the same.

...man, I really can't make a starting post without turning it into a book, can I? I just wondered if anyone else knew anything about this trend that's going on or was as skeptical as I am. Nothing serious here, just wondering on a slow weekend.

[Garrett Williamson]

gaming market is a bit larger here in the general Nashville areas.

some of these seem fake, others seem real. I think it all depends. I could easily go and buy a buttload of Genesis games and N64 games and SNES games and such at an indie game store and I think that depending on how many games I got, I could end up only paying like 50 or 60 bucks for a good 10 to 12 games or something.

[Melbu Frahma]

My wife and I yard and estate sale all the time (she really, really, REALLY enjoys it, and I occasionally find something cool), and I've never really had that kind of luck myself with gaming stuff. About the only thing I ever found was two years ago, when I came across a mint, in-box copy of Pokemon Silver, never opened.

It really comes down to the area you're in. Different regions of the same city will oftentimes feature different things, as do different regions of the same state, and pricing is often different too. Around us, for example, people love to get rid of glassware for 10-25 cents per glass, whereas sales ten minutes down the highway from us expect $5/glass for duplicate glasses. So I suspect that a lot of it's just luck on the part of the people who find that kind of stuff.

[Meteo Xavier]

Like I said, I believe some of them are true, but I don't believe many of them are. With how much prices for old games are skyrocketing versus how often people are scoring and hoarding these rare finds, I feel there's a major gap. Something ain't adding up there.

[Flexstyle]

My dad's mom sold his collection of first-edition comic books a long time ago (like 30-40 years ago). He's still miffed about it, lol. She sold 'em for pennies when they'd be worth hundreds now.