General

I set out to do this a few years back, I think I'm pretty much done on the big ones

I actually sold off a few big ones like Bucky CIB, DW3 and 4. It just seemed too ridiculously priced.

Thats a nice collection! Also, i see that chrono trigger 👀

Lunar wrote:

Generally in a similar boat. I've had pretty much everything at some point. Now I'm trying to keep it trim with really nice copies of my favorites only for older systems.

Could think of a few figures I want that are just basically impossible to even find for sale or the price is too far above msrp for me to do it. Working on a set of something right now. The yen being so down helps a lot.

I have a couple I listed in the toy thread, and probably a ton more I’m forgetting. Mostly toys I used to have in the 90s:

1. 1993 TMNT Giant Mutations Donatello
2. Mighty Max - Storms Dragon Island
3. Mighty Max - Trapped in Skull Mountain
4. Batman Returns - 12-16 inch Batman figure (not sure on height)
5. SWAT Kats - T-Bone and Razor

I’d also love the AEW authentic scale ring for figure display. Those are still fairly easy to track down but they’re like $150.

@theJaw We had both of those mighty max playsets as a kid. As far as I know we still have them, though lots of the little pieces have been lost to time or the vacuum cleaner.

What kind of condition are you looking for on those?

theJaw wrote:

Ooo yeah i use to have a giant figure of godzilla when i was a kid. No clue where it is now😔

Panzer Dragoon Saga, always was and always will be

bumsplikity wrote:

As long as they’re not super damaged, I’d at least be interested in taking a look for sure. Ideally I’d like any electronics to still function and for no pieces that would usually connect to the playsets themselves to be missing (like doors and whatnot, figures and the accessories are easy to lose/easier to replace).

But yah, if you end up digging them out at any point, I’d at least take a gander.

When I began collecting video games in the late nineties, my unattainable video game holy grail has always been a legit English release of Metal Slug (Neo Geo AES (home)). Later, when I started taking on real adult responsibilities like a mortgage, wife, and three kids, my unattainable video game holy grail grew to also include a legit English release of Metal Slug 2 (Neo Geo AES (home)). Thankfully, I bought legit English releases of Metal Slug X (Neo Geo AES (home)), Metal Slug 3 (Neo Geo AES (home)), Metal Slug 4 (Neo Geo AES (home)), and Metal Slug 5 (Neo Geo AES (home)) well before all that when I was still living at my parents' house without a care in the world. I paid the low-low price of between two hundred fifty and three hundred dollars apiece; otherwise, they'd easily be on that unattainable list as well. Retro video game prices are getting outta hand nowadays; there's no way I could afford over half of what I have if I hadn't bought 'em when I did.

As far as an attainable video game holy grail, I'd love to watch the market and catch a minty NTSC cartridge of Little Samson (Nintendo Entertainment System) for less than two grand. But, if not, it's all good. I still have enough bangers to light the night sky 'til New Year's Day.

I've had a few of the years but the last two, I've given up on:
1. Earthbound Complete
2. Panzer Dragoon Saga Complete
3. Lunar Silver Star Saga Variant 7/Blue-Dot case
4. Mega Man V GB Complete
5. Zelda GBA SP Complete

Of course, this doesn't factor in that I only consider something holy grails if I miss out on them at a reasonable price, like Shantae CIB and Chrono Trigger SNES CIB- got both when they were considered rare, but long before things went crazy.

I think a Hylian Shield Nintendo DS is at the top of my watch list. Prices got pretty insane there for a bit. It's by far the best looking Zelda system in my opinion.

Ninja Five 0
Car Battler Joe
Dead Space Ultra edition

I have none

Honestly the one thing that seems completely unobtainable for me now is a Mickey Mote, complete in box. (A DVD remote for children's educational DVDs.)

Yes, it counts, gosh darnit.

…I don’t think I have a holy grail anymore. I thought it was a Neo-Geo system and any of the King of Fighters carts, but I had the chance to buy both recently and I passed. I don’t remember the price of them but it was at my buddy’s store and if I was gonna pull the trigger it would’ve been then. I wanted one of those since I was a kid and I saw it staring me in the face and I declined.

If there’s a holy grail type item for me, I don’t know what it is. Definitely cool with that too. I don’t need more stuff, and I’m more concerned with paying debt down than I am accumulating more of it.

Mine was Xenosaga III on PS2. I found one at a price I was willing to pay (but still too high) sealed a couple of years ago. I still am a little bit chasing the idea of upgrading it to the version with the lenticular cover.

For me, it's the Video Jukebox. For some reason, I wanted this thing really bad when I first saw it advertised in a game magazine in the '90's. It was a device that was supposed to let you switch between six different games in a jiffy for only $49.99! Better yet, if you had $300 burning a hole in your pocket, you could link six of them together to have access to a whopping 36 carts, all plugged in at once! It was going to be released for the Genesis, SNES, and Jaguar, but never saw the light of day.

SwiftJAB wrote:
When you said prices got insane for a bit, I thought that meant that it went down. Just looked it up. Around 1000 for a brand new one.

nonamesleft wrote:

Yeah. I think the last time I looked, a good condition CIB used system was going for like $700. Now it looks like $500.

SwiftJAB wrote:
It's a nice looking DS to begin with. That it includes Link Between Worlds makes it even better. I remember when it came out. I don't think I even considered getting one because I was happy with my 3DS.

My first game I really sought out was Pulseman, which I bought back in 2006 for around $60 from an eBay seller in Singapore. It's much more expensive now, and it honestly makes me sad from time to time. I was happy to see it on the US Wii Virtual Console (and bought it there too). It's now on Switch Online.

Sparkster on SNES was my most recent, and I was able to make that a less painful purchase by trading in some Pokémon TCG singles.

For me, definitely DarXide for the 32X. All I want is a legit cart, but the only legit listing for a while was for a $9000 CIB, and even repro carts went for several hundred. It's definitely come down since then, but I still don't see this ever happening…

I hope everyone gets their holy grail and for cheap!

One of my grails: I bought PDS on this site for $400 plus ship back in 2019

subbed just in case anything I have is grail and I can help a bro/sis out!

I really don't have any anymore. I have owned just about every rare and expensive Dreamcast or Saturn game at various points.

Do I wish I kept some of them? Maybe. Sure can't imagine paying today's prices for some of them.
Would be cool to have now that I help furnish the gaming library at OMGCon, but honestly anything that fetches over $100 cart or disc only I'd be hard pressed to have it available unless we put the systems under lock and key.

7 events with our stuff being available and I think our only losses so far have been a DKC: Tropical Freeze Wii U disc and a single switch joycon (which may just be in a box in the storage unit since we had to pack up everything quick this year).

We still have quite a few bafflingly expensive items, but just owning expensive items doesn't give me a thrill. I would rather retro games be less expensive and thus easier to share and recommend.

Nothing beats running a game room and having a couple guys ask for our copy of Pen pen TriIcelon because they saw we had it and just HAD to try it out.

Or having a father ask if we have any OLD tekken games because the new ones are too complicated for him, and then seeing him and his son play together for a couple hours.

Or having someone say "I'm looking for ben?" and immediately jumping into an Urban Champion grudge match.

Sharing Games > Playing Games > Owning Games > Subscribing to Games

Maybe that's why we all spend so much time in the forums here. Because talking about games is kind of a way to share them.

benstylus wrote:
I can agree to that 100% i still have so many childhood games im missing cause i just can't afford them all at once. So i gotta slowly build up. Maybe prices will come down eventually...

The best advice may be to learn Japanese. Sure it takes effort but then you have tons of your hundred plus dollar RPGS for just a few bucks apiece.

Vectrex - I had used one briefly as a kid, always wanted one, never had the means... I forgot about it for years, but after college, I had a job and some money. I remembered the Vectrex and eBay existed by then (mid-90s), so I got one.

I got an extra controller and a multcart which was even legal because the games were released into the public domain. I brought it to work, I played Rip-Off with some coworkers. Good times. There was even a guy making new homebrew games for it and I got a couple of those too. Vectrex is a cool, unique system. It was satisfying and fun to play it all those years later.

A few years after that, I hadn't played it in a while. I've never been much of a collector. So, I traded it away to someone here. No regrets. I got my grail, drank from it deeply and gave it back.

fyreboltx wrote:

Variant 7 is the hardest one to find. The blue dot back art insert is stupid.

benstylus wrote:



I was wondering about that. It looked way too easy to just walk off with a controller or possibly a game. Glad to hear that your losses have been rather minimal.



I was originally going to say, "I'm looking for the so-called Urban Champion," but it felt a little too wierd saying that to a complete stranger. Now I regret that decision.

citizen_zane wrote:.

Oh they would have known. I had been hyping that match in the staff discord for weeks!

citizen_zane wrote:

Thankfully, there are very few people willing to risk being removed from a convention, being banned from future events, and possible prosecution just because they "MUST HAVE" a certain game when they can just enjoy it off and on for the better part of the weekend (especially if they visit us during the dance party). The average value of a given game in our collection is about $20; we also only bring carts and discs.

I imagine there may be cons with less honest attendees, but smaller midwest cons tend to attract a pretty good slate of people.

We do try to make stealing a not terribly attractive opportunity, too.

With staff and other attendees around, people tend not to want to risk it even if they thought about it.

Cart/disc only retro games don't fetch near the price of a complete copy, and as a bonus they are also way easier to transport to and from a con. So the games go but the extras stay home. That's also why you'll see Switch Online Pulseman instead of Mega Drive Pulseman.

We also use quite a few of the mini systems since they have a pretty good variety and dont require as much attention. And with as noisy as it gets people don't fuss too much about the sound delays. (Or slightly off sounds like the atgames genesis I like bringing).

Now if we could only figure out a good way to get people to try out more games they haven't played before...

... we pulled it off at a Library retro event we hosted with 8 game station setups by making achievement bingo cards for people. We also learned that running around and stamping bingo cards was a lot of work, and we jusy don't have enough staff to scale that up to our full con setup of 60+ stations.

Gotcha Force. I have no idea what happened to my copy growing up but I still have my save file on my gamecube memory card so maybe some day..

Was Valkyrie Profile when i started trading. Now I've got 3 solid copies on hand in the last year.

I had two: an original, US CD-ROM release of One Must Fall 2097, and this super rare release of the original Twisted Metal for Windows.

I picked up the former last year. I found the original manual and strategy guide on eBay, which I didn't even know existed, and the game appeared shortly after from a different seller. Insert mind manifestation theory here.

I'll likely never even see the Twisted Metal disc, though. It may not have even been for sale. One theory is that it was given out as a promo item at a music convention. The image itself is on the Internet Archive, though, so at least I was able to play it.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Um. I just found it on Yahoo Auctions Japan in this lot...

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f1107...

And there's two other items that might be of interest to people I know... I'll ping them and see if they want those other two games.

Foxhack wrote:

OH MY GOD

OH YOUR GOD

Good luck dude. Again, dibs on the Ultraman disc. ;)

Knocked Suikoden II complete off the list this weekend. stoked having my first copy on that.

I just purchased a North American Neo-Geo AES system with original box, papers, and baggies. Box is in very good condition. Everything else is like new. I would be the 2nd owner and the first owner said it was hardly used.

I really never thought I would have the North American system 100% complete in near mint condition in this day and age.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Well...

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I play a lot of games and open up a lot of superfluous eBay packages, but this was pretty damn exciting. Thanks @Foxhack

Renaissance2K wrote:

*horns*

Foxhack wrote:

This is just a great story! Good looking out @Foxhack and congratulations @Renaissance2K
Awesome stuff

I have two grails that have eluded me for years. They're in the PC realm. If you're a PC collector all I can say is good luck and I feel your pain! Wherein the console marketplace, while expensive, most items are still obtainable...in the old big box PC market, obscure games, boxes, manuals, just aren't! and it's not even to say that these items would be expensive...the audience is so small on some of these items and so scarce that you just won't find them...ever.

I'm looking for a copy of Arcomage, a stand alone game based on an in-game card game introduced in Might and Magic VII.
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The other item is just the box and manual for Heroes of Might and Magic II GOLD, the GOLD is key!
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