Purchase: NES & SNES Manuals

So I just had a purchase arrive today and it made me think of this blog.  If I am going to write about collecting, I should show my purchases and give some information about them.  My first arrival since starting this blog is a bubble mailer full of manuals for NES and SNES games.  So let's delve a bit:

  First thing, a bubble mailer is a very nice way to send manuals and/or games.  This is particularly true of manuals, since a lot of people sending them think that it is a needless extra expense.  For a collector, at least a serious collector, protecting the parcel is half the battle.  No collector wants their package to arrive with something torn or damaged in some way.  While bubble mailers are good they are not always the perfect choice.  There is a shop on Ebay that sends me games in bubble mailers all the time, however quite often the envelope is too big for the games being sent.  What this means is, if the shop didn't take extra measures to protect the games (wrapping them individually in bubble wrap, which they didn't), and the envelope is too big, the games are rattling around inside the envelope in transit.  I have a picture of a game before it left the shop arrive on my doorstep in much worse condition.  But for manuals, the current items of discussion, it is an excellent choice.
 Second thing, keep track of your collection.  I had two trades with people in transit to myself at the same time.  Because of this, between the two trades, I have ended up with a couple of the manuals being repeats (i.e. I now have two Castlevania manuals, two Burgertime Manuals and two Tetris manuals.  I do keep track of my collection very closely now to avoid this kind of problem, but I also don't catalog items until they arrive and because of that I still run the risk of collecting more than one of a cheap item like manuals.
 Third thing, the more confidence you can have in what you are buying, and who you are buying from, the better.  I bought these manuals from someone I don't know.  However, I bought them from him based on his exemplary feedback on gametz.  If he had received bad reviews or had very little feedback I would have made sure he sent the items first (something you can't do on Ebay), but since I can trust him (based on other gametz community individual comments), I paid for them first before he sent.
  Needless to say I am very happy with this purchase.  The individual packed the items well, he was accurate with the description of the manuals and he didn't overcharge me for them.
  Some of you less devoted of the devotees might ask "Why on earth do you care about the manuals anyways?  You can't play the manual!"  That may be true, but the manuals & the boxes of the games have their own amazing features to them.  Since we are discussing manuals we'll stick to them for now.
 The transliteration from Japanese to English is incredibly funny in some of these manuals.  Here is an example from the manual for Spy Hunter:

YOUR MISSION

Pilot your vehicle through the track.  Seek and destroy enemy agents who will use every means to wipe     you out.  You must avoid the road hazards and protect the friendly pedestrian vehicles.  There's terror at every turn - tire slashers, torpedoes, bomb dropping helicopters - standing in your way of the most diabolical collection of enemy agents ever to hit a video screen.  You have your skill and reflexes along with Smoke screens, Oil slicks, and Heat seeking missiles to outmaneuver your opponents.  One mistake and it's all over.  So strap yourself in, no need to check your ammo.  You've got more than enough; and take the challenge.
Be: SPY HUNTERtm

This transliteration is not half bad actually, but I wanted to use an example from the manuals I just received.  Pilot your vehicle through the track? Friendly pedestrian vehicle?  And the capitalization on Smoke, Oil and Heat? I love little details like this.  These are the fun little tidbits in the manuals.

  Beyond that there are some games that having the manual becomes necessary for game play.  I mentioned this issue in my review of Destiny of an Emperor, where the 'magic' you use in that game, without the manual, there is no way to decipher what it does except trial and error.  From the bunch I just received there is an amazing amount of information in the Metroid manual that I would only be able to guess at by playing the game without it.

  Another important reason for collecting the manual, at least from a collector stand point, is that the manual (and/or the box) quite often mentions other items that would be included with the game when it first came out.  This is one method for collectors to determine what items make a game CIB.  CIB means one of two things; it means Cart, Instructions, Box for some, but the second interpretation is more apt for collectors, it means Complete in Box.  Most of the time, the game came with more, and sometimes much more, than just the game, the manual and the box.  Thus I say Cart, Instruction, Box doesn't cut it.  I'll give you some examples:

Both Orb 3D and 3D Worldrunner both came with 3D glasses included in the box.

Air Fortress, if purchased from the publisher HAL america, came with an Air Fortress T-Shirt.

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego came with a small encyclopedia in the original oversized box.

  These are just a few examples of extras that came with NES games back in the day.  While there are databases out there detailing everything that was included in the game, I like to find out through the info on the boxes and manuals the other items hidden for me to find.

  I`ll leave you devotees with that information for now.  Perhaps I have convinced a few collectors who never game the manuals a passing glance before to consider them as an important element to a collection.

   

A place for those truly, fantastically, over the toply insane NES collectors, part 2.

 Continued from part 1.

River City Ransom Rocks!

 Destiny of an Emperor was the first in a long line of NES games to come back to me.  Then I got a few games from my brother-in-law, not sure what they were.  Then I found a box of them at a garage sale, including games like Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular, Dusty Diamond's All Star Softball and River City Ransom.  There were 19 games in that box I know for a fact.  It was also with that box that I started doing some research into the value of the games.  I had already experienced through buying Destiny of an Emperor that these games were not the dollar bin items some expect them to be (and what keeps collectors like me looking at garage sales to this day).  I had to pay $22 U.S. to acquire Destiny of an Emperor, whereas River City Ransom, a game that is worth $15 and up, I maybe paid 50 cents for it. (I paid $25 that day at the garage sale for 19 games, an NES with 2 controllers and a Power Glove).
 After that first garage sale; and yes, it was the first garage sale I went to specifically looking for NES items and happened to find a box of them, I started searching diligently.  By this time the collection was a mere 30ish 'cart only.'  That first summer, after going to perhaps 100+ garage sales I ended up with around 80 games.
  The garage sales led to another discovery.  It wasn't just NES games that people wanted to be rid of, these garage sales were full of games for other systems as well.  From VIC-20 to Xbox 360, these garage sales brimmed over with games nobody wanted anymore, and yet I knew of an internet market in place for all of these games.  That doesn't mean that every video game is worth more than people sell them for at garage sales, not by a long shot.
  Here are some things to keep in mind:
  MOST sports games are worth nothing.  Unless the garage sale is giving them away, or its one of the few rare sports games, like Intellivision's World Series Baseball, don't waste your money.
  Rich neighborhoods have a higher amount of video games for sale BUT they want a higher amount of money.  In my experience it is the unusual rich person's garage sale that actually sells things for garage sale prices.
  Do your research first or have a mobile device with you at all times.  Knowing the values of NES games has informed me quite well on the values of other system games.  That being said my cell phone has also saved me from spending too much on games I assumed to be worth a decent amount of money.
  These are a few examples and I plan on doing an article focusing on this down the road.  But back to this piece.
 Garage sales were the catalyst for finding internet resources such as videogamepricecharts.com, or as it now goes by: http://blog.pricecharting.com.  I used (and still use) this site religiously for getting a basis of the values of these games.  However, while this site is useful, it also has flaws in the valuation of games and should thus only be used in tandem with other pricing sources.  Using this site, plus other sources sure to be mentioned on this blog down the road, I began to amass a giant amount of garage sale games...the intent was to 'flip' them and use the profit to acquire more NES games.
  For the most part I have come out ahead collection wise.  I have made large garage sale purchases that I have flipped for 10 times what I paid for them and quite often make single item purchases that have me come out ahead 20-50 times the price I paid for it.  Those are the good purchases.  I have also made a number of purchases where I lost money due to the game being worth less than what I paid for it, the game not working (disc games should be checked for scratches), or being for a system that there is little interest in anymore (anyone want to buy a TI-99? I have two.).  But as I said, overall I have come out ahead, perhaps doubling or tripling the money I have spent at garage sales over all (and put that money back into the collection).
  The winters are harsh here in Saskatchewan and thus the garage sale season is short, perhaps 5 or 6 months long.  At the beginning of winter 2010 I had a little over 1500 video games in my basement, most of them not for the NES.  This is where the selling on Ebay and the discovery of gametz came into play.  Selling on ebay I don't need to explain (or evilbay as I usually call it now), but gametz is a different can of worms.
  Gametz is an online trading site focused primarily on buying, trading and selling video games.  The site also is known to trade books, music and movies, but the focus is mostly gaming.  The site is entirely feedback based and thus those with low feedback have difficultly continuing to trade on the site, while those with good feedback establish strong reputations in the community.  Gametz is very much a community, full of a huge array of personalities that clash and clash and clash on the forums and chat therein.  For those just needing a place to trade however, gametz is a great site for those looking to offload games.  Some basic rules that will save you from ridicule on gametz: 1. Don't charge Ebay prices, there is no percentage coming off the top here so you can lower your price by 10-20% from Ebay prices and lose nothing.  2. Be honest about everything (particularly the condition of your games), it will help.  3. Avoid confrontations if you can: The forums are full of hostile young men looking for an internet fight, learn to avoid them because becoming one of them hurts your trading.  Check out gametz...and subscribe to it if you like it.
  This process repeated itself since then.  I have been on gametz for a year, using ebay and pricecharting for two years, and constantly researching NES and other systems in that whole time.  I learn something new almost everyday about NES games, whether it is label variants, NTSC vs PAL values, gameplay hints and cheats, video game history...all of this has led to this blog, where I intend to review as many NES games as I can, review game collecting books, discuss rare games, share personal video game related stories, explore NES related sites, etc etc.
Hope you join me on my quest to get the complete collection...and then on to SNES (lol).