Heritage's Next Event Auction has started posting books ! 31 31

[comicnoir]

But nothing beats this ebay win this evening.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Chamber-of-Chills-19-Classic-Cover-Pre-Code-Horror-Harvey-Comic-1953-CGC-5-/312986483948?_trksid=p2385738.m4383.l44720.c10&nordt=true&rt=nc&orig_cvip=true

[lou_fine]

3 hours ago, Gotham Kid said:

6 hours ago, batman_fan said:

I will probably get slammed but from my observation Archie #1 has slowed a bit.

Yes. Considerably.

I woud tend to agree with this sentiment as the Archie cycle is long in the tooth and on the down side of the curve after an rather extended period of very agressive upward price movements.    

But probably not to the point of considerably.  

[tth2]

12 hours ago, Bronty said:

There was for all intents and purposes literally zero kept sealed with forethought.    What happened is that from time to time a store would close down.   Whatever unsold inventory there was is all there is for sealed stock today.    As a result, titles from specific periods sealed (such as that 100k Mario) are impossible because when that game came out, it was the hottest toy around and that version only existed that way for a few months.    We can date the time of release surprisingly accurately for the changes in identifying marks on the box over time.    Asking for the ones from the very beginning of the sale period sealed is a monumental ask because there was no unsold inventory in that period, and as I’ve just described only unsold stock remains.

So... more like file copies, but not really because that’s unsold stock at the publisher level.   This is unsold stock at the retail level. 

This would make it a lot less interesting to me as a collector, then.  This is not at all like comics purchased and stored unread by individuals such as Edgar Church who actually bought the comic and then miraculously survived the ravages of time.

This is more like Edgar's Electronics went out of business and a bunch of unliquidated inventory sat in a back room for years.  There's nothing miraculous, and there's no emotional element, about these games surviving in pristine sealed condition for all of these years (and it's really not that many years).  

Which is why in comic collecting, file copies aren't held in as high esteem as copies from a pedigree (all things being equal).   

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by tth2

[tth2]

11 hours ago, Bronty said:

As for counterfeiting, like everything, there are all kinds of tells.  I can explain more by pm if it interests you

Nah, I have no interest in collecting these games.  I was just curious.

[Bronty]

27 minutes ago, tth2 said:

Nah, I have no interest in collecting these games.  I was just curious.

And that’s why I didn’t want to get into it    I didn’t want to type four pages about something I doubted you cared about in the first place.   A thoughtful answer to your question would have taken a lot of time.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Bronty

[Bronty]

34 minutes ago, tth2 said:

This would make it a lot less interesting to me as a collector, then.  This is not at all like comics purchased and stored unread by individuals such as Edgar Church who actually bought the comic and then miraculously survived the ravages of time.

This is more like Edgar's Electronics went out of business and a bunch of unliquidated inventory sat in a back room for years.  There's nothing miraculous, and there's no emotional element, about these games surviving in pristine sealed condition for all of these years (and it's really not that many years).  

Which is why in comic collecting, file copies aren't held in as high esteem as copies from a pedigree (all things being equal).   

 

That’s exactly what it’s like, but who gives a shyt?   You are deeming it less interesting because you aren’t interested in the first place.   To someone who wants a pristine copy, your logic doesn’t hold up or matter but that’s fine, it’s not for everybody.

As for miraculous or not, that depends on the time frame .   With some of them it really is miraculous (like the example  I outlined above where some games sold out immediately and were immediately changed yet somehow a couple early versions survived.    To your point that 100k Mario came from one of the only collections that came from someone who was already an adult collector then.   That shouldn’t have happened - in 20 years I’ve only heard of three collections like that; exceedingly scarce - but it did). 
 

The ones that needed divine intervention as far as NES titles  were the early and late releases.   The stuff in the middle, there were enough “Edgars Electronics” That they are uncommon but more available.   There were almost 800 titles over a ten year span.    Each one has a different rarity dynamic, but the basic swaths are early, middle, late.   Complicating that is that some (and only some) of the early titles remained in print for a long time, but the specific version in hand can be dated based on changes to the box over time.   So the rarity profile of a sealed “middle” era version of an early release is similar to other “middle” titles whereas the “early” version of the Early title is much, much more scarce . 
 

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Bronty

[dem1138]

Given that this is the Heritage thread, I think this is the wrong place for this debate.  Could we move it somewhere else?  I have dabbled in graded games as well but have similar reservations as everyone else.  I think my overarching main concern is that it appears that the dealers are driving this market far more than the actual collectors.  Many major dealers seem to be getting involved/invested and are selling games but I hear little to no interest from actual collectors other than the cacophony of the same 5+ people on the Facebook Private Groups.  Comic books and other hobbies developed from enormous fandom that generated the market for dealers; here it appears that the dealers are generating the market for collectors who grew up (and still are) playing the games, but as a whole, don't care about the graded games at all.  I think a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines and think its a house of cards and given that most of the people promoting the market are the same people selling or have sold the games, reinforces these conclusions.

[lou_fine]

4 hours ago, tth2 said:

16 hours ago, Bronty said:

This is unsold stock at the retail level. 

This would make it a lot less interesting to me as a collector, then.  This is not at all like comics purchased and stored unread by individuals such as Edgar Church who actually bought the comic and then miraculously survived the ravages of time.

This is more like Edgar's Electronics went out of business and a bunch of unliquidated inventory sat in a back room for years.  There's nothing miraculous, and there's no emotional element, about these games surviving in pristine sealed condition for all of these years (and it's really not that many years).  

I would tend to agree with Tim's sentiment here after giving it some thought from a logical collector's point of view.  

To extend this same line of thinking a bit further, I would also see this Nintendo Play Station Super NES to be akin to the equivalent of an ashcan comic in our hobby place, since it is clearly nothing more than a prototype (mentioned several times in the auction description itself) and never meant for public sale.  

[lou_fine]

1 hour ago, dem1138 said:

Given that this is the Heritage thread, I think this is the wrong place for this debate.  Could we move it somewhere else?  I have dabbled in graded games as well but have similar reservations as everyone else.  I think my overarching main concern is that it appears that the dealers are driving this market far more than the actual collectors.  Many major dealers seem to be getting involved/invested and are selling games but I hear little to no interest from actual collectors other than the cacophony of the same 5+ people on the Facebook Private Groups. 

Not sure if this is the wrong place since it is a Heritage thread and Heritage are auctioning off these games in this current auction here.  

Maybe these dealers are just ahead of the curve relative to the collectors in terms of the gaming market here.  Reminds me a bit about the first time I went down to a SD Con at the turn of the 90's and saw all of the old long term comic collectors like Geppi, Hamilton, and the likes all sitting around flipping OA pages to each other when they were going for relative peanuts.  Clearly a time when collectors were still not really into them, but just take a look at the OA market nowadays.  

[dem1138]

38 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Not sure if this is the wrong place since it is a Heritage thread and Heritage are auctioning off these games in this current auction here.  

Maybe these dealers are just ahead of the curve relative to the collectors in terms of the gaming market here.  Reminds me a bit about the first time I went down to a SD Con at the turn of the 90's and saw all of the old long term comic collectors like Geppi, Hamilton, and the likes all sitting around flipping OA pages to each other when they were going for relative peanuts.  Clearly a time when collectors were still not really into them, but just take a look at the OA market nowadays.  

As someone who has been ingrained in the OA hobby (and its history) for the last 15 years, I would say that the video game market does not resemble the origins of the OA hobby/market at all.

[Bronty]

3 hours ago, dem1138 said:

Given that this is the Heritage thread, I think this is the wrong place for this debate.  Could we move it somewhere else?  I have dabbled in graded games as well but have similar reservations as everyone else.  I think my overarching main concern is that it appears that the dealers are driving this market far more than the actual collectors.  Many major dealers seem to be getting involved/invested and are selling games but I hear little to no interest from actual collectors other than the cacophony of the same 5+ people on the Facebook Private Groups.  Comic books and other hobbies developed from enormous fandom that generated the market for dealers; here it appears that the dealers are generating the market for collectors who grew up (and still are) playing the games, but as a whole, don't care about the graded games at all.  I think a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines and think its a house of cards and given that most of the people promoting the market are the same people selling or have sold the games, reinforces these conclusions.

Hey guys can we talk about something else ?    Followed by ‘let me tell you all about my opinion on it’ LOL   

Edited February 17, 2020 by Bronty

[batman_fan]

2 minutes ago, Bronty said:

Hey guys can we talk about something else ?    Followed by let me tell you all about my opinion on it LOL

Comic prices are still super low, people need to be doing some price discovery.

[Bronty]

44 minutes ago, dem1138 said:

As someone who has been ingrained in the OA hobby (and its history) for the last 15 years, I would say that the video game market does not resemble the origins of the OA hobby/market at all.

Art is art.   Commercially released goods are a different animal for sure.   I’ve included a pictorial guide

 

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Bronty

[Bronty]

1 minute ago, batman_fan said:

Comic prices are still super low, people need to be doing some price discovery.

Will this be the auction the peanuts collection grows, or the spidey cover collection grows?  🤔 good luck

[batman_fan]

Just now, Bronty said:

Will this be the auction the peanuts collection grows, or the spidey cover collection grows?  🤔 good luck

  hoping to go “Pea-nuts”

[lou_fine]

38 minutes ago, dem1138 said:

As someone who has been ingrained in the OA hobby (and its history) for the last 15 years, I would say that the video game market does not resemble the origins of the OA hobby/market at all.

I would tend to agree with you here and would certainly agree with Tim's point that the video game market does not appear to be built based upon the true collectors with long and deep roots in the hobby, as compared to both comics and OA which clearly does.  

They seem to be built based more upon developers and people that worked very closely within the video game industry itself, as opposed to the original buyers of these products.  Comic books and OA have certainly made a long and steady climb up the mountain of valuation over the decades with broad based collectors, while the video game market seems to have started at the top of the mountain with the fortunate few that were in the right place and as we all know, there's usually only one direction to go from way up there. 

[Bronty]

Just now, lou_fine said:

I would tend to agree with you here and would certainly agree with Tim's point that the video game market does not appear to be built based upon the true collectors with long and deep roots in the hobby, as compared to both comics and OA which clearly does.  

They seem to be built based more upon developers and people that worked very closely within the video game industry itself, as opposed to the original buyers of these products.  Comic books and OA have certainly made a long and steady climb up the mountain of valuation over the decades with broad based collectors, while the video game market seems to have started at the top of the mountain with the fortunate few that were in the right place and as we all know, there's usually only one direction to go from way up there. 

You can’t consider this prototype representative of the greater market.   It is not.   It is very much a one off, for better or worse. 
 

However, To suggest there are no long term collectors passionate about collecting is way off.    For this item I agree.   For everything else, no, that’s just not factual 

[szav]

6 minutes ago, Bronty said:

Art is art.   Commercially released goods are a different animal for sure.   I’ve included a pictorial guide

 

 

Forgive my naïveté ... is there actually a market for original art for video game boxes now?... even as a lifelong gamer I haven’t felled compelled to jump into collectible video games (the prices are too high for my comfort level)... but damn.  I would be all over OA for some early 80s And 90s PC games.

[Bronty]

11 minutes ago, szav said:

Forgive my naïveté ... is there actually a market for original art for video game boxes now?... even as a lifelong gamer I haven’t felled compelled to jump into collectible video games (the prices are too high for my comfort level)... but damn.  I would be all over OA for some early 80s And 90s PC games.

Sure.   Supply is the biggest issue; there's precious little.

Swing by the facebook groups.

This one's been around a year or two.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/502536466816380/

this one is brand new but has some data points on completed sales.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/759246584570374/

If you find the prices on games high though, you may not  find the prices on OA cheap.   At the very least you'll have fun checking out the groups.

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Bronty

[batman_fan]

5 minutes ago, Bronty said:

Sure.   Supply is the biggest issue; there's precious little.

Swing by the facebook groups.

This one's been around a year or two.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/502536466816380/

this one is brand new but has some data points on completed sales.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/759246584570374/

If you find the prices on games high though, you may not  find the prices on OA cheap.   At the very least you'll have fun checking out the groups.

 

Tech geeks love this sort of stuff.  Old cell phones are selling for big money, old consoles, even open games are in demand to be played.  I think it is just at the beginning stages myself with a lot of upside potential.  I dont collect the stuff myself but like watching what stuff goes for.