Wednesday, December 31, 2014

We Are Tracking amiibo Prices

amiibo nintendo lot
Nintendo released amiibo in November 2014 and they have already become collector's items with some hard to find figures and even a couple extremely rare ones.

We've added all amiibo figures to our site so you can keep track of their value and see which are the most valuable.

amiibo are figures for different Nintendo characters. Each one can hook-up to the Wii U and the character can be used in games like Super Smash Bros Wii U, Hyrule Warriors, and Mario Kart 8.

Each figures retails for $12.99.

So far, 18 figures have been released with another 11 announced for release in February 2015.

Three of the figures - Marth, Villager, and Wii Fit Trainer - are quite hard to find with prices more than $50.

There are two very rare "mistake variants" that sell for $200+ each. Peach with no legs and Samus with two cannons. These are manufacturing mistakes and quite popular with collectors.


Initially we will be tracking these prices using automated methods on Amazon and manually on eBay. eBay prices will not be updated daily because it takes quite a bit of time to do it manually. If the amiibo page is popular enough we will take the additional steps needed to automate the eBay portion as well.

Nintendo World Championship Gold on eBay

1 of 26 Nintendo World Championship Gold cartridges is up for sale in an eBay Auction.

The last one sold for $29,000+ in March and this auction is up to $12,600 now.

See past sales for Nintendo World Championship Gold.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

5 Last-Minute Christmas Gifts to Buy any Video Game Collector

Christmas is tomorrow. It is literally tomorrow and I still have SO MANY gifts I have yet to buy. What am I to do? I know, procrastinate by putting together a Buzzfeed-esque list/article instead of getting my affairs in order! What could go wrong? Be sure to post any suggestions for last-minute gifts in the comments section.

1. Amiibo (ANY/ALL)

"Impulse Buy"
Out of ideas? Panicking? Does your hapless gift-recipient own Super Smash Bros.? Then put literally no thought into a gift and buy them an amiibo! Don't know what it does? Don't worry, I'll explain. It is basically a USB memory stick embedded in a tiny figurine. Placing the figurine on a Wii U gamepad let's you customize a computer-controlled character in the game that you can fight against, or watch fight, or even have them fight against other amiibo. That's right, digital cock-fighting! You literally cannot go wrong with buying your friend an amiibo. You don't even have to worry about buying your friend a duplicate of one they already have. Each amiibo is different based on the experience it gains fighting in-game. Buy them two! Buy them three!

Availability: 8/10 (Most stores have them but a few of the characters are harder to find than Atlantis)
Price: $12.99+tax
Thought put into purchasing: 4/10

2. Tamagotchi

This is an actual photo of me.
This might not make sense at first but let's think about it for a sec. You probably had one of these bad boys way back in the day, yeah, it was fun-ish but easily forgotten. Well, think back to when you had one of these. It was probably way back in the 90's before everyone developed their current "I-have-to-have-something-in-my-hands-at-all-times" complex thanks to smartphones. Giving this to one of your collector friends might seem like a gag gift at first but what you are actually putting in their hands is the gamer equivalent of heroin. Trust me, I made a huge mistake when I accepted one from a friend. I got so addicted to it, I had to throw it in a lake just to get it away from me. The perfect Christmas present for all ages, genders, and budgets.

Availability: 5/10 (Bigger toy stores will have them, usually in the "Girls" aisles)
Price: $10-20
Thought put into purchasing: 7/10

3. Gift Cards


This is literally just money but more limited in scope. Awesome.

Availability: 10/10
Price: Whatever you put on them
Thought put into purchasing: 0/10 (Seriously, just give them cash)

4. Game Boy Generations 1989-2003 by S★T★A★R

Game Boy Generations

This neat little book is an extensive photo guide to over a hundred different Game Boy classic, Light, Pocket, and Color special editions released between 1989 and 2003. The entire book includes tons of pictures and is written in English, Spanish, and Japanese. I have a copy and I love it. The bad news is that it ships from Europe and is expensive but this is the ultimate gift for the collector who has everything.

Availability: 1/10 (http://www.matranet.net/boutique/books/gb/gb.php)
Price: 28 [$35] (SPECIAL OFFER: 25 [$30] until December 31 2014)
Thought put into purchasing: 9/10

5. Any Shirt from The King of Games


Ever heard of The King of Games? The apparel company started with the Kyoto-based "EDIT MODE" design team creating a line of T-shirts called "The King of Games" in 2002 after Masaaki Enami convinced Nintendo to grant him a license to produce a line of high-quality, original, yet official, Nintendo shirts. Enami was given permission and the design group continues to produce new and WONDERFUL clothing. Currently, they haven't produced anything new since April. Are they going into hiatus? Are they going away? Who knows, most of their shirts are sold out and the few that remain are quite pricey. However, all collectors will appreciate the merchandise. The quality is boutique-grade and every single item is extremely limited, often no more than 200 are produced. Oh, and did I mention that they are all official, licensed Nintendo apparel? 

Availability: 2/10 (http://www.the-king-of-games.com/english/shop/index.php)
Price: ¥5,500 [$45]
Thought put into purchasing: 9/10

In the end, use your best judgement. You have 24 hours and you can always pull the, "it is in the mail" routine. Oh, and have a Merry Christmas.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Should you Buy Cubic Ninja and is it Worth Anything? No.

Recently, everyone in the 3DS and homebrew community have been freaking out over one game, Cubic Ninja. Never heard of it until recently? Yeah, me neither and I write articles on obscure video games for a living. So just what exactly is Cubic Ninja? It is a crappy, shovelware title first released in 2011 that has languished on bargain bin shelves ever since its initial release. The gameplay, graphics, controls, and sound were all very unappealing. Everything about this game was extremely subpar.


The game sold poorly and all the extra stock ended up in retail clearance limbo, being sold for as little as $5 new in some stores. This all changed on November, 17 2014. In a single night, the game became a sensation thanks to the release and publication of a programming exploit found in the game's level sharing feature. 

Student and hacker, Jordan "Smealum" Rabet developed NINJHAX, a neat little exploit that allows a Nintendo 3DS, 2DS, 3DS XL, New 3DS, or New 3DS XL console to run unsigned code. This means the console could now be used to run homebrew applications such as games, tools, and emulators. The exploit was incredibly easy to use, all you had was load a boot file onto the 3DS's SD card, and then use the level sharing feature of Cubic Ninja to scan a special QR code depending on your hardware's firmware. Scanning the QR code causes the homebrew program to download and run, and even saves the data from it to the game's save file.

This means you can finally play all of your favorite SNES, NES, and other ROM's on a 3DS. You could even mess around with all the Minecraft clones people have been making for the system. What is most interesting about the publication of this exploit is that Smealum waited until November to release all of this, when he had actually had the entire exploit working way back in July. Why wait? Well, he figured Nintendo would patch out the exploit as soon as possible so he waited until the latest iterations of the 3DS hardware were launched, the New 3DS and New 3DS XL, in Australia. He was right on the money about that.

Nintendo released the 3DS firmware update 9.3.0-21U on December 8, 2014 which (in their words) added:
  • A Shuffle Favorites feature has been added under Change Theme in HOME Menu Settings. Users can choose multiple themes and have their theme change when the system is left in Sleep Mode from the HOME Menu or turned on after being off
  • Available software updates can now be downloaded from the HOME Menu
  • Users can now capture screenshots with both the upper and lower screens included
  • Further improvements to overall system stability and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience
What they didn't list in their description of the update is that it also "fixed" the exploit. This was effectively a death knell for exploit but between November 17 and December 8, the price for Cubic Ninja skyrocketed. There was a run on the market and buyers, collectors, homebrewers, and the just-plain curious all got in on the action. Prices for the game went from single digits to as high as some copies selling for $500. Even GameStop got in on the fad, raising the price for a used copy to $39.99, despite the fact that their website still lists the price of a new copy of the game at only $19.99.

Needless to say, people lost their minds during this brief time and snatched up as many copies as they could, either to horde themselves or scalp on eBay (I personally restrained myself and only resold five copies). However, as general excitement died down and Nintendo patched the exploit, the price has plummeted back to the modest normal levels of about $10-20. You can still use the exploit as long as you don't update the firmware on the system to 9.3.0-21U or higher.

Despite all the notoriety and press about this little game, I foresee the price continuing to fall as the novelty wanes and more people move onto better ways of exploiting the 3DS hardware, especially as flash carts for the system are become more available. This game really isn't worth much anymore but it will surely have a long-standing niche somewhere deep inside the 3DS homebrew community. And for that, we thank you Cubic Ninja. You snuck into our lives just as quickly as you snuck out of it. You will be remembered.
The face of a market fad.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Change the Date Range on Index Charts


We display a chart of the average price for all vintage game consoles so collector's can see where the market is heading for a particular console.

We've updated these charts to let you edit the date range that is displayed.

By default the chart will display all data available.

You can drag the left and right dongles at the bottom to adjust the time frame.

This can be very helpful for seeing the most recent data, or seeing seasonal variations like the Wii chart below. Price increase every holiday season.


Play around with a few (NES, SNES, Wii, Sega CD) and give us your feedback below.

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