Sealed Stadium Events Auction: No Reserve and Low Starting Price

There is another NTSC version of Family Fun Fitness Stadium Events up for sale but this time it has a low starting bid of $9.99 and no reserve.

Bidding is up to $15,000 as I write this article. Hopefully the high bidder actually pays for the auction this time. The last two sales in September and June 2011 were from the same seller with the same game, which leads me to think they didn't complete the previous transactions.

UPDATE: The auction ended with a closing price of $24,201.10

Sonic the Hedgehog Master System (US Version) Sells for Almost $1,000

What makes this version of Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega Master system worth almost $1,000? A sticker.

A Sonic game for Master System recently sold for $981.33. When other copies of Sonic regularly sell for $30-40. The games are identical except for a small UPC sticker on the back of the box, as seen below:

Usually a sticker on a game would lower the value, but Sonic the Hedgehog (Master System) is unique.

The Master System was much more successful in Europe than the USA. In the early 90's Sega released the Sega Genesis in the USA as the successor to the Sega Master System and very quickly cast aside any Master System support.

Sega published Sonic the Hedgehog in Europe because the Master System was still selling well there, but instead of producing the game for the USA they decided to import some of the European versions and put a UPC label on it so it could sell at retailers in the states.

The USA and the European Sonic games for Master System are literally the exact same game. The only difference is the small UPC sticker placed on the US version.

The game has become notorious with game collectors because the value is so different but the "rare" version can easily be faked with a UPC printer and labels.

Nintendo World Championships Sale History | Gold and Gray

Below is a sales history log for Nintendo World Championships Gray and Nintendo World Championships Gold cartridges. It includes the date of the sale, the price, the cartridge number, and other details of the transaction if they are known.

Nintendo World Championships Gray

Date: 2011 December 8th
Price: $11,500.00
Cart Number: 0060

Other Details: The cartridge was sold at the 2011 Child's Play Charity fundraiser.

 

Date: 2011 November 25th
Price: $11,900.00
Cart Number: 0306

Other Details: Private sale. Buyer purchased item directly from NWC competitor Jeff Falco. Purchase price includes game, signed semi-finalist hat, finalist t-shirt, and Nintendo Power with Jeff Falco's name in it.

 

Date: 2010 October 28th
Price: $11,999.99
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 320605562914.

 

Date: 2010 March 20th
Price: $3,999.00
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 220571733324. Cartridge cover was badly scratched.

 

Date: 2010 March 18th
Price: $7,000.00
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 120543472895.

 

Date: 2010 January 27th
Price: $6,500.00
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 270520620509

 

Date: 2009 October 17th
Price: $5,500.00
Cart Number: 260

Other Details: Private sale on NintendoAge.

 

Date: 2009 June 14th
Price: $5,172.54
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 270422656534.

 

Date: 2009 June 9th
Price: $5,000.00
Cart Number: 260

Other Details: Private sale. JJGames purchase for rare game giveaway promotion.

 

Date: 2009 May 30th
Price: $4,299.00
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 250371513258

 

Date: 2009 January 23rd
Price: $5,499.00
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 250341152152

 

Date: 2008 December 4th
Price: $4,260.00
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 140285142835

 

Date: 2008 September 7th
Price: $6,500.00
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 290258613319

 

Date: 2005 September 20th
Price: $6,100
Cart Number: ?

Other Details: Ebay Auction 8218061163

 

Date: 2005 September 21st
Price: $3,000
Cart Number: 280

Other Details: A sale on eBay for an NWC cartridge with a peeling label. You can read more details about the purchase at the buyer's website.

 

Nintendo World Championships Gold

Date: 2009 December 26th
Price: $18,000.00

Other Details: Sold in a private sale after the high bidder on an eBay charity auction didn't pay. Proceeds from sale were donated to World Vision.

 

Date: 2009 June 1st
Price: $17,500.00

Other Details: Purchased in a private transaction. The details are described in an article "How I Got Nintendo World Championships Gold".

 

Date: 2008 April
Price: $15,000.00

Other Details: Purchased by game collector James Baker. Some details about the purchase and other items in his collection are available in an Edge interview.

 

If you have any details about a Nintendo World Championship Gray or Gold sale not listed here please contact us with the details so we can add it to the list.

Nintendo NES Collecting Quiz

How much do you know about Nintendo NES games? Are you the biggest and brightest NES collector? Test you knowledge in our newest installment of the Video Game Collecting Quizzes.

Nintendo NES Quiz >>

Pricing Improvements

It's very important to us that our prices be accurate.  Thousands of visitors each day depend on the prices being correct.  They use the prices to keep their family business profitable or save a little cash on their favorite hobby.  Of course, we also eat our own dog food, so inaccurate prices annoy us as much as they annoy you.

One of the trickiest parts of running our site is trying to calculate accurate market prices for illiquid markets.  It's easy to price Call of Duty: Black Ops which sells more than 50 copies each day and has 200 listings between Half and Amazon.  It's quite a bit harder to price items like Cannibal Women in The Avocado Jungle of Death which only sells a couple times each month and has a couple dozen listings.  Many items have even less liquidity.

For the last two summers, we've added features allowing visitors to report bad auctions and incorrect prices.  We've analyzed this data and adjusted our pricing techniques to improve on the problems you discovered.

Removing Bad Sales

About 65% of inaccurate prices were caused by incorrectly listed eBay auctions.  Common examples are sellers who list Famicom games as if they were SNES games or list their collection of Xbox games as if it were a single game.  Of course, a brand new Chrono Trigger magnet is not the same as a sealed copy of the classic RPG itself.  Our pricing bots now recognize these kinds of problems and automatically remove 100-200 junk auctions each day.

You can still report bad auctions with the icon.  That helps us further refine our system and keep prices accurate.

More Price Signals

A quarter of our inaccurate prices came from placing too little emphasis on high quality auction sales.  We previously weighed all eBay sales the same.  Over the last couple years, we've noticed that fixed price sales on eBay are less accurate than hotly contested auctions.  With a high-bid auction, at least three people agreed on the final price (seller, buyer, second-place bidder) and possibly more.  We now give more weight to healthy auction sales.

Ridiculous listing prices caused about 10% of the inaccurate prices.  Just because someone lists his favorite copy of Shaq Fu for $100 on Amazon doesn't mean it's actually worth that much.  For thinly traded games, this is a real problem.  By analyzing listing price variations over time, we can determine which prices are reasonable and which are wishful sellers fishing for easy money.  In our analysis of thinly traded games, where this new signal is used, prices improved 66% of the time and only rarely got worse.

Conclusion

We continue to improve our pricing algorithms, as we've done in the past, to make sure we provide the most accurate movie and game prices possible.  If you have any suggestions for further enhancements or questions about these changes, please let us know in the comments below.

Complete NTSC Nintendo Collection Up For Sale

A member of PriceCharting.com's community posted about their auction for a complete NTSC NES collection on the forums.

The auction is on eBay and is selling for $2,100 with four days to go.

Check out this video made for the listing and a picture of the collection:

Test Your Video Game Collecting Knowledge: Super Nintendo

Every Friday on the forum we are having a video game collecting quiz to test your collecting IQ for a particular console.

On Friday I will post a set of questions for a console. You respond with your answers. The next Friday I will post the answers and give every response a grade.

The first console quiz is: Super Nintendo

Answer the questions on the forum today and see how well you know your SNES collecting.

Nintendo 3DS Now Outpacing its Predecessor

From the date of its release back in March, the Nintendo 3DS has had great expectations and for the most part, has struggled to live up to its hype. As the month of December drags on closer to the second wave of winter holidays, Nintendo can take solace in the fact that the 3DS is finally experienced a consistent boost in revenue, even setting Black Friday sales records and outpacing its predecessor, the Nintendo DS.

A combination of major holiday gift interest, along with a slew of big name Nintendo 3DS games set for release in December are just some of the driving forces behind the resurgence of the console. The eight month sales for the 3DS have now overtaken the first year sales for the DS back in 2005. The 3DS had overtaken the 2.37 million sales mark for units by the end of November thanks to a strong effort in the last two weeks of the month, including Black Friday.

One of the major game titles for the Nintendo 3DS, Super Mario 3D Land was released on November 13 to heavy sales. The title has quickly become the fastest selling Mario release of all time, already experiencing over 500,000 purchases. For whole console sales in November, Nintendo saw a 325 percent increase in sales increase for the 3DS over the numbers from October.

This increase over October purchases are telling, especially when you consider that Nintendo had begun to steadily pick up 3DS sales this fall. Over 250,000 units of the handheld console were moved in October to make it the highest selling system of the month and second overall in sales for the year behind Xbox 360.

In addition to the success of the 3DS, Nintendo experienced heavy sales for the Nintendo Wii during the Black Friday rush. Wii had its largest holiday numbers yet by selling over 500,000 units on Friday, November 25 alone.

One interesting figure in a sales comparison between the 3DS and the DS is the fact that the DS enjoyed great success after a slow first year on the market to become the highest selling console of all time. Nintendo is expecting similar results for the 3DS. With major game titles such as Mario Kart 7 and Sonic Generations likely to draw in big numbers, a big start for the second year of availability is a clear objective.

Guest Author: This article was written by Justin Taylor.

Fan Made PriceCharting App Available on Android

In the mobile app discussion thread on our forum a user of the site told us they created their own mobile version of PriceCharting.com for Android phones.

You can read more about it on Josh's website. The app is the same info as the main site, but formatted for a cell phone.

I'm really impressed with the app. Very easy to use and formatted well. Great work Josh and thanks for your fanmade app. We are flattered that you chose use our site for your own app development.

If you have an Android phone be sure to download the app and give Josh your feedback.

Android App Screenshots

Xenoblade Will Be Rare & Collectible Game

This past week it was announced that Xenoblade, the Japanese RPG for the Wii, will be released in the USA. It will be coming out April 2nd, 2012 and will be a GameStop exclusive. I'm predicting the game will become a future collector's item and probably be near the top of the Wii expensive titles list.

Below are the reasons why:

1. Xenoblade is an RPG

All else being equal Role Playing Games hold their value better then any other genre. RPG's also have the best chance of increasing in price during the first year of release.

2. Xenoblade is Releasing at the end of the Wii's Life Cycle

Rare games are five times more likely to release during the last 2 years of the console's life than any other time.

The Wii's successor, the Wii U, will be releasing in 2012 and Nintendo has already slowed support for the Wii. Until Xenoblade was announced there wasn't a single high profile Nintendo game on the Wii release schedule for 2012. The Wii is definitely at the end of its life-cycle.

3. Xenoblade Has a Very Loyal Following in the US Already

Fans of the game organized a website (Operation Rainfall), email campaign, letter writing campaign, and Amazon pre-order campaign to get Nintendo America to release the game in the USA. The pre-order campaign was so successful the game was #1 on Amazon's best seller list for several weeks even though the game was never announced.

The loyal fans will purchase the game and probably avoid selling it which will keep resale prices high.

4. Xenoblade Will Have a Small Print Run

Nintendo held off on releasing the game for the longest time because they didn't think it would be profitable for them. Even though the game has a loyal following, it is only being sold at one nation wide retailer and it is a niche genre. Nintendo will be very conservative with their production of Xenoblade to make sure they don't lose money on it.

If the first print run sells really well Xenoblade might have second printings like Nintendo did with Super Mario Allstars Wii, but the game will never sell millions of copies.

Xenoblade Will Be More Rare & Expensive

All of these factors lead me to believe Xenoblade will keep its value very well over time and most likely end up on the list of most expensive and rare Wii games.

That doesn't mean you should buy the game as an investment by any means. Resale prices might still end up below retail price, but there is a much better chance Xenoblade will be worth more than other Wii games in a few years time.

To tide you over until the game does release, here is the European trailer:

What Do you Want in a PriceCharting Mobile App?

We are in the very early stages of developing a mobile app for different smart phones like iPhone and Android. We would like your feedback on what features you would like to see included in the app.

Please visit our forum topic about the mobile app and let us know what you want:
http://forum.pricecharting.com/discussion/11/mobile-app

When we roll it out we will probably need some beta testers too so let us know on the forum if you would like to beta test as well.

PriceCharting Forum Launches Today

We launched our forum today!

The video game forum is a place for gamers to talk about game collecting, buy/sell/trade games, discuss recent news, and exchange tips on great video game deals. There is also a section for movie collectors and discussion on any unrelated topic too.

Anyone can read the forum but you need to have a free PriceCharting account in order to comment or send messages. Create an account today if you haven't already.

Check out the forum today and let us know what the most prized game is in your collection.
forum.pricecharting.com

You can access the forum from any page on the site under the "All Categories" link in the menu.

OccupyMW3 - 1% of Games Have 56% of the Sales

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launches tonight at midnight and it is expected to break sales records. One analyst is predicting over $1 billion in sales in the first six weeks.

Occupy Wall Street is protesting that 1% of people are too wealthy and have too much power compared to the 99%. Studies show the wealthiest 1% of Americans own 42% of the wealth in the USA. Wealthy American's have nothing on video games!

The top 1% of video games represent 56% of the total sales!

People should be protesting the injustices of sales inequality in video games. Won't somebody think of the other 99% of games.

Methodology: The 56% is based the dollar value of games sold on eBay during the last 30 days.

539 PAL SNES Games Auction - Every PAL Game Ever Made

A huge lot of 539 PAL Super Nintendo games is listed on ebay right now - every single PAL SNES game ever released. There are quite a few rare games included like Terrinagma and Whirlo.

200 of the games include the original boxes and instructions. And the lot includes some promotional posters to top it all off.

This is definitely a great lot for any Australian or European collectors out there who want a complete PAL collection or any other collectors who want to finish an international collection.

The listing price is about $31,000 US Dollars, which is a bit high, but is generally just the starting offer in listings like this. I'm sure they would be willing to accept a reasonable lower offer.

Some pictures of the lot below (Click to see more pictures):

Seasonal Video Game Prices - Games are Cheapest in November

Video games are a seasonal product. There are some purchases throughout the year, but demand increases a lot during Christmas. The time of year with the lowest prices - November.

Seasonal Video Game Price Chart

Below is a chart showing the prices from 2007 to 2011. The prices every January are indexed to start at 1 to show the seasonal trends.

Click to See Larger Chart

In three out of four years the lowest price of the year was November. 2010 was the only exception with the lowest prices during September.

On average prices decrease 25-30% from January to the low point for the year. Then during December prices jump 10-15%. If you are a game collector don't buy games during December or you will be paying a premium.

2011 is noteworthy in the chart above because prices have only decreased 15% so far for the year instead of the usual 25-30%. (See the section below for reasons why)

Five Years of Video Game Prices

Below is a chart showing the past five years of data on a continual basis instead of stacked to show seasonality.

Click to See Larger Chart

The seasonal spikes during Christmas can easily be seen but in general video game prices are decreasing.

Older consoles like NES, Atari, and SNES do not follow this same general trend. Their prices are increasing or holding steady in general as seen in the images below. I believe this is the cause for the smaller price decreases during 2011.

The newer the games are the more pronounced the decline. This can easily be seen by comparing Playstation 1, 2, and 3.

The curve down is much steeper with Playstation 3 than it is with Playstation 1, which means the prices are decreasing faster for PS3 than they are for PS1.

Methodology: Every licensed, commercially released, NTSC game is included in the prices shown. New releases are excluded during the calendar year they were released to remove upward bias when new games come out. You can read more about the price indexes for each console here.

Iron Man Steelbook Collector's Edition Is Very Expensive

The regular Iron Man on Blu-ray sells for about $12-13. A sealed Steelboook version is selling for $995 right now on ebay.

This is the first sale for the Steelbook version that I have ever seen so it will be interesting to see where it ends up.

The movie was an exclusive release at Future Shop, a Canadian electronics retailer, and is the Canadian version. Because the movie was only released in Canada a USA version does not exist.

12 Combo DVDs That Should Never Be Released

Combo DVDs with two or more related movie in a package are really popular with movie studios. Putting two or three second rate movies on one DVD and selling it for $10 each is an easy way for them to make a few bucks (See a few examples).

Below is a list of 12 combo DVDs that should never be made no matter how desperate the studios are for cash.

Thin: The Movie/Man vs Food

Thin is a documentary about eating disorders. Man vs Food is a guy who takes on food challenges all over the country. Both share a couple scenes involving vomit that are strikingly similar.

Sound of Music/American Pie

A movie about teenagers trying to have sex for the first time and a movie about a singing nun. The main characters are all virgins - is that enough of a similarity to warrant a combo?

The Hangover/Schindler's List

I'm not going to explain this one. It is just wrong!

Beach Party/Beaches

Both movies are about friends and have some memorable songs, but the similarities stop there. None of the teens in Beach Party has a care in the world, while the friends in Beaches deal with one tragedy after another.

Fight Club/Breakfast Club

Two very different clubs and two very different movies. I wish Joy Luck Club's first rule was "Don't talk about Joy Luck Club".

Citizen Cane/Gigli

The greatest movie ever and the worst movie ever together at last. Gigli should never have been released as a standalone DVD let alone a combo.

Capitalism: A Love Story/Atlus Shrugged

Michael Moore's anti-capitalist documentary about the failures of a market economy paired with Ayn Rand's magnum opus about the beauty of the markets and individuals. Michael Moore is strikingly similar to some of the antagonists in Atlus Shrugged.

Paranormal Activity/Bambi

Quite a few kids cry in Bambi when **SPOILERS** Bambi's dad dies but the scene with Bambi trying to walk soon helps kids forget. Paranormal Activity will give kids sleeping disorders and huge psychiatric bills for the rest of their life.

Beethoven/Cujo

Beethoven is covered in drool the whole movie while Cujo is covered in blood. Sounds like the perfect combo for dog lovers.

Star Trek/Star Wars

Some people might think this is a great combo idea, but it would only upset fanboys of both series. It would also confuse the non-Sci-Fi fans out there: "What? I thought those were the same movie."

Blue Lagoon/War of the Roses

The "Romance Combo". Blue Lagoon is the quintessential "young love" movie. War of the Roses is a married couple trying to kill each other.

The Passion of the Christ/Rosemary's Baby

Depictions of Christ's last days before crucifixion and the story of a woman who gives birth to the son of Satan. At least they are both religious movies.

If you can think of any other bad DVD combos post them in the comments below.