instruction manuals

[RangerG]

I bought about 25 Atari manuals off a guy at the thrift shop for a couple bucks. I was excited about collecting manuals, but I now realize that this is a daunting task. I almost never see manuals in the wild. Who else collects manuals and how successful have you been matching them with your cartridge collection? How much more $ do you spend adding this new search to the hobby? Do most people not care about the instruction manuals? Thanks -- RangerG

[MoonlightKnight]

I think instructions are very important! I don't have a way to find things in the wild, but when I go on e-Bay this really drives my decision on with auctions on bid on. For me the most important factors are label quality and quality of the manuals. I could really give a rip about the boxes, but if I find something with a box I'll still keep it. I only have about 4 or 5 boxes but, when I bought them, they were the first copies of those game that I had ever had. If I should come across a better box I'll trade up, but I won't go looking for them.

 

But like I said, I am on the same quest to find the instructions for all the games.

[Paul Slocum]

I also really like having manuals. I love the pictures and personally I think it makes the games more fun to read the scenario and have the game variation information. I've now got manuals for 275 of my 300 games.

 

I started out buying them off the internet from Chuck Gill and 4jays. I also would buy big lots of manuals or games with manuals off ebay and sell back what I don't need. I would sometimes almost break even doing this.

 

To fill the last few hard to find ones, I've ended up having to buy the cartridge with the manual on ebay, and then sell the cartridge.

 

If anyone else has any manual tips I'd love to hear them too.

 

-Paul

[ATARIPITBULL]

I try to buy all my games CIB, but if I find a game by itself that I like I will buy it and try to find the manuel on ebay and so far I have been able to find almost all the instruction books for my loose ones.

[Lemmi]

I used to have a few guys that would find manuals for me but one has dissapeared off the face of the earth , but out of my 210 games i have 114 manuals, which isnt bad as 3 years ago i only had manuals for my original 25 games

[mos6507]

I still have all my original 2600 manuals from when I was a kid. I kept them in a comic book sleeve.

 

I think the manuals are very important, and it is depressing how uncommon it is to see used carts with manuals--even more depressing that manuals are not seen as a more valuable commodity to collectors.

 

[ 02-17-2002: Message edited by: Glenn Saunders ]

[Lemmi]

Whats worse for me is, i can find 2600 manuals easier then NES manuals. but i wont go into my rant about people not taking care of there manuals as i did that during my first 2 weeks on this site

[MoonlightKnight]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Smart Patrol:

 

I started out buying them off the internet from Chuck Gill and 4jays. I also would buy big lots of manuals or games with manuals off ebay and sell back what I don't need. I would sometimes almost break even doing this.

 

To fill the last few hard to find ones, I've ended up having to buy the cartridge with the manual on ebay, and then sell the cartridge.

 

If anyone else has any manual tips I'd love to hear them too.

 

-Paul

---

 

Actually this is how my e-Bay selling started. I bought a lot of games from someone because they had one or two games and manuals that I needed. I ended up selling the extras to someone and just about broke even.

 

The next time I went on e-Bay I noticed "There are more people selling group of games than just selling them individually, which is what I want"

 

I found my niche on e-Bay this way, and now I sell single carts for what I fell is the fair market value. I judge "fair market value" by what I would expect to pay for each game. I usually only get one bid on each game, but that's what I expect by the way I price them. I try to include manuals whenever I have them and increase the price a little to cover the expense of obtaining them.

 

I use the proceeds to fund my own "hunting and gathering" and I would say it has worked pretty well so far

[Albert]

I also make it a point to collect manuals. In fact, the manuals are more important to me than the boxes right now. It's great to read many of these manuals, to see how they try to embellish many Atari 2600 games, since there's only so much they could do in graphics and sound back then. It's nothing like these days where the entire story can be quite clearly spelled out on the screen. Back then you had to read the manuals to figure out some games (or at least, know some of the finer details). Especially if you wanted to know what each game variation did.

 

I carefully store all my manuals in paperback novel bags, each with a cut-to-size comic book backing board. Then they're sorted alphabetically by manufacturer, by system. If I need to look at a manual I know right where to go. Of course, most of those manuals will be online here at AtariAge at some point. One of the reasons Alex and I decided to scan the manuals is because it's great fun to look at the originals, complete with layout and graphics, as opposed to HTML (or straight ASCII) manuals that convey the information, but just aren't the same.

 

I've also purchased games on eBay just to get a manual, although I'm pretty bad about hanging onto the cart instead of trading or selling it (a behavior I need to change). When I get boxed games I'll take out the manual if I don't have it, and store the box away separately. Easy access to the carts and manuals is of paramount importance.

 

I recently acquired a huge batch of manuals from another collector, and once I absorb them into my collection I should have quite a few extras to trade.

 

..Al

[Lemmi]

Well while im here i might as well plug a manual ive been looking for, for quite awhile

 

if anyone has a NHL Hockey Manual (the original one for the Genesis) or an extra one let me know please, as hockey on the Genesis rules and i have every one complete now from '93 to '98 and all thats left is the manual for the original to get, ive looked online for one, but cant find one.

 

ill throw in some sealed 5200 games and 7800 games and a nes game super off road for your troubles