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A reality check on the box craze.


homerwannabee

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God, I've been wondering why they weren't doing anything up there. I've been staring and staring...

 

If you stare at them long enough they might start to do a dance!! Or so I have heard. I only own 2 boxed games which I have doubles of loose to play. You guess it: SRIGC & SSTD both mint and complete. :cool:

No Bears :?

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First $2000 gets all games in the picture,,

 

post-43-1169225218_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

:P

 

Does this include the M-Network game which only has its corner showing in the far right, the 13 Atari games below, Sky Jinks, and the other Activision game....Pitfall?

 

:?:

Edited by gamme
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Lets see, what else goes for MORE in the box.....

 

Old toys, action figures (granted, they are on card), matchbox cars, dolls, board games, china sets (storage cases more correctly named), DVD's, just to name a few

 

Classic gaming for me is more than the bleeps and bloops. My basement is a shrine to all that was innocent, fun and creative in the 80's. The art, the smell, the garish colors, the shapes and lines of the consoles, the look of arcade machines. Besides, loose carts won't look like this on a wall.....

 

C

 

 

Well... it tooks like you took Computer Space out of the box and halved it's value :P

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I am a collector, so I'm very interested in the boxes. I don't desplay them though, they get packed into storage containers for protection and stored someplace safe. As for boxless carts, this is how I get all my games at first. I useually don't worry about boxes, unless I already have the game in my collection. Sometimes you'll come across someone that has boxes for games, that they no longer have cause they sold them years ago and found the boxes while cleaning. That's AWESOME when that happens. But it doesn't happen to often, especially considering that most people simply pitch their old stuff when they get the games out.

 

I'm in the boat of pro box though, especially thinking that 50 years from now, maybe I'll be able to retire on the money I get from them....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....aww, who'm I kidding, I won't ever get rid of them.

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I'm not a 2600 guy, but I think that the same arguments apply to A8 stuff.

 

I started out looking for the computers and software that I'd wanted as a kid but could never have afforded, especially the accurate computer conversions of the games that I used to play in the arcades when I had some spare change.

 

As my collection progressed, I became interested in instruction manuals, so that I knew how to play the games that I wasn't familiar with, and then in boxes, because I thought that it would be cool to have the stuff as it was originally available.

 

So I started out as a player, and ended up as a player and a collector. It's fun to set yourself some difficult goals and work towards them, and it's a useful escape from the (sometime) mundanity of everyday life. Everyday life does have to take priority, though :D

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not mine :ponder:

 

from http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...=ADME:B:SS:US:1

First of all let me state that this is a show off auction. If you have the moolah to spend on this sucker and want to buy it for 4 Grand, be my guest. Also, when I got this game back in May I paid $280 on Ebay for it. Since then though there has been a huge box craze that has swept over the Atari 2600 collecting community that has made this games worth a lot more than this. The last time Rescue Terra I was up for auction this game sold for $400 plus shipping which was $20 since the guy lived in France. This was over 4 months ago. Since then none has shown up. I did think about making the price $1,000 but I realized that the way the box craze is going someone would be crazy enough to take me up on this, and if I sold it I know that there would be no way on Earth I could ever get it back. I also made it this price to make a point. As far as I know there is probably less than 150 boxed games that are in collectors hands at this moment. If you compare this to the other two major childhood collectibles this is extremly rare. An Amazing Spider-Man will average four to five grand. There are over 1,000 Amazing Spiderman #1's that have been graded. If an Amazing spiderman #1 was to show up in this condition I would guess it would hit $50,000 easy. Same thing goes for the Mickey Mantle 1952 Topps baseball card. A badly shaped 1952 Topps Mantle would probably go for $4,000 to $5,000. A Mantle in this shape would probably go for $30,000 to $40,000. I truly believe that about 10 to 15 years from now that this game will be a steal at four thousand. As far as the game itself is concerned this game has generally been reconized as a very fun game to play. Yes there are certainly other Atari 2600 games that are just as rare and even rarer, but among those games there are only 3 or 4 that are rated among collectors as very fun to play. This game happens to be one of them. Finally I believe that Video Games is an art form and have a place in our collective history that ranks right up their with comic books and baseball cards. The only reason that video games are not as valuable is because this is a relatively new hobby that still has a lot of room to grow. So although this is a showoff auction, this is also a statement auction as well.

Also if for some odd reason this actually does sell. Serious buyers only please and I only accept Paypal and immediate payment is required. I also will only ship in the United States Have a great day:)

 

{emphasis added by poster}

 

Yeah, that be my auction :P If you check though I do not have any other auctions, so I am not doing it to pimp other auction's up. I really don't think it is wrong to have a show off auction as long as you admit to it. Also I make a good point when you compare Video Games to other collectables. Also I am not the first to say video games is an art form and won't be the last either. Also, when I say a huge amount, I mean that some boxed games have lliterally doubled in price if not more in the past 7 months. I guess my statement was this hobby is undervalued and deserves more respect.

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Call me crazy, but I have most of my 2600 games loose AND boxed.

Am I running out of room, you better believe it!

(could I have put about $10,000 in cds for retirement,instead of buying old games, well that's a whole other topic)

 

I guess the box/no box question depends on just how far you want to take this thing called "collecting."

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Call me crazy, but I have most of my 2600 games loose AND boxed.

Am I running out of room, you better believe it!

(could I have put about $10,000 in cds for retirement,instead of buying old games, well that's a whole other topic)

 

I guess the box/no box question depends on just how far you want to take this thing called "collecting."

Or 'sickness', as the case may be. . . :P

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To me boxes for games are like cover sheets for hardcover books.

Especially since many Atari games already have their boxes artwork on the cartridge.

 

I have found very few boxes in my cartridge hunts (<10!) out of the hundreds of cartridges I have found in the past 7 or so years of 2600 collection.

 

While a box is nice, It doesn't suit me. It doesn't "protect" the cartridge much since cartridges are already rather durable, and they make each cartridge have a larger physical footprint in a hobby where space becomes a premium fast.

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To me boxes for games are like cover sheets for hardcover books.

Especially since many Atari games already have their boxes artwork on the cartridge.

 

I have found very few boxes in my cartridge hunts (<10!) out of the hundreds of cartridges I have found in the past 7 or so years of 2600 collection.

 

While a box is nice, It doesn't suit me. It doesn't "protect" the cartridge much since cartridges are already rather durable, and they make each cartridge have a larger physical footprint in a hobby where space becomes a premium fast.

 

Excellent thought

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Come on dude, You do remember that the point of video games is to play them not just look at the box on a shelf and say "thats pretty" right? ;)

You also lick the stamps in your stamp collection and drink tea out of your 800 year old China? :P

 

Cheers,

Marco

 

all about the carts - no one can know anything but what can be converted into a jpeg.

 

 

:P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P

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But honestly should a boxed frontline really be worth more than a loose Waterworld :ponder:

 

If somebody's willing to fork over the dough, then absolutely.

 

Atari collecting is at the point where on one hand you've got veterans who have amassed quite a bit over the years, and on the other hand you've got newbies who are just starting out. The veterans are running out of holes to fill in their collections, so a lot of them decide to go for boxes to take care of all that disposable income burning holes in their pockets. Meanwhile, the newbies either don't care about the rarer games (possibly just wanting a round of Space Invaders or Adventure to satisfy their nostalgia) or figure they're out of their price range.

 

So, the veterans fight over the boxes, the newbies are happy with the cheapies, and the unboxed rarities just sit there.

 

let people amass. Give it away to younger generations when u die who pretend they appreciate it and then sell half of it off. CARTS IN THE COFFIN. Where's the first serious death, egyptian pharaoh style?

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I've been selling more and more boxed games for decent prices. I think people are realizing how rare many boxes are, even for common games, since most people did not have the storage space for boxes and just tossed them in the trash. I'm actually looking forward to the spring for all these nice garage sales. Now that I'm working full time, I'll have some income that I can spend if I can find the merchandise.

 

If I ever come across a game I need, I'll take it loose just to fill in the hole. But after amassing the majority of US released games, I'm working on the boxes, which I now have over 200 of. I actually consider that pretty good since I put my collecting on hold for the past couple of years due to being unemployed for the majority of that time.

 

Anyone who has scans of boxes I don't have listed in the giant list of variations, or I have listed but don't have a scan for, do me a favor and send me front and back scans. I completed all 3rd party software and have been slowly working on the Atari released titles. Just click the link below in my signature.

 

Phil

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To me boxes for games are like cover sheets for hardcover books.

Do you meant the dust jackets? Often the dust jackets feature illustrations that the hard cover of the book does not. Granted, you can read the book without the dust jacket, but in the world of book collecting, having a dust jacket - especially on a first edition book - definitely increases its value (if the edition was indeed released with a dust jacket).

Especially since many Atari games already have their boxes artwork on the cartridge.

Except for the text label Atari ones. And the text label Sears ones. And the text label Imagic ones. And sometimes the Wizard Video ones. And... Well, of course you can picture labels of those, too, but that means that you might prefer picture labels over text ones, and someone could come along and say that's as silly as caring if the game has a box or not - as long as you've got the cart, who cares? (Finally, all those label-less Parker Bros. carts are vindicated.)

 

I have a friend who collects LPs - not from an audiophile reason, but because he really likes the large scale cover art. As for me, I am quite content with the size of the covers as reproduced on my CD booklets. Further along the spectrum, another friend thinks CDs have too large of a footprint, the CD cases (and even the medium itself) doesn't "protect" the music, he doesn't care about cover art, or booklets (not even as JPEGs), and is quite content to buy MP3s for everything.

 

One could, of course, extend that little paragraph to video game ROMs.

 

I like collecting the boxes as well as the cartridges themselves. Others do, and others don't. The dynamic of the buying market (since this is mostly about eBay) has changed over the past year or so to generally privilege boxed titles over loose titles (and to be more specific, just some boxes over others, and some boxes over cartridges) for the Atari 2600. (Relatively speaking, things have become even more extreme in the same amount of time for boxed Colecovision titles.) Now personally, I open all my boxes (shrinkwrap/sealed, I don't care about) as I regard my collection as something to be played via the original carts in the original hardware, but I know of several collectors here who want reference quality, brand-spankin' new, coulda-been-plucked-off-the-shelf-in-1982, never seen the light of day minty fresh boxed games. It's just their preference.

 

Collect what you like, and enjoy your collection.

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