how do you tell the rare and expensive games from the outright garbage?

[xDragonWarrior]

So i was wondering fellow collectors,how do you know a rare game from a game that's garbage.There are some games out there that you would think is worthless but has a high price tag online(Warpath:Jurassic Park PS1 to name one).Also resellers might have rare or expensive games but they only look up the prices for games like Mario,Zelda,Sonic Donkey Kong etc and the rest of the games they make up prices but because there resellers we pass them up.so do you look up on your phone games that could possible be rare?expensive or what

[+thegoldenband]

I'm personally more of a gamer than a collector (or reseller), so no good game is "garbage" to me even if it's common as dirt. But at this point I have a pretty good sense of the rarer titles on most of the systems for which I actively collect, so I'm willing to spend an extra few bucks if I know I'm getting something I won't often see.

 

I've pretty much got the whole Intellivision library in my head and, with a few exceptions, Genesis/Sega CD/32X. Atari 2600 and NES/SNES are fuzzier, but I know that if I don't recognize it, it's worth lingering over. Not PlayStation, though; the task of sorting that one out is unenviable at best. It's hard enough to differentiate between the genuinely rare games vs. games with inflated prices because of high demand from newbie types, but with a library as big as the PlayStation's, it's just too much information.

 

I don't like being the kind of person who busts out a smartphone or iPad when I'm at a yard sale or flea market. Of course, I don't own either one, so that makes it easy! But if my fiancée and I are at a big flea market together (which we invariably are) and are browsing separately, I'll sometimes ask her to look something up for me.

[number six]

My rule of thumb is, if it looks weird i buy it.

 

If a game looks odd or unfamiliar to me, then chances are it's rare. I also buy just about anything I come across that I don't already have as long as the price is reasonable.

 

Although I admit i'm not 100% up on what's trending these days. There are plenty of games that were not rare in stores back in the day that are now worth big bucks. Sometimes it's a combination of supply / demand and actual rarity that drives prices up. Every now and then i'll just pick a system and search completed eBay auctions just to see whats bringing in the big bucks so I can keep an eye of for them in the wild. Good trade bait if nothing else!

[sqoon]

My rule of thumb is, if it looks weird i buy it.

 

If a game looks odd or unfamiliar to me, then chances are it's rare. I also buy just about anything I come across that I don't already have as long as the price is reasonable.

 

Exact same philosophy here. If a game is unidentifiable, less common, or not yet in my collection, and the price is reasonable, it becomes mine.

[fiddlepaddle]

I think after you spend time looking for awhile, you learn which games are common, and if you've never seen it before, it's probably rare. By the way, you always NEED it, if you don't already have it.

 

If a game is going to cost me anything I consider significant, I probably won't buy it, but I'll remember it (and the asking price). Then, if I see that game again, I'll know, at least, if it's a better deal than the time I saw it before. Occasionally I might pay more than necessary to get something I don't have, but not often, and not by enough to cause me any real discomfort in my finances.