What are these called - and how do I find out a value?

[NANA]

Can anyone help me... What are these called? bare boards or Proto types?

and what are there value.

 

They came from Sunnyvale -

bequeath to me from the original mfg operations executive

and I want to sell them?

 

thanks so much for your input... it is appreciated...

treasures.forsale@yahoo.com

 

1. PAM - Pac man#1 and pacman # 2

2. Space Dungeon - top and bottom

3. Jungle hunt top and bottom

4. Counter Measure top and bottom

5. PAM - Centipede 1 and Centipede 2

[atari2800man]

Those look like prototypes to me.you can sell those for over a few hundred dollars each or even up to the thousand dollars range,it just depends.go to digitpress.com and look up the online rarity guide.itl help you up man! :-)

[Shawn]

or even up to the thousand dollars range,it just depends.

 

no.

[+Ksarul]

The rarity guide is just an estimate, based on the market conditions at the time it was written. Sales of items will always be variable in price, as the end value is more a function of current demand for a specific title than the status of prototype would sometimes indicate. There are those who would try to view the prototype market as a massive pump-and-dump scheme, but the truth is, most of us are long-term collectors here--and most prototype cartridges don't go for really high prices. Do they often break $100? Yes. Do they often break $200? Maybe--but rarity really starts to kick in here. Do they break $300? Not so much--unless there is something really special about them. Breaking $500 is not common at all--and sometimes prices will go stratospheric, but then the item in question is unique and otherwise unknown in the wild. Common sense is key--and watching sales over the long term to build your own estimate on what a proto is worth to you--and what the market is really getting for it today.

 

I personally collect TI-99/4A cartridges--and the prices I listed are definitely applicable there. They may vary up or down for some of the other systems here, but from what I've seen reading the threads here over the last few years, the wiggle room won't be a lot, price-wise.

[BassGuitari]

Is it interesting to anyone else that someone who was bequeathed these 5200 prototypes by a former Atari mfg. ops. exec has the email address "treasures.forsale@yahoo.com," and that this post inquiring about their value is this person's first ever here?

Or am I just being sensitive?

[atari181]

Is it interesting to anyone else that someone who was bequeathed these 5200 prototypes by a former Atari mfg. ops. exec has the email address "treasures.forsale@yahoo.com," and that this post inquiring about their value is this person's first ever here?

Or am I just being sensitive?

was my first thought as well

[CPUWIZ]

They are reproductions, pirates. Nothing prototype about them.

 

EDIT: Upon further looks, they are actually mask ROM's. Totally worthless.

[atari2800man]

If you go on ebay,they list atari 2600 and 5200 prototypes for crazy amounts of cash.im assuming they actually need to sell for those prices,to actually be worth that amount?but dont you think the people who sell these protos,do their own research first before selling and putting a price on the games!

 

PS:I got my sega dreamcast back!!!im so excited!

[+Ksarul]

24 cartridges for the 2600 identified on eBay as prototypes within the last three months. Of those, several came close to or barely exceeded the $300 line, which is exactly where price resistance really starts to kick in. Only one sold for more than that and it crossed the $900 line--but then again, that one is a very special title in general: Cakewalk. None of the protos with crazy list prices sold--and the majority of what did sell was in the $75 to $150 range (when they weren't repros, although sometimes those went into that range as well). Note that in the case of production 2600 cartridges, the $200 to $300 range seems to be the top end for rare titles in general--again, there are exceptions, but we are looking at the general market here, not cherry picking exceptions to try and prove an indefensible point. Research is key when you are truly interested in something--know what you should expect to be paying before you go hunting to buy. Your wallet will definitely appreciate it.

 

I was able to pull up a lot of data on the 2600 with minimal effort. There was a lot less activity on the 5200 side, but enough was there to indicate that there wasn't a lot of difference between protos for these systems price-wise. Three months of sale data is less than I usually use (I usually tabulate stuff for a year or so), but it is enough to identify a general trend.

[tep392]

If you go on ebay,they list atari 2600 and 5200 prototypes for crazy amounts of cash.im assuming they actually need to sell for those prices,to actually be worth that amount?but dont you think the people who sell these protos,do their own research first before selling and putting a price on the games!

 

PS:I got my sega dreamcast back!!!im so excited!

People on Ebay often list this stuff at prices that exceed market value, and they rarely sell until reduced to something reasonable. I will watch auctions periodically then I see something overpriced but almost always end up deleting from my watch list when months go by without any activity. As an example, was watching this Atari 400 for months wondering if it would sell at the listed $400 (way high). I deleted it from my list when the goofball increased it to $1400.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-400-Home-Computer-1979-You-dont-have-to-be-a-genius-to-use-one-/201483584442?hash=item2ee95b83ba:g:hagAAOSwzrxUzSZb

 

I love this particular quote from the auction.

 

"

This Lot comes with the highly collectable game "Basic" computing language.

Computer programmers will know the significance of this cartridge."

[atari181]

24 cartridges for the 2600 identified on eBay as prototypes within the last three months. Of those, several came close to or barely exceeded the $300 line, which is exactly where price resistance really starts to kick in. Only one sold for more than that and it crossed the $900 line--but then again, that one is a very special title in general: Cakewalk. None of the protos with crazy list prices sold--and the majority of what did sell was in the $75 to $150 range (when they weren't repros, although sometimes those went into that range as well). Note that in the case of production 2600 cartridges, the $200 to $300 range seems to be the top end for rare titles in general--again, there are exceptions, but we are looking at the general market here, not cherry picking exceptions to try and prove an indefensible point. Research is key when you are truly interested in something--know what you should expect to be paying before you go hunting to buy. Your wallet will definitely appreciate it.

 

I was able to pull up a lot of data on the 2600 with minimal effort. There was a lot less activity on the 5200 side, but enough was there to indicate that there wasn't a lot of difference between protos for these systems price-wise. Three months of sale data is less than I usually use (I usually tabulate stuff for a year or so), but it is enough to identify a general trend.

 

None of that matters because as CPUWIZ said in Post 7, they are not Prototypes.

[R.Cade]

Mask ROMs in sockets? Strange....

[+Ksarul]

I understand that the data is useless when applied to these cartridges Atari181, I was looking at this from a prototypes in general standpoint. The boards in this group are someone's personal assemblages. I see this kind of thing all the time with TI cartridges. I have a couple of dozen of them. Generally these result from someone at the factory pulling parts and assembling boards on their own. Sometimes the boards came from rejects from the wave solder machine, sometimes they were bare boards assembled like these appear to have been (using real boards that they installed sockets onto instead of soldering the chips on directly, and chips pulled from the parts bins for the production line (often left over after a production run)). They are not protos, they are not preproduction cartridges, they're just some factory tech's sly way to get software without having to pay for it. Some of the ones I have for my TI system are in cases that were also bits left in spare parts bins, generally leftovers from test runs of case color variants. The two halves were often different colors (although some real TI protos also come in mixed color cases), or colors never seen in a real production cartridge. For a TI cartridge, a proto has a very different circuit card most of the time, as it often had to have the logic on it to simulate a TI GROM chip. A proto with a real GROM on it wasn't a proto, it was a preproduction cartridge made as part of a qualification run of 50 to 100 cartridges for the engineering and test folks. Most of the TI cartridges identified as protos fit into that category, unfortunately. They sometimes are the only existing copies of that cartridge though, so they can occasionally have great value too, just like any truly rare production cartridges would.

[atari2800man]

CPUWIZ please explain how you know just by looking at the pictures of the games,that they arent prototypes?im just curious.im not questioning you.

[CPUWIZ]

CPUWIZ please explain how you know just by looking at the pictures of the games,that they arent prototypes?im just curious.im not questioning you.

 

The chips are plastic (EPROM's are what you would find in a proto, they are ceramic) and I have owned 20+ real 5200 protos, they never used production boards.

[atari2800man]

Thanks for the information CPUWIZ

[towmater]

Maybe they were bequeathed to him/her by the former atari employee without a name, but they are not unreleased games (at least according to Atari's stickers) so there is little incentive to risk buying these. The hand soldering job on the sockets could be signs that an engineer did it himself at Atari, or that Nana or friends just unsoldered some roms and put them in sockets.

 

At auction, I would say that these would be worthless without some provenance. A letter signed by the late "original mfg operations executive" with some refernce that this person did indeed work at Atari would make all the difference, or as an alternative, PT Barnum's adage that "there's a sucker born every minute" might also apply.

 

The only evidence I can observe here is that the solder on the sockets appear to have a different specularity from the few other exposed wave-soldered traces that weren't masked, indicating that no exposure or "hazing" has occurred on the socket solder joints, which might indicate that these are more recently soldered connections.

[+Ksarul]

It is also possible that the boards were failures out of a wave soldering run (maybe good boards that had a bad lot of Mask ROMS on them or just an overproduced leftover). The later owner just removed the unwanted ROMs and put sockets in their place to allow insertion of the readily available ROMs from factory parts bins. Of course, it is also possible these ROMs were originally removed from the boards for some reason and put into sockets, or even removed from other boards that were defective for some reason unrelated to the ROM. I've seen a lot of the variants I listed here in the TI cartridges I have, and I doubt that there will be too much difference with the breadth of what shows up from the other manufacturers/systems. Of course, then there are the repros and fakes--those will have all kinds of variations from the originals.

[Wickeycolumbus]

If you go on ebay,they list atari 2600 and 5200 prototypes for crazy amounts of cash.im assuming they actually need to sell for those prices,to actually be worth that amount?but dont you think the people who sell these protos,do their own research first before selling and putting a price on the games!

 

PS:I got my sega dreamcast back!!!im so excited!

 

Hard to put a value on prototypes. Most of the ones that sell on ebay are final versions of released games. A lot of times these go for far higher than most people would think they are worth. I think it may be because people that don't necessarily collect prototypes simply want to own one. The strange thing is that some really interesting protos (less common, available less often) will often sell for around the same price as these final versions.

[nofrills100]

They are reproductions, pirates. Nothing prototype about them.

 

EDIT: Upon further looks, they are actually mask ROM's. Totally worthless.

Damn dude!

I wanted to see Atari2800child take out a loan and buy these

[toiletunes]

I'm still waiting for pics in the bedroom...