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What companies do you see the most NOS for?


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I think Atari has the most due to the longevity of the 2600/VCS. I mean, how many "runs" did that thing have? There was the original run, which went from 1977-82ish, then they sorta rebranded as a value line when the "silver label" games debuted, then another push when the Jr. came out with the "red label" titles, and then there was the backwards compatibility of the 7800 on top of that... it just kept going and going. And when a lot of the old 80's retailers fell, all of those cases of games stretching back to the early 80's went to the highest bidder. Even though the crash happened and they did a massive inventory dump at one point in a certain desert landfill, I bet there are still warehouses full of late 2600 games out there.

 

PC stuff is sort of a mystery to me, but I'm thinking that as systems became quickly obsolete, no one wanted the games anymore. The big PC boom of the 80's came when people were starting to see them as "replacements" to game consoles, so games were probably manufactured in large quantities for just about every system you can think of. When they got replaced, retailers were stuck with the old stock.

 

Sony/Microsoft stuff was widespread and sold in all sorts of retailers, and a lot of those retailers fell in recent years. I bet a lot of the stock that's out there could have been in those retailers' warehouses collecting dust and rediscovered recently. I still see PS2 games on shelves in some retailers like Walmart and Best Buy. Also, the "all sorts of retailers" extend to random stores you wouldn't normally see selling games. I've seen games at grocery stores, discount retailers like Family Dollar and Dollar General, and in other completely random places.

 

Sega? I remember when the Genesis and Game Gear were on their way out, the games went on MEGA clearance. I'm guessing people bought them all up then. I also remember when some of the discount retailers around here fell, like Caldor, Bradlees, and Ames, and they had stacks upon stacks of NOS Game Gear games. They couldn't give them away at the time! Sadly, I bet most of them got tossed. I still see some here and there popping up at game shops and flea market with the Ames stickers on them. I didn't have a Game Gear at the time otherwise I'd probably have a complete library after seeing all the stuff that was out there at the time.

 

And Nintendo... They just know how to control inventory. They stay on the lean side of things, hence why there's always a rush during the holidays for their stuff. Hell, I'm just seeing Switch stuff being stocked regularly NOW, and that was released nearly a year ago. Same thing happened with the 3DS, Wii U, Wii, DS, etc... Another thing is Nintendo's newer policy of never discounting things unless it's on the "classic hits" line or whatever they call it. Last time I saw sealed new NES games in a store was actually in the late 1990's. BJ's Wholesale Club somehow stumbled on some cases of games, and I scored Mega Man 2, Mega Man 5 (!!!), Strider, and a few others at $19.99 a pop. These days, I'm still seeing Wii games for nearly full price years after their release. Just yesterday, I saw Metroid: Other M in the Walmart clearance bin. It was on clearance for $30. I passed.

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I think Atari has the most due to the longevity of the 2600/VCS. I mean, how many "runs" did that thing have? There was the original run, which went from 1977-82ish, then they sorta rebranded as a value line when the "silver label" games debuted, then another push when the Jr. came out with the "red label" titles, and then there was the backwards compatibility of the 7800 on top of that... it just kept going and going. And when a lot of the old 80's retailers fell, all of those cases of games stretching back to the early 80's went to the highest bidder. Even though the crash happened and they did a massive inventory dump at one point in a certain desert landfill, I bet there are still warehouses full of late 2600 games out there.

A ton of them seem to have ended up in Venezuela. Osheas also had all those Atari games for years, mostly 7800 I think. But I think they're gone now.

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A ton of them seem to have ended up in Venezuela. Osheas also had all those Atari games for years, mostly 7800 I think. But I think they're gone now.

O'Shea's! I bought quite a bunch of games from them BITD and yeah, they sold out quite a while ago. Wish I could go back in time and purchase all of their Ballblazers. :lol:

 

http://oshealtd.com/atari.htm

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A ton of them seem to have ended up in Venezuela. Osheas also had all those Atari games for years, mostly 7800 I think. But I think they're gone now.

Yeah, I've heard that too.

 

A few years back, I bought some NOS 2600 games from a US seller on eBay for dirt cheap. They were all Silver Label games, too. Some of them snuck out into private hands.

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O'Shea's! I bought quite a bunch of games from them BITD and yeah, they sold out quite a while ago. Wish I could go back in time and purchase all of their Ballblazers. :lol:

 

http://oshealtd.com/atari.htm

 

I have a feeling a few Ebay sellers bought most of them and are still reselling them. I see the same titles come up all the time. They were 80 cents from O'Shea's, and now these guys are selling them for $10-$20. Really wish I had had that idea, to be honest. At the time, people weren't yet collecting these games and everybody just thought they were worthless. I bought about half of the titles they had, thinking I could just buy the others if I wanted them, but 80 cents seemed like a lot of money for an Atari 2600 game!

 

As for what I see NOS, in terms of stuff that matters, I see a lot of Intellivision NIB games, and a lot of TI-99/4A systems and software. As far as the Intellivision stuff goes, I'd guess you'd probably naturally see more NOS stuff from just before the crash. I think there's a decent amount of 5200 stuff out there too. ColecoVision seems to not be as common, but maybe they started clearing out inventory before the crash really wiped everybody out. Atari and Mattel probably got caught with tons of unsold inventory.

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I agree with what folks have said here. I've run into sealed Atari 2600 and Intellivision games on multiple occasions, and I know 5200 and 7800 stuff is out there. I've also come by a couple of sealed computer games -- I think one for the Atari ST and one for DOS, as I recall.

 

I've gotten (and opened!) new Genesis, 32X, 3DO, and Jaguar games from online sellers, and all of those seem to show up with regularity.

 

I've also encountered flea market sellers who clearly had acquired piles of remaindered budget/trash PlayStation games like V.I.P. and Miracle Space Race, all sealed, as well as a few more desirable games from the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro series.

 

I've only run into one sealed NES game in the wild, and the seal was both torn and probably non-original. I'm guessing it was a returned game, or one with damaged shrinkwrap, that was resealed by the vendor. It's now become a fairly big-ticket game too -- Vice: Project Doom -- but I traded it for things I wanted, so it all worked out. The person to whom I traded to noted that the contents were immaculate.

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