New seller has some hard to find games

[holygrailvideogames.com]

Zero feedback seller but some hard to find games.

 

https://www.ebay.com/sch/clewins216/m.html?item=154364889055&hash=item23f0dd47df%3Ag%3AIz8AAOSwfhlgRypk&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

[taxman]

Registered 4.5 years ago and then finally decided to do something with the account.

[ClassicGMR]

I find it odd that H.E.R.O. will cost me $23.81 shipping, Gremlins $20.85 and yet Video Cube is $6.99 and KRULL is $6.00 shipping. All over the place for shipping costs??

 

As for the games themselves - very nice collection of sealed games.

[Atari_Bill]

What is the deal with the Mario Bros box price lately?    Never used to be much more than an uncommon.   Now it tops $100 even for poor copies.  Are these being bought up by the Nintendo speculation crowd thinking they’re gonna be valuable as a “first appearance”?

[TeddyBear89]

Help me out here guys.....in what plausible scenario in 1984 did someone buy games like H.E.R.O and Mr. Do's Castle and decide to not open them and have the foresight to just hold on to them for nearly 40 years?  I honestly have never understood how this happens.  Lesser and more common games that made their way to the discount bins during the Great Crash, I get that.  But these rarer titles, how?

 

I will be an enthusiastic spectator watching how much cash some of these new CIB 2600 games will command. 

 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I thought originally, the games didn't come from the factories already sealed and that shrinking them was something the specific retailer were doing after the fact? I only say this because I honestly never remember any of my Atari games being shrink wrapped at all when I bought them new back in the day. Places like ToysRUs or Service Merchandise just had little paper tags or tickets you took from a pouch on a shelf display and took to the cashier to pay for. Then you waited and walked over to a counter elsewhere in the store to get the game. The only sealed I've seen on Atari games was the glue that held the top flaps down etc... 

 

I can't remember how Parker and other 3rd parties were done originally though.

 

[TrekMD]

$710 for Mr. Do's! Castle?  Maybe I should sell mine! 

[+Psionic]

SQ WaterWorld ended yesterday at over $6k.

[taxman]

56 minutes ago, Psionic said:

SQ WaterWorld ended yesterday at over $6k.

[+x=usr(1536)]

On 3/14/2021 at 10:31 AM, -^CrossBow^- said:

I thought originally, the games didn't come from the factories already sealed and that shrinking them was something the specific retailer were doing after the fact? I only say this because I honestly never remember any of my Atari games being shrink wrapped at all when I bought them new back in the day.

Understood, but by the same token I have a number of Atari-made cartridges (5200 and 2600) that are shrink-wrapped.  Having said that, I also have sealed ones that aren't shrink-wrapped but are glued, and can remember seeing (mostly A8) cartridges on sale when they were current with no shrink-wrap but with hanger tags added.

 

My best guess is that shrink-wrap would have been added by individual retailers.  It's not the sort of thing that might've held up well during travel from the factory, so it would make sense to let the retail outlet figure out how it wanted to handle it.

On 3/14/2021 at 10:31 AM, -^CrossBow^- said:

Places like ToysRUs or Service Merchandise just had little paper tags or tickets you took from a pouch on a shelf display and took to the cashier to pay for. Then you waited and walked over to a counter elsewhere in the store to get the game. The only sealed I've seen on Atari games was the glue that held the top flaps down etc... 

 

I can't remember how Parker and other 3rd parties were done originally though.

I do have 3rd-party titles with shrink-wrap as well, but still no idea if it was the retailer who did that or not.

 

[+Psionic]

Most if not all of the Atari silver boxes (including the Atari Club exclusives) were glued and shrinkwrapped.  I believe Atari started wrapping their games in late 1981 or early '82.

[high voltage]

I've got sealed Silver Boxes, Kids Boxes, Red Boxes, Grey Boxes. No Colour Boxes for sure.

 

Further sealed, Activision, Telesys, Sancho, Froggo, Imagic, M Network, Epyx, Gakken, Mystigue, TNT, CBS.

 

What I want to know, was Australian Home Entertainment Suppliers (HES) ever sealed? They came in plastic box. 

Edited April 5, 2021 by high voltage

[+x=usr(1536)]

On 3/14/2021 at 9:11 AM, Atari_Bill said:

What is the deal with the Mario Bros box price lately?    Never used to be much more than an uncommon.   Now it tops $100 even for poor copies.  Are these being bought up by the Nintendo speculation crowd thinking they’re gonna be valuable as a “first appearance”?

The only thing I can think of is that 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of Donkey Kong hitting the arcades, so early Nintendo stuff is back on collectors' radar.  Again.

[stringfellow]

On 4/3/2021 at 10:47 PM, x=usr(1536) said:

Understood, but by the same token I have a number of Atari-made cartridges (5200 and 2600) that are shrink-wrapped.  Having said that, I also have sealed ones that aren't shrink-wrapped but are glued, and can remember seeing (mostly A8) cartridges on sale when they were current with no shrink-wrap but with hanger tags added.

 

My best guess is that shrink-wrap would have been added by individual retailers.  It's not the sort of thing that might've held up well during travel from the factory, so it would make sense to let the retail outlet figure out how it wanted to handle it.

I do have 3rd-party titles with shrink-wrap as well, but still no idea if it was the retailer who did that or not.

 

It seems that the shrink wrap continues to shrink or so I have heard. I remember it being advised to remove the shrink wrap to avoid box damage. I did this with almost all of my sealed games.

[+OLD CS1]

5 hours ago, stringfellow said:

It seems that the shrink wrap continues to shrink or so I have heard. I remember it being advised to remove the shrink wrap to avoid box damage. I did this with almost all of my sealed games.

From what I have deduced from experience, it seems to upon both the quality of the shrink wrap and how the items are stored.  To the former, the type of wrap which gets brittle with age seems to contract more over time.  To the latter, and seemingly irrespective of the wrap quality, storing in heat will cause the wrap to contract.

[Tanooki]

I've got a few big box PC games that are sealed, but it shrunk with time so one (the long) side of the box had popped open entirely, right on the line or it blew the side out from the pressure.  It's clear from the rest of the box it wasn't cut or otherwise opened and slipped back in, physically impossible, so it was contraction of the wrapping.