Endless supply of sealed classic games

[Rik]

Factory sealed games?I,ve seen tons of sealed games for sale that are in such mint condition,with not one scratch through the seal,no humidity damage,question is,where do they get these games?(the stores),i realise that there were left overs form the famous"video game crash",but that was over like 10-20 years ago,i figure the supply would be depleted by now.I just got 4 7800 games factory sealed,and the store has hundreds more,and you can tell if a game is REALLY factory sealed,or if it has been opened.I open all my games,except for,( MIDNIGHT MUTANTS)which i have multiple copies of,does the fact that midnight mutants was the last game produced for the 7800 give it more collectors status?I KNOW there's alot of bogus sealed games,the ones i have seen are legit.

Edited November 2, 2006 by Rik

[thegamepeddler]

A few years back I bought a sealed Quest For Quintana Roo for ColecoVision from a guy. It turns out he had 3 boxes of 15 each just sitting around his house; all old store stock he had gotten ahold of somehow. I guess there is quite a bit of that still floating around.

[AussieAtari]

Factory sealed 7800 games seem to be quite plentiful here in Oz, along with Coleco games (which are getting so old now that the shrink wrapping is turning yellow and getting brittle), so there must still be some caches somewhere.

[maibock]

Being in the plastics industry, I'm very skeptical of "factory sealed" games..

[AussieAtari]

Being in the plastics industry, I'm very skeptical of "factory sealed" games..

 

Overall I'd have to agree, but the 7800 games I have bought recently were brand spanking new, the shrink wrapping still had the plastic hanging do-dad attached, the boxes showed no sign of being opened around the lid tabs where you would normally expect a bit of creasing and everything inside was in mint condition and still had that nice "new" smell.

 

Whereas any 2600 "factory sealed" games are completely suss as fas I'm concerned as they were not shrink wrapped (at least not here in Oz anyway) when they were orginally released!

Edited November 2, 2006 by AussieAtari

[Rik]

Being in the plastics industry, I'm very skeptical of "factory sealed" games..

 

Overall I'd have to agree, but the 7800 games I have bought recently were brand spanking new, the shrink wrapping still had the plastic hanging do-dad attached, the boxes showed no sign of being opened around the lid tabs where you would normally expect a bit of creasing and everything inside was in mint condition and still had that nice "new" smell.

 

Whereas any 2600 "factory sealed" games are completely suss as fas I'm concerned as they were not shrink wrapped (at least not here in Oz anyway) when they were orginally released!

I just got a 2600 MS.PAC-MAN,sealed with the plastic hanger on top,as the 7800 games were shrink wrapped the same way,quit a few 2600 games were shrink wrapped,here in CANADA,and i suppose the same for the U.S

[Technosis]

Caches of classic games still do exist, it's just that they get more uncommon as years go on. Just this past summer I picked up a whole load of classic games from a collectibles dealer that brought them out on my request. The guy was sort of a "junk" packrat and this (along with scores of every other used thing under the sun) had been in an old storage barn for 20+ years. He would bring stuff out and sell it at his own pace. I picked up scores of rare and boxed stuff (some shrinkwrapped) for just about every system up to the Sega Genesis. There was even a complete O2 Powerlords in the mix, and even some odd ball handhelds and Nintendo Game & Watches. The only reason that the guy was motivated to sell the stuff as he was moving into some sort of low income housing and would no longer have the storage space.

 

The shrinkwrapped games were Intellivision and Atari 2600 games (i.e Robot Tank, Summer Games, Decathalon, Solar Sailer). Nothing uber rare, but multiple copies of some. When I get a trade list together, I'll post some of them to the marketplace here.

[Uzumaki]

Anyone remember O'Shea? Million or so of sealed 2600 and 7800 games.

 

There are probably more caches of sealed and unsold games somewhere waiting to be discovered by a collector or eBayer.

Edited November 3, 2006 by Uzumaki

[+remowilliams]

Anyone remember O'Shea? Million or so of sealed 2600 and 7800 games.

They're still going http://www.oshealtd.com/atari.htm

Edited November 3, 2006 by remowilliams

[christianscott27]

Couple of years ago I came across a flea market vendor who had cases of sealed Parker Brothers games. He had boxes of frogger for INTV, Jedi Arena and Strawberry Shortcake. Maybe it was from the nearby PB headquarters, theres still stuff out there.

[jpfalcon2003]

Factory sealed games?I,ve seen tons of sealed games for sale that are in such mint condition,with not one scratch through the seal,no humidity damage,question is,where do they get these games?(the stores),i realise that there were left overs form the famous"video game crash",but that was over like 10-20 years ago,i figure the supply would be depleted by now.I just got 4 7800 games factory sealed,and the store has hundreds more,and you can tell if a game is REALLY factory sealed,or if it has been opened.I open all my games,except for,( MIDNIGHT MUTANTS)which i have multiple copies of,does the fact that midnight mutants was the last game produced for the 7800 give it more collectors status?I KNOW there's alot of bogus sealed games,the ones i have seen are legit.

Midnight Mutants is pretty inexpensive. Although I agree, it should be worth more because of that. I own a boxed copy.

[jaybird3rd]

I too am amazed at the amount of NOS software and hardware that continues to be found. Watching eBay, it seems that every couple of months, somebody opens a sealed storage facility someplace or explores a dusty corner in a warehouse and discovers another hidden stash of stuff (usually a pallet of sealed games). I guess it's because video game publishers were so busy pushing huge volumes of goods into the sales channels in the pre-crash days, and because it wasn't being bought up by consumers nearly as quickly, the stores just packed it away wherever they could find room and eventually forgot about it.

 

It really puts a lot of those crazy pre-crash sales figures in proper perspective: Imagic, for example, was the fastest-growing American company in history at one point because they sold something like $37M of product in their first six months, but only about $40M of the $80M in revenue that they booked in 1982 actually sold through to their customers. That other $40M of inventory, and the inventory that they and other companies had built up in anticipation of Christmas sales that never materialized due to the crash, accounts for a lot of the new-in-the-box product that is still floating to the surface today. I'm sure there's a lot more of it out there that hasn't been discovered yet.

[Classic Pac]

I got this info from a dealer on why even after all these years you still see many game mint in box. It all comes down to when these games stopped being made many were just sold in job lots and many more were just left forgotten in the back of werehouses or other places. I even heard this from my garbage man who told me about this building was being torn down in his neighborhood and he was seeing shipping box after shipping box of old video games being taken out but not junked. To be sold hopefully on Ebay.

[spacecadet]

Anyone remember O'Shea? Million or so of sealed 2600 and 7800 games.

 

Remember?! How could anyone here forget! They are the first place you go as a newbie to the collecting hobby. (Of course, they're not as compelling now that they've jacked up their prices.)

 

Every once in a while this topic comes up here and it's always just O'Shea stuff that people are talking about. There are probably other titles sprinkled around here and there (I didn't look through all the titles mentioned here) but if you got a 2600 Ms. Pac Man sealed, you got an O'Shea game.

[+RandomPerson]

7800 games are more common NOS than loose by a long shot.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Anyone remember O'Shea? Million or so of sealed 2600 and 7800 games.

They're still going http://www.oshealtd.com/atari.htm

Holy crap, they're up to $5 each now? I remember the good ol' days when they were like 70 cents each. Then they went up to 2 bucks.

 

I bet you could talk them into a good price if you bought like 50-100 or so of the same game, but still, geez.

[Rik]

Factory sealed games?I,ve seen tons of sealed games for sale that are in such mint condition,with not one scratch through the seal,no humidity damage,question is,where do they get these games?(the stores),i realise that there were left overs form the famous"video game crash",but that was over like 10-20 years ago,i figure the supply would be depleted by now.I just got 4 7800 games factory sealed,and the store has hundreds more,and you can tell if a game is REALLY factory sealed,or if it has been opened.I open all my games,except for,( MIDNIGHT MUTANTS)which i have multiple copies of,does the fact that midnight mutants was the last game produced for the 7800 give it more collectors status?I KNOW there's alot of bogus sealed games,the ones i have seen are legit.

Midnight Mutants is pretty inexpensive. Although I agree, it should be worth more because of that. I own a boxed copy.

Midnight Mutants is pretty expensive,have you looked at what they're asking for it on E-BAY or any other auction,i havent seen one under $30.00us loose,and boxed ,i've seen sealed boxed ones go for $60.00-$70.00us,overpriced?,dont know ,it all depends on whats important to the buyer,but people are gobbling them up!.And mutants is not that easy to find either!I think part of the reason,besides it was the last game made for the 7800,is that its a horror/halloween game,those types of games have always demanded high dollars.I bought all my copies on e-bay,I have 3,that was the quickest way for me to have them,if not for ebay,I'd still be looking for midnight mutants, I paid $45.00us for the mint sealed one,I was lucky I got it that CHEAP!,and I think it was worth every penny,AWESOME GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited November 5, 2006 by Rik

[mos6507]

Anyone remember O'Shea? Million or so of sealed 2600 and 7800 games.

They're still going http://www.oshealtd.com/atari.htm

 

They also have an expired SSL certificate. Yay!

[TuzenTCA]

I was at a local auction where a coin-op business was going out of business. Apparently back at the time of the Atari and other classic gaming systems, or more so the NES, the store carried system games for purchase. As I was nosing around upstairs I found about 10 or 15 of the Tengen Tetris posters with St. Basil Cathedral on them. I thought it was an interesting find, so I nosed around a little deeper in this spot, and found a box of what appeared to be at least 50 boxed copies of Tengen Tetris for the NES, marked for return shipment. I asked the guy if there was anyway I could purchase a copy or two without paying for the whole lot at auction, he told me I could not. I decided it wasn't worth staying for as they said the building and everyting upstairs was going to be auctioned last. My cousin stayed for the auction and told me, they brought it down from upstaris after I said something to the auctioneer, who actually wasn't in chage, and that it went for $ 200.00. I wish I would have bought it myself, because I have seen them sell for a lot, more than is in each a copy by far from 200 dollars.

 

--James

[Bill Brasky]

Anyone remember O'Shea? Million or so of sealed 2600 and 7800 games.

They're still going http://www.oshealtd.com/atari.htm

Holy crap, they're up to $5 each now? I remember the good ol' days when they were like 70 cents each. Then they went up to 2 bucks.

 

I bet you could talk them into a good price if you bought like 50-100 or so of the same game, but still, geez.

 

How do they still have a million after all these years? They must either be running low or not be very eager to sell them if they're asking $5.00 each. IIRC, I paid .80 cents tops for mine and they had many more titles back then. I bought two nearly complete 7800 collections for little money.

[Bruce Tomlin]

How do they still have a million after all these years? They must either be running low or not be very eager to sell them if they're asking $5.00 each. IIRC, I paid .80 cents tops for mine and they had many more titles back then. I bought two nearly complete 7800 collections for little money.

I think they just got tired of picking onesie-twosies for collectors.

[Bill Brasky]

Factory sealed games?I,ve seen tons of sealed games for sale that are in such mint condition,with not one scratch through the seal,no humidity damage,question is,where do they get these games?(the stores),i realise that there were left overs form the famous"video game crash",but that was over like 10-20 years ago,i figure the supply would be depleted by now.I just got 4 7800 games factory sealed,and the store has hundreds more,and you can tell if a game is REALLY factory sealed,or if it has been opened.I open all my games,except for,( MIDNIGHT MUTANTS)which i have multiple copies of,does the fact that midnight mutants was the last game produced for the 7800 give it more collectors status?I KNOW there's alot of bogus sealed games,the ones i have seen are legit.

Midnight Mutants is pretty inexpensive. Although I agree, it should be worth more because of that. I own a boxed copy.

Midnight Mutants is pretty expensive,have you looked at what they're asking for it on E-BAY or any other auction,i havent seen one under $30.00us loose,and boxed ,i've seen sealed boxed ones go for $60.00-$70.00us,overpriced?,dont know ,it all depends on whats important to the buyer,but people are gobbling them up!.And mutants is not that easy to find either!I think part of the reason,besides it was the last game made for the 7800,is that its a horror/halloween game,those types of games have always demanded high dollars.I bought all my copies on e-bay,I have 3,that was the quickest way for me to have them,if not for ebay,I'd still be looking for midnight mutants, I paid $45.00us for the mint sealed one,I was lucky I got it that CHEAP!,and I think it was worth every penny,AWESOME GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I don't where or when you're looking. MM isn't rare. O'Shea's sold tons of new, boxed copies of it for months or years till it finally sold out. I sold my mint, boxed copy on ebay in January and it only went for $15.49. I can't imagine the price or rarity has quadrupled since then.

[Rik]

Factory sealed games?I,ve seen tons of sealed games for sale that are in such mint condition,with not one scratch through the seal,no humidity damage,question is,where do they get these games?(the stores),i realise that there were left overs form the famous"video game crash",but that was over like 10-20 years ago,i figure the supply would be depleted by now.I just got 4 7800 games factory sealed,and the store has hundreds more,and you can tell if a game is REALLY factory sealed,or if it has been opened.I open all my games,except for,( MIDNIGHT MUTANTS)which i have multiple copies of,does the fact that midnight mutants was the last game produced for the 7800 give it more collectors status?I KNOW there's alot of bogus sealed games,the ones i have seen are legit.

Midnight Mutants is pretty inexpensive. Although I agree, it should be worth more because of that. I own a boxed copy.

Midnight Mutants is pretty expensive,have you looked at what they're asking for it on E-BAY or any other auction,i havent seen one under $30.00us loose,and boxed ,i've seen sealed boxed ones go for $60.00-$70.00us,overpriced?,dont know ,it all depends on whats important to the buyer,but people are gobbling them up!.And mutants is not that easy to find either!I think part of the reason,besides it was the last game made for the 7800,is that its a horror/halloween game,those types of games have always demanded high dollars.I bought all my copies on e-bay,I have 3,that was the quickest way for me to have them,if not for ebay,I'd still be looking for midnight mutants, I paid $45.00us for the mint sealed one,I was lucky I got it that CHEAP!,and I think it was worth every penny,AWESOME GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I don't where or when you're looking. MM isn't rare. O'Shea's sold tons of new, boxed copies of it for months or years till it finally sold out. I sold my mint, boxed copy on ebay in January and it only went for $15.49. I can't imagine the price or rarity has quadrupled since then.

Go on E-bay,put midnight mutants in the search box,or just try bidding on one,you'll see what i mean, e-bay is just the easiest way for me to get my hands on 7800 games,you can wait till the cows come home to find games like these,the last time i saw a 7800 game at the flea market or pawn,or thrift shop is like NEVER,in the 7 years ive been collecting.Ive looked on other on-line stores,but all they have are the common carts,who wants another pole position 2?and i never said, midnight mutants is rare,just HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER,and VERY HARD TO FIND IN THE WILD.EVERY bid for THIS game HAS turned into a bidding war for me,but yes with patience you can snag it for a reasonable price,LOOSE,that is,sealed,get ready to pay quite a high price.People may not all be fans of e-bay,but because of e-bay i'm getting all the games I want,without waiting years to find them at thrift stores,and that suits me fine.

Edited November 12, 2006 by Rik

[birdie3]

Eh!! How about the finds in South America last summer (sealed Motorodeo, Ikari warriors etc..). There's bound to be tons of this kind of thing still out there. Where the hell are they though!!??

[Classic Pac]

Let me tell you what I learned the hard way here recently about Tetris by Tengen. A few years back and this is no joke that game was selling for as much as $1000 even just for the cart. But that was back then, right now as I have been told that same game can be bought for as little as $30 or less. Why such a dramatic change in value? My guess is that once everyone saw what they could get the collector market became flooded with them and the price took a nose dive.