How much should I pay for this Virtual Boy?

[Xelyx]

My friend has a VB he's willing to sell me. It has the power supply, stand, controller and face piece. It powers on but there's no game so we can't fully test it. What is an accurate and fair price to pay for it, untested?

[Tanooki]

He willing to take it back if it won't work? That should be a helpful direction to go in. If he isn't, find out what a broken one sells for on average, remove the ebay fees, then take a little more off for effort. If it's busted, well you can sell the separate parts off individually get your cash back. Just find the cheapest copy of Mario Tennis online shipped and use that as your tester.

I know a good loose working one will go at least fairly speaking around $100-150 if it's complete, works, and still has Mario Tennis with it.

[Xelyx]

Luckily another friend of mine has a copy of Mario Tennis that I can get from him. I offered $50 for the system.

[Tanooki]

That's fair depending how much you care to dig into it if it's junk.

See the stand itself if the plastic bits aren't cracked has some ok value. The red/black body does as well even if the guts in some way are shot. I've also seen people part out some of the internals, specifically the eye pieces and their ribbon cable attachments as they end up shot often annoyingly with age. All that can since it'll get you more than $50 make it worth the effort if it's a piece of junk to break even factoring $ and your time/fees into it.

I was in a similar situation last year, these trolls at this one Goodwill priced a VB with just the body, not even the controller (which means no power, which is also untested) for $90 which was complete bs and it sat, sat, then met its fate in the crusher outside as they were too ignorant to get that was like full price value with no game. Man I wanted it, had it been $40~ I'd have jumped at the risk for the parts.

[Xelyx]

That was my plan. Either it will work ok or I'll part it out.

[Xelyx]

Well, I picked it up. I brought it over to another friend's house to try it with a game he has. I didn't expect it, but it started right up! I'm so happy right now!

[Tanooki]

Score.

Now the hard part, pay up badly on a lot of games **OR** get a Flashboy assembled for you. More up front sure, but you can save thousands of dollars not being ripped off over Japanese stuff, plus multiple finished/near finished prototypes have popped up along with a good bit of homebrew (including Street Fighter II) have come out as well.

[Xelyx]

I might have to look for one of those now. I didn't even know there was one for the Virtual Boy. Thanks!

[Tanooki]

Well get educated with this:
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/hardwar ... carts&v=fb

While you're at it, bookmark that site, it's basically definitive #1 place to go on VB stuff.

75 euros for the device so it's just barely over $80, not sure what shipping is, but it's a life saver. Better off having that and just swapping games (the few there are) off the menu than dicking around with hardcore tier scalpers. You want to see abuse, look up anything Japanese the US didn't get, paid prices, ebay or otherwise, it gets over the $1000 mark.


EDIT scratch that. Forum for it shows a revised edition for $100USD, this one has an internal battery in it to save your games (the older didn't) and I believe it's faster I think I saw somewhere. You need to send him a donor VB cart so he can use the shell on it.
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/v ... 55&forum=7

They're custom ordered, you email him, and it's a considered preorder once you postmark a cartridge to use. Takes 1-2wk turn around to make one as ordered and then sent back with your donor to use. Easy as that. Cart+usb transfer cable, if you need a box pay someone else extra(who cares) and if you need the software it's a free download (used to come on a CD which is a waste of $.)