Updated Rare and Valuable NES Guide - Crazy Increases!

[racketboy]

My Rare and Valuable guide have needed an update and the NES guide was most needed, so I updated it a couple weeks back. Figured I should post it in here.
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/nintendo ... -nes-games

It's worth noting that there's been some huge increases since the last revision 5 years ago or so.

A lot of the games that were in the "honorable mentions" or even the "affordable rarities" section before skyrocketed as people are trying to round out their collections.

What's everyone's thoughts and insights on the NES market these last few years?

[Sarge]

It's put a crimp in my collecting for sure. I own four of these titles: Mighty Final Fight, Metal Storm, The Jetsons, and TMNT: Tournament Fighters. Only the last one is complete, the first two cart-only, and the box for The Jetsons. It still boggles my mind how fast the prices rose. I distinctly remember balking at the asking price of Little Samson years ago; they wanted an audacious $50 on eBay. If only I knew then what I do now...

[marurun]

At least one of those is actually a really fun game, so it's a shame it's completely out of reach.

[racketboy]

Yeah, my story is that I had Metal Storm on my shopping list for years. I noticed an old text wishlist file that I had which had a $20 price point for Metal Storm.
I really wanted it so I bit the bullet and just bought it. Most I've ever paid for a game at like $120. Oh well.

[Sarge]

Mighty Final Fight is one of my favorite NES games, but it's not worth $200. Of course, I don't think there are many games at all that are worth that much...

Metal Storm is really interesting, but it's not one of my faves. I'm partial to TMNT: TF; it's way better than the Genesis version, and better than any fighter on NES had any right to be. I'm still lucky I didn't end up selling it at a yard sale years ago.

Little Samson is the cream of the crop, but daaaaaaang, quadruple digits doesn't work for me. Sorry, gonna stick to emulation there.

[Tanooki]

In the last 5 years we were established into the annoying rise of the prices on the NES which drove away more and more other than the truer collectors who ran elsewhere, and the price games followed.

Now if you were comparing now to a year or two ago it's a little bit of a different picture. Despite the fact about 5 years back I swore off buying Nintendo home cartridge games and stuck well to it I did keep up on values now and again. I noticed that games that were clearly maxing out at insane levels have bled off some value, and not even the most crazy but even some of the fairly average to tempered priced stuff ($20-50 range) fell back a bit. It's not some huge cut but light to moderate.

The other day I saw this comment drop and went to ebay looking at a known paid pain in the arse which is Little Samson, a year back it was common as all get out to rarely see that sell with a solid label for $1000 and a bit higher. I did a skim on that and saw some nice ones roll out in the $750-850 range which surprised me. I started poking around more and saw where Duck Tales 2 had bee around close to $200 and now averaging at $150 so I think we may be seeing a light kick back against the stupidity of it all.

Perhaps people are fed up and everdrives are looking far more responsible or people got a brain and figured out you could just throw roms for free on your PC or buy a cheapo all prepped Pi3 box for like $70 (canakit) from Amazon and go that route. Android, everdrives, random windows(etc) emulators may be making a cut or people are just saying screw it and in some unknowing mass exodus of push back are paying less instead of bid war raging into worse territory.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Let the collectors and resellers fight over this stuff. If I can't afford it, I don't buy it. Simple as that. I already have a decent collection of games, and I like to just slowly pick away and grab stuff I find locally, with some occasional import purchases made online. Speaking of which, I think at this point there are more "expensive" Famicom games I care about vs. NES titles.

Think the most I ever paid for an NES game was $50 for Faria.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Let the collectors and resellers fight over this stuff. If I can't afford it, I don't buy it. Simple as that. I already have a decent collection of games, and I like to just slowly pick away and grab stuff I find locally, with some occasional import purchases made online. Speaking of which, I think at this point there are more "expensive" Famicom games I care about vs. NES titles.

Think the most I ever paid for an NES game was $50 for Faria.

+1

I am old enough to have bought NES games when they were new...which means that, after adjusting for inflation, I paid just over $122 dollars for Heroes of the Lance.

[Tanooki]

Let the collectors and resellers fight over this stuff. If I can't afford it, I don't buy it. Simple as that. I already have a decent collection of games, and I like to just slowly pick away and grab stuff I find locally, with some occasional import purchases made online. Speaking of which, I think at this point there are more "expensive" Famicom games I care about vs. NES titles.

Think the most I ever paid for an NES game was $50 for Faria.

+2 I guess.

I did the same thing 2 weekends ago. Always usually little to nothing, or it's filler stuff or beat to hell if not asking ebay normally. Oddly I walked into a spot and found Ms Pac-Man for the NES, dude wanted $8 and I've always wanted to try it and never found it when the want was there without an idiotic price attached. That aside from grabbing Rampage for my kid and I to enjoy a couple weeks earlier broke a 5 year old buying moratorium on old NES carts. My kid totally ate up playing the big monkey and pounding the crap out of everything while eating people. I haven't let her try out Ms Pac-Man yet, but wow I was shocked how much replay value is in that one due to the crazy unique options they added to the game. I almost feel bad I never had it before and I've owned more than 1/2 the licensed/unlicensed library for that at one time or another. It was like one of a couple Tengen titles I never found.

Let the nuts battle it out. If I can find a fun one locally and it's old school cheap I'm game. Other than that I'm more than happy buying junk on the Switch or even 3DS still if not something that is on my GoG wishlist. Recently I ended up with $100 in amazon gift cards in the last month and I dropped them on a stack of Switch and 3DS games reducing the price deeply with the 20% off added onto that too. Point being more than enough to keep busy with for months to come.

[racketboy]

OK, let me ask this: if you had any of the top 20 or 30 on this list, are there any you wouldn't sell at premium prices?