Sunday, January 18, 2015

Some Interesting Famicom Price Information: 88 Games Worth More than 5000 Yen


 As I mentioned in my last post, a seller on Yahoo Auctions has been putting up an amazing collection of CIB Famicom games with low starting bids.  In fact he seems to be putting an almost complete set (over 1,000 games according to him and he has put up 600 different ones so far) - all CIB and all in nice condition.

Since an opportunity like this only comes once in a while, I thought this would provide a useful bit of information to record - just how much are all of these games, being auctioned at (almost) the same time in almost the same condition by the same guy going for?

While one sale isn`t enough information to form the basis for a price guide, at least this will give us a hint of what these games are roughly worth - virtually all the games got a fair amount of bidding so we know there weren`t any expensive ones going for unrealistically low prices, while at the same time the low starting bids meant no unrealistically high prices set by the seller (though of course that doesn`t mean everyone was bidding rationally).

The seller hasn`t quite been selling them all at once, in the first round he auctioned off 300 (and has a second round of 300 which will finish next week).  The first round finished last night and these are the games which sold for over 5000 yen, which accounted for 88 out of the 300.  I cut them off at 5000 yen partly to save myself some time and partly because the more expensive ones, having gotten the most bids and most attention from buyers, probably went for prices closer to their actual value.

I have listed these below, in order from most to least expensive.  The values are in Yen and do not include shipping (which would have added 164 or 510 yen depending on the method of shipping chosen).  To get a rough idea of the value in US $, the exchange rate at the time of the auction was about 115 Yen to the Dollar.

All games are CIB and, while I didn`t closely look at all the pictures, the ones I did inspect were all in very good condition.  Some of them were sold as new or never used, these are marked with `New` after the price.

There are a few interesting things.  The most expensive game was Summer Carnival Recca at 104800 yen, almost one thousand dollars.  Battle Formula, another rarity, was a close second and the only other one to breach the 100,000 Yen barrier.  Taking third place was a game I had never heard of for the Datach called Battle Rush, which apparently is also quite hard to find CIB.  Kung Fu (the scarce variant of Spartan X), Snow Bros and Lickle all got over 50,000, which isn`t surprising as they are all quite hard to find.

One game that did surprise me was #10, Double Dragon which sold for a whopping 36100 Yen.  That is a great game but by no means is it rare (though CIB copies in nice shape are a bit hard to come by).  It seems totally out of place wedged in between Adventure Island 4 and Moon Crystal, both of which are extremely hard to find.  I have seen slightly worn copies selling at Mandarake for about 1/10th that price.

There are a few other super common games that made the list - Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo, Kakefu Kun and Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu seem completely out of place on a valuable game list but they were all new which might explain it (though I still think they went for too much). Mitsume ga Toru, a hard to find and very popular game, also seems out of place right next to Milon no Daibouken, which is a good game but extremely common.

There don`t seem to have been any steals among the games on this list (the ones that went under 5,000 yen were mostly unsurprising too).  Kage and Taiku no Gen San seem a bit lower on the list than I think they deserve, but the prices paid for them aren`t much different from what they go for in shops.

I`ll update this again next week when round 2 of the sale finishes.


Summer Carnival 92 Recca 104800
Battle Formula 101100
Battle Rush (Datach) 81550
Kung Fu 61000
Snow Bros 55300
Lickle 50111
Guevara 45100
Gimmick! 44100
Adventure Island 4 39000 New
Double Dragon 36100
Moon Crystal 34700
Chip and Dale's Adventure 32700
Banana Oushi Daibouken 32100 New
Bubble Bobble 2 30200
Contra 29100
Gold Punch Out 28500
Yu Yu Hakusho (Datach) 25500
Magical Doropie 22500
Doki Doki Yuenchi 21500
AnpanMan no Hiragana Daisuki 20500
Chip and Dale's Adventure 2 20100
Rockman 18600
Donald Land 18500
Nekketsu Street Baseketball 18060
Spartan X 2 16015
Kyoro Chan Land 15700
Taiku no Gen San 2 15200
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 14700 New
Spelunker (with POP) 14500
The Empire Strikes Back 14300
Kakefu Kun 13600 New
Final Mission 13200
Sword Master 13111 New
Star Wars (Victor) 13060
Bucky O'Hare 13001
Family School 12600
Mike Tyson Punch Out 12200
Super Contra 12100
Choujin Sentai Jetman 12050 New
Bazolda 11600
Fushigi no Umi no Nadia 11200
Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo 11166 New
Adventures of Lolo 2 11100
Gekitotsu Macho Man 11015 New
Rockman 2 10600
Bomber Man 10600 New
Idol Hakkenden 10550
Nakayoshi to Isshou 10500
Chaos World 10000
Mitsume ga Toru 10000
Milon no Daibouken 9649 New
Joust 9500
Mighty Final Fight 9050 New
Kage 8851
Kawa no Nushu Tsuri 8450 New
Hoshi wo Miru Hito 8000
Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru 7850
Bikkuriman World 7750 New
Popeye (silver box) 7501
Rockboard 7250 New
Sqoon 7150 New
Tatakai no Banka 7150
Mother 7150
Donkey Kong Jr Math 7050
Rokdenashi Blues 6850
Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu 6511
Moai Kun 6449 New
Taiku no Gen San 6350
Chiki Chiki Machine 6265
Ninja Ryukenden 6252
Moeru Onisan 6250
Robocop 2 6150
Max Warrior 6150 New
Mickey Mouse 3 Yume Fusen 6100 New
Dragon Slayer 6099
Balloon Fight 6050
Zelda no Densetsu 6050
Tom and Jerry 5761
Space Hunter 5750
Rockman 6 5750
Ninja Ryukenden 3 5600 New
Mario Bros (silver box) 5510
Robocop 5350
Bio Senshi Dan 5250 New
Red Arima 2 5250 New
Tashiro Masashi Princess ga Ippai 5000
Ushi Ototora 5000

5 comments:

  1. I've placed bids of 3 of them on this list but all lost. The final prices (of the ones I bidded) are actually a bit higher than recent items with similar conditions...

    One of my outbid items was 100 yen off so I guess I was partly responsible for pushing the price up...

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  2. This makes me glad I just collect cartridges rather than CIB. O.o

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  3. Yeah, I am glad I collect loose too. I also put in bids on 3 or 4 games. None of them went so high as to make this list, but they were also a bit out of my range so I didn't win any.

    I think you are right about the prices of some stuff going on the high side. I think that might happen when big auctions like this gain a lot of attention.

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  4. Aw, so you didn't get any, Sean? Also, I have to agree w/ Anon (above), as some of these prices actually are higher than what I've seen on NA eBay. (Many others are lower, of course.) Anyway, thanks for collecting and sharing this info :)

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  5. Hi Bryan,

    Yeah, the prices are a bit higher than what stuff goes for on Yahoo Auctions too. I think the explanations for why that is might be;

    a) These were all games in really nice condition and perhaps people had more confidence in getting stuff from a seller with so much high quality stuff;
    b) The bidding wars on some stuff got too frenzied and people ended up bidding stuff up higher than what they would normally pay, resulting in skewered higher prices;
    c) This auction got a lot more attention than most, so it simply drew in a larger range of bidders on everything, possibly including some wealthier collectors looking to plug in multiple holes in their collections and not worried about money, and that resulted in higher prices.
    d) The prices might actually reflect the market value of this stuff, but other sellers are selling their stuff too low ( this seems unlikely to me).

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