Ebay- Ebay is a double edged sword to collectors. It provides an outlet to get incredibly hard to find items, but also can inflate prices by creating an artificial market. There is always the possibility of ugly bidding wars or less-than-honest participants. Personally I do not participate in Ebay bidding, although I may at one point. Part of collecting is the challenge inherent in going into "the wild" to find carts. A guy sitting at a computer with a credit card isnt a collector, just a person trying to see how much they can spend. Hit the streets and scour the stores is what I say.
Funcoland- Funcoland, soon to be called GameSpot, is a national retailer of new and used games. They are most commonly found scattered around America's finest strip malls. The main attraction of this store is that you can trade in your old games for credit for new ones. This leads tothem having a lot of NES carts and accessories in stock as people look to unload their old stuff. There is almost always a good selection of carts at Funco, however they know demand for their titles and will rake you over the coals for a popualr title. It doesn't help that the store employees of Funco are notorious for their dismissive attitude towards anyone not buying the latest N64 or Playstation title. Go here to build up your collection with their bargain basement titles (many are under $2) and scour flea markets to get a deal on the expensive ones. Unfortunately, in the past couple months their prices have skyrocketed, making the store a less valuable resource because you can't get as many bargains anymore.
Conventions The Classic Gaming Community often organizes Classic Gaming conventions for collectors to get together, trade, and discuss games. The Largest one, Classic Gaming Expo, takes place annually in Las Vegas. It features gaming developers such as David Crane, Ralph Baer, and Nolan Bushnell giving speeches and showing off rare items. There's also tons of dealers and homebrew games for sale.
Inverse usefulness/attractiveness to collectors.For a general rule, as collectors, it seems as if the more obscure and less useful a product actually is, the more desirable it is as a collectable. For example, the R.O.B. Nintendo peripherial was only supported by two games, and only released for a few years 1985 and 1986. But becuase it looks great on display, it is a sought after item for collectors.
Many collectors crave the difficulty of finding obscure or special edition packages. Showing off a collection with rare and obscure titles is satisfying in its own right.
Web links
Frodaddy Home Page
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