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Value of a large collection of NES cartridges?

R

raifield

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2010
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174
Location
NJ, USA
I've got 312 NES cartridges that I'm trying to sell as a whole, but I'm having difficulty in finding any information as to what would constitute a fair price for them. My first thought was to ask at the Chase the Chuck Wagon video game auction site, only to find that it is now completely gone. In my feverishly optimistic mind I'm hoping for $5 - $10 a cartridge, but that does seem to be a bit much, even if I've spent probably four times that acquiring them over the years.

While this is the Vintage Computer Forum, I'm hoping someone here might know where I need to be asking.
 
I think Chase the Chuck Wagon turned into http://www.gamegavel.com/ a few years ago.

If you're selling as lot-only $10 is quite high...$5 probably is pushing it too. Normally you lower the price some, if you sell in lots.
Of course you don't list what titles you have either. For all we know it's 300 Mario/Duck Hunts.
 
Find the rarities if any and sell them separate, dump the rest as a lot. Anybody buying a large lot with pay much less for it then the pieces separate.
 
Yup. I'm not a collector of NES and it'll be a tedious task to find known sales of each cart (unless money really is an issue, then time is probably worth less than the money so do that and list them all separate) but otherwise I'd lot some or all and sell the more unique ones separately.
 
Thanks. Clearly I have to give this some more thought. I'll check out GameGavel. Thanks for the assistance everyone!

For all we know it's 300 Mario/Duck Hunts.
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Well, true, but each game only shows up once in my collection, I have no use for duplicates. I have been tracking what I have in a Google Docs spreadsheet, but none of the cartridges are uniquely valuable, so I figured no one would want a list 312 lines long.
 
That link is a nice resource - thanks for posting... In glancing at a few of the NES titles, however, I think that they're a little high on some of the common carts.

Still, quite a nice resource and one I'll be visiting again.

OP, if there are just loads of NES games, you won't get alot on a per-cartridge basis by selling as a lot, though if you get enough traffic for those looking to start/fill-in holes in their complete NES set and get a bid war going, who knows? For 300 games with no rarities, I'd be surprised if you got more than $1000 without that bid war... but it's been known to happen. I've seen 200 games iwth only one or two "rare" games (and by rare, I mean commanding in the $50-100 range per piece) go for upwards of $2k before, so you might luck up!

If I were you, I'd put a low start bid, reserve for what you want, and state that reserve in the auction. See what occurs. You might get surprised.
 
Unknown_K said:
http://videogames.pricecharting.com/console/nes?sort-by=name
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I think that price list is incredibly overpriced. Using Amazon.com as a price resource is worthless. Somebody can sit with his Bubble Bobble 2 or Duck Tales 2 loose cart there for years and never sell it. They can probably do the same with ebay BIN and half.com. A removed listing does not mean that it sold for the list price. Only a list verified to be based on real sales has any value.
 
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It may sound hypocritical coming from someone who is looking to sell his, but NES games in general have become incredibly overpriced in the past few years, KOEI's NES games are especially over-priced for some reason.

The price list may not be terribly accurate, but it is nice to have some idea of what to expect to get another game. I'm not sure if I'm going to sell mine after all, I needed to raise money for a medical issue, but it's looking like selling my games won't be necessary.
 
Pretty much all price lists like that are inflated but it does give an idea of what the common titles are and what the rarities are. There are quite a few more console game collectors around then PC game collectors so prices on sold items should easy enough to find (kind of hard to pirate a ROM cart for most people).

Anyway the list isn't mine so complain all you like. ;)
 
raifield said:
It may sound hypocritical coming from someone who is looking to sell his, but NES games in general have become incredibly overpriced in the past few years, KOEI's NES games are especially over-priced for some reason.

The price list may not be terribly accurate, but it is nice to have some idea of what to expect to get another game. I'm not sure if I'm going to sell mine after all, I needed to raise money for a medical issue, but it's looking like selling my games won't be necessary.
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People have all kinds of reasons for selling collections, but the reality is anybody who needs to dump a collection that took ages to put together and needs it sold yesterday generally gets nothing for it defeating the purpose.
 
I think that a lot of those sites either peruse and collect Amazon sample data or ebay posts but not very often look to see if they sold at that price. I'm a bit surprised also and wouldn't expect prices like that for loose carts unless they're considered uncommon/rare. Of course all the local stores buy them for $.50/1.00 at most and then sell them for $9.99 but that's also sitting on a shelf until someone has enough of an itch to pay that for one game they remember and don't care about the price.
 
Common games, even popular ones, I will rarely pay more than $3 loose and $10 CIB. Exceptions being the rare/collectible games. Those I'll pay/trade market value for. And sometimes hold out until I find my price.
 
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