Any Collector's here on GB?

And if so what game has given you the most trouble to find, and what's the most obscene price you have paid for something you were looking for?

For me I'm having a real hard time locating a copy of Silent Hill 4 The Room and I'm about to pay out my ass for both Final Fantasy Anthology and Chronicles (the ps1 game not the newer gamecube) at about 50$ a piece.

I would feel ICO is notable but I managed to find it for 5$ at a gamestop once. :)

What platform are you looking for SH4 on? I have the PS2 version, and although I'm not 100% sure I'd part with it, I've seen a billion used copies here in Kansas.

Edit: Or, here you go.

My apologies if not a North American resident. In which case, I might be able to track down a copy and ship it to you for the retail price + Shipping.

Ugh, yeah. Jeff has somewhat regrettably gotten me into collecting games. Probably the worst deal I've made so far was spending 31,32 dollars on Trapt. It's just not a great game, and I could have lived without it. It's still awesome having it and all, but I could have put that 30 dollars toward getting Sengoku Basara 3 Utage, or something else that I would have played a lot more. As far has hardest to find, I'd have to say Metal Wolf Chaos is going to be my holy grail for a while. It's sitting around 250 for a copy just about everywhere I've looked so far.

Having recently bought a SNES I've straddled the line of collecting. I began only trying to get all the games I had, but now I'm trying to buy a couple of "best of all time" games as well as trying for a Ps1 or Ps2 game here or there.

€30 for Shadowrun or €35 for Mega Man X would be the most I've spent.

I hate when things pile up and tend to get rid of them if possible. I guess I'm the opposite of a collector.

I collect a ton of games... I have a few games (some really obscure) that I have been searching for. One of the more well known games that I have had a tough time finding for a decent price that works properly is Secret of Mana for the SNES. I have picked up two copies of the game, one at a flea market and one at a game shop. The flea market purchase didn't work at all, I only paid 3 bucks for it so not a big loss. The other worked until it froze at the same scene about an hour in, every time.

I'm as collectory as they come. The biggest thing for me was getting a decent copy of Steel Battalion, my thousandth game. I finally got one for about 250$...then my mom asked me to find one for my brother. Yay.

I have gotten a whole lot better about this, I used to be pretty bad and ended up paying double the price if the game came with a manual. Now I don't really care about that kind of stuff, I will only buy something if it interests me, not to complete a collection.

Although saying that I recently spent £80 on the Skyrim art book and soundtrack..

I'm still looking for a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga. I'd say my most ridiculous purchases have been Terranigma ( $300), Steel Battalion ( $250), two copies of Valkyrie Profile ( $200 each), to name a few. One of my best finds, though, was an unopened Skies of Arcadia just hanging out in an Exchange for, like, $25!

Don't spend 50$ on Final Fantasy Anthology! I spent 25$ on it and still thought it was 5$ too much. Being a collector doesn't necessarily mean being a big spender. I play the markets and always buy low. The most I've ever spent on a single game is like 40$, and I have some semi-rare games in my collection.

If you look hard enough you can get the Anthology for somewhere around 15

I only collect games that I will play a lot. I am going to round off my SMT collection, and focus on more PS2 and SNES games for the time being. It's a lot cheaper to look at games this way.

My holy grail would be EarthBound, but I've long since given up hope at finding that game for a reasonable price.

Maybe I'll go find a copy of Mother 3 instead, that is much cheaper to find.

I probably have over a 100 games on my shelf (and a lot more on Steam and GOG) but I've never paid for than the normal retail price for a game. 

There's definitely some rare JRPGs I'd like to grab hold of in the future. I haven't bought any really expensive ones yet. I paid £30 for Suikoden a while back (NTSC version, as it seems to be a lot cheaper than the PAL versions that appear), but that's nothing compared to some of the rarer ones. The main reason of buying them will always be to play those games, but it's also nice to own a piece of gaming history. One day...one day...

I am a pretty huge video game collector. I would say the game that is recently giving me a hard time acquiring is Tomba. TWICE now I have found it at thrift stores and TWICE now it turns out to be only the case with no game inside. both of the times it was with a stack of other PlayStation games and they were all in their cases....

I generally try not to spend large amounts of money on my games however, I always try and wait to find good deals on stuff. I have however been sucked into buying more than a few collectors editions this console generation.

I spent 15k on Nintendo world championship.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Any collector's what? 
 
Hilarious grammar jokes aside, I'm not really a collector, but I keep the games I buy. What if I ever want to play the game again?

I've once spent about $300 on a boxed copy of Earthbound and sold it a year or so later because it was too ridiculous of an investment. I still somewhat casually collect games and CDs.

But hardcore collecting just for the collection's sake is something I'll never do (like collect all games available for a specific system or something like that).

I payed $70 USD for a sealed, unboxed copy of System Shock, and $55 for an unsealed, boxed copy of System Shock 2.

But they're more insurance against the titles being lost to time rather than officially "collected."

I collect games too but haven't spent too much on any one thing yet. Unless you count the ridiculous amounts I spend on steam sales.

I did spend about £50 on digital comics after seeing the avengers though

I don't actively seek out games, If i see and old game that I played or know to be good and is relatively cheap, I'll buy it.

Though I did spend $50(AU) on a copy of Deadly Premonition.

i collect games from when they came out but i don't go out of my way to get them. i play the games and then they sit on my shelf.

I'm a collector in the way people end up on Hoarders. It's not because I see them as having monetary value or anything, I just can't really bring myself to sell games after I'm done with them.

I'd say my most valuable game was probably a sealed copy of Suikoden (Didn't care about it being sealed, I just never got around to it), but after it came out on PSN I'm sure any sort of market bottomed out of that.

I like to keep every game i buy, and will try and hunt down older games for reasonable prices if i hear a lot of good things about it. But i always buy them with the intention of playing them at some point and normally wont go over $60-$50 price that the game originally sold for.

After Persona 3 FES came out i was on the hunt for any ATLUS games, and since they do limited runs they where expensive and hard to find. But luckily i think ATLUS knew there where people like me after that game and reprinted everything, so i got them for a good price ($30-$20 i think).

Maybe... I may or may not have spent $100+ on a sealed copy of Ikaruga for Dreamcast.

I also may or may not have spent even more on a limited edition poster of said game, made for the arcade release of the game.

There's also a second different poster of the game that I got for about $60 from some french arcade game festival.

I like to think that I collect games, but I don't get into the area of sealed games. Any game I buy is going to end up getting played at one point or another. I think the most money I've spent on a game was on a copy of Renny Blaster for the PC Engine, and even then I paid a lot less than what I would have expected. Having the bottom of the market drop out in the last 5 or so years has been great for new acquisitions.

I just picked up a Genesis and Sega CD, so I'm looking to build that collection currently. I'm hoping to get copies of the Mutant League games, so I can show my little brother what brilliant sports games look like. But what I really need to find is a copy of Lunar 2. I was able to quickly find a copy of the first one, but I need to complete the saga!

@Keen314: I was lucky enough to pick up Lunar 2 at launch, it's a pretty damn perfect game. I loved working designs

As far as collecting, I'm a collector with a caveat. I will buy and collect video games that are only a really good deal. I'm talking like 50% or less of the real value of the game. That makes game collection exciting again. I mean, with eBay and cheapass gamer and such, it's easy to find the rarest of games, so the hunt has evolved into finding those games on the cheap.

As far as the most expensive thing in my collection goes, It's a toss up between my Neo Geo arcade machine and the AES home version. I think initially that the home version was more, but in the long run, the arcade is due to parts.

@mlarrabee said:

I payed $70 USD for a sealed, unboxed copy of System Shock, and $55 for an unsealed, boxed copy of System Shock 2.

But they're more insurance against the titles being lost to time rather than officially "collected."

Oh god that's awesome. You just gave me a collector's erection.

Creepy intended.

@TehFlan said:

Any collector's what? Hilarious grammar jokes aside, I'm not really a collector, but I keep the games I buy. What if I ever want to play the game again?

Good call I've said before I was going to stop making 5 am threads but that's when I find myself most bored if sleep just isn't going to happen,

Steam, motherfuckers! :3

@MordeaniisChaos said:

Steam, motherfuckers! :3

Steams awesome but I really have a thing for owning the boxed copy :(

I've only recently got into "collecting" games. Back in the PS2 days and before, I didn't have much disposable income, so I generally sold games when I was done with them. Now that I do have the money, I've been trying to find the games I enjoyed the most and get the full boxed copies of them. This includes all those classic PC games I grew up with as well.

Thankfully, those games either have a ton of copies floating around, or no one really cared about them, so they are incredibly cheap.

And now when there is less of a focus on backwards compatibility, but digital downloads for services that have no guarantee of lasting for more than a few years, I'd rather have something that I could own for a good long while.

I don't really go out of my way to get certain games, but I really hate buying the standard edition of a game when there's a collector's edition and they're usually being sold at extortionate prices.

I found a used copy of Shadow of the Colussus Collector's Edition for about 25$. According to google that's somewhat rare.

One game I found in particular, and I wasn't even looking for it, was Dragon Warrior Monsters. I just bought a Game Boy Color for $12 about a month ago and I needed a game for it. I was actually trying to look for Metroid or Link's Awakening. I was at a swap meet looking through every stand trying to sell games and that's when I stumbled upon Dragon Warrior Monsters. Only cost me $6 and I love it.

Other than that, I really haven't had a hard time finding a game that I wanted. I've had occasions where it was a pain in the ass due my car being repaired. Such as, I wanted to buy Golden Sun the Lost Age. The problem is that it was at a Gamestop a couple of cities over. I walked down to a local Gamestop to ask the guy if there's any way they can have that game shipped to this Gamestop. They said no since it's too big of a hassle. Luckily the store manager walked in and mentioned that he was heading to that location anyways and he'll bring it back to this Gamestop. I just left my phone number and told him to give me a call when he brought it. That is one bad ass manager.

Close to £30 for Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes.

Totally worth it though

I paid $70 for a copy of chrono trigger (SNES) at PAX. It was in really good condition it was also cart only though.