DefaultGen's Video Game Collecting Guide v1.0

Your future SNES collection.

• I am not a hardcore collector, I'm just a member of the community passing on knowledge.
• Starting out with this guide will cost you around $50-100 depending on your luck and patience. If you learn quickly, you'll make it back in no time.
• Buy an NES (explained later). If you have some great objection to buying an NES, I hope I can persuade you that it will be for the best in the long run.
• You don't need to buy an NES, and don't get me wrong this is not an article on how to collect or resell specifically NES games. However, the market for NES games is large and you'll run across NES games more than anything else, so they are easy to trade for wants.
• This guide assumes you've never played a retro game in your life, you own nothing, and you've never used Ebay, Paypal, or the United States Postal Service in your life. Nothing beyond basic internet skills, patience, and a few bucks is needed to start out.
• This article was written in 2008 and if was tailored for the market at the time. Much may have changed since then and I haven't kept the article up to date. If there are any huge errors please email me!

So you'd like to get a start on eBay or trading games, shipping things in general, or collecting games. I'm a novice collector myself, but considering I started with a limited initial investment I'd say I've done quite well for myself. I began the hobby with around $400, and almost no video games (as I'd traded just about everything I'd owned into EBGames, a very bad idea, to afford a new Wii). I had no interest in retrogaming or collecting at the time, but the fact that Nintendo was charging $5 to download old Nintendo games from the 80s had me thinking, why bother with download copies when I could own physical copies? I grossly overpaid for an NES and a handful of games and that's where it began!

Ebay Vintage games is a great place to get a feel for common game prices.

So my first bit of advice is:

• Hang out a bit on Ebay, DigitPress and GameTZ.

Completed listings are searchable via "advanced search"

On DigitPress, you must be a member for 5 days before you get access to the marketplace so sign up for that right away. On GameTZ, just check the Vintage Games forum for single game prices. Most of the prices there are pretty reasonable so should be a good base of what things are worth. Prices are dynamic as HELL for retro games, a price guide, even updated yearly, will never be perfectly accurate.

• Assume the worst when it comes to pricing
• Assume the worst when it comes to pricing
• Assume the worst when it comes to pricing
• YOU WILL NOT GET THE BEST PRICE ON EBAY. Account for fees and shipping cost when determining the price of a game. If a game sells for $15 easily, don't pay $14 for it and assume you'll come out a dollar ahead.

A lot of NES games.

So another important point:

• Pick up 'lots' of games and don't be picky about which console it's for BUT have a means of testing games!

If you're going to collect Saturn games, you're going to need NES games to resell. They're just too common and the market is very large for them. Don't buy games for a console you don't own unless you personally trust the seller. If the game ends up not working you resell it, it'll be on you, and it will be a pain in the ass to run around letting the original seller know that a game you resold doesn't work and you'll likely be out a bunch of shipping money.

Owning a great deal of consoles and a wide variety of games may not be for you, but it could lead to you discovering an interest in a console you'd never considered. Owning more consoles increases the amount of money you'll have to spend, but if you come across a big lot of games spanning a dozen consoles, you'll be less likely to pass up a great deal if you own a majority of the consoles (and you'll likely know the prices of the games for consoles you own better than ones you don't own)

Paypal is important. Paypal is very important. You can pretend you're going to switch to RevolutionMoneyExchange or Obopay or anything like that, but in the end, Paypal is the current standard for the games (and Ebay) market. Paypal is both a good and very bad thing at the same time and of course you've probably heard your share of horror stories but it's like the government. You can hate it, but you have to depend on it for some times. If you don't know, Paypal is basically an online payment service, linked to your bank account and credit card.

Paypal is a necessary evil. You must learn to live with it.

For sellers, Paypal is a whole 'nother story. You WILL incur fees for receiving money ($0.30+4% or so per payment received) so keep that in mind when pricing items. PPCalc.com is a great reference to see how much someone has to send you to receive a particular amount after fees. You want to upgrade your account to a premier account. This allows you to receive credit card payments, something you absolutely will need to do. All the bullshit they tell you when upgrading is basically just that you'll start getting the bullshit fees when receiving money. I don't care if you think you'll get by without a premier account.

• You need a Paypal account
• You need to upgrade your account to Premier (It doesn't cost anything, it's just modified fees)
• You need to confirm your address
• You should add a bank account/credit card

Confirming your address is an absolute must. Without a confirmed address sellers will be reluctant to ship things to you because it will be harder for them to recover their item if you say you never received it. As a rule, you should not ship to people who do not have confirmed addresses. It's easy to confirm your address. Simply add a credit card to your account. If you don't have a credit card you can simply request to have a piece of paper with a code on it mailed to your house. Enter the code when you get it, and you're confirmed.

NES. Buy it for profit, if nothing else.

As many of you know, NES's suffer from a "blinking" problem (the reason you have to blow into the cartridges). For an NES with a new 72-pin connector, spend around $40 shipped. Now these prices are about middle of the road, you could shop around and find a better deal out there, but you won't be killing yourself buying an NES at market price. An alternative is to spend $25-30 on an NES clone (Found on Ebay by searching for 'New NES Console' you'll find tons). Keep in mind the feedback system on whatever forum you use, ask for feedback, and don't trade with new members!

Your first lot of games will be your first venture into buying to resell. I'd recommend looking for a medium sized lot of NES games and sniping it on Ebay. (For lots of games, it's easier to find a deal on Ebay than forums, but you might be able to get an NES console with games on Ebay for cheap. It's not written in stone that DigitPress or GameTZ forum members will give you a better price!).

• Snipe: noun/verb - The act of placing a bid in the last few seconds so that no one has time to outbid you
• Never place a bid on Ebay without Gixen

If you haven't figured it out, if you bid on Ebay when there is time left in the auction that gives other people time to outbid you. When they outbid you, you might bid higher than them, and then come back and bid higher... and the cycle goes on. This needlessly inflates the price of the item. You'll notice that nearly all Ebay auctions are won by snipes. All of the action in any Ebay auction occurs in the last 30 seconds. Don't get caught up in a bidding war.

• Decide the maximum amount you're willing to pay for an item. The absolute MAXIMUM amount and make that your limit.
• Set the snipe on Gixen and walk away. If the auction price goes past your bid, move on, it's not the end of the world.
• Remember that Ebay bids automatically UP TO your maximum bid. If you set your bid to $500 on an item, but the second highest bid is $10, you will only pay $11. This is very important!

• Sort the auctions by time listed so the most recently listed auctions are up
• Click Buy It Now to only show auctions with a Buy it Now option
• Weed through until you see "Optimize your selling success!" this means you've reached the end of the featured items (of which there is never anything good in).  For the "Systems" category this can be as many as 4-5 pages.
  
• Go through the first few auctions looking for deals
  • Confirm that a deal is a deal by checking completed listings.
  • Read the damn description. Make sure the item is the same as the picture/title and not broken or in terrible condition.
• If the auctions were listed more than an hour or so, you've reached the limit. It will be very rare that you find great deals in BIN (Buy it Now) beyond this point. Refresh the page occasionally and check back.

As a first lot of games, i'd recommend buying something easy to resell, depending on your price range that could mean buying a huge $400 lot of games (as I did when starting out), buying a system with a bunch of games to resell, or if you've only got $10 or so to spend, you could try to find a solitary game to purchase that you'd be able to flip for more. Finding solitary games to resell is much more difficult than lots, since single games usually go for more than you'd be willing to pay after factoring in shipping.

• There are tons of people doing the same thing as you right now

You might need to bid on dozens of auctions before you find a deal that suits you. Big resellers have the resources and customer base to bid more per game than you do. Don't get frustrated! If you have to, try combing forums for some good deals on games. Remember, you're not buying games to keep right now, you're buying mainly to resell.

• A very important point: Any game that you see on completed listings that has many listings UNSOLD at $5 or less shipped is nearly worthless.
  

If you see a game that has a bunch of auctions that look something like the above, that does not mean you'll get that. Your auction will be one of the ones sitting unsold, count on it. After Ebay fees and all, it's nearly worthless. These are the kind of games that will be easy to start out your collection with.

• Buy lots for the money games. If something consistently sells for $5+, count it when you're adding up how much a lot is worth. Anything else consider a bonus since it will not sell by itself. These cheapo games are the games you can keep to start out your collection, trade for other common games you actually want to keep on forums like GameTZ or DigitPress, or you can resell them in lots and earn a bit more cash.

• Everyone on Ebay is lucky except for you.

Your auctions will end lower than everyone else's. You will not get the same fantastic deals as everyone else. Going through completed listings will leave you with mixes emotions almost every time. There's bound to be some fluke buyer who got that $40 game for $5 shipped and there's bound to be that fluke seller who got lucky and some uninformed buyer overpaid $25 for a common NES game. Ignore these!

• Add up the final price + shipping for a slightly below average listing. Take off $4 for shipping and fees. Expect around that much for an average game. Yes, the buyer pays for shipping but you don't see any of that money.

So hopefully you got a great haul of NES games. If in 4 weeks you found out that you overpaid slightly, don't sweat it, you're just starting out. After all, the sucker bidding under you was willing to pay nearly the same price. For selling you've got 3 major choices: Forums, Ebay, and Amazon.

No fees but a crowd looking for big deals.

• You will not get market value for your games on forums

People on forums are looking for deals. They expect you to be lenient with pricing because you will not have to deal with the hassle of Ebay. You will not have to pay Ebay fees. You will not have to deal with shitty buyers who don't pay. This isn't to say that no one will want your games, and in most cases forums are the most favorable place to dump your games (due to the lack of fees). However:

• No one wants your crappy NES commons on forums

Unless you get incredibly lucky and find someone starting a small NES collection, your NES games are worthless to forum members. The only reason an established trader anywhere is going to buy your copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 is because he thinks he'll be able to resell it for a higher price. If you plan on selling on a forum, go to the appropriate board (Marketplace, Vintage Games, Classifieds or Console Marketplace) and set up a "FS: NES Games" thread.

• FS/WTS: For Sale/Want To Sell
• WTB/LF: Want To Buy/Looking For
  
• WTT/FT: Want To Trade/For Trade

List the conditions of the games as well as exact prices. Charge something like $2 for shipping + $1 for each additional game. Don't overcharge for shipping, it's bullshit and everyone sees through it. If you want to compensate for Paypal fees, make people use PPCalc.com when sending you money, or simply ask them to add 4% to their order.

• Don't ask for offers, list EXPLICIT prices and shipping prices. 99% of offers are bullshit lowballs.
• You WILL send first. Don't be a bitch about this. You're a 0-feedback noob with no reputation, you'll mail the games before you receive a god damn nickel from the buyer.
• Understand the reputation system of the forum you're using, make sure the buyer is well established! Generally DigitPress has trustworthy members, but check the feedback forum. If a buyer doesn't have feedback, or offers feedback from another site, confirm this! (Ask for him to send a message from the account with feedback).
• GameTZ uses a star system to rate traders. Do not trade with new traders or bronze stars as a new member. Don't be a bitch to well-established traders either.

Ebay: Huge market, huge fees.

So assuming you have a few NES games to sell, lets list them on Ebay. Click sell, enter the name of the game you're selling, and you're off to your first listing. Here are some tips for listing on Ebay:

• List your games in 'Video Games -> Games' It is the most popular category.
• Put 'Nintendo NES' in your title, not just either one. More keywords = More hits.
  

• Take a good picture. Show both the end label and the front face of the label. Condition is everything for retro games. Don't take a blurry picture or use a stock photo.
• Describe everything about your item. Buyers would rather buy an item they know to only have minor cosmetic defects than an item with an incomplete description.
• US Shipping only. Say it. Explicitly. Shipping even to Canada is too costly, time consuming (and likely confusing) for right now, especially for NES games.
• Test your item before you list it. Don't sell broken items, return them to the shitty seller from whence they came. You will be held accountable by Paypal for non-working games. You WILL lose the Paypal dispute. Buyer's read "as-is" as "broken." Paypal reads "as-is" as "trying to pass off broken games as might be working." TEST YOUR GAMES.
• Charge $4 for shipping a single game. On average a game will cost $2-$2.50 to ship in actual shipping. You'll spend $0.25-$0.50 on packing materials bought in bulk and the rest will go towards fees (although it might not cover all of them). Anything above this will be seen as gouging your shipping price, and will be frowned upon by buyers.
• Add shipping discounts. It's not difficult, and it gives you the option to while listing. Charge $4 for a single game and $2.50 for each additional game.
• Explicitly state your shipping price and shipping discount in the item description.
• PRICING GUIDELINES: If you expect a game to sell for $5-10, start it at $0.99. If you expect to sell it for $15-30, start it at $9.99. Learn the Ebay insertion fee increases. Fees are lowest at $0.99, $9.99, $24.99 and $99.99 so be sure to use those as starting prices. Remember if your item doesn't sell, you eat the $0.30 or so you spent listing it.
• Fees Restated:Ebay Listing Fee (~$0.35), Ebay Final Value Fee (~10% of the final price), Paypal funds received fee (~4% of the incoming money), Shipping Fee (~$2/game).
• Ebay bills you for fees monthly, they do not take it out right away. This sucks. It makes you think you're getting more money than you are. Amazon takes fees out straight away from payments.

Buyers will pay you in Paypal (Ebay will notify you when this happens via email), you'll give them positive feedback for paying you, and you ship out the item.

Amazon: My preferred way to sell.

• Amazon takes 15% commission. This is huge, but comparable to Ebay sans listing fees. Amazon takes fees straight out of the money you're getting, you don't ever have to worry about paying an Amazon bill on time, because fees will never accumulate.
  
• Amazon gives you $3.99 shipping credit for most games. This means they'll add $4 to whatever price you set for the item automatically.
  
• When listing on Amazon, you always get to see EXACTLY how much you will receive when listing an item. You don't have to hope that people bid on it like with Ebay. When someone buys an item, you will get that amount.
• Keep in mind the final amount includes the shipping credit, so if your bottom line is $9 for a game, you'll spend around $2.50 of that to ship it.
• Amazon does not use Paypal. They deposit directly into your bank account. This is fantastic. No additional Paypal fees!
• Make sure you add a bank account and make that your default payment method! Amazon pays in gift certificates otherwise!
• If you have the lowest price, regardless of how high it may seem compared to market value, your item will sell quickly.

I strongly prefer to sell on Amazon and forums. When I have to, I use Ebay, because face it, it is the marketplace of the internet. With Amazon, you don't have to deal with bullshit like non-paying buyers, and you can set your own prices, so it's generally superior to Ebay. Don't be afraid to throw a few things up on Amazon even if they're retro games. I've got surprisingly high prices for NES games on Amazon!

#0 Bubble Mailers are important!

USPS (United States Postal Service), regular mail, is the way to go when shipping games. Occasionally UPS will offer slightly better prices for large packages, but USPS is generally fine. Don't shop around for better postage prices, it's a waste of time in most cases. All of your postage will be done online. Waiting in line at the post office is for suckers. With Paypal, you can print up labels, slap them on a package and drop them off at the post office.

So for now, you likely have a bunch of NES carts you'd like to ship out, so we're going to use bubble mailers, not boxes. Bubble mailers minimize cost, are instant packaging, are perfectly sized for any game from Gameboy carts to DVD-cases, and save on shipping. We're also going to need shipping labels to print on and a scale to weigh packages. Here is your shopping list:

• 100 #0 Bubble Mailers ($17) - You need #0, it is the perfect size for anything. Yes you are purchasing 100 of these. These things are very expensive to buy alone ($0.50-$1.00) and investing in 100 of them, even if you only have 10 games to ship at the moment, is a very good idea for the long run.
• 200 Self Adhesive Shipping Labels ($10) - 200? Yes 200. They are very cheap and you might as well save on shipping and get enough for 2 loads of mailers.
• Digital Shipping Scale w/AC ($17) - If you have a food scale or something similar at home, that will do for now, but this is the cheapest sufficient long-term solution. The AC prevents you from needing to purchase batteries and it's more accurate than a mechanical scale. If you don't purchase this one make sure you get a scale that's accurate to the fraction of an ounce!

It is important to note that sellers have TONS of these items so bid the minimum bid, and if someone outbids you, just remember that another auction is likely ending in an hour or so! You shouldn't pay more than the prices listed next to each item, including shipping.

So now i'll introduce you to a website that you'll swear by as long as you're shipping things:

• https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ship-now

This section of Paypal lets you print out shipping labels to any address in the US using Paypal for free! There's no link to this on the site, but it works and it's great. You type in the address, how much it weighs, pick a shipping service (more on that later), and print up a label on one of your double labels. You have to mess with your Paypal shipping options to make sure that only one side of the label is printed on (otherwise you'll waste a label with each one you print).

Delivery confirmation is automatically included, you don't need to fill out any forms, and it is cheaper than DC purchased at the Post Office. So besides convenience this is an insanely good plus side to using Paypal. So here are some shipping tips:

• USE DELIVERY CONFIRMATION WITH EVERY SHIPMENT (Paypal includes it automatically). This is probably the most important thing anyone will ever tell you about shipping.
• Printing up invoices can be a hassle. I usually add a post-it note instead to each package with my Ebay/Amazon/Forum name and a short message thanking them and telling them to leave positive feedback.
• Save boxes you get from things you buy. Finding the perfect box for bigger items like consoles is a pain.
• Round up. 5.1oz means 6oz. A 3.9oz package is 5oz after you put a label on.
• Never ship a box (like a cardboard NES box) in a bubble mailer. Always use a box! Never ship a valuable jewel case game in a bubble mailer either.
• If you can't ship every day it's not a big deal, but you'll need to ship 1-2 times a week or people will complain about shipping times

• First Class - Takes 2-3 days, package must be 13oz or less, shipping a game generally costs $2-3. This is the way to go for anything under 13oz. Always try to use this!
• Priority Mail - Takes ~2 days, insanely expensive, and you have to measure (yes measure) your package. This seriously sucks. Unless your buyer specifically wants to pay for this, don't offer it. For packages that are 14oz to 2lbs, this is cheaper than Parcel Post so use this for packages of that size.
  
• Parcel Post - Takes 2-9 days, shipping big packages cross-country can take a week or two, but generally it won't be any longer than First Class. It's really cheap compared to Priority for bigger packages, so use this when you have packages that are 3lbs or more.

Drop box

That's it. If you're feeling nice, email your buyer the delivery confirmation number, but if you have a whole bunch of things you're shipping it's kind of a pain.

Get to know George

Once you've got the hang of selling and shipping it's time to realize that crap you find in the garbage is free money, and I'm actually serious!

Assuming you aren't just buying and selling games for profit (in which case you'd just be a greedy ass rather than a poor collector) get your damn collection organized. In a few short months, if your interest in this hobby continues or grows, you'll have piles of stuff coming in, piles of stuff going out, and piles of stuff you need to sell. A trade box is a very handy thing to keep yourself organized. Throw all the games you intend to trade/sell in it rather than keeping them with your other games.

Keep organized have/want lists (with prices and conditions) so that you can easily set up trades of forums. GameTZ has a fantastic database of games and is a great place to set up have/want lists if you don't want to use Excel.

RFGeneration is a very useful video game collection website.

Personally I use a well-organized Excel spreadsheet and organize everything from software to demos to promotional items.

Your future NES collection

When things start swinging, you have some funds to spare, and you're buying and selling new items daily, every day becomes Christmas. You'll come to your door to find new packages and wonder what's inside them because you've purchased so much and can't remember! Remember it starts slow, and you really have to make better purchasing decisions when starting off but when you strike it big, you can roll on a good purchase for a really long time. If you're really good with your money and don't piss it away on impulse purchases, you can really do a lot by buying, selling and trading.

I started with an NES and a dozen games. Since, my collection has grown to 1,500+ unique games. I own tons of games I never would have experienced had I not begun collecting, and now my interests have expanded to arcade games and hardware, which is a whole new realm for me to discover. It's a fantastic world out there.

• Don't constrain yourself to one console. Seriously. Unless you're 100% dead set on completing a console's full collection, spend your money on a variety of games!
• Don't piss your money away because you have it. I do it all the time, and regret it later. If you have an extra $400 in Paypal because you had a good month selling that doesn't mean "SHOPPING TIME!" Spend a fraction of it but save most of it. When you buy small things, you're only missing chances to knock big items off your want list.
• Deposit your Paypal into your bank account. It's too easy to see money sitting in your Paypal account and just think of it as free money to spend.
• Use Amazon! You'll be surprised at how high you can list items and have them sell!
• Ask for help! The collecting and retrogaming community is insanely helpful and friendly. If you don't know what something is worth, don't consult a useless price guide, ask the forums for a more accurate answer.
• Ebay completed listings are ALWAYS the market price for a game (once you factor in that they are slightly inflated due to fees and shipping costs)

So good luck in your future endeavors buying selling, reselling, collecting, trading, retrogaming, or anything this guide may have covered. Please email me or contact me with anything you'd wish for me to add to this guide, i'm very open to suggestions!