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Looking for some feedback on my recently updated 2600 game list


hogie1418

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Hey guys, I run a website called GameValueNow and I would love to get some feedback from you guys on my 2600 page.

http://gamevaluenow.com/atari-2600

Let me give you a quick background on the website. GameValueNow is a price tracking website that pulls in eBay listings, sorts them and prices games based on an algorithm I came up with. It separates games by "Loose", "Complete", "New", and "Graded". The site is not completely automated as I review close to 1000 questionable listings a day to ensure the highest quality of data.

I have been working with another member here on my 2600 game list, trying to add as many different versions of games as possible that we thought would help make the pricing more accurate. We have both exhausted our knowledge at this point and felt it was time to see if any of the experts in the community had any opinions or suggestions.

I am constantly trying to improve the site so any feedback I can get would be amazing!

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Looking good, I appreciate the effort it takes to do this. Are you going to get into label variations? Some games (like Adventure) won't make a difference, but other games (like Flag Capture) could.

My other piece of advice: If your prices are without shipping, watch out for 'free shipping' listings, they tend to inflate the game price to compensate, which could artificially inflate your numbers.

keep up the good work, it's good to have a guide.

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Thanks toiletunes! You are correct I am only looking to add label variations where a price difference is expected. There are simply to many variations to keep track of as you know, but if games like "Flag Capture" will be different I most certainly will want to add it.

 

As far as shipping goes, I do deduct a flat fee from listings when shipping information is free or simply not provided by ebay. So if a listing sells for $5 with free shipping, I would deduct say $3 from the listing price and use the deducted price in the calculation.

 

If you can think of any other games like "Flag Capture" where the text label makes a difference please be sure to let me know.

Edited by hogie1418
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I like it but you should run a check to make sure that there aren't inconsistencies. For example a loose Ikari Warriors is listed as $31.25 while a new one has a value of $15.72. That doesn't make sense. It would also be nice if you could show the number of data points used to determine each value.

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here's a few where labels could make a difference:

Gravitar (silver vs red), Yars Revenge (red vs pic), Fun with Numbers (pic vs text), Black Jack (pic vs text), Space Invaders (silver label is rarer) Raiders Lost Ark (error label) Breakout (orange label), pole position (error label), and Halloween (label vs no label).

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@cvga - It actually could be a strange fluke of 2600 Ikari Warriors, along with MotoRodeo and Xenophobe, that they are actually most commonly found nowadays new in box. I have all 3 now, but when searching I never or rarely saw them come up as loose carts. Essentially all the new old stock has made it's way back to the US via eBay.

 

I am not a variant collector, and to track values for all of them would be a full time job just for the 2600. Keep up the great work and perhaps over time, you can continue adding more notable or valuable variants. I think toiletunes had great suggestions. Also, isn't there a rare Sears Superman picture variant? Activision blue label variants. 3 Telesys games (Demolition Herby, Ram It and Stargunner) have color vs. b&w label variants.

 

You might consider adding listings for the ultra rare programmable Xante carts (which probably never come up for auction, do they?):

http://atariage.com/company_page.php?CompanyID=94

 

Off Your Rocker - what is the community's opinion on being a valid release in the Atari's lifetime? AA's rarity guide lists it as a prototype, but the carts did see a kind of public release. I'm on the fence myself on it's status, but am leaning towards it being included.

 

I like that your site tallies the values on what a complete collection might cost. I collect for many different systems but 2600 has always the most rewarding because of the insanely wild library. More than any other console, I wonder about the value of a complete Atari 2600 collection of original North American carts. Not even boxed, just carts. If you consider the ultra rares like Gamma-Attack, Extra Terrestrials, Red Sea Crossing... Neo Geo's got nothing on the 2600!

 

Anyways, love your site and use it all the time.

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This looks great! I can only imagine the amount of work that went into this.

 

I would echo excitement for the label variations - especially the really big titles listed by toiletunes. If it could be done, it would be very cool to see the many titles where the difference is not orders of magnitude in rarity/price, but still rarer enough to move the price significantly. Basic Programming seems to be a lot less common in text label, for example. The Coleco/Atari red carts in your list show this. Both versions of Venture and Mouse Trap are basically the same price, while the DK games show a 38% and 70% preference for the red label Atari versions. Classic, blue, and white label Activision labels are a group like this. It would be a challenge to pull off... Only the collector and fan listings are going to know anything about label variations. Some dude emptying a box from the attic is only going to capture the basics in his ebay listing.

 

Besides the labels, since I collect carts and manuals but not boxes, this is my new go-to pricing site if we can see a new column of "with manual" in between loose and CIB, or even a "loose manual" column. Super bonus points if you can capture pricing information in sales with the various pack in comics, overlays, controllers, etc - the elements that would have come packed in with a particular game. There's a significant price difference in "cart + manual" over just a loose cart - even more so if the other items are present for the few carts that had them.

 

Looking forward to using this!

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I like it but you should run a check to make sure that there aren't inconsistencies. For example a loose Ikari Warriors is listed as $31.25 while a new one has a value of $15.72. That doesn't make sense. It would also be nice if you could show the number of data points used to determine each value.

 

I noticed the same thing with some of the loose prices vs new prices. I was actually going to pose this as a question to try to understand how and why this happens because it is the only console that I have run across where it occurs. I really like the idea of showing the number of datapoints. Just added it to my todo list!.

 

 

here's a few where labels could make a difference:

Gravitar (silver vs red), Yars Revenge (red vs pic), Fun with Numbers (pic vs text), Black Jack (pic vs text), Space Invaders (silver label is rarer) Raiders Lost Ark (error label) Breakout (orange label), pole position (error label), and Halloween (label vs no label).

 

Thanks again toiletunes! This is exactly what I was looking for.

 

@cvga - It actually could be a strange fluke of 2600 Ikari Warriors, along with MotoRodeo and Xenophobe, that they are actually most commonly found nowadays new in box. I have all 3 now, but when searching I never or rarely saw them come up as loose carts. Essentially all the new old stock has made it's way back to the US via eBay.

 

I am not a variant collector, and to track values for all of them would be a full time job just for the 2600. Keep up the great work and perhaps over time, you can continue adding more notable or valuable variants. I think toiletunes had great suggestions. Also, isn't there a rare Sears Superman picture variant? Activision blue label variants. 3 Telesys games (Demolition Herby, Ram It and Stargunner) have color vs. b&w label variants.

 

You might consider adding listings for the ultra rare programmable Xante carts (which probably never come up for auction, do they?):

http://atariage.com/company_page.php?CompanyID=94

 

Off Your Rocker - what is the community's opinion on being a valid release in the Atari's lifetime? AA's rarity guide lists it as a prototype, but the carts did see a kind of public release. I'm on the fence myself on it's status, but am leaning towards it being included.

 

I like that your site tallies the values on what a complete collection might cost. I collect for many different systems but 2600 has always the most rewarding because of the insanely wild library. More than any other console, I wonder about the value of a complete Atari 2600 collection of original North American carts. Not even boxed, just carts. If you consider the ultra rares like Gamma-Attack, Extra Terrestrials, Red Sea Crossing... Neo Geo's got nothing on the 2600!

 

Anyways, love your site and use it all the time.

 

As I mentioned to cvga above, Atari 2600 appears to be the only console that I have seen where new games are selling for less than used. Maybe someone else can chime in and confirm your suspicions. Also, thanks for the suggestions on the other variants that you mentioned. Just because games do not show up often doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared for when they do :-)

 

This looks great! I can only imagine the amount of work that went into this.

 

I would echo excitement for the label variations - especially the really big titles listed by toiletunes. If it could be done, it would be very cool to see the many titles where the difference is not orders of magnitude in rarity/price, but still rarer enough to move the price significantly. Basic Programming seems to be a lot less common in text label, for example. The Coleco/Atari red carts in your list show this. Both versions of Venture and Mouse Trap are basically the same price, while the DK games show a 38% and 70% preference for the red label Atari versions. Classic, blue, and white label Activision labels are a group like this. It would be a challenge to pull off... Only the collector and fan listings are going to know anything about label variations. Some dude emptying a box from the attic is only going to capture the basics in his ebay listing.

 

Besides the labels, since I collect carts and manuals but not boxes, this is my new go-to pricing site if we can see a new column of "with manual" in between loose and CIB, or even a "loose manual" column. Super bonus points if you can capture pricing information in sales with the various pack in comics, overlays, controllers, etc - the elements that would have come packed in with a particular game. There's a significant price difference in "cart + manual" over just a loose cart - even more so if the other items are present for the few carts that had them.

 

Looking forward to using this!

 

I have been adding box and manual only listings to a few consoles lately and because you mentioned it I went ahead and just did it for the 2600. Currently I have only picked up around 100 of each but that number will just continue to grow. I will not be pricing them until I feel that there is a large enough sample size to generate an accurate value but the prices will be there as a reference :-).

 

 

 

 

Thanks again for the responses guys. It really means a lot!

Edited by hogie1418
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No recent games on the Atari 2600 side? I couldn't find Princess Rescue, Halo or Boulderdash doing a cursory search (for example)..

 

I have not added any games that were developed outside of the 2600's lifespan at this point. That does not mean they cannot be added in. I could even add a separate tab with homebrew games if there is interest in that. I would definitely need some help coming up with a list of the most popular titles to start with though (Outside of the ones you already mentioned :-)).

Edited by hogie1418
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I'd like to make another suggestion. Or maybe I just have a question. Do you filter out the terms "repro", "reproduction", "homebrew", "novelty", "Hozer" (repro maker) and those kinds of terms from item descriptions?

 

I'm looking at your River Patrol listing (which I've always understood to be a $300 - $600 game for loose cart) but it's at $209. Looking at the auctions, there's one for $26 which brings the average value way down - that auction is for a reproduction. I've noticed a lot of sneaky sellers doing this (not just 2600) when listing a repro. They don't prominently mention it in the auction, but just put it as a tiny note in the body of the description. Sometimes they price them high (higher than any repro should cost) but still low enough to get a collector to click BIN before they read the description.

 

Another suggestion for a very minor issue is I noticed several titles, when you click on them, have incorrect box art. River Patrol, Seaquest and Activision Decathlon were some I just saw that have mock-up boxart, and I think there were many others that may be off (ie, PAL artwork for Seamonster instead of NTSC version). Not a problem really, but wanted to bring it up.

 

Edit: You have a listing for Frogger [supercharger] - you might consider changing it to The Official Frogger [starpath] or Frogger, The Official [starpath] (it's official name and publisher) to differentiate it from regular (Parker Brothers) Frogger.

Edited by glazball
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I'd like to make another suggestion. Or maybe I just have a question. Do you filter out the terms "repro", "reproduction", "homebrew", "novelty", "Hozer" (repro maker) and those kinds of terms from item descriptions?

 

I'm looking at your River Patrol listing (which I've always understood to be a $300 - $600 game for loose cart) but it's at $209. Looking at the auctions, there's one for $26 which brings the average value way down - that auction is for a reproduction. I've noticed a lot of sneaky sellers doing this (not just 2600) when listing a repro. They don't prominently mention it in the auction, but just put it as a tiny note in the body of the description. Sometimes they price them high (higher than any repro should cost) but still low enough to get a collector to click BIN before they read the description.

 

Another suggestion for a very minor issue is I noticed several titles, when you click on them, have incorrect box art. River Patrol, Seaquest and Activision Decathlon were some I just saw that have mock-up boxart, and I think there were many others that may be off (ie, PAL artwork for Seamonster instead of NTSC version). Not a problem really, but wanted to bring it up.

 

Edit: You have a listing for Frogger [supercharger] - you might consider changing it to The Official Frogger [starpath] or Frogger, The Official [starpath] (it's official name and publisher) to differentiate it from regular (Parker Brothers) Frogger.

 

I do filter out reproduction keywords when they are in the title. I have a list of "Bad" keywords for each console and I will add "novelty" and "Hozer" to the 2600 list.

 

Good catch on the reproduction in the River Patrol section. I just went and removed it so the price should look correct now. The site almost always catches these and it most likely caught this one, asked me to review it, but I allowed it to get in (Human Error).

 

The images are honestly driving me insane lol. When I first setup the 2600 page I was not super careful with which box art that I chose. At the time I was not considering variants and was simply grabbing the first box art images I could find for games. Having the wrong box art listed for a game has turned into one of my biggest pet peeves so mark my word they will all be fixed soon :-)

 

I Just changed the title for "Frogger: Supercharger" to "Frogger, The Official [starpath]". Thanks for pointing this out.

Edited by hogie1418
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