Bargain Hunters challenging Pat the NES Punk over Atari game prices

[the_wizard_666]

All I can think is to check with Rene's Facebook page, since that's where he was planning to broadcast it.

[Torr]

Childishness.

 

I'm must say I enjoy Pat's work, both his earlier scripted work and the podcast. But he bit off a little more than he could chew here.

 

Both sides are guilty of pandering to what their viewers want to see.

 

Pat's fans want to see Pat be a pseudo investigative journalist exposing shenanigans in the video game world.

Renee's fans (storage wars fans) want to see guys buy $10,000 worth of stuff for $500.

 

Granted, I agree with Pat & Ian. I agree that they were too quick to just slap a huge value on it.

I also agree with Renee, they can't just say they "lied". They did however provide too little info to prove whether their estimated values were were accurate or not.

 

Pat's over a barrel. He can't win.

 

This guy owns a WAREHOUSE of shit. He could very well have bought nothing but commons, however between Pat's CUPodcast and Renee's date he has set, Renee can sift through his stuff, drop in some high value items he already had lying around and claim they werre part of the locker he bought. No one will ever know WHAT was in the locker Renee bought, but Renee.

 

Pat can't comfirm what Renee did or didn't get from that Locker. and Renee is NOT going to be honest, come one he's a sales man who buys shit for pennies and then marks them up with +1,000% profit margin (his words) so we know this guy is as honest as ol' Honest John and Honest John Used Motors!

 

If Pat doesn't accept the challenge, he's a chicken, and if he does, he's playing poker and against stacked deck.

[LaserCat]

I see Pat and Ian at Too Many Games every year. They spend a lot of time at their tables and are much more accessible than most other youtube "celebrities". I hope Ian's health doesn't prevent him from attending this year as I really enjoyed watching the CU Podcast live recording last year. Ian btw is suffering from Nerve Entanglement Syndrome. Yes Ian has NES.

Edited April 18, 2017 by LaserCat

[G-type]

Childishness.

 

I'm must say I enjoy Pat's work, both his earlier scripted work and the podcast. But he bit off a little more than he could chew here.

 

Both sides are guilty of pandering to what their viewers want to see.

 

Pat's fans want to see Pat be a pseudo investigative journalist exposing shenanigans in the video game world.

Renee's fans (storage wars fans) want to see guys buy $10,000 worth of stuff for $500.

 

Granted, I agree with Pat & Ian. I agree that they were too quick to just slap a huge value on it.

I also agree with Renee, they can't just say they "lied". They did however provide too little info to prove whether their estimated values were were accurate or not.

 

Pat's over a barrel. He can't win.

 

This guy owns a WAREHOUSE of shit. He could very well have bought nothing but commons, however between Pat's CUPodcast and Renee's date he has set, Renee can sift through his stuff, drop in some high value items he already had lying around and claim they werre part of the locker he bought. No one will ever know WHAT was in the locker Renee bought, but Renee.

 

Pat can't comfirm what Renee did or didn't get from that Locker. and Renee is NOT going to be honest, come one he's a sales man who buys shit for pennies and then marks them up with +1,000% profit margin (his words) so we know this guy is as honest as ol' Honest John and Honest John Used Motors!

 

If Pat doesn't accept the challenge, he's a chicken, and if he does, he's playing poker and against stacked deck.

 

You make very good points. Pat's best move is probably just to ignore Renee's bait, and maybe add a few qualifiers to his previous claims on the next podcast.

[BassGuitari]

[EDIT] Double post.

Edited April 18, 2017 by BassGuitari

[BassGuitari]

Having only seen the videos posted in the OP, it seems to me like Rene's the one doing most of the crying here. Pat posted a kinda-sorta-maybe-but-not-totally-offbase tweet he didn't like, and he responds with all that? Sack up, son. It's the internet.

"He's a punk, he cries 'cause that's what he always does, he's a pain in the ass, he thinks nobody knows anything, he should come down to my store and we'll go through all these games and I'll even buy him dinner and it'll be nice, no hostility!"

There's some middle ground between the two. Rene wants something like $100 a piece for loose Mystique carts (he knows for a fact!) , and Pat doesn't want to pay more than a buck or two for basically any Atari cart (except something like Video Life, he might do $20 on that) .

The thing about Atari carts, which Ian touched on and many of us have been saying for years, is that with few exceptions, anyone who was ever going to buy all those Combats and Space Invaders and Missile Commands already has. You might get that kid or curious n00b Ian was talking about every once in a while, or the occasional nostalgia tripper, but almost literally anyone else who's looking for Atari stuff is looking for more rare or exotic items. So yeah, if you bring boxes of Atari commons to shows or you get them in your store, they're going to sit. And sit. And sit. And sit. There's no market for them among collectors anymore (however, as a collector, they're still fun to rifle through in search of diamonds in the rough!).

That being said, "a buck a game" is so 2005. Except for the commonest of the common (which you're better off trading in to AtariAge for store credit on homebrews), the price floor on individual carts is more like $3 for rock-bottom commons in decent shape (which, frankly, are going to be piecemeal label upgrades for most people) and ~$5-6 being the starting point for R3s and up. This is not trivial when you multiply it across a couple hundred carts. Then again, you can't price a large lot at simply the total value of every individual item.

Ian and Pat are worried about a price spike, which is certainly conceivable, but spikes are temporary (that's why they're called "spikes;" they go down as sharply, steeply, and quickly as they go up). And it's not like we haven't seen this before, like with the old Antiques Roadshow Atari 2600 episode or the "NES-001" episode of Storage Wars (so much facepalm there, btw). And anyway, the people Ian and Pat seem to be worried about causing price inflation in retrogaming--that is, nongamers and otherwise under-informed people who might see these shows, go dig something out of the basement, and throw it on eBay for a mint--do demonstrably FAR less damage than YouTubers, for the plain fact that YouTubers target collectors and retrogamers specifically, and create more interest for this stuff among the very people who are willing to spend larger sums of money on it. AVGN/James & Mike, MetalJesus, GameSack, even Pat and Ian themselves to a lesser extent, etc.--I'm not knocking those guys or their shows (I think they're great, personally!) but, probably unwittingly, they're tipping off a competitive group of people about collectibles and creating interest in games that would have otherwise sneaked under the radar. (This group probably also doesn't give a shit about the crusty NES with SMB/Duck Hunt that grandma found in the attic after she saw Storage Wars.) I've even been a "victim," myself (for want of a better term)--I've watched Cinemassacre shows and thought, "Hmm, Heavy Barrel looks like a pretty sweet hidden gem. I think I'll swing on over to eBay and grab a copy." (And then the asking prices will be, like $50 for loose copies... )

But more than anything, it's basic economics that explains the upward trend in pricing over the last 20 years, with or without media-induced spikes: demand continues to outstrip supply. There's an ever-growing and ever-diversifying group of collectors and enthusiasts, and it's not like like NEC and NeoGeo are still making consoles and games to keep up.

Final remark: Rene's backroom is a mess. I don't know what his inventory system is, but god damn. He doesn't seem to know what he has or where it is.

Edited April 18, 2017 by BassGuitari

[the_wizard_666]

Final remark: Rene's backroom is a mess. I don't know what his inventory system is, but god damn. He doesn't seem to know what he has or where it is.

 

No shit! I totally want to just go there and start sorting through it all just to get it manageable. If that wasn't the back room of a shop, I'd swear he was a hoarder!

[+KaeruYojimbo]

They sort of represent both ends of the clueless spectrum. One who thinks that because common 2600 games are worthless, all 2600 games are worthless, and one who thinks all 2600 games are worth whatever the highest buy it now ebay listing for that game is.

[thadsilverfox]

 

Pat was a no show

[Jason_Atari]

Bringing up and old thread, came across this video.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gegtHo3ESJc

[Supergun]

I recognize both Pat & Rene from YouTube & television. Ive seen Rene on that storage wars show and if I recall correctly, I think Pat was the one who was on Pawn Stars with an NWC cart. They both have unique & interesting personalities. I cant quite place Renes accent, but would be curious to know where hes from.

 

At the end of the day, like most arguments, its mostly just miscommunication & assumption. Im sure they are both very knowledgeable in their own fields of appraising values to the items they know, as well as when it comes to buying, selling, and/or collecting. This is all just hype up drama. Fake news!

[hizzy]

Rene is from Germany, I think!