The comments on the youtube video of someone recreating labels for atari 2600 and 8-bit nintendo cartridges to make them look new are interesting
http://kotaku.com/youtube-video-sparks-debate-about-relabeling-vintage-ca-1795731760
I saw this yesterday, interesting. Are people concerned that their minty games that were fairly rare will become not as rare, since others will restore worn out cartridges with beat up artwork?
I have a small collection of cartridges but mostly NES and SNES stuff, RPGs that I love from the past.
You could argue that he used crappy packing labels, then covered it in crappy packing tape (and used 2 passes creating a line) instead of getting a proper sized sheet. Isn't it wrong to recreate the art by eye instead of scanning the original and cleaning it up in illustrator with vector art? Also is printer ink going to last 10-20 years or will it fade by then? By cleaning the contacts with baking soda will that accelerate the copper from eating away? Should he have tried to mask and replate the connectors?
Who thought 8-bit cartridges would ever be worth anything?
Yeah, it is kind of crazy that people were literally giving these away. I used to pick them up here and there at thrift stores. I have picked up a NES with about 20 games a few years ago for $60 off craigslist. Got a bunch of great titles with it; Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, and Contra to name a few. I still play my NES once in a while.
It all depends on the collector. Do you want a mint copy of the original? Then prepare to shell out cash money. If you are tech savy, you can build your own ROM cartridge & have 100s of games. Most people just want the classics anyways like Super Mario World or NBA Jam.
Anyone have a cheap copy of Mega Man X2 collecting dust? 
Whenever I hear conversations about different collecting communities, original vs repro, refurb vs untouched, etc. and all of the discussions that relate to different types of collecting and what we go through to find our stance on how our machines should be kept... I think of this guy:
He has an original Cafe Vienna AND a Miami Lowback in the same room!
Makes me feel better about my obsessions somehow.
Quoted from Friengineer:It all depends on the collector. Do you want a mint copy of the original? Then prepare to shell out cash money. If you are tech savy, you can build your own ROM cartridge & have 100s of games. Most people just want the classics anyways like Super Mario World or NBA Jam.
Anyone have a cheap copy of Mega Man X2 collecting dust?
I do, but it's not collecting dust
I think if you are making repro labels they should be marked as such. All it takes is one person in the chain of ownership to either purposely or accidentally not let the buyer know it is a repro and someone gets hosed. IMO it's really not cool to make repros that look identical to the original.
I am glad I am not this kind of collector. I just want to play the games, not worry about the labels and boxes. When the SD multi carts came out I bought one for every console and sold all cartridge games for a small fortune. I think Contra alone went for $50+.
SD2SNES, harmony cart, etc all work great. I just need a multicart for the atari 7800 to come out and then I can sell off all those.
I always thought the appliance collectors were scarily close to pinball collectors:
"It's just three days of crazy washing, round the clock!"
"What compels otherwise normal people to collect big old appliances and do their laundry in other people's basements?"
Quoted from Darscot:If you want to restore your games this way have at it. The whole messing up the market thing is laughable. There are already lots of counterfeit games for sale.
Laughable? Sure. Let you buy a counterfeit Stadium Events and then see how you feel. The whole "everybody else does it" mentality is lost on me.
Quoted from MinusWorlds:Laughable? Sure. Let you buy a counterfeit Stadium Events and then see how you feel. The whole "everybody else does it" mentality is lost on me.
The guy is not fooling anyone or even attempting too. Some guy making home made labels is not going to impact the market. No one is buying a counterfeit stadium events without knowing it. Companies produce knock off games, that is simple reality, they are much higher quality and much harder to detect. They are also cheap and have very little value. Some guy making very obvious knock off labels is nothing.
Quoted from Darscot:The guy is not fooling anyone or even attempting too. Some guy making home made labels is not going to impact the market. No one is buying a counterfeit stadium events without knowing it. Companies produce knock off games, that is simple reality, they are much higher quality and much harder to detect. They are also cheap and have very little value. Some guy making very obvious knock off labels is nothing.
Uh actually people are buying counterfeit SE's all the time. How anyone thinks making repro labels to look like the original is okay is beyond me.
Quoted from MinusWorlds:Uh actually people are buying counterfeit SE's all the time. How anyone thinks making repro labels to look like the original is okay is beyond me.
I was thinking of the World Championship carts that are all accounted for. So no one is getting fooled by knock offs.
This guys labels are very obviously fake and not going to fool any serious collector.
Quoted from Darscot:I was thinking of the World Championship carts that are all accounted for. So no one is getting fooled by knock offs.
This guys labels are very obviously fake and not going to fool any serious collector.
I wasn't specifically talking about this guy's labels. And not all the NWC's are accounted for. We don't even know officially how many there are. I am a serious collector and know many people that have been taken by counterfeit labels. As far as NWC's being counterfeited, they aren't, until someone finds a way to reproduce the dip switches. Then you will see those too.
Quoted from MinusWorlds:I do, but it's not collecting dust
I think if you are making repro labels they should be marked as such. All it takes is one person in the chain of ownership to either purposely or accidentally not let the buyer know it is a repro and someone gets hosed. IMO it's really not cool to make repros that look identical to the original.
It happens all the time in the pinball hobby with the 'HUO' label.
I vend retro games, and I'll throw in my two cents to say I hate the relabeling thing. We have 20,000+ items in stock, and with that much quantity passing through our hands, and with honestly only a small cut being any sort of "profit" (there is a reason that my little company is run by two guys that also have day jobs...), it is VERY difficult to look at everything and determine if someone stuck a new label on a cart or not.
If I were to sell a game as "repro label"...
- If it is too good, the buyer forgets and then sells it as new in the future. Eventually, it's caught, and someone feels screwed.
- If it isn't great, the buyer isn't happy with how the label looks anyway and is disappointed they bought the game.
Neither is great for reselling and keeping everyone happy by telling them what they are getting exactly and being able to easily ensure they get that.
The pirated carts coming into the market is a similar thing. Yes, they are functional if that is all you care about, but less educated collectors won't realize they are fake (eBay got a flood of them last week and none of them mentioned they were "new productions" or anything), and will then try to pass them off as real. It now requires opening and examining the PCB of many of the higher priced games to prove authenticity, an annoying step to have to take for games that may only be worth like $20 to begin with (Donkey Kong Country is the one that sticks out to me).
It definitely can hurt the market, as if there is enough faked collectibles, it diminishes the market for that collectible. Additionally, it makes people who were willing to spend big money on a collectible or two much more wary of spending that, if they think that someone could successfully pass off a fake for the original. Note though, it's the faking itself that is the issue - Nintendo "Virtual Console", rereleases and various flash carts? They have only served to drive the market for retro games further up in most cases, as people decide they want the original physical copy. "Good" pirated copies hold the potential to disrupt that.
The idea of this video is totally fine, it's just the obvious problem that it will lead to people making counterfeits. To me this video isn't a concern, because counterfeits already happen everywhere, all the time. I work with both video games and Magic the Gathering, and this kind of stuff is getting more common in both of them. I can understand why people would be annoyed, however it's not worth throwing a fit about, because there's no way to actually stop it. The best thing to do is to continue learning how to detect what's original and what's fake, and to use that information as best as possible.
Quoted from goatdan:I vend retro games, and I'll throw in my two cents to say I hate the relabeling thing. We have 20,000+ items in stock, and with that much quantity passing through our hands, and with honestly only a small cut being any sort of "profit" (there is a reason that my little company is run by two guys that also have day jobs...), it is VERY difficult to look at everything and determine if someone stuck a new label on a cart or not.
If I were to sell a game as "repro label"...
- If it is too good, the buyer forgets and then sells it as new in the future. Eventually, it's caught, and someone feels screwed.
- If it isn't great, the buyer isn't happy with how the label looks anyway and is disappointed they bought the game.
Neither is great for reselling and keeping everyone happy by telling them what they are getting exactly and being able to easily ensure they get that.
The pirated carts coming into the market is a similar thing. Yes, they are functional if that is all you care about, but less educated collectors won't realize they are fake (eBay got a flood of them last week and none of them mentioned they were "new productions" or anything), and will then try to pass them off as real. It now requires opening and examining the PCB of many of the higher priced games to prove authenticity, an annoying step to have to take for games that may only be worth like $20 to begin with (Donkey Kong Country is the one that sticks out to me).
It definitely can hurt the market, as if there is enough faked collectibles, it diminishes the market for that collectible. Additionally, it makes people who were willing to spend big money on a collectible or two much more wary of spending that, if they think that someone could successfully pass off a fake for the original. Note though, it's the faking itself that is the issue - Nintendo "Virtual Console", rereleases and various flash carts? They have only served to drive the market for retro games further up in most cases, as people decide they want the original physical copy. "Good" pirated copies hold the potential to disrupt that.
Roll through the Ali Express listings for SNES games. You can see initials, country of origin, and qty bought of previous purchasers Going through SNES game listings and I see one guy buys numerous of a title. Might be able to match that to your ebay guy. But then what... tattle to ebay? do they even really care?
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