Monday, August 03, 2009

Collecting Duds


I am still alive (barely). Been busy with a few Ergonomics and Industrial Design courses and may potentialy relauch in the neaaafaar future.
What I have also been doing is going back to video game roots. scavenging eBay for somewhat rare games of childhood past.
So I do my homework, I purchase a few SEGA Genesis sealed carts for a price a bit over what they were sold 20 years ago (inflation adjusted), and I had an idea, I purchased a lower priced game from the same seller for a test.
The carts arrive, I then proceed to unseal/open the cheap one to use as a quality sample for the rest of the lot...it looks repackaged, in fact I don't even think its an original cart.

I contact the seller, trying to resolve things in a civil manner (I'm not a GTA player). He disses me, I file a compliant, on and off, he then agreed to refund for the sealed lot and do a half refund for the opened one.

What annoyed me was the email he sent aftewords:

"I dont really understand why people get so upset if like the instruction booklet is bend or something like that. The only thing a gamecollector does with a game is put it in the shelf and look at it, i dont really understand the joy in that. And sometimes they take out the box and touch it and feel pleased with themself.
I mean people who collect cars take them out on big events show them to other people and stuff like that but all a gamecollector does is put the game in the bookshelf and thats about it.
So therefore i dont really unbderstand why it is so important that the instruction booklet must be perfect as i suppose you are not going to have like an game event for 100 000 people who are all going to look at your game? Or do you everytime you pass by that bookshelf with this game get upset and unhappy and think that this really ruin my day?

I only wonder."
- end quote

I can see a point, but why are you charging 50x the price of a used game if that is your view?

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