Some Interesting Famicom Price Information: 88 Games Worth More than 5000 Yen

 As I mentioned in my last post, a seller on Yahoo Auctions has been putting up an amazing collection of CIB Famicom games with low starting bids.  In fact he seems to be putting an almost complete set (over 1,000 games according to him and he has put up 600 different ones so far) - all CIB and all in nice condition.

Since an opportunity like this only comes once in a while, I thought this would provide a useful bit of information to record - just how much are all of these games, being auctioned at (almost) the same time in almost the same condition by the same guy going for?

While one sale isn`t enough information to form the basis for a price guide, at least this will give us a hint of what these games are roughly worth - virtually all the games got a fair amount of bidding so we know there weren`t any expensive ones going for unrealistically low prices, while at the same time the low starting bids meant no unrealistically high prices set by the seller (though of course that doesn`t mean everyone was bidding rationally).

The seller hasn`t quite been selling them all at once, in the first round he auctioned off 300 (and has a second round of 300 which will finish next week).  The first round finished last night and these are the games which sold for over 5000 yen, which accounted for 88 out of the 300.  I cut them off at 5000 yen partly to save myself some time and partly because the more expensive ones, having gotten the most bids and most attention from buyers, probably went for prices closer to their actual value.

I have listed these below, in order from most to least expensive.  The values are in Yen and do not include shipping (which would have added 164 or 510 yen depending on the method of shipping chosen).  To get a rough idea of the value in US $, the exchange rate at the time of the auction was about 115 Yen to the Dollar.

All games are CIB and, while I didn`t closely look at all the pictures, the ones I did inspect were all in very good condition.  Some of them were sold as new or never used, these are marked with `New` after the price.

There are a few interesting things.  The most expensive game was Summer Carnival Recca at 104800 yen, almost one thousand dollars.  Battle Formula, another rarity, was a close second and the only other one to breach the 100,000 Yen barrier.  Taking third place was a game I had never heard of for the Datach called Battle Rush, which apparently is also quite hard to find CIB.  Kung Fu (the scarce variant of Spartan X), Snow Bros and Lickle all got over 50,000, which isn`t surprising as they are all quite hard to find.

One game that did surprise me was #10, Double Dragon which sold for a whopping 36100 Yen.  That is a great game but by no means is it rare (though CIB copies in nice shape are a bit hard to come by).  It seems totally out of place wedged in between Adventure Island 4 and Moon Crystal, both of which are extremely hard to find.  I have seen slightly worn copies selling at Mandarake for about 1/10th that price.

There are a few other super common games that made the list - Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo, Kakefu Kun and Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu seem completely out of place on a valuable game list but they were all new which might explain it (though I still think they went for too much). Mitsume ga Toru, a hard to find and very popular game, also seems out of place right next to Milon no Daibouken, which is a good game but extremely common.

There don`t seem to have been any steals among the games on this list (the ones that went under 5,000 yen were mostly unsurprising too).  Kage and Taiku no Gen San seem a bit lower on the list than I think they deserve, but the prices paid for them aren`t much different from what they go for in shops.

I`ll update this again next week when round 2 of the sale finishes.

Summer Carnival 92 Recca	104800
Battle Formula	101100
Battle Rush (Datach)	81550
Kung Fu	61000
Snow Bros	55300
Lickle	50111
Guevara	45100
Gimmick!	44100
Adventure Island 4	39000	New
Double Dragon	36100
Moon Crystal	34700
Chip and Dale's Adventure	32700
Banana Oushi Daibouken	32100	New
Bubble Bobble 2	30200
Contra	29100
Gold Punch Out	28500
Yu Yu Hakusho (Datach)	25500
Magical Doropie	22500
Doki Doki Yuenchi	21500
AnpanMan no Hiragana Daisuki	20500
Chip and Dale's Adventure 2	20100
Rockman	18600
Donald Land	18500
Nekketsu Street Baseketball	18060
Spartan X 2	16015
Kyoro Chan Land	15700
Taiku no Gen San 2	15200
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2	14700	New
Spelunker (with POP)	14500
The Empire Strikes Back	14300
Kakefu Kun	13600	New
Final Mission	13200
Sword Master	13111	New
Star Wars (Victor)	13060
Bucky O'Hare	13001
Family School	12600
Mike Tyson Punch Out	12200
Super Contra	12100
Choujin Sentai Jetman	12050	New
Bazolda	11600
Fushigi no Umi no Nadia	11200
Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo	11166	New
Adventures of Lolo 2	11100
Gekitotsu Macho Man	11015	New
Rockman 2	10600
Bomber Man	10600	New
Idol Hakkenden	10550
Nakayoshi to Isshou	10500
Chaos World	10000
Mitsume ga Toru	10000
Milon no Daibouken	9649	New
Joust	9500
Mighty Final Fight	9050	New
Kage	8851
Kawa no Nushu Tsuri	8450	New
Hoshi wo Miru Hito	8000
Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru	7850
Bikkuriman World	7750	New
Popeye (silver box)	7501
Rockboard	7250	New
Sqoon	7150	New
Tatakai no Banka	7150
Mother	7150
Donkey Kong Jr Math	7050
Rokdenashi Blues	6850
Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu	6511
Moai Kun	6449	New
Taiku no Gen San	6350
Chiki Chiki Machine	6265
Ninja Ryukenden	6252
Moeru Onisan	6250
Robocop 2	6150
Max Warrior	6150	New
Mickey Mouse 3 Yume Fusen	6100	New
Dragon Slayer	6099
Balloon Fight	6050
Zelda no Densetsu	6050
Tom and Jerry	5761
Space Hunter	5750
Rockman 6	5750
Ninja Ryukenden 3	5600	New
Mario Bros (silver box)	5510
Robocop	5350
Bio Senshi Dan	5250	New
Red Arima 2	5250	New
Tashiro Masashi Princess ga Ippai	5000
Ushi Ototora	5000