How to make a reasonable offer?

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By Uninteresting

Champion (352)

Uninteresting's picture

20-12-2017, 21:20

I intend to make an offer for a box of MSX1 games (cassettes and cartridges) and an SVI-728 (so far w/o AC adaptor) to a friend's friend.

How can I decide what amounts to a reasonable offer in terms of what they'd get on other forums like auction sites? Look up sales on eBay or whichever for each game separately or is there something else I should note? I've never done retro purchases before or used auction sites.

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By jltursan

Prophet (2619)

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20-12-2017, 21:30

I don't consider the SVI-728 a specially valuable machine (50€-60€ maybe?, no more than 30€-40€ or even less if there's no adapter) so all depends of the box of games, post here the tape and cart list (specially carts) and probably people could give you a better idea...

By Stt1

Hero (615)

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20-12-2017, 23:13

Also a lot depends if the games are with their original manuals and boxes, or loose. And then the overall condition of every bit'n'piece. It's really hard to value items you wont see. If the seller does not have any idea what he would want, then giving offer is mainly picking some random number and try it.

By Grauw

Ascended (10699)

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20-12-2017, 23:40

Tapes are generally not worth much, around €5 (typically less rather than more). Cartridges really depend on the game, most hover in the €30-€40 range, but there’s some outliers that are worth more (and some that are worth less). Also it matters if it’s boxed or not. If you buy multiple I would expect to get a nice deal / significant discount.

E.g. taking some well known Konami titles as example (boxed), Athletic Land I would pay somewhere between €10-€15 for, Penguin Adventure or Usas between €30-€40, and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake looks like it currently goes for ~€300 (which is not too bad considering prices that I’ve seen before).

By Stt1

Hero (615)

Stt1's picture

20-12-2017, 23:52

Grauw: for a certain version of Athletic Land in a very good condition and complete I would pay a lot more than that ;-)

I want to point out that also game version may affect a lot for the value. While the most common might be just xx, then the same game as a different release may cost xxx.

"reasonable offer" is really difficult pair of words today :-(

By Grauw

Ascended (10699)

Grauw's picture

20-12-2017, 23:58

Well, if it turns out to be that certain version (I guess mini version or something? I never understood that, why they would be worth so much more) then the buyer is lucky Smile. If the seller isn’t interested in investing quite a bit of time and research into auctioning all of them on eBay to maximise profit, I would just go by “reasonable prices” plus a nice friends set buy discount.

By Stt1

Hero (615)

Stt1's picture

21-12-2017, 00:09

Not a mini, Japanese "normal" version (not the "I love").

The price of EU minis is based to small production run (except common Nemesis 3 mini, which was only released as a mini in Europe) and large demand today. And because the production run was small -> not many exist anymore. Demand amongst collectors is much higher than what is available to buy. Technically minis are similar than the larger boxed cousins.

When the demand is high and supply low, price tends to rise on a free market. If for example there would have been about none demand for TurboR computers in like last 20 years, their prices would be dirt-low now (I picked this example, because stock of Turbos worldwide is relatively large after all).

Anyway, this goes somewhat off-topic now...

By Grauw

Ascended (10699)

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21-12-2017, 00:41

I understand the small production run, and the economics of supply and demand Smile. I just don’t understand why there is a large demand for mini versions if there are much cheaper versions of the exact same game in pretty much just as nice a box / cartridge!

By Uninteresting

Champion (352)

Uninteresting's picture

21-12-2017, 07:06

I don't have the game list yet -- just a pic of the cardboard box with the games in it.

Super Cobra is the cartridge game I recognized and it's in its original box. The others I can see on the top are Psygnosis's (Melbourne House's?) Barbarian, Codemasters's BMX Simulator (I think), probably Bug-Byte's Rally-X (I can read "Y-X"), Kuma's Driller Tanks, Dawn Patrol, Venom Strikes back, The Chess Game, Alpha Blaster. Mastertronic's F1 Simulator is one I already have.

The rest of the games are behind other cases so I can't even tell how many games there are in total.

I imagine SVI-738's AC adaptor wouldn't work with SVI-728?

By reasonable offer, I mean something that won't make the seller angry at me or my friends.

By Stt1

Hero (615)

Stt1's picture

21-12-2017, 07:39

Grauw wrote:

I understand the small production run, and the economics of supply and demand Smile. I just don’t understand why there is a large demand for mini versions if there are much cheaper versions of the exact same game in pretty much just as nice a box / cartridge!

Because of collecting - collectors mostly have all the cheaper versions and want to complete with the rarer ones as well. Have you ever heard "collect 'em all"? ;-)

If you just want to play the game itself, even getting a physical copy of that game is not needed, just get the ROM-image on the flash-ROM (whatever) cart and play. Or use emulator...

By Stt1

Hero (615)

Stt1's picture

21-12-2017, 07:53

Uninteresting wrote:

Super Cobra is the cartridge game I recognized and it's in its original box. The others I can see on the top are Psygnosis's (Melbourne House's?) Barbarian, Codemasters's BMX Simulator (I think), probably Bug-Byte's Rally-X (I can read "Y-X"), Kuma's Driller Tanks, Dawn Patrol, Venom Strikes back, The Chess Game, Alpha Blaster. Mastertronic's F1 Simulator is one I already have.

Not very valuable stuff there so far - my opinion.

Uninteresting wrote:

I imagine SVI-738's AC adaptor wouldn't work with SVI-728?

Nope, SVI-728 has it's own AC adapter. If it is missing, then there is a real problem decreasing the value. I recently saw one AC adapter offered for 30e in Swedish market place. And it's rather rare to find AC adapter for this computer. It's not impossimble to build one, but you need two AC supplies for this computer.

Uninteresting wrote:

By reasonable offer, I mean something that won't make the seller angry at me or my friends.

I completely understand. And this is the exact reason why I try to avoid making offers if seller has no idea of value and I don't personally know the seller well enough. You could try to make your offer and reason it "this is the best I can offer at the moment for economical reasons etc.".

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