What I ordered:
What I got:
This is one “wrong item received” that I won’t be filing a complaint for. 
I believe the look on my face was priceless when I opened the evelope and thought, “I………. didn’t order this…… did I?” The fact that I couldn’t answer that clearly is the reason I named this blog what it is.
I was pretty excited to receive my Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII European PSP bundle today. I had been seriously coveting the Japanese version for a few months now, but couldn’t stomach the $500+ price tag.
I decided to document the unboxing for you, in case you’re curious to know exactly what’s inside. Also, I should note that this is the UK version. I don’t know if there are any substantial differences from the other European versions.
This came from National Console Support, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago.
With the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 a couple of weeks ago, the Metal Gear Solid Essential Collection suddenly evaporated from Amazon and Gamestop. The box, released in March, includes Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance, and Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence at an absolute steal of a price, $29.99. Prices in the past 2 weeks have been climbing over $50 on eBay and one opened set even fetched a ridiculous $81.
The Metal Gear Solid Essential Collection just came back into stock at Amazon this afternoon for $29.99 and is the perfect way to catch up on the series.
It appears that anti-Gamestop site Preorder Pushers is offline for good. The last update on the blog was a photo of a sand-filled African ghost town, with a caption that read something like, “This blog is now just a ghost town.”
It was lacking in updates in recent months, but I’m sad to see it go. The ‘net needs more vocal unhappy customers if we are ever going to get Gamestop to change some of its more unsavory policies (gutting new games, preorder pushing, stickers directly on cover inserts, etc., etc.).
Today was one of my best ’saling days of the year to date. The weather was perfect — the day started out at 59° at 8 am and only moved up to around 80° for most of the day. (I’m glad sales start at 8 am around here rather than the 6 am in other regions.) Lots more people were out today than recent weeks, but the finds were still good.
I should add that I saw a pretty large number of games today, but nothing rare or desirable. In fact, one sale had a big stack of PSP games ($15 each, ack!), which is probably the first time I’ve seen PSP games at a yard sale. They were mostly puzzle and poker titles.
I haven’t had any good actual game scores lately. I’m praying to the yard sale dieties for a big RPG trove soon.
and the Find of the Day:
eBay seller springledge_entertainment_inc has recently listed a huge number of games (about 6000) including a pretty large number of hard-to-find sealed titles. Their feedback is 235 and 100%. Most of their items also accept Best Offers, so you can probably knock a few bucks off if you’re patient. Here are some highlights:
One of my favorite aspects of game collecting is finding ridiculously old titles still new at retail. (Gamecube launch titles at Wal-Mart, anyone?) I remember seeing a copy of Soul Blade at an outside-of-town Dollar General about a year ago. It was $10 at the time, a bit too steep for any PS1 game still kicking around on shelves. I happened to be driving by the same store yesterday, and thought I would stop just to see if they still had it and if it had been marked down any.
To my luck, not only had Dollar General marked it down to $8 at some point, it was in the middle of 2 big “50% off” clearance aisles. That made it $4 out the door. For reference, they had several other less-than-stellar titles like Wild 9 (PS1, $4), Ultimate Board Games (PS2, $7.50), Dragonball GT (GBA, $7.50), and Veggie Tales (PS2, $7.50).
It’s rare to see any new PS1 games still at retail these days, let alone one that’s part of a well-respected franchise (Soul Calibur). Did I mention the cheapest sealed copy on eBay is $20?
The game rang up as “Xmas 05 Assort,” so it’s been there for at least 3 years. As a funny side note, the store didn’t even have the tool to unlock the plastic bracket that held the game. It came out with a quick snip from a pair of wire cutters.
Here’s my haul from this weekend’s yard sales. Not a ton of stuff, but I do like what I picked up.
I saw Apollo Justice today at Game Crazy with a new price tag of $19.99, probably the lowest I’ve seen it anywhere.
On a side note, this was at the Frederick, MD, store, where they recently expanded to about half of the total floor space with Hollywood Video. I was extremely disappointed to see that they have now gutted ALL of their new games and put them out on the floor. As a collector, it made me sick, and the last thing I want is for Game Crazy to become another Gamestop with their practices.
I know it’s for higher “visibility of the product” or whatever, but I don’t care. I guess if I want a sealed game, I’ll have to take my business to Best Buy/Wal-Mart/Amazon now.
You wouldn’t buy an opened DVD from Best Buy, so why is this an acceptable practice for video games?
(I would say “you wouldn’t buy opened food from the supermarket,” but that’s taking it too far, even for my rhetoric.)
I’ve made it a point not to advertise my own auctions here on GameHoarders (as that’s not really my purpose for the blog), but I’ve just put up something special that I think will interest Final Fantasy fans, even if they’re only window shopping.
Square Enix released an official Final Fantasy VII “Aerith’s Theme” music box in 2005, which was limited to one hundered copies and cost around 40,000 yen (~$400 US) . According to the folks over at the Final Fantasy Collectibles Forum, the music box, in the rare occasion that it goes on sale, now fetches over $2000 US.
I know surprisingly little about the one I own, except that is patented and manufactured by “Artec.” It looks to be part of a series called “Music and Harmony.” It may very well be unofficial, but that doesn’t make me like it any less, as this is as cool as unofficial items get, in my humble opinion. I have another photo and more specific details on my eBay listing.
My asking price is ridiculously high, I know, but my main purpose in listing it is a) to find out if anyone knows more about it, and b) to gauge any interest there might be among collectors.
If anyone reading here can give some insight on this item, submit some comments!