The Collector's Quest

CQ 271 - Is your "CIB" good enough? by Johnny & Tyler

CQ 270 - It's time to fix your collection: Spring Cleaning by Johnny & Tyler

Finally, an episode where we can talk about Beyond Shadowgate, the second best Bomberman game, and $700 Neutopia games no one really cares about.

Two old men enumerate why collecting modern games is generally less interesting and see if it's just a nostalgia thing or the olden days really were the golden days.

We're looking at the most expensive, rarest collectible Xbox 360 games and determining if any of this stuff is worth our time in a sea of junky collectors editions.

We're talking about the best versions of games and other collecting dilemmas. Do you get the rare variant or the early variant? American or Japanese? Busted original version vs. remake with all the DLC? Nicer condition or better variant?

We're talking about every single modern game that costs $200+ (that isn't some weird release or special edition) and coming to the conclusion that not only is collecting modern games affordable, but you don't even want the games that cost this much.

Johnny takes us on a journey of collecting the "most 1980s" games, meaning games that embody pop culture of the decade like Knight Rider, Tron, and Smurfs.

We're recapping the price trends, interest trends, big sales, and how we collected in 2024. Grab the aux cable because this is 3 hours of pure, unfiltered hobby entertainment you can subject your family to while you're driving up to grandma's for Christmas in Delaware This is a complete re-upload to fix a Spotify issue. If your episode shows as 3:41:42, you already have the right file.

We're recapping the price trends, interest trends, big sales, and how we collected in 2024. Grab the aux cable because this is 3 hours of pure, unfiltered hobby entertainment you can subject your family to while you're driving up to grandma's for Christmas in Delaware. Reupload with fixed out-of-sync audio (Only relevant if you downloaded this in the first 30 or so minutes it was up on 12/19).

We're looking a physical indie releases from 2004-2019 to find obscure, underappreciated, and usually very cheap releases of some of the most popular games.

We enter the world of gifts for gamer blog posts to discuss how terrible the affiliate link spam has become. It is maybe impossible to find genuine recommendations for gifts anymore.

An episode where we discuss common game collecting topics in general without much focus similar to CQ After Dark. Johnny wanted to call this "Tyler Talk" but I think everyone would skip an episode named Tyler Talk.

We're talking the KEY horror and Halloween games from the early days, from interesting survival horror games, to stupid the stupid obscure first appearances of Frankenstein...'s monster.

We are discussing Johnny's objective* system for separating Halloween games from horror from dark fantasy to determine the official subset of NES Halloween games.

There are a handful of Stephen King games from proto-ebooks to the official Worst Adventure Game Ever Made. They're probably from his books you haven't read for some reason.

We're talking about games you can devote years to without ever becoming the best, which is largely esports games but also chess and mahjong?

We are clicking the drop down menu and selecting Sort By Highest Price and looking at recent sealed market and Ebay sales and discussing what's on top right now.

(Reupload to fix the last 4 minutes). We're talking about budget labels like Players Choice, Greatest Hits, and Platinum Hits, which ones we find interesting, which ones are expensive, and whether any of this junk is really worth collecting.

We're talking about budget labels like Players Choice, Greatest Hits, and Platinum Hits, which ones we find interesting, which ones are expensive, and whether any of this junk is really worth collecting.

A long episode about collecting a beloved, okay video game console.

It's CQ Shark Week. That time of year we talk about the electromechanical gun game from Jaws that once sold for $15,000 and Shark! Shark! on Intellivision which once sold for as high as $15.

It's one of those episodes where we're going to talk about the merits of the View-Master Interactive Vision, HTC Dream cell phone, and that Oregon Trail handheld thing, if those have any merits at all.

cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges cartridges

EVERY Pokemon game. The Windows computer games, the Sega Pico Beena games, the Pokemon Mini games. But yeah, mostly the mainline handheld games that people actually care about.

We're talking some specific inserts preventing your games from being 100% complete, from Zelda games to the highly collectible EA Sports Genesis games.

This is a 4 hour show where we talk about how much we like every console's boxes. That's the show. Odyssey 2's cardboard gatefold boxes up through modern trashy eco-cases. It's four hours of that. Four hours talking about whether we like boxes. Four hours.

Hey there. You're about to take a long drive. Maybe you're about to catalog some games. You need to kill the time so we're here with a long episode about a topic you didn't know you didn't want: games that came with temporary tattoo inserts.

If you've ever said "Games are getting too expensive" are you talking about games you care about that matter, random hyped expensive trash, or the cost of trying to own literally every video game? The best games to collect are more affordable than virtually any other hobby, especially if your goal isn't to buy EVERYTHING. You'll never own a Babe Ruth rookie card, Action Comics 1, or 1794 Flowing Hair Silver Dollar, but even the most expensive million dollar games ever sold you can own the exact same thing for a couple hundred bucks CIB.

We're talking about game conventions and our thoughts on attending them for both commerce and sociability in preparation for the upcoming Midwest Gaming Classic. Sorry for the late post, I've been very sick this past week!

We're talking about every collecting category except video games: coins, stamps, comics, toys, cereal, etc. and what the best video game things in those categories are that come to mind. Over 3 minutes of research was done looking up video game related Funko Pop prices for this episode before we couldn't take it anymore.

We're talking about a few controversial games we haven't yet discussed to death including perhaps the first controversial video game in 1973's Gotcha to Wolfenstein 3D to whatever Gal Gun is. This episode is banned in Germany for multiple reasons.

We're discussing some of potential "oh I wish I just got that when it was $8" games of 2000s and up. And also $3000 World of Warcraft server blades, which are sure to be a timeless collectible as well.

Two out of touch relics who collect old video games debate the merits of whether you should spend $64.99 on a reissued copy of NES Felix the Cat by Limited Run Games. No. No you shouldn't.

We are discussing and rating how worth it some of the "rarest" hype games are in game collecting from NWC to Pokemon Box to, for some reason, Devil's Third.

We're looking back at 2023: Our collecting goals, the price trends, the hobby trends, and the biggest sales of the year.

A.k.a "Ten Lords a Leaping" for the holiday season but I don't want people to skip the episode based on the title. We're going over an overview of platform games before Super Mario Bros., including some important but nearly forgotten games like Miner 2049er and Pac-Land that were swept away by Mario.

It's a big episode of advice for new collectors like setting goals, avoiding hype, budging, and avoiding becoming a hoarder who thinks your pile of mass produced media is equivalent to a savings account.

We're going over the games, books, gadgets, and sundries of the season while Tyler tries to drag us into tangents. Be sure to ask your family for boxes to easily store all those bulk games you've been buying!

Due to unforeseen circumstances this month we don't have a new traditional show yet, but we do have a long After Dark conversation we had with Joe about NES variants. So if you're wondering who "Joe" is or want to hear about weird stickers and date codes on Nintendo games, this is the episode.

We try our very best not to pick a Castlevania game as the spookiest, Halloween-iest game on every platform except the BBC Micro.

We're kicking off the season talking about the rare, the obscure, and the categories of games you might not even know exist. We chose some interesting spooky games to discuss this episode, and they just happen to be the most 90s games ever with lots of FMV games, oddly shaped PC big boxes, and Goosesbumps.

Taking in a blend of collectibility, history, relevance, influence, and Tyler's personal taste, we each come up the first 10 PS2 games we'd start our collections with. Is this the first time we talk about the Trance Vibrator??

Hide the kids and perhaps hide your ears. We are talking about porn games, from delightfully quirky Atari games, to the dark, dark origins of some of your favorite Japanese companies, to longtime grails like the Panesians.

We are here to reiterate that unless you have a plan to corner a collectibles market, drive hype and speculation, and sell at a price determined by your business plan, you are not INVESTING in video games by filling your room up with boxes of PS2 games that might be worth more one day. Also maybe max your 401k and take stock of how those $10-20 purchases add up to $100s or $1000s over time.

McDonalds is one of the most American things ever, but the Famicom game Donald Land is a whole McDonalds platformer that never got released in America. We're talking about western licenses that never got western releases. You know, the import stuff you can look at and go "I can't read Japanese but at least I know what Back to the Future is!".

A basketball fan and a guy who doesn't watch sports cover four reasons you might collect perhaps the least collectible genre of video games.

Or as good as it might realistically get. Near term economic uncertainty aside, we're discussing some current and future factors that might have us looking back on today and saying "I wish I bought that before it blew up". Tools, charts, and ease of access to detailed information are unusually poor but there are numerous startups trying to improve this. The days of CIB Nintendo games costing 1.5x what cartridges do, let alone near mint copies, are NEVER coming back so it might be time to plan realistic future goals rather than hope good-stuff prices somehow return to 2008.

Collecting is a weird hobby where the top things are often the top things just because they're the top things. We talk about, and disagree, on what some of the top things should and shouldn't be.

We're talking about going straight into the matrix in the most classic fashion: with crappy little paper 3D glasses. We're talking about the most interesting games (and virtually every game) that includes pack-in 3D glasses.

We're talking about the first 10-ish Saturn games we'd collect at any budget because of all consoles maybe the US Saturn library isn't the best one to be poking around random cheaper games looking for gems.