Lots of old games for not very much money - but do you want them?

There’s a lot to be said for buying in bulk, though it doesn’t always work out (just ask Manchester City fans). With that in mind, I trawled through the infinite pages of Yahoo! Auctions to find some of the best job lot game auctions on the site. Here are some of the best and worst deals I clicked on:

100 PlayStation games – no duplicates, all with instructions, some missing their spine cards – for a starting price of 3,800 yen and with a Buy It Now of 7,800 yen.

300 Super Famicom cassettes for a starting price of 15,000 yen – that’s 50 yen per game, but most of them are probably pachinko simulators…

200 Famicom cassettes for a starting price of 10,000 yen – same deal as above.

400 Super Famicom cassettes for a starting price of 20,000 yen. OK, let’s move on.

100 Super Famicom cassettes for 3,000 yen? That’s more like it – the photos show you exactly what you’re getting, and what you’re getting includes F-Zero, Star Fox, DQV and FFVI!

And at the other end of the pitch:

100 rare Famicom games, all boxed and everything… for 80,000-120,000 yen! Hey, if you like your games mint…

More than 100 Mega Drive titles for a starting price of 262,000 yen, for which you could very possibly buy a car.

1. Yahoo! Auctions watch: rare book/magazine edition Out of print but still in demand....
2. Yahoo! Auctions watch: game music and copying device edition It's hammer time!...
3. Yahoo! Auctions watch: MEGA RARE edition! Japan doesn't know the meaning of "recession"!...

The most expensive RARE game on Yahoo! Auctions right now is this golden Rockman 4 cartridge, with an asking price of half a million yen...

Ever wondered what would happen if you were to enter “レア” (that’s “RARE”) in a Yahoo! Auctions search that spans every videogame section on the site and set the results to be displayed in most-expensive-first order? Here are some of the things I found doing exactly that!

Top of the list is the golden Rockman 4 Famicom cartridge pictured above, for which the seller is asking a perfectly reasonable 500,000 yen (£3,400/$5,300). It supposedly was never officially put on sale, and the seller claims that only 8 copies exist in the whole world. So it’s got to be worth that kind of money, yeah?!

The same seller also has the second-most expensive game in the list, which is a virtually unheard-of Famicom number called Mighty Bunchin Jack that apparently deserves at least 200,000 yen (£1,375/$2,125) of someone’s hard-earned. You can see the game in action right here:

Further down the list are highlights such as this brand new copy of Tokyo-based Hacker International’s intriguing Miss Peach World (68,000 yen to you, good sir!), a Sharp telly with a Super Famicom built-in (a bargain at 80,000 yen, madame!) and an original “Neo-Geo Rental Store” illuminated shopfront sign that would look great in any 6-tatami apartment (and it only costs 45,000 yen!)…

1. Yahoo! Auctions watch: rare book/magazine edition Out of print but still in demand....
2. Yahoo! Auctions watch: bulk buy edition Stacks of games for stacks of yen?...
3. Yahoo! Auctions watch: inexplicably expensive games edition HOW much?!...

This troubles me because I don’t understand it. In that sense, it’s a lot like baseball. Or Scottish accents. And it’s been going for a year or longer, too: Sony’s original F1 game on the PS3 consistently sells in Japan for high prices. How high? It’s near-impossible to buy the game on Yahoo! Auctions for less than 4,500 yen (£30/$48) used, while brand new copies like this one (above) go for anything up to 7,500 yen (£50/$81) each! Scarcity might be the issue, and the absence of a PS3 F1 game in intervening years is likely a factor, but still…

Lot 2: Out Run 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)

OK, this one I do understand: it’s expensive because it’s an import. Coast 2 Coast in its PSP form was never released in Japan, so most copies have had to be imported from the UK. Nevertheless, there’s quite some mark-up action going on here, with used copies typically going for 4,000 yen+ (£27/$43) and brand new ones selling for 5,500 yen (£37/$60) and up. Compare that with the prices people are actually charging for copies in Blighty and it’s easy to see a decent business opportunity. Damn, I should have kept that to myself…

1. Yahoo! Auctions watch: MEGA RARE edition! Japan doesn't know the meaning of "recession"!...
2. Yahoo! Auctions watch: rare book/magazine edition Out of print but still in demand....
3. Yahoo! Auctions watch: ridiculous Final Fantasy XIII cosplay edition How much would you pay for a pink wig?...

The seller of this outfit has blocked out the model's face either because she's hideous (doubtful) or because of the inherent shame associated with being a cosplay model. Nice wig, though.

Now that FFXIII is finally here, the crazy anticipation has turned into delirious celebration. And in Japan, celebrating games means dressing up just like the characters in the game. Even when they look like this. But the scary thing isn’t the act of cosplay itself: it’s the lengths and expense to which true otaku will go to in order to achieve their aims. This auction for the outfit modelled above (model not included) has had 14 bids at the time of writing and is up to 36,000 yen (£250/$400) – it’ll probably end around the 50,000 yen mark.

If you just want Lightning’s pink wig, there’s one going here for 5,750 yen (likely higher by the time you read this). Check it out:

That's a highly unusual strain of acne.

1. Final Fantasy XIII Elixir spills into Japan’s conbinis *Drink not guaranteed to Restore faith in series. ...
2. Final Fantasy XIII Original Soundtrack -PLUS- due May 26th "Original" + "-PLUS-" = Leona Lewis bonus tracks?...
3. Yahoo! Auctions watch: bulk buy edition Stacks of games for stacks of yen?...

Lot 1: Super Wildcard DX

This fine piece of bric-a-brac is a bit of a steal, marked as it is with a Buy It Now price of just 5,000 yen. It’s also a “steal” in another sense of the word: the whole point of the Super Wildcard DX is that it enables you to play Super Famicom/BS games on your Super Famicom … FROM FLOPPY DISKS! I’m sure you can imagine the possibilities. Only slight hitch is that the SWC is probably not capable of running that Star Fox 2 beta, what with it being a Super FX game and all, and this being a dodgy piece of back-up/piracy hardware built in a shed in Hong Kong circa 1992. But still.

Lot 2: Bayonetta 5-CD Original Soundtrack collection

You know Bayonetta, that bloody new adventure game from Hideki Kamiya? Well, it’s got some music in it. Pretty good stuff, too, including the odd ditty from J-pop’s own MiChi. As you can see in the auction listing, the complete Bayonetta Original Soundtrack compilation spans 5 CDs, which may seem wildly excessive, but the bids have already taken this one to 5,250 yen and it’ll probably finish nearer the 10,000 yen mark.

Lot 3: OutRun 20th Anniversary Box

With a Buy It Now price of 50,000 yen (£330/$560) and 11 – yes, eleven – CDs full of OutRun music part of the bargain, this makes that Bayonetta thingy look as tame as a neutered Doraemon. Frankly, I’d just settle for the original OutRun soundtrack (i.e., the good one, before it got tampered with) on gorgeous vinyl instead – only 1,000 yen and less liable to get snapped beneath a dining chair.

1. Yahoo! Auctions watch: bulk buy edition Stacks of games for stacks of yen?...
2. Yahoo! Auctions watch: rare book/magazine edition Out of print but still in demand....
3. Yahoo! Auctions watch: MEGA RARE edition! Japan doesn't know the meaning of "recession"!...

Lot 1: Complete collection of Gamest magazine

This complete collection of 200-odd issues of Gamest magazine – a specialist arcade games title that ran from 1986 through to 1999 – has an opening price of, wait for it, 399,000 yen! That’s £2,650/$4,400. Delivery anywhere within Japan costs another 10,000 yen or so, and if some maniac is anxious that he might be outbid, he can of course choose to cough up the slightly higher Buy It Now price of 447,000 yen (£3,000/$5,000).

Lot 2: Vast collection of PS/PS2, DC, SFC and PCE magazines

This is a slightly more reasonably-priced auction than the Gamest one: it’s starting at 200,000 yen (£1,330/$2,200), but the seller is offering to lower his asking price. For that outlay you get loads of copies of Dengeki PlayStation, Dorimaga, Marukatsu Super Famicom, Marukatsu PC Engine, etc. A couple of potential bidders have asked whether the seller is willing to break the auction up into smaller lots. He says it’s all or nothing. Hardball!

Lot 3: Denshi Game Daisakusen – a very old Game & Watch book

And finally a book: this rare volume catalogues the first wave of battery-powered electronic games (Game & Watch, etc.). It’s called Denshi Game Daisakusen, which means “Epic Electronic Game Battle”, and it cost 650 yen when it was published in 1982. Now someone wants 7,500 yen (£50/$82) for it…

1. Yahoo! Auctions watch: MEGA RARE edition! Japan doesn't know the meaning of "recession"!...
2. Yahoo! Auctions watch: bulk buy edition Stacks of games for stacks of yen?...
3. Yahoo! Auctions watch: game music and copying device edition It's hammer time!...

Anyway, let’s begin the hunt with some (completely-impractical-for-your-Japanese-apartment) choice arcade machines:

Lot 1: Virtua Racing twin coin-op

The asking price for this classic SEGA racer is 50,000 yen (about £330/$550), which isn’t bad, especially considering it’s the Twin version of the cab and therefore facilitates head-to-head two-player action like the year is still 1993.

Lot 2: Astro City cabinet loaded with 4 Neo-Geo games

This dirty but perfectly functioning SEGA Astro City cab has been modded so that it can play both MVS and JAMMA games, and included in the deal are Neo-Geo titles Samurai Spirits, King Of Fighters ‘97, KOF ‘98 and KOF ‘99. Starting price is only 12,000 yen (£80/$130) and the unit is currently in Gifu prefecture (central Japan), so no matter which part of Nippon you’re based in, delivery shouldn’t be too steep. “Cheap as chips!” (Thanks, David.)

Lot 3: BeatMania Complete Mix

At 25,000 yen, this twin-decked BeatMania Complete Mix machine is only a bit more expensive than a DJ Hero set-up… Shame that half of its blue neon facade is shot.

1. Yahoo! Auctions watch: bulk buy edition Stacks of games for stacks of yen?...
2. Yahoo! Auctions watch: rare book/magazine edition Out of print but still in demand....
3. Yahoo! Auctions watch: game music and copying device edition It's hammer time!...