EarthBound Sells for $4700

One thing I find amusing is thinking about how many copies of EarthBound at its original RRP nearly twenty years ago would fit into that sale price. Admittedly I’ve no idea what its RRP was being that I’m neither American nor was I of gameplaying age in 1995, so…

Probably 40-50 copies.

Also, SNES and NES collectors have been paying way too much for games lately. That and every game is getting listed as “rare”, so people who have no idea will get ripped.

It’s despicable;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-1984-NINTENDO-SUPER-MARIO-BROS-JAPANESE-NINTENDO-64-GAME-MADE-JAPAN-/370578511479?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item5648335677

It’s probably a good time to collect PS2 games before that generation starts getting nostalgic.

rofl, that auction reminds me of this:

Coincidentally, I own a NES 001. Oh boy. *Rollseyes*

It is an auction, though, and there were others willing to pay even 3000 dollars, which is insane.

With that money you could buy about 4 arcade machines.

The winner better never ever open the box or play the game! And I hope s/he’s got a dehumidified room set up with a pair of lions to protect it o_o

Imagine if EarthBound popped up on Pawn Stars.

EarthBound is my favourite game and all, but I’d be hard pressed to drop more than a hundred dollars on an unopened copy. It just seems frivolous to me.

If anything, I’d just create a replica of the box and tell people it’s an unopened copy. >.>

LOL.

Sooooo glad the VGA exists.

Wow, I can’t even imagine! I’m still trying to get a regular old cartridge, haha. I’ve almost given up on ebay and have been wandering around flea markets and Buybacks. I’m just hoping to be someone in the right place at the right time by this point.

Hey Pepper, there are some on ebay, from experience it’s extremely hard to find one at the used game stores, even the big ones in NY have only ever gotten 2 and they sell them for the same price as on ebay. Have you tried Lukie Games online?

I think I’m going for that auction that you just posted. Then I’m going to get it graded and see what happens… It’s a bad time to spend so much money, but if I do this right, I can make some serious cash.

Bionic- I haven’t! Thanks, I’ll definitely give it a look. At the moment I would probably be able to spare a bit of the extra cash so I’ve been trying to get it while it’s still reasonable for me.

Wow, wee. Well, at least it’s a real game cartridge. I’d hate to imagine someone paying over a $1000 and finding out their copy is a bootleg.

Also, I laugh and cringe at storage wars. Some people on that show are dumb as a doorknob.

not a good time to be an earthbound fan, huh…

WHO WOULD PAY ALL THAT?!? WHO IS THAT RICH. O_o

if i had the money I would buy it in a heartbeat. XD

As Mato pointed out on the new page, there is a collision of three groups right now when it comes to EarthBound purchasing. There are passionate collectors, people who’ve never played the game who just want to play, and then that damn third group; the group trying to make money off the other two groups.

I’m sorry but I’m allowed to have my own personal opinion and my opinion is that this third group is scum. It really bothers me the level of greed that is easily noticeable in this world, and this third group is a perfect example. I remind myself that you can’t completely blame the third group for this. Some of the blame lies in the willingness of whoever is buying these things to pay this insane amount of money for a SNES game. I’m sure I’m in the minority here, and that’s ok, but someone needs to step up and call banana yellow. I am willing to allow everyone the freedom to do as they wish, however that does mean people can do whatever they want and be free from scrutiny or the be subjected to individual’s opinions of their actions.

I just wish that the greedy people of the world would find something else to go be greedy about. Like cars or something. There are plenty of rare cars that can be used to make thousands of dollars. I’ve been watching EB on eBay for years, and I see the same sellers scooping up all the copies of EartBound they can possibly afford just to jack up the prices. I see the sellers going around scooping up all the boxes and guides they can possibly find so they can make these complete sets and sell them for thousands of dollars.

I know, I’m not cool.

To be fair, in the case of this particular auction there were many people happily willing to spend this much money. But I’ve often wondered if there’s like one or two rich guys who might be buying up all the copies for that same reason too 😛

If I ever won the lottery, I’d buy all the EarthBounds, make a fort out of them, and charge admission.

Holy flip. And I thought the $80 I paid for my copy back in 2003 was pricey. Of course, it wasn’t brand-new, but it came with the box in good condition and Players’ Guide (which was noticeably beat-up, but nothing to cry over).

Well there is one seller in particular who has been scooping up everything EB that he can possible can for years. Then he only sells one “category” at time. That means that he puts no more than two complete sets auctions, game+guide auctions, and game-only auctions. He typically prices these with higher-than-current-market-Buy-It-Now and reserve auctions.

Even if he has three complete sets, he’ll only list one. When that one sells, he’ll immediately put another one up for auction at heavily increased price from the last one that sold.

This type of behavior is so greedy it makes my stomach turn. It not only drastically increases the rate of price increases (as others around EBay see his copies selling for these prices, and list their own products/buy others EB auctions for similar prices) but it also plays in to this whole misconception that EarthBound is super rare….which it isn’t.

Amazing and to believe I saw so many brand new copies of Earthbound at best buy back in the day and I didn’t even buy one copy cause at the time I was a kid that didn’t like rpg’s. 🙁

Dang.
I’m never going to own this game, am I?

I’m laughing cause I read Poe’s comment and just imagined some guy somewhere shrugging, then opening the box immediately and playing it, lmao!

Just so y’all know, I know of the seller of this auction and the winning bidder didn’t pay.

That sucks, I dunno why someone would do that.

Thanks for posting my listing, Tomato!

They didn’t pay?!

$4700 is a lot of money. Maybe the buyer needs time to gather it all together? I hope the seller is in contact with him/her, at least. Yikes, I hope everything works out 🙁

no the winner of the auction did not pay, he/she was a seventeen year old with like five feedback.

The seller ended up selling this VGA earthbound for a lot less on another site

Damn 🙁

;O; whaaaaat? How much did it end up going for in the end? That is upsetting…

The only game that I feel should go up for such a price would be a copy of earthbound 64.

So I’m guessing there’s no way to know who the second-highest bidder was, and offer it to them for their bid price instead? Or is that against eBay policy somehow?

Either way, if it was already sold to someone else, it’s too late anyway, but yikes.

Usually if you have a bidder who doesn’t pay you have the ability to do a “second chance offer” to the second-highest bidder. It looks like that wasn’t used in this case, for whatever reason.

WOW… JUST WOW.

I have a really old beat up Blockbuster cartridge version of Earthbound with a beat to death strategy guide.

It used to be the exact copy I would rent. When they went to sell it I had to get it. But I have this incredible memory, when for some odd reason…something happened at Best Buy…where they had a bunch of Earthbound’s that they were selling for somewhere around “$8.00” to close them out. I know it sounds unbelievable, but trust me, this really happened at the Southgate Michigan Best Buy.

From friend J.P. who I grew up with purchased one, I mean I had a hard enough time getting my grandma to purchase the one from Blockbuster…but to think…$8.00 to $4700. That is so prosposterous. Think about it. Buying shares in Earthbound. Hahaha. Goodtimes. Cheers everybody

No, they were definitely that cheap at Best Buy. The one I have up for auction right now was bought for $5 way back in 1995 or 1996—I can’t remember which. Pretty incredible.

I work at Best Buy and I’ve been meaning to look in our inventory program and see if I can find our listing for Pokemon Red, so I bet it’s in there somewhere. I’ll report on what price it is listed at, too. I know it should be there if I dig a bit.

Ack, I’m typing sideways and my keyboard ate a bit of my comment. I was saying that some time ago, I was looking and I found the listing for Pokemon Red, so I know Earthbound should be there if they still have listing that old in the system.

http://i776.photobucket.com/albums/yy43/chibi_or_die/IMG_0295.jpg

Found it and printed out sale tags for it!! The price listed is $5.99, a price we all wish we could get it for now. It’s listed as SN-Earthbound, where SN must stand for SNES. The SKU number is 2375272, which sadly doesn’t mean much since if you search for that on Bestbuy.com, it doesn’t yield a result. The many little tags are peg label stickers; I printed out eight of ’em just cuz I can 😛

That’s amazing! I wonder if they have leftovers sitting in a forgotten warehouse. If so, I’ll gladly pay that price for them all 😛

Sadly, on the inventory page for it, it said there was none available in the warehouse or on hand to order. Which really, really sucks. If it was available to order, I would have got it sent to my store faster than you could say “FUZZY PICKLES”!!

Also, it lists the dimensions on the larger tag; are those correct? I don’t have a copy of EB to quickly measure….. and what is the UPC barcode numbers on the box? The long number under the barcode is the UPC number, so now I wanna know if that’s still accurate too.

I don’t have the dimensions handy but there are some detailed pics here: http://gameswag.com/view/earthbound-super-nes/