You've Got Grail! The Valuation Thread

[cools]

Shame it's missing the CP sticker and coinslot, but unless DS shipped them out of the country there should be spare CP uppers with these present somewhere in the UK

[docky]

Shame it's missing the CP sticker and coinslot, but unless DS shipped them out of the country there should be spare CP uppers with these present somewhere in the UK

Which sticker is it missing? I have a printed out piece of paper with controls written on it slipped behind the glass panel.
I *might* still have the coin-slot, although I don't recall what state it was in.

[cools]

The price per play sticker

[docky]

Aha. Yeah, it's never had a price per play sticker.

[cheuboh]

Well, my bad, i miss the times when you could find one for 60/80 euros...

[markedkiller78]

It looks pretty good though it's hard to tell how yellow the doors / body have gone.

So No Marquee? Possible missing Coin Slot & Price sticker, necked monitor. The cab will sell here I'm sure of it. If the monitor matches what I have here, then I will be interested, dependent on price.

Once we know what monitor it has it in, we can figure out how best to replace it

[markedkiller78]

Well, my bad, i miss the times when you could find one for 60/80 euros...

The green one has fluctuated a bit. The last "cheap" one was on ebay a few months back (Pehnros sold, J69 Bought) It sold for £80 + £10 P&P. They have sold for £140-150 in the past too.

I guess like everything, it's worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

[docky]

So No Marquee?

What is the marquee it should have? It has the originally grey 'splatter' artwork behind the glass plate. The piece of paper I have in there right now isn't glued or anything. You can see the windy background in this picture better.

[geotrig]

marquee is the yellow backed plastic thing that sits on top of the cab in the middle near teh grooved section

[markedkiller78]

Pang's pictured hosted at NG.com

The thing at the top:

[CPS2]

STV has one for sale.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/23/cimg0273ki.jpg/"

[cheuboh]

I guess like everything, it's worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

We had numerous debate about this point on french forums.
I don't really agree with that, because people with lots of money don't care paying more than usual for something, and if that sets the price of the item higher for everyone, then it become not really fair.
I mean, if a manage to sell a sf2x for 1000£ to an arcade newbie full of cash, does it state the price of this board at this price ?
I don't think so.

I won't polute opt2not topic no more, if someone wants to talk about this, i'd be glad to do it on a proper topic.

[docky]

Oh, I think I have that, but it might be in storage.

[markedkiller78]

I guess like everything, it's worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

We had numerous debate about this point on french forums.
I don't really agree with that, because people with lots of money don't care paying more than usual for something, and if that sets the price of the item higher for everyone, then it become not really fair.
I mean, if a manage to sell a sf2x for 1000£ to an arcade newbie full of cash, does it state the price of this board at this price ?
I don't think so.

I won't polute opt2not topic no more, if someone wants to talk about this, i'd be glad to do it on a proper topic.

I agree with what you are saying. To me there are 2 elements (parts) being discussed:

1. What is the individual item worth
2. What will the same item sell for in future.

I didn't want to poison the last thread, but if you look at historical sales of SSF2X it ranges from £90-150 in the last 24 months. If the current seller is asking for £150 & a buyer is prepared to pay that, then that's what it's worth (on that one occasion)

I had one up for sale with 2 pretty rare mooks at £140 & it didn't sell. I din't want to sell for any less, so it's still in my house. You can take the view that it was too expensive, or like me, leading on to point 2, accept that it takes 2 people to make a sale. Buyer & seller must agree on the price. that's the key point.

I hate it & don't think it is right to believe that because XXX sold for £10, that all future sales should be for £10. It's silly. I get bored of things & want the space, so sell for a low amount, which is my choice. If it's small enough to store at home, then I simply keep it unless it sells for what I believe (based on historic sales over a 1-60 month period. Some games simply don't sell more than 1-2 a year on western forums, so it's hard to track)

Demand fluctuates & all pcbs are rare to some extent.

For some reason Sky Shark was always a $50 pcb. I even got it for that, but it took 8 months to find one for sale. There were none for sale at a higher price & all the pcbs got snapped up at $50. To me, that says people would have paid more for it. It just takes 1 & all of a sudden prices go through the roof. I think Sky Shark is now an $80-100 game? & I bet it would sell at $80 in minutes.

Anyways, prices are fluid.

To me a rough Candy Cab is not worth £500+, but they are selling & I'm not involved in the sale at all, so how can I comment? It's all opinion until you you are either they buyer or seller, then you can effect the market.

It's simple economics. Demand & supply, but as I said above you need both to agree or there is no sale and therefore no price. We all just take a best guess at what's fair in our opinions. SSF2X used to be £40. £100 is now "Fair" imo. No one likes to see high prices or anyone getting ripped off. So if an asking price is at the high end, or slightly more, then it's hardly crime of the century.

Now a Blue SSF2T, that sells for £150-200

[cheuboh]

Agree with all of above.

My point is maybe beyond the rules of demands and supply.
Maybe i'd like to see more of a "arcade market spirit" if you see what i mean.

People use this market to make profits, as in every market rules basically, that's what i'm not happy with.
And because a game get hyped all of a sudden (like ssf2x and the return of 2d versus gaming popularity), doesn't mean everyone should profit of that and sell their copy for twice the price just because "it sells"
I mean, this is maybe asking too much, but i'd like to see a way of regulating values of pcbs so greedy people don't use this market to simply make profits.
We are for the most passionate about this stuff, and i don't like to see people like STV for example BS everyone, and especially newbies in the arcade community.

About point 1, we are talking about used old boards, so stating a price is difficult, but we all know the value of pcbs from experience and time passed on forums.
And someone putting a very high price for a cheap item will generaly be avoided.

What i can state from discussions on french forums, is that a lot of people defends themselves for putting high prices with the "supply and demand" shield, to continue and get the most out of their sales, not thinking about the future of the community, and the benefits greedy people make over this market (making boards rarez all of a sudden and profiting from boots conversions etc).
And i think that's a shame.

Just look at how much a cyvern conversion is selling nowadays, it's pretty much the same price the original board sold 2 years ago.
Why ? Because it's rare, and all of a sudden conversions appeared for cheap prices, then the conversions got higher and higher in price due to this demand and supply scheme, and now it's over priced (about 200 euros for a convert)

[cools]

I think a far larger problem than the rare hype one is price equalling what the seller originally paid in full. Meaning sales price + shipping + customs fees. Cycle this around a couple of times and a board has suddenly gained £100+ in value.

Keep a board for a year while the above goes on in the market and all of a sudden what you paid £150 for is suddenly worth £300+. Most of us would find it difficult to price something so vastly under the current market value so it goes up, simply because we know that while we paid one thing for it the market is sustaining a much higher price. Our one off sale isn't going to make any difference to future sales anywhere else so it defies all logic to undervalue it - it's one thing to be a good Samaritan but quite another to be a martyr.

I personally try and balance between the two - paid price and current market value. And I'll freely admit that I regularly buy two (or more) items when I only want to keep one simply because selling the unwanted bits on at market value will mean that I've paid less for the item I really want.

[wonderbanana]

Most points on this have been well covered already but I will say one thing, it still baffles me how the price of certain games are 'set' by us all as a community because I sincerely can't work it out.

Ill use two examples, both of which I've brought this year - Flying Shark and Twin Cobra.

Flying Shark averages £70 now if you ask, Twin Cobra the same (ish), indeed I asked very recently and was told £60.

What I don't get is, these are 2 games that regularly feature in forumites top 10/20 games (and deservedly so), their made by Toaplan - a revered prestige developer to most of us, they are almost constantly in people's wanted lists (I know of 3 for Twin Cobra right now ottomh) and they don't actually come up that often - hence the demand.

Yet when the value is asked, almost universally the values will be as above, I mean why? These games are IMO miles better than the vast majority of pcb's 'valued' at £100 - £150, in many cases harder to acquire and from wanted ads/comments I see - more sought after.

So where the hell does the value come from? On quality, prestige (Toaplan) and demand they should be around £150 logically. I just don't get it and tbh I don't think I ever will.

[opt2not]

Hey thanks for cleaning up my sales thread, markedkiller78.

Cools hit in on the head.
The board I have listed is priced according to a person in my position -- a North American who paid to import this board to my country. So it's priced based on what I paid, nothing more, nothing less. Which is also the reason I am limiting the sale to people on this side of the pond. I initially got this board in a trade last year, and we valued it at $200 USD. It was sent from France, and after shipping and duty (thanks Canadian customs. ) it comes out to almost this amount after all's said and done. Note, the price I have listed there is the shipped price in North America. Shipping a board around here costs between $20-30 USD, and if I'm sending it States-side, it's a few more bucks, and there may be a chance of it being dinged by customs (sometimes they don't care, but there have been a few cases).
Anyway, you could say the value of my board is around the $220 mark, plus it's clean and in mint shape!
So say you're a North American, importing it from YAJ or whatever in Japan, you'd probably end up paying this much after shipping, service fees and potential customs cost.

I'm not trying to make a profit here...just trying to offload this board so that I could by a Blue US Phoenixed version, which was equally priced on the American arcade forum = KLOV.

It sucks, I know, but I feel the price difference should be considered based on location as well. For what you guys sell over there for a certain price, doesn't usually translate 1:1 here because of the fact that importing is so high.
Commodities in life take this same approach. When gas prices go up, so does the price of food/merchandise. It's really hard to keep prices low around here when you have to factor in the cost of actually getting your hands on the item.

Sorry to create drama, it seems that ST boards seem to do so everywhere. But what would you do in my position? Sell it at the cost of what you see on YAJ?

[VHD]

Just to add, I just bough SSF2X for 130 and after paypal fees and delivery it works out to £150.

Maybe this is a bit too much but this is for the A+B board.

[pubjoe]

Good points above. SSF2T's price has been remarked upon a few times in the past. Opt2not made a good point about oversea prices not being 1:1, and of past examples of ST/2X, I do know that it's historically worth more in the US than it is here. ...http://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14948"

People use this market to make profits, as in every market rules basically, that's what i'm not happy with.

I hear you, but this can depend on your perspective. High value may encourage a sale but it's not necessarily the case that profit is premeditated.

I can think of an example when I bought a Madkatz fightstick and resold it (on this forum) for double what I paid. To me the joystick was worth £100 and I pre-ordered it at that price. Soon after, low supply meant that it was selling for £250 on ebay and everywhere else. Any shops that had stock raised their price and it easily sold. It occurred to me that the stick was clearly worth £250 and, to me, I couldn't justify keeping the joystick with that high a value. I would be in effect, parting with £200-odd by not selling it - for a joystick I wouldn't have paid more than £100 for in the first place. I was going to ebay it with no reserve, but thought I'd throw it up here for £200 first, and it sold quickly. I received a couple of pairs of rolled eyes for doing it. If I'd have sold it for what I paid, it'd only be sold on at a quick profit anyway.

I know my example is different. There were many sales happening in that case, so "fair" value was easy to obtain, which is harder to do with less-sold items. I've flicked between marking down for a quick sale and marking up because I don't want to sell for less or I don't mind holding on and waiting. I sold SFIII3S at a friendly price once and I've noticed that sell for much more since. I can't complain, it's just an initial asking price that the seller has picked after factoring in many variables, many of which are private, and only one of which is the seller's original purchase price.

A price guide doesn't help, look at the NeoGeo market.