Meeting with Ben Gold yesterday

YellowDog

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Yesterday a few of us had a chance to meet a legendary video game player Ben Gold. He was in town to meet up with Callan Hendricks and was gracious enough to stick around for us to stop by and meet him. For those of you that went "Who?", here is a link to an article that explains what Ben has accomplished better than I can: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/comm...731-Farmers-Branch-man-to-join-video-5437.ece. Or just google "Ben Gold arcade player".

One of his latest projects is to establish a high end video game collectables auction site. This is something that I think is very exciting. Most of us collect rare and memorable video game items when we can get them and when it is time to part with them, off they go to eBay where they go for pennies. His concept is to get the best of the collectible items and aution them off the same way they do Picassos and 2,000 year old Ming vases. In a fine art style on-line auction. He has some pretty cool items up right now. If you haven't gone out to his site, it deserves a look. Right now he has Walter Day's referee uniform, a Kong Off cabinet, one of the "naked" centipede posters and some other cool items.

I think Ben has doen a really nice job of laying out the site. As I said, it is modeled after the fine art type on-line auctions, so it is a radical departure from the "c'mon down to America's garage sale" format eBay uses. I think it could work. But it needs people to stop in and register and it needs some more cool things. If I had known that this stuff would have turned into collectibles, I would have been stealing, I mean saving, stuff from Williams by the car load.

The url for the auction site is: www.ivgah.com

ken
 
Looking at that auction site I see it has the same basic problem that every non-ebay auction site has and that is that 90 percent of the opening bids are far, far higher than the item is worth.

Walter Day's old checks aren't worth $200 and a Kong Off marquee doesn't make a Donkey Kong machine worth $3000. The demographic that would know or care about the Kong Off wouldn't pay $3K for a Donkey Kong and the demographic that would pay $3K for a Donkey Kong wouldn't know or care about the Kong Off. I could be wrong here, but I don't think I am.

This isn't meant as an insult to anyone involved, but there is no way most of the items listed on that site are worth anywhere near the opening bids. Since that is likely to always be the case, then they may just want to structure themselves with more of a store format, as I can't see there actually being any competitive bidding going on.
 
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A high end restore sale site would be good that is consistent. The high end stuff never gets appreciated for what it is. The pinball collecting hobby has gone through a transformation that has yet to hit the Vids. Once that happens this hobby will be very different than the current situation. $50 cabs will be unheard of. The fact that tubes have gone the way of the dinosaur should start the change over soon.

This is a big hobby for big boys that still lets kids play due to many vendors dumping old junk for nothing. The supply will dry up very fast. I have noticed that it is hard to find monitors from regular vendors and they are starting to ask high prices. After used TV's and after market chasis are hard to find or even flyback transformers can not be bought it should get interesting. Guys like Ben were there in the hay day of fun so show some respect on their knowledge and have some fun.
 
an auction site where you could find high end games, sell high end games would be awesome. i know the hunt is part of the hobby, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to go to a website and find these:

http://www.rotheblog.com/2008/08/arcade/15-most-valuable-classic-arcade-games/

now i cant see the 5000.00 referee suit. i dont care for stuff like that.

Yeah, that is pretty insane. Considering a shirt worn by Sammy Davis Jr. is only $1,200.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SAMMY-DAVIS...522?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c67eea2d2
 
I see prices going up in the future, but nowhere near pinball levels. Pinball machines offer something completely different than what you can play on your computer. Arcade games, not so much.

A high end restore sale site would be good that is consistent. The high end stuff never gets appreciated for what it is. The pinball collecting hobby has gone through a transformation that has yet to hit the Vids. Once that happens this hobby will be very different than the current situation. $50 cabs will be unheard of. The fact that tubes have gone the way of the dinosaur should start the change over soon.

This is a big hobby for big boys that still lets kids play due to many vendors dumping old junk for nothing. The supply will dry up very fast. I have noticed that it is hard to find monitors from regular vendors and they are starting to ask high prices. After used TV's and after market chasis are hard to find or even flyback transformers can not be bought it should get interesting. Guys like Ben were there in the hay day of fun so show some respect on their knowledge and have some fun.
 
My $0.02

Interesting theory, but I believe the big difference is that someone at home with a few tools and a little skill can build 90% of cabs for very low cost. Plus as there were hundreds of thousands more cabs build than pinballs we won't be running out of ancillary parts too soon. In addition a lot of folks are just perfectly happy with an LCD over a CRT, so even the demise of the best display device ever invented won't slow things down.

The same certainly not true for pinballs, you couldn't repro a pin for love nor money. Well probably for a LOT of both.

The arcade hobby is unlikely to go the way of pinball in our lifetimes as a cabinet is just too easy to build repros and the boards, even XX-in-1, keep availability high.

In car terms I see most of the hobby in the "kit car" category and a small sub-culture of super demanding "concourse quality" collectors. To me it seems pin collectors are just much more serious or out.

But, saying this, IMO the real "high end" stuff will be color vectors and the more obscure cult games which may have collecting appeal only because of rarity over gameplay. The "rare-but-crap" phenomena.

I could be wrong and it might not matter after Dec.23rd
- James
 
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Ever notice how "rare but crap" valuable games also seem to have to have been produced by Williams.

My $0.02

But, saying this, IMO the real "high end" stuff will be color vectors and the more obscure cult games which may have collecting appeal only because of rarity over gameplay. The "rare-but-crap" phenomena.

- James
 
Not to derail the thread, but there are plenty of "rare but crap" games produced by other manufacturers. I have never heard anyone wax poetic about the gameplay of a Sundance for instance, or War of the Worlds. Personally, I am not horribly impressed with the gameplay of Major Havok or I, Robot. But both of these command relatively high prices.

And rarety is not just a function of the quantity but also the hoops one needs to go through to keep the game running. How many "working Pole Position" jokes have been posted. Or "working Omega Race" jokes.

The marketplace will determine if there is truly a serious collectors market for video game memorabilia the way there is for car memorabilia, or movie memorabilia, or any of the other niche markets that collectors inhabit.

Is Walter's outfit worth $5000? Is a working Omega Race boardset worth $300? Is a Medieval Madness worth $14,000? I don't know. The market will decide. At least there is an alternative to ePay that uses a true auction format.

ken
 
I KNEW I should have stayed with my original thoughts that the rare but crap titles were all Williams, vector or laserdisc. I literally typed that, then backed it up because the original poster had already mentioned vector titles.

The serious game collecting community is going to get smaller as games get more expensive and the guys who remember the classic era firsthand get older. Because of that I don't see I, Robot being an Epic Tier type of game long term. There are probably 100-200 of them floating around out there which might not sound like a lot, but in a smaller collecting community it will be.
 
Throwing items on a website with starting prices established out of thin air does not make those items worth those prices. All that does is establish the price that they are worth to the person who is trying to sell them.

Like it or not, Ebay is a completely valid place to establish the value of an item. As long as everyone that is interested in that item knows that it is up for auction. Then again if they don't know it's up for auction, they probably aren't THAT interested to begin with.

$5000 for the ref jersey. Riiiiiight. Put it on Ebay for .99 cents and it would probably sell for a few hundred. Not the equivalent price of TWO 25" Star Wars cockpits.

Not trying to bag on Ben personally. I've met him once. Great guy.
 
dude comes off as a total weirdo on the chasing ghosts documentary. just my opinion...
 
Throwing items on a website with starting prices established out of thin air does not make those items worth those prices. All that does is establish the price that they are worth to the person who is trying to sell them.

Like it or not, Ebay is a completely valid place to establish the value of an item. As long as everyone that is interested in that item knows that it is up for auction. Then again if they don't know it's up for auction, they probably aren't THAT interested to begin with.

$5000 for the ref jersey. Riiiiiight. Put it on Ebay for .99 cents and it would probably sell for a few hundred. Not the equivalent price of TWO 25" Star Wars cockpits.

Not trying to bag on Ben personally. I've met him once. Great guy.

Actually eBay is one of the worst formats for establishing prices. Nobody bids until the last 30 seconds and the rest of the time the listing is up is basically just advertising time. You might as well have a sealed bid auction.

If you had a format where the auction would continue for a period of time after the last bid came in untill there were no more bids, then I would agree that it would be a fair way to set prices. But as it stands now, I usually don't bother to bid until the last 10 seconds, throw a guess at what it will take to win the item and take my chances. While that format favors the buyer, it certainly does little to settle the price of an item. There have been many occasions where items would have gone much higher if two or more bidders were allowed to duke it out until one quit rather than just hitting an arbitrary time limit.

ken
 
I don't know. I always bid the most that I am willing to pay at the last second. If it sells for less than that, I guess the other person put in their maximum as well.
 
Actually eBay is one of the worst formats for establishing prices. Nobody bids until the last 30 seconds and the rest of the time the listing is up is basically just advertising time. You might as well have a sealed bid auction.

I see what you're saying, but I'm of the opinion that the final hammer price is valid no matter how you get there. Bottom line, it's what someone's willing to pay. Any sale can be analysed to death re: what contributed to someone being willing to pay said price.

Also, there's "Buy It Now".

I don't know. I always bid the most that I am willing to pay at the last second. If it sells for less than that, I guess the other person put in their maximum as well.

That's what I do as well.
 
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