November 3, 2025 • 44 mins
Wilbo once had a box called "Retro Game Box" and as you can imagine, this box had some pretty valuable things in it. However, for reasons you'll soon learn about, Wilbo no longer has this box... In our very first episode, Wilbo shares his journey of rebuilding this once great box of retro games, as well as offers some insights into how he's doing this without overspending. You'll also learn some things about GameStop that you may or may not already be aware of (let's just say if it's not news to you, I imagine you were at least trying to forget this fact).
You can find Wilbo here:
https://www.youtube.com/@WilbosWorld
https://www.twitch.tv/wilbos_world
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dan (00:00):
Welcome. I'm Dan, and this is the first episode of Sticker
Shock Collector's Edition, thepodcast where we talk to people
about the things they collect,specifically things that maybe
cost a bit of money or time orjust take up space in their
living quarters. My personalcollecting hobbies kinda revolve
around video games, but latelyI've been really getting into
(00:21):
collecting movies and shows,things like that, getting the
physical media for those things.And from there, I've also been
kind of getting into rebuildingold game consoles and things
like that. With that in mind,just to set expectations for
this show, a lot of the thingswe talk about will probably have
a gaming undertone to them.
But the second episode, forexample, won't be specifically
(00:41):
about video games. And I thinkas this goes forward, we'll talk
to more and more people whocollect all sorts of stuff,
niche things, things like that.I have a lot of people in mind,
a lot of people have agreed todo the show, which I'm very,
very excited about. My hope withthe show is selfishly, I just
wanna learn about theinteresting niche things that
people are finding and arepassionate about. But I've also
(01:02):
found that when I talk to peopleabout the interesting objects
they collect and fill their homewith, I learn a lot about them.
I learn a lot about what theyvalue, and it really changes the
way I approach collectinganything myself. Anyway, this
will be the only episode where Ido such a long introduction for
myself. But basically, eachepisode will open with this type
(01:22):
type of format where I talk fora bit, set expectations, and
then the rest of the show, we'llinvite our guest in. And we'll
have a page on our Patreon whereyou can see show notes and
things like that. We'lladvertise all that stuff at the
end though.
But let's get into what Iactually wanna talk about today.
Growing up, it was a very commonpractice to trade in old games
(01:43):
for new ones. Like, a newrelease would come out. You
know, you'd finish it, maybe youwouldn't, but eventually,
something else would catch yourinterest. And, I mean, if you
grew up like I did, havingmultiple games, like too many
games wasn't allowed.
So trading them in, trading themup for the new thing was very
normalized. So much so thatmultiple franchises at one point
(02:04):
existed purely to make theprocess of trading in a game
super easy and even fun. Now, atleast in The US, we have one
place for that pretty much, andwe'll talk about them later. But
the act of making a physicalvideo game predates me by a long
shot. I mean, the Atari was inthe nineteen seventies.
I think there are probablydifferent computers that could
run games even before that. Andwhat would happen? The games
(02:26):
would get older. The technologywould get better, and they'd
stop making those older games infavor of making newer ones. So
it shouldn't have been asurprise that when I went to
rebuild my gaming collection, itwas kind of expensive.
I never really had a massivecollection of games growing up,
but I am trying to get my handson some things that I would have
liked to have played or thingsthat I did own at one time that
(02:47):
I really, really enjoyed. And asI'm trying to rebuild that
collection, I'm running intosome barriers. So far, it's been
pretty easy to find peopleselling the things that I want.
But if you go to the usualsuspects like GameStop or eBay,
the prices are absolutely out ofhand. And we're not even talking
for things that are in greatcondition.
Some stuff doesn't even comewith its original packaging. And
when I say original packaging,I'm not talking about the
(03:08):
cardboard box that n 64 gamescame out. I threw those away all
the time. I'm talking about theplastic cases that had the
manuals in them. The stuff thatI figured everyone would keep
because it's what you store thegame in.
So as I've been going throughthe motions here and as I
typically do when I start to getfrustrated, I was venting. And I
was venting to a friend of minewho turns out was doing
(03:28):
something similar. He'ssearching online, and he's going
out with his list of games he'strying to get, and he's running
into the exact same issues. AndI wanted to have him on as a
first guest because, well, forone, it's just relevant to the
things that I'm currentlyinterested in. But two, he
definitely has some interestingstories from his journeys trying
to get things and also some tipsto try and, like, help people
(03:50):
who are also out there trying torebuild their collections or
maybe they just wanna try someretro games.
Maybe they're younger and theynever had this stuff growing up
and it looks interesting tothem. He's a content creator
like myself, and it was verycathartic to sit down with him
and talk all of this out. So Ihope you enjoy the first episode
of Sticker Shock Collector'sEdition. Let's bring them in.
(04:11):
Alright.
Welcome, Wilbo. Hi. Telleveryone who you are and what
you collect.
Wilbo (04:19):
Well, I'm Wilbo. I collect a lot of Game Boy and
Game Boy Advance stuff. I'm likereally into that. And then I
also like to collect everythingbelow like Xbox three sixty.
Dan (04:30):
So Xbox three sixty and older?
Wilbo (04:32):
Well, I just happen to have like a big Xbox three sixty
collection, but I don't collectit. So like a little older than
that, like PlayStation two, one,Dreamcasts.
Dan (04:41):
How much of what you have is from your childhood that
you've kind of carried intoadulthood versus how much you've
gone out and like bought kindarecently?
Wilbo (04:50):
Well, so I when I was moving, right, I had a box and
it was like retro game box.Right? And we were cleaning out
my basement and unfortunately, Iended up throwing it away. What?
So a lot of my yeah.
A lot of my old games haveunfortunately been trashed which
(05:12):
hurts me every day that I thinkabout it.
Dan (05:14):
Oh my gosh. And so
Wilbo (05:16):
but I still have all of my Xbox three sixty games and a
lot of them are like shovelware,unfortunately. So and and like
Wii and all of pretty much alllike the disc games I still
have. So I still have myPlayStation one and stuff but my
like cartridge ones are kinda,like, gone. So Wow. I I kept, a
(05:38):
little bit and I've just beenrebuilding my collection slowly
ever since then.
Dan (05:42):
So Do you know I'm gonna I'm what I'm trying to do right
now is make you cry. Do you knowwhat cartridges ended up in the
landfill?
Wilbo (05:49):
Yes. I do.
Dan (05:50):
What are the tell me the worst ones.
Wilbo (05:52):
Okay. Pretty much all of my Pokemon games. So Pokemon
yellow, ruby, sapphire. I hadtwo sapphires, emerald.
Dan (06:01):
We're gonna talk a little bit today about how much those
are going for right now and it'sgonna be prime.
Wilbo (06:06):
Great. All of my DS ones, so Pokemon Pearl, Diamond, I
think I had black and all justall the DS cartridges that are
Pokemon related all all gone.You know, and then I had a bunch
of like random Game Boy gamesthat are kinda good like Kirby.
I I really like the Kirby gamesso I collected those. This is
(06:27):
horrible.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's prettybad. So it's pretty bad.
Dan (06:32):
Okay. Just trying to make it positive. Like, this is good.
You know, you have kind of likean origin story here. And Yeah.
Yeah. You're going out andyou're trying to rebuild your
collection. Tell me about howthat's going for you.
Wilbo (06:45):
Well, I kind of like collected before because like I
would say after COVID it gotextremely popular. But I started
collecting a little before that,like in like 2015. Like
rebuilding my collection alittle bit. So it was a little
bit easier. Like, I could walkinto GameStop even in, like,
twenty fifteen, sixteen andfind, like Like, I bought
(07:06):
Pokemon HeartGold for a prettygood price at GameStop.
But ever since COVID, after it'sbeen kinda crazy, like, I can't
find any good prices for some ofthe games. I honestly thought I
would have more time. So I,like, slowly was collecting, but
then, like, after this COVIDhit, it's been kinda crazy with
the prices.
Dan (07:24):
I've noticed that as well. And it kinda feels like a lot of
hobbies have been hit by this.It's just that 2020 was like the
year that everything kinda feelslike it exploded. And I have a
feeling that this is gonna be atheme because just for some
inside baseball for everyonelistening, I actually have
already recorded episode two ofthis podcast, and that that
(07:45):
comes up in that episode. Welike, it's the exact same thing
for the subject of the nextepisode as well.
As soon as COVID hit, thisparticular hobby just exploded.
I get I'm just teasing you nowfor the next episode. So with
that coming up soon, I actuallywanna get into, like, some of
the prices of this stuff becauseI have my own kind of, like,
experience to share, and I'msure this is, like, this will
(08:06):
relate to you as well. Take aguess as to how much you think a
copy, like an authentic copy ofPokemon Ruby is going for right
now on eBay.
Wilbo (08:15):
Like a $112.
Dan (08:16):
That's pretty close. That's pretty close. So the range could
be for for one that doesn't looktoo bad, for like, it's kinda
beat up, but the label's stillthere and stuff. I I see one for
$75. There is one kinda similarfor $80, but I don't have to
scroll far to find one's a $130.
And they they're boasting thatthey replaced the battery in it.
Wilbo (08:37):
Actually, those so in those games for the the battery,
the save doesn't matter, becauseit's on like the the RAM.
Dan (08:44):
Oh, what's the battery for in those in the Game Boy Advance
ones?
Wilbo (08:47):
It's for time based events. So like your berries
won't be able to grow. That'spretty much the only downside.
Dan (08:53):
Okay. I was thinking of the Game Boy ones. Yeah.
Wilbo (08:56):
Yeah. The Game Boy ones, the battery matters.
Dan (08:59):
So new battery, your berries will grow. That's good.
Yeah. $70 is pretty consistentfor a beat up copy of Pokemon
Ruby. But if you wanna find onethat looks nice, $120,140.
There's another 140. I'm justscrolling through eBay right
now, kind of cherry picking thethe big ones. And this is like
the journey I recently went onbecause I'm also trying to
(09:20):
collect these games again. Andthe thing that I found very,
very interesting is thatalongside these 70 to a $140
copies of Pokemon Ruby, thereare $20 copies of Pokemon Ruby.
Wilbo (09:32):
Interesting. Wow. Why don't I just buy one of those,
Dan?
Dan (09:35):
Why don't you just buy one of those?
Wilbo (09:38):
Because they're fake.
Dan (09:39):
This is why I wanted to talk to somebody about this
because I I was like, And youclick on them, and, yes, they
are fake. And usually, theperson listing it is proudly
selling it as inauthentic. Like,they they'll use words like,
hey. This isn't authentic, orthey'll say a non OEM version of
(10:00):
the game. Oh, yeah.
Which is just really funny. Andthey do sell them at reasonable
prices. And you look at thepictures Yeah. And it it does
when you compare them side byside, it does look like they're
a little off, but they look goodoverall. Like, they look really
good.
Wilbo (10:14):
They are they look really good.
Dan (10:16):
The reviews are also positive, meaning people are
buying this stuff and going,yeah, it works.
Wilbo (10:20):
Yeah. So it does work, like, but there's, like, a high
risk that one day your save filejust won't be there anymore.
That's like one of the mainproblems with these fakes in my
opinion. It's just like the savereliability and then also the
compatibility with like If Iwere to buy a fake copy of
Pokemon Ruby, I wouldn't be ableto connect that to like Pokemon
(10:42):
Colosseum or something or Iwouldn't be able to trade with a
real copy. Well, some of themdo.
Most of them don't work with areal copy if you were gonna
trade Pokemon over.
Dan (10:52):
Why is
Wilbo (10:53):
that? I Because the ROM is a little different I think.
I'm I'm not entirely sure. Forexample, like when I was at a
classic game fest, it's like afestival I went to that sells
classic games. Yeah.
I, took my Analogue Pocket whichis like this new, generation of
Game Boy that plays Game Boygames that it's like a fan made
(11:16):
Game Boy that uses a chip calledlike an f FPGA? FPGA. That's
what it was.
Dan (11:22):
I always mix up the letters but I know what you're talking
about.
Wilbo (11:24):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, the they, they
emulate what like playing likeon a real console would be.
But it's like with a new screenand new battery life and all
that jazz. But anyway, there'sthis feature on it where you
could put a game in and you cantake a snapshot of it and you
can see the name of the game. SoI was looking at this copy of
Pokemon Emerald because, like,this guy wanted to sell me one.
(11:47):
And I took a snapshot of it andit said a different name than a
regular real genuine copy. Sothat's one way I was able to
tell.
And then like the label is justlike ever so slightly different
and you can like look sincethey're translucent and like see
the inside of the board to seeif it's different.
Dan (12:05):
Yeah. Always look a little bit
Wilbo (12:06):
Yeah. Yeah. A little bit off.
Dan (12:08):
So how did this go? Like did you did you break the news
to this person that they havelike a fake copy of the game?
Wilbo (12:15):
I did in fact do that. Because like okay, it was like a
little bigger of a retailer andthey had like a few copies of
Pokemon Emerald. I would saylike two or three. And the other
two were genuine but that onewasn't. And so I told them and
then they're like, oh, don'twanna sell a fake copy.
Thank you. And then they took itoff the shelves. And I guess
they didn't put it back, so theyprobably bought it from somebody
(12:38):
too. Yeah. Unfortunately, theyjust have to eat the loss there.
Dan (12:41):
That's unfortunate. I mean, as long as they had legitimate
copies amongst the fake ones, II give them the benefit of the
doubt that they probably didn'tknow what they were.
Wilbo (12:49):
I don't think they were trying to scam me or anything,
but it's it's like kinda crazythat you have to look out for
that kind of stuff. And mostpeople won't even notice because
most people that's why they gotsuch good reviews on eBay. They
just wanna play the game, youknow. They don't care about all
the trading or connectivity toother games and stuff like that.
For example, I like on Redditand stuff, I I like look at the
(13:13):
classic game kind of subredditsto see what people are saying.
And this one person was reallyupset that they couldn't
transfer their Pokemon upanymore from Emerald because
their copy was fake. It wouldn'tconnect to Pal Park, which is
how you transfer your Pokemon upall the way to the DS one. I
feel kinda bad.
Dan (13:29):
Yeah. I didn't know that these had like limited
functionality. I figured whatwas happening is that the
bootleggers were flashing thewhole game onto the cartridge.
And as long as on the cartridge,like, what what is the
difference at that point? Like,because these get these things
come into existence inNintendo's factories.
Why why can't somebody make asmaller version of that factory
in their in their garage andmake these? I guess that's a
(13:52):
factor a of like what you getwhat you pay for.
Wilbo (13:54):
Yeah. I think they're using like cheaper chips too and
everything, you know. So likethe cost to make them is a
little cheaper than Nintendo andthat's why they can sell them to
so cheap and everything.
Dan (14:06):
So when you're at this like event that you're at, I like, it
kinda surprises me that youfound this at an event.
Wilbo (14:12):
Yeah. I was surprised too. I was like, woah, an actual
fake copy of something. This iscrazy.
Dan (14:17):
Yeah. I I would expect a seller who is doing this
professionally to kind of likedo those checks, you know?
Wilbo (14:24):
Yeah. They had to like pass it off to a few people and
then this guy was like, oh,yeah. This is fake.
Dan (14:30):
Right. And the the thing is too the Analog Pocket is not the
only device that can kind ofdetect this stuff. I have the
Epilogue I forgot what it'scalled, like, Epilogue Pro or
something. It's a it's a littledevice that sits on your desk.
You plug it in the USB port, andyou can take any Game Boy, Game
Boy Color, Game Boy Advancegame, pop it in there.
And the whole point of thisthing is if you are going to do
(14:52):
a battery replacement to saveyour save data or something like
that, you can back up thecartridge and it can, like,
store your save data for youwhile you do the battery
replacement and then flash yoursave back onto the cartridge,
which is great. Like, nicelittle game preservation win.
But it also tells you if thegame is fake.
Wilbo (15:09):
Yeah.
Dan (15:09):
Yeah. It's a simple little $60 device and you plug the game
in and without you asking it, itjust has a thing where it says
like authentic. And like oh,cool. Okay. That makes me feel
good.
I didn't I didn't get, aninauthentic game. In some cases,
people wouldn't even think aboutthat. And so just imagine that
little light turning red andyou're like, oh, shoot. Oops.
Wilbo (15:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I understand the appeal of like
playing the fake games thoughand like why because they
they're so cheap and like yousome people just want to
experience a bit of nostalgia.But like, if you're wanting to
keep your Pokemon and liketransfer them up, not that like,
not that many people are gonnawanna do that.
So they should at least labelthese very clearly that they're
reproductions, but a lot ofpeople don't do that. And some
(15:51):
people just think they're buyingthe real one.
Dan (15:52):
It is like, I I guess, a larger problem and one that will
persist as time goes on. Andthat is like one of the things I
wanted to chat a little bitabout today because I've been
wondering the ethics of this. Sowhen I found this copy of like
Pokemon Ruby and I startedlooking at the other Pokemon GBA
games, because I I would likeall of them, I was thinking to
myself, what who who'sbenefiting from this? So you
have the people who are charging$102,100 dollars in some cases
(16:16):
for these copies of games. Thenyou have the people who are you
could kind of look at it one oftwo ways, breaking the law by by
remanufacturing these games thatthey don't have permission to
remanufacture, or providing aservice to people like you said,
who don't necessarily need allthe functionality.
They just wanna play this gamethat they never got to play when
they were younger. Then you'veanother option. You could skip
(16:38):
both of those parties who don'twork for the Pokemon Company or
Nintendo and just pirate thething, which also doesn't feel
good.
Wilbo (16:46):
That doesn't feel good at all. No.
Dan (16:48):
And it's this big ethical dilemma. Another example, I'm
sure you've heard of I'm sureeveryone's heard of it by now.
DK Oldies is like one of thebiggest online used game
retailers that there is.
Wilbo (16:57):
Oh, yeah.
Dan (16:58):
And a lot of the prices I'm seeing over there are they
compare pretty heavily to theeBay ones. I think they are
probably themselves going oneBay and buying up the cheaper
ones and put pull them over totheir store. I don't know that.
I would just how do you get usedgames for if you're a used game
store? You wait for trades andor you go and source them.
So the price of Pokemon, I thinkfire red on DK oldies was
(17:21):
shocking. If you go on theirwebsite and type in Pokemon fire
red, the game is listed on liketheir page in a few different
ways. There's like a bunch ofout of stock ones, and there's
one, like, in stock listing. AndI click on that. So it says
$254.99, but they cross thatout, and it actually says $170
is, like, the the deal that'sgoing on right now.
(17:42):
Like, okay. That kinda matchessome the eBay listings a little
bit more. When you click intoit, you find that there's two
options. There's a goodcartridge and a cosmetically
flawed one. If you want the goodcartridge that has like there's
more like pristine condition,that is the $235.
And that's even weirder. Yeah.So it's it's $102.35 dollars,
still still discounted,supposedly. And then the
(18:03):
cosmetically flawed one is theone that is a 170 ish dollars.
And Yeah.
That's a lot. Like, even thecosmetically flawed one is at
the price where on eBay, thegames are looking a lot better.
Like, the cosmetic flaws arealmost indistinguishable if
they're there at all. Like, it'speople who take really good care
of them that sell them for thoseprices. And that's kinda what
(18:24):
we're working with right now interms of ways you can get your
hands on these games.
Wilbo (18:28):
Yeah. And and like, I I I also don't like with DK oldies
that you can't really see thething you're buying. It's like,
you will be buying this, it'llcome how it is. We'll just give
you one of something. But likeon eBay, you can see exactly
what it is.
So but I understand theconvenience, I guess.
Dan (18:45):
Right. And that was like my biggest thing too is is it says
cosmetically flawed and it hasthis big disclaimer is like it
could have all kinds of stuffwrong with it. But I do think
that if you're going to ask thatkind of money and I don't wanna
pick on them specifically. Like,a lot of people pick on them.
Other other stores that sellused games also have pretty wild
prices.
Yeah. I I think though that youowe it to customers to show them
(19:07):
exactly what they're buying. Andthe only other comparison I can
really make in terms of price islike, what what where else can
you get this for reasonableprice? And I you think GameStop,
they sell used games. The thingis GameStop's stock of old games
is not great.
They kinda stopped selling oldgames for a while, and then they
brought it back. So I think theyoffloaded a lot of that stuff,
(19:27):
and they're kind of rebuildingtheir supply. But they have
Pokemon Fire Red version for,for for pro members, $53. Except
they don't.
Wilbo (19:35):
Wait. They well, okay. Sometimes, like rarely. GameStop
recently has been having somestocks of some retro games and
they've been pretty good prices.So you might get lucky one day,
but then like, usually theydon't really have a good stock
of games that are really old,unfortunately.
Dan (19:52):
Yeah. Often it will tell me that I can actually like put it
in the cart as long as I'mwilling to verify my address.
And then as soon as I verify myaddress, it's like, oh, we don't
have that.
Wilbo (20:00):
Okay. Wait. Can I tell you a story about GameStop? Yes.
Okay.
So I used to work at TropicalSmoothie which is like the
smoothie place and they alsoserve some food. But next to
Tropical Smoothie was aGameStop. So like every day
after my shift, would just,like, go in the GameStop and,
like, talk to people aboutgames. Because, like, I didn't
(20:21):
have a lot when I went toschool, not a lot of people
liked video games.
Dan (20:25):
Oh.
Wilbo (20:25):
And so I was, like, I was in, like, high school at this
time. And they would have, like,some older games and this is
during the Xbox March period oflike selling games. And so they
would have like a shelf for oldretro games and stuff for pretty
good prices. So like apparently,they have like a set time that
(20:45):
they let it sit on the shelfbefore they get like too much
inventory that they want to likemake room on the shelves to put
new inventory on.
Dan (20:54):
Okay.
Wilbo (20:55):
And with the old inventory, they would destroy
the, the old games, basically.Because they didn't, corporate
didn't really see, like, thevalue in them. And so, not only
would they throw them at so theywere throwing them out at just
like in the dumpster and notreally doing anything to them.
(21:16):
But people started likerealizing that GameStop was
doing this so they woulddumpster dive. And you could
even find like old videos onYouTube about GameStop diving.
People still do it but theydon't really throw away a lot of
retro games anymore.
Dan (21:30):
Are they still throwing away games in general?
Wilbo (21:32):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They are. No way.
Yeah. Yeah. So, well, it's notas much but they do throw away
like some games and game cases.I watched one recently actually
and there was like, I don'tknow, some like Lego games that
were still in the case. Somelike things they don't really
deem that worth, you know?
(21:52):
But they still do throw awaygames. They would throw away
like crazy stuff back in the dayand people realized this and
started like dumpster diving forit. But then, GameStop realized,
that they were dumpster divingand they just didn't want people
on their property doing that.So, they started instructing the
employees to destroy any gamesthey were throwing away. So they
would like take scissors todiscs and like, take like
(22:16):
another scissor and like cutcartridges like DS cartridges
and all that and like throw themaway so they can't be used.
So I was talking when I wastalking to the workers they were
like, yeah, it's it's bad. Andthey like they weren't allowed
to take anything home either.
Dan (22:33):
I'm gonna scream. I I just can't imagine. So like you sell
your games to GameStop. Yousell, like, a Pokemon cartridge,
you're done with it, but maybeyour old save data is on there
and you you you go you go homethat day and you think someone's
gonna, like, maybe see myPokemon and all the funny
nicknames I gave them and allthat stuff. Nope.
Right in the incinerator. Justgone.
Wilbo (22:54):
Yeah. I don't know how how long exactly they sat on the
shelves,
Dan (22:58):
but yeah. It probably I have to imagine it's a pretty
significant amount of time, butthe idea that this is happening
to this day still makes me wantto just rage. There's so much
waste in the world. Like, okay,my horrifying story about people
throwing stuff away. If anyone'sever worked at a grocery store,
I'm sure you can relate to this.
The at grocery stores, a lot ofthem have like a a deli kind of
(23:21):
area and they make like freshfood all all day, you know, and
people can come up and getchicken or pasta salad or
whatever. I would come in. I wasI was working like overnight for
a while, and I did not do thatvery long. It's a it's a lot. So
I would get to be there at theend of the day when everyone is
kinda wrapping up theirdifferent sections of the store,
and that was when the deli wouldcome in.
(23:42):
And oftentimes, we're talkinglike two trash cans the size of
big drums, like 50 gallon, or II have no idea what the the size
would be. Massive trash cansabout, you know, half as tall as
a person, and they were full tothe brim of food that didn't get
sold that day. Yeah. And theywould be dumping that out. This
is very common.
A lot of stores, grocery stores,do this, and there's there's
(24:06):
different reasons they'llthey'll tell you. It's like,
well, we can't really give someof this food away. It's gonna be
it's gonna go bad too soon, andthen then reliable if someone
eats it and gets hurt orwhatever. Like, there's all
kinds of different things thatthat go on that companies do to
kind of justify throwing thingsaway like that. But video games,
like, can we not just donatethem to like a children's
(24:27):
hospital or something?
Wilbo (24:28):
I know. Right? Like, they did just like a set aside a
separate bin or something? Ugh.They thought basically, they
were very forward futurethinking.
They were like, okay, peoplearen't gonna want the older
games when they can just get thenewer ones. We gotta put up the
new so they they reserved a lotof their shelves for like the
(24:49):
new Xbox games or something likethat. Like a lot of copies of
Call of Duty and all that so,people could have enough stock,
I guess.
Dan (24:58):
I get it. I I mean, the store has limited space on the
shelves.
Wilbo (25:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan (25:03):
But to tell the employees, uh-uh. You can't take this home.
We they so they know it'svaluable. Like, oh, well, that's
like another form ofcompensation. Like, we can't
work that in.
And you can't give them away.You can't donate them. Like, it
would be just a tax write off.That's the thing. Companies love
a tax write off.
You could just donate. You couldtally up the value of all these
games, have these overworked,underpaid employees sit there
(25:25):
and scan all the games into somesystem that tallies them all up.
You put them in a big cart andyou take them down to your your
local video game food bank andyou're like, here. This is this
is all the stuff we didn't sellthis year. Do you know what
Wilbo (25:41):
a SKU is, right? An SKU? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
That's like basically theidentifying number of like how
you determine what a product isor whatever. They deleted, like,
because I talked to theemployees about this, they
deleted all of their older SKUnumbers for the the older games.
Eventually, at one point in onecertain year, I don't remember
(26:03):
when it was, like probablyaround 02/2010 or something like
that, somewhere in that range,They just deleted all of their
old SKUs and like got rid of allof their old stock and just
didn't carry it anymore. So likeI'm pretty sure they had like a
massive purge during that daywhere they just like got either
sold at a sale of what their oldgames or threw them away. I
(26:25):
don't know.
Dan (26:26):
Wait, was this an accident? Like they didn't mean to?
Wilbo (26:29):
No. This is this is corporate. Because I I also did
research about this before thispodcast just to make sure I had
it right because it soundedcrazy in my head. Okay. The
corporate basically said thatthey don't wanna carry the older
games anymore because theydidn't see the value in them.
They just wanted to sell thenewer releases and digital
(26:49):
cards.
Dan (26:50):
I'm gonna have to ask you to link me to this story just so
I can put it in the show notes.I I want I want people to able
to see this for themselves. Thisis
Wilbo (26:56):
I I will.
Dan (26:57):
This is information that's publicly available. This isn't
some big scoop or anything. I'mjust shocked because I naively
thought that these games atGameStop, like, they didn't get
sold, we're just kind of sittingin the back or maybe they ship
them off to a more centralizedwarehouse where they could just
be sold over time online?
Wilbo (27:14):
Yeah. I think they do have warehouses for it, but they
they must I I don't know all theinsider information.
Dan (27:21):
I'm just, yeah, my jaw is on the floor because I am here I
I'm like, Wilbo, I wanna do thispodcast where I talk about these
retro games because you're nevergonna believe this. But did you
know games from the year thatyou just said, like 2007 and and
beyond, are really hard to comeby now to the point where
they're being, like, resold forway nutty prices. And you're
(27:43):
like, oh my gosh. I can totallyrelate to that. I it's enraging
to think that some of the gamesI'm looking for right now
existed in droves.
Like, just so many copies ofthem are just lost because this
massive corporation was like,ah, you know, burn it. Just get
rid of it. I don't want itanymore. It's just a travesty.
Wilbo (28:04):
I have to imagine that they kept, like, I don't know. I
don't know what their warehousesituation is, but I have to
imagine they kept some of it.But then they, like, around 2015
or something like that or 2014,they quietly added back their
SKUs. So like, for older games.And they started selling them
again through like the GameStopclassic service because they saw
(28:27):
the demand.
But, at that point they hadalready destroyed or gotten rid
of their stock. Like a lot of
Dan (28:33):
This is exactly why I'm, like, getting into this stuff
again now. Just just not not Ididn't know this, but just the
idea that it's difficult to getthis stuff. It's and it should
be cherished. You know? This isstuff that we should value
because our options are like,our other options are either,
you know, fight over the scrapsthat are left from, I guess, the
(28:55):
GameStop purge of the early twothousands, or we can all give
our money to bootleggers, or wecan emulate these games by by
getting them from dubious linksonline.
And it I don't think that's anyskin off Nintendo's back if
people do that because they theydon't give us a way to get these
games. The ones we're talkingabout specifically on their own
(29:17):
modern services. Like, thePokemon games don't exist in
currently, at the time we'rerecording this, don't exist in
the library right now, the GameWave events library. So until
that happens, people are makingthat that moral argument of,
like, oh, it's fine to piratethis. I don't if it's against
the law, my stance is we'll knowit's not.
Like, objectively, it's not finebecause we've made laws that say
(29:39):
it's not fine. But it's also notokay to like price them up at
these wild prices, making themto a point where they're
completely unattainable. Whatwhat tips do you have for trying
to like get your hands on stufftoday for a reasonable price?
Wilbo (29:53):
That's it's hard. Facebook marketplace has been
pretty like it but this is likeif you wanna go in person Mhmm.
You know, like make in persondeals. Facebook Marketplace is a
pretty good place for likepeople who genuinely wanna get
rid of their older games for afair price. And like people I
(30:13):
don't wanna say taking advantageof certain people but, some
people might not know exactlywhat they have.
You could, offer them a veryfair price that isn't like too
crazy but be like, oh hey, thisis a Pokemon game and it's
actually worth this. I'd bewilling to pay you this if you
come meet me in person, youknow? Is what a lot of people
have doing been doing to likeget better deals on those types
(30:37):
of games.
Dan (30:37):
Right.
Wilbo (30:38):
Other than that, it's been hard to come across. I
also, like, I wanted to playPokemon Ruby and Sapphire so I
bought Japanese copies becausethere's a lot more Japanese
copies of older, like, Japanesegames, that are, like, than, US.
So you would just have to playthe game in Japanese. Which I
(31:01):
did. I've been doing.
Did did you find it difficult orwas it Yes. Okay. It's a little
difficult but with a game likePokemon you're spamming the same
move often so like it's not toobad and then you could use
Google Translate or Lens orwhatever.
Dan (31:18):
Because even the remakes, the three d s remakes of, Alpha
Sapphire and Omega Ruby are alsono longer in print, and there's
no digital storefront to getthem from anymore. Like, those
are also games that if that Ihappen to own, thankfully, but
if you don't own them, there'sno, like, legitimate way to get
them other than these thingswe've been talking about. So
(31:38):
Facebook Marketplace is one. Iwill say that eBay, you know,
for for the the dangers I waspointing out earlier, it's still
probably my favorite way to getthis
Wilbo (31:48):
stuff. Yeah.
Dan (31:49):
Yeah. It just takes a bit of research. You wanna always
look at a couple things. Look atthe reviews of the seller. Look
at how long they've beenselling.
Because even if they're in thehigh nineties, meaning they've
had a couple negative reviews intheir time. If they've been
doing this for so many years,okay, people are bound to make
mistakes. But if they haven'tbeen around very long and you
see that they're in, like, thehigh 90 percentile of of
positive reviews, but they onlyhave, like, a few dozen reviews,
(32:12):
then there's a kind of a problemthere. That's that's a mistake
made in a very short amount oftime. And then my other my other
tip for eBay, pay attention tothe country it's coming from
because I've made the mistake ofbuying stuff that is actually
coming from, like, Japan orChina.
It's the English copy of, like,a game, for example. But thanks
to the moment in history we livein right now, there's tariffs on
(32:34):
everything. And so people willhappily sell you something and
you'll forget that, like, it'sgonna get shipped over here from
overseas, and then it's gonna behit with a tariff and you're
gonna have to deal with that. Sothose are kind of my tips. Make
sure it's within your homecountry for, like, the easiest,
smoothest transaction, and makesure the seller has good
reviews.
And make sure you read thedescription because if I didn't
(32:56):
read the description of thoseinauthentic games, I would never
have seen that they were openlyadmitting that the game was
inauthentic.
Wilbo (33:02):
Yeah. It's it's very important to read the
description. And it's like kindahard, like eBay's UI sometimes a
little hard to follow becausethey have like the product
description and then they havelike the seller's description of
the product. And so like, youhave to read very carefully and
make sure that you you can seewhat the seller actually wrote
compared to what like thegenerated whatever like Pokemon
(33:24):
HeartGold is a game where youcan but then the seller will be
like, this is a fake copy orsomething in the description,
the actual description.
Dan (33:32):
It's I mean, that keeps their reviews positive because
if they openly admit that andpeople know what they're buying,
then it's, you know, everyone'sfine. And then, I guess the the
last tip, which you've alreadykind of like talked about a
little bit, is just going out inperson to places like you went
to a game expo of sorts.
Wilbo (33:47):
Yeah. And I was able to get a good deal on a couple of
games.
Dan (33:50):
Was there anything in particular you're looking for
while you were
Wilbo (33:52):
I was. I was looking for Kirby Return to Dreamland.
Unfortunately, they didn't havethat. Well, they did. But the
problem is a lot of vendors getlike first pick of all the good
games and stuff and like somepeople get in early through
other reasons.
I don't really know. And then Iwas able to find a couple PS two
games and stuff, so that wasfun.
Dan (34:12):
Which ones?
Wilbo (34:12):
Oh, well, there's this game called Lifeline that I I
played on, like, the emulators.And so I I wanted to own a real
copy and so I bought it. It'sthis game where you use voice
commands to control yourcharacter and you guide her out
of a spaceship situation andyou're like the guy in the chair
(34:35):
who's on the security cameras.
Dan (34:37):
I don't
Wilbo (34:37):
know, it's a really unique game and I like it, so I
wanted it.
Dan (34:41):
How do you input the voice commands?
Wilbo (34:42):
You connect your it came with a headset mic that you
connect to the Playstation and,you say like, walk here, shoot,
dodge, dodge right. It does gettedious.
Dan (34:53):
Did you get that accessory? Did you need it?
Wilbo (34:55):
I do still need the accessory to Oh no. Play I
couldn't find it complete butapparently any headset mic will
work so. That was
Dan (35:04):
gonna be my next question, like, you just plug in whatever?
Okay.
Wilbo (35:07):
Yeah yeah yeah. I don't know. I like weird games like
that. There's like a charm toit.
Dan (35:11):
I've never heard of that. That sounds like I would have
had a blast with it, growing upif
Wilbo (35:15):
I had that. It could get a little frustrating. It gets a
little difficult.
Dan (35:19):
I was already yelling at the games. I mean, having them
hear me would probably have beenhelpful.
Wilbo (35:23):
But I love the story. It's it's really nice. It's
classic sci fi kind of thing.
Dan (35:28):
That's cool. My last tip for getting games as well is
gonna be buying a lot of games.And when I say lot, I don't mean
buy a lot of games. I mean, buygames that are in a lot
together. Like
Wilbo (35:40):
Oh, yeah. For sure.
Dan (35:41):
Yeah. And you can get some pretty good deals, especially if
now this is a risk. You'retaking don't know. I'm just
gonna put a disclaimer. You'retaking a risk if you're
listening to me right now and dothis.
But you can buy oftentimescartridges that are, like,
labeled as ones that are notworking. And sometimes, in fact,
in a lot of cases, it's really amatter of opening them up. Like
n 64, for example, you open upthe cartridge and you use
(36:03):
isopropyl alcohol and you gentlyscrub off the, you know, junk on
the contacts. And I've I watcheda video about this where someone
bought, like, a 100 or socartridges, and every single one
worked. They just took them allapart, did that, put them back
together, every single cartridgeturned on.
Yeah. So you can't you can't domuch if it's chipped or anything
(36:25):
if the if the motherboard hasbeen broken. Obviously, you
can't do much about that. But ifthe seller is saying, yeah,
these games don't reliably,like, turn on or whatever, but
there's stuff in there that youwant. There's not that much risk
if you're if you're willing toget a little technical, you're
willing to buy a couple extratools.
The and that's what got me into,like, some more some deeper
parts of this hobby. I'vestarted to fix up old Game Boys,
and I bought a a lot of sixbroken Game Boys. And three of
(36:49):
them came back to life just byopening them up and, like,
scrubbing them real good. Someof them were beyond repair. They
obviously had, water damage andand kinds of stuff wrong with
them.
Mhmm. And I was replacing thescreens anyway. All of them had
busted screens, but, like, itfelt really good to be able to
kind of, like, give some ofthese Game Boys a a new life
just because I wanted to. I justfelt like it. I I wasn't even in
the market for Game Boy.
I was just bored. And I'm like,oh, I I like doing these old
(37:10):
Game Boy mods. That sounds likea lot of Yeah.
Wilbo (37:11):
I love fixing up gold consoles too. That's what I used
to like like, even in college Iloved fixing up old Game Boy
SPs. It is really fun to likeclean it up, give it new life,
maybe do like a screen mod on itor something.
Dan (37:25):
Yeah. Classic console mods right now are just a really fun
way to get into these hobbiesand pretty accessible. I mean,
you'll you'll spend some moneyif you are gonna do screen
replacements and things likethat, but it it definitely gives
the hobby like this whole newkind of like purpose to it. You
you could turn around and maybesell those modded consoles so
(37:45):
they actually go to a home withsomebody who's gonna use them.
You could collect those yourselfand just have like a little
collection of like stuff thatyou fixed And I'm I'm really
like at a stage where I'm justgetting into all of that.
Wilbo (37:58):
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really fun to learn too. I know
this is like getting into thethe the nerd, really nerd stuff
though, you know. A lot ofpeople just wanna play their old
games but if you're willing to,it's a really fun like little
project to be like, oh, I wannamaybe clean up this old Game
Boy.
And some of the like, somethingas simple as like buying
isopropyl alcohol and cleaningit a little bit and like just
(38:20):
taking it apart is like a reallygood start if you ever wanted to
get into doing something likethat. So I think that's really
good advice.
Dan (38:26):
I'm also learning to solder and you you specifically, I
pestered a lot with like tipsand stuff like you
Wilbo (38:32):
Oh, yeah.
Dan (38:33):
You helped me find a good soldering kit. And then I I
don't even know how late it got.It must have been late for you
because it was late for me. Youwere still taking my questions,
like, while I was sitting theremaking a huge mess, in my
kitchen trying to fix this GameBoy.
Wilbo (38:50):
I love stuff like that though. I don't know. Even if it
like, the dead of night, I wouldanswer.
Dan (38:55):
Those I think sum up the tips pretty well. You can buy
sometimes broken games and as aslong as GameStop didn't take
their scissors to them, youcould probably fix them up and
have yourself a a nice littlecollection that didn't cost too
much, which is probably how I'mgoing to continue to expand my n
64 collection. Well, I thinkthis will probably have to be a
separate episode, maybe with youor or, I don't know, someone
(39:18):
else out there who gets one ofthese. I I actually bought the
the analog three d. Oh.
For anyone who doesn't know
Wilbo (39:25):
That looks nice.
Dan (39:26):
Yeah. So Wilbur earlier mentioned the analog pocket, the
FPGA console for Game Boy games.
Wilbo (39:32):
Mhmm.
Dan (39:32):
And what I just bought was from the same company, but it's
for n 64 cartridges. So you plugin your n 64 cartridge and the
promise is that it's going totake that and and upscale it to
like four k. And it is goingit's not emulating the game.
It's running the game onoriginal well, not a non
original hardware, but it isrunning the cartridge. And that
is so exciting because the gamethe n 64 games are the ones I
(39:55):
kept from childhood.
Wilbo (39:56):
Oh, awesome. Wait. What's your favorite n 64 game?
Actually, wait. This is anotherpodcast episode.
Dan (40:02):
It could be, but I will, you know, for for teasing
purposes, I it's not I don'twanna get anyone too excited. I
it's probably gonna be Mario 64because I'm that basic.
Wilbo (40:12):
Nice.
Dan (40:13):
But there's some others. Like, I have rampage, which is a
lot of fun. You're a monster andyou destroy a city. Mario Kart
was always great, and I I'mreally excited to play that
again, like, in a in a livingroom setting. I have the
controllers as well that eightBit Do made to go along with the
analog three d, which is not outyet at the time of recording
this.
They keep delaying it. They justdelayed it for, like, a third
(40:34):
time till, like, the end of theyear, which is really
frustrating. But I got thecontrollers, and they're really
cool. It's like, imagine ifsomeone made an n 64 controller
with all those buttons in theplace in the weird places that
they're in, but they made itfeel like a normal controller
and not that weird three prongedmonstrosity we used to play
with.
Wilbo (40:51):
That sounds really cool. I don't know. I I I like the
third party controllers that arecoming out nowadays. Like, I
have the, the SNES one from8BitDo, and it's it's really
nice.
Dan (41:01):
So They they have a lot. Yeah. That company in particular
has, like, a lot of differentneat controllers. So I I got a
couple of those, and it's justcool to imagine, like, pretty
soon I'm gonna have an n 64 thathas Bluetooth support and works
with my modern television. And Istill have my old n 64, but I
don't have, like, a CRT to playit on.
So whatever I plug it into, itjust looks terrible. I that's
(41:23):
the kind of gamer
Wilbo (41:24):
I That's how it's supposed to look, Dan.
Dan (41:26):
I know. I know. But that's kind of gamer I am. I love
playing old games with a freshcoat of paint on them.
Wilbo (41:30):
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's nice to see the polygons sharp
and like in four k too.
Dan (41:35):
It's so fun. And so I I'm I'm really looking forward to
it. The future of retro games,which is an ironic thing to say,
despite how difficult these areto obtain, looks really good
because the community has kindof come together and and made
some really cool stuff.
Wilbo (41:48):
Just to tie it in a little bit, you know how you
were talking about GameStop,like, cutting old cartridges and
stuff? Well
Dan (41:56):
I don't wanna think about it anymore.
Wilbo (41:59):
They would also do this with like because like they had
distribution cartridges for thePokemon and stuff, and so they
would cut them and some peoplehave went and repaired some of
them and like gotten themworking again. So I believe, you
know, some of the stuff that wasalready destroyed could be like
fixed and a lot of people are,like, making projects. For
(42:21):
example, if you have, like, areally water damaged version of
Pokemon Crystal, someone made,like, a whole new board you
could order for it and, like,transfer the chips and stuff. So
I think it's retro gaming isgonna be alive in like a lot of
different ways with like thecommunity making like different
options to bring, bring itmodern a little bit or like fix
(42:41):
old ones more easily.
Dan (42:43):
I I love that, the kind of project too. There's with the
modded Game Boys, they havesomething like that too, where
you can get a kind of a blankmotherboard and transfer the
chips of the Game Boy Advanceonto it and have, a brand new
Game Boy Advance. All you needis the CPU and the RAM. I did
not know that was a thing forgames, but that's not
surprising. I I think that everyeverything is being made for
retro games right now.
That is, that's just awesome. Ilove that.
Wilbo (43:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Dan (43:06):
Yeah. So, Wilbo, thank you for being the the first guest on
the podcast. I appreciate it.
Wilbo (43:11):
Hey. No problem. No problem.
Dan (43:12):
Where can people find you?
Wilbo (43:13):
They could find me at youtube.com/wilbosworlds. Just
all one word. W I l b o s world.Also on Twitch, I think. And
that's it.
Dan (43:24):
You think?
Wilbo (43:25):
Oh, no. No. I'm on Instagram, TikTok, all the
things too. Sometimes with anunderscore.
Dan (43:30):
Wait. Okay. So you might be on Twitch. You're definitely on
YouTube, and sometimes there'san underscore in your name.
Wilbo (43:36):
Yeah. So that that should give you all the information you
need to find me pretty much.
Dan (43:41):
I will just put some links, I guess, in the show notes.
Thank you to Wilbo, and we willsee you next time. Thank you for
listening to Sticker ShockCollector's Edition. You can
learn more about this episodeand our show by following us
Patreon. It's atpatreon.com/stickershockpod,
where you can subscribe for freeto see our show notes and maybe
any other images sent in by ourguests featuring their
(44:01):
collections, you know, thingslike that.
You can also find us on blue skyat sticker shock pod as well.
Our podcast artwork was createdby Han and music by composer
Cleo. We have new episodes everyother week, so hopefully we'll
catch you in the next one.
Welcome. I'm Dan, and this is the first episode of Sticker
Shock Collector's Edition, thepodcast where we talk to people
about the things they collect,specifically things that maybe
cost a bit of money or time orjust take up space in their
living quarters. My personalcollecting hobbies kinda revolve
around video games, but latelyI've been really getting into
(00:21):
collecting movies and shows,things like that, getting the
physical media for those things.And from there, I've also been
kind of getting into rebuildingold game consoles and things
like that. With that in mind,just to set expectations for
this show, a lot of the thingswe talk about will probably have
a gaming undertone to them.
But the second episode, forexample, won't be specifically
(00:41):
about video games. And I thinkas this goes forward, we'll talk
to more and more people whocollect all sorts of stuff,
niche things, things like that.I have a lot of people in mind,
a lot of people have agreed todo the show, which I'm very,
very excited about. My hope withthe show is selfishly, I just
wanna learn about theinteresting niche things that
people are finding and arepassionate about. But I've also
(01:02):
found that when I talk to peopleabout the interesting objects
they collect and fill their homewith, I learn a lot about them.
I learn a lot about what theyvalue, and it really changes the
way I approach collectinganything myself. Anyway, this
will be the only episode where Ido such a long introduction for
myself. But basically, eachepisode will open with this type
(01:22):
type of format where I talk fora bit, set expectations, and
then the rest of the show, we'llinvite our guest in. And we'll
have a page on our Patreon whereyou can see show notes and
things like that. We'lladvertise all that stuff at the
end though.
But let's get into what Iactually wanna talk about today.
Growing up, it was a very commonpractice to trade in old games
(01:43):
for new ones. Like, a newrelease would come out. You
know, you'd finish it, maybe youwouldn't, but eventually,
something else would catch yourinterest. And, I mean, if you
grew up like I did, havingmultiple games, like too many
games wasn't allowed.
So trading them in, trading themup for the new thing was very
normalized. So much so thatmultiple franchises at one point
(02:04):
existed purely to make theprocess of trading in a game
super easy and even fun. Now, atleast in The US, we have one
place for that pretty much, andwe'll talk about them later. But
the act of making a physicalvideo game predates me by a long
shot. I mean, the Atari was inthe nineteen seventies.
I think there are probablydifferent computers that could
run games even before that. Andwhat would happen? The games
(02:26):
would get older. The technologywould get better, and they'd
stop making those older games infavor of making newer ones. So
it shouldn't have been asurprise that when I went to
rebuild my gaming collection, itwas kind of expensive.
I never really had a massivecollection of games growing up,
but I am trying to get my handson some things that I would have
liked to have played or thingsthat I did own at one time that
(02:47):
I really, really enjoyed. And asI'm trying to rebuild that
collection, I'm running intosome barriers. So far, it's been
pretty easy to find peopleselling the things that I want.
But if you go to the usualsuspects like GameStop or eBay,
the prices are absolutely out ofhand. And we're not even talking
for things that are in greatcondition.
Some stuff doesn't even comewith its original packaging. And
when I say original packaging,I'm not talking about the
(03:08):
cardboard box that n 64 gamescame out. I threw those away all
the time. I'm talking about theplastic cases that had the
manuals in them. The stuff thatI figured everyone would keep
because it's what you store thegame in.
So as I've been going throughthe motions here and as I
typically do when I start to getfrustrated, I was venting. And I
was venting to a friend of minewho turns out was doing
(03:28):
something similar. He'ssearching online, and he's going
out with his list of games he'strying to get, and he's running
into the exact same issues. AndI wanted to have him on as a
first guest because, well, forone, it's just relevant to the
things that I'm currentlyinterested in. But two, he
definitely has some interestingstories from his journeys trying
to get things and also some tipsto try and, like, help people
(03:50):
who are also out there trying torebuild their collections or
maybe they just wanna try someretro games.
Maybe they're younger and theynever had this stuff growing up
and it looks interesting tothem. He's a content creator
like myself, and it was verycathartic to sit down with him
and talk all of this out. So Ihope you enjoy the first episode
of Sticker Shock Collector'sEdition. Let's bring them in.
(04:11):
Alright.
Welcome, Wilbo. Hi. Telleveryone who you are and what
you collect.
Wilbo (04:19):
Well, I'm Wilbo. I collect a lot of Game Boy and
Game Boy Advance stuff. I'm likereally into that. And then I
also like to collect everythingbelow like Xbox three sixty.
Dan (04:30):
So Xbox three sixty and older?
Wilbo (04:32):
Well, I just happen to have like a big Xbox three sixty
collection, but I don't collectit. So like a little older than
that, like PlayStation two, one,Dreamcasts.
Dan (04:41):
How much of what you have is from your childhood that
you've kind of carried intoadulthood versus how much you've
gone out and like bought kindarecently?
Wilbo (04:50):
Well, so I when I was moving, right, I had a box and
it was like retro game box.Right? And we were cleaning out
my basement and unfortunately, Iended up throwing it away. What?
So a lot of my yeah.
A lot of my old games haveunfortunately been trashed which
(05:12):
hurts me every day that I thinkabout it.
Dan (05:14):
Oh my gosh. And so
Wilbo (05:16):
but I still have all of my Xbox three sixty games and a
lot of them are like shovelware,unfortunately. So and and like
Wii and all of pretty much alllike the disc games I still
have. So I still have myPlayStation one and stuff but my
like cartridge ones are kinda,like, gone. So Wow. I I kept, a
(05:38):
little bit and I've just beenrebuilding my collection slowly
ever since then.
Dan (05:42):
So Do you know I'm gonna I'm what I'm trying to do right
now is make you cry. Do you knowwhat cartridges ended up in the
landfill?
Wilbo (05:49):
Yes. I do.
Dan (05:50):
What are the tell me the worst ones.
Wilbo (05:52):
Okay. Pretty much all of my Pokemon games. So Pokemon
yellow, ruby, sapphire. I hadtwo sapphires, emerald.
Dan (06:01):
We're gonna talk a little bit today about how much those
are going for right now and it'sgonna be prime.
Wilbo (06:06):
Great. All of my DS ones, so Pokemon Pearl, Diamond, I
think I had black and all justall the DS cartridges that are
Pokemon related all all gone.You know, and then I had a bunch
of like random Game Boy gamesthat are kinda good like Kirby.
I I really like the Kirby gamesso I collected those. This is
(06:27):
horrible.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's prettybad. So it's pretty bad.
Dan (06:32):
Okay. Just trying to make it positive. Like, this is good.
You know, you have kind of likean origin story here. And Yeah.
Yeah. You're going out andyou're trying to rebuild your
collection. Tell me about howthat's going for you.
Wilbo (06:45):
Well, I kind of like collected before because like I
would say after COVID it gotextremely popular. But I started
collecting a little before that,like in like 2015. Like
rebuilding my collection alittle bit. So it was a little
bit easier. Like, I could walkinto GameStop even in, like,
twenty fifteen, sixteen andfind, like Like, I bought
(07:06):
Pokemon HeartGold for a prettygood price at GameStop.
But ever since COVID, after it'sbeen kinda crazy, like, I can't
find any good prices for some ofthe games. I honestly thought I
would have more time. So I,like, slowly was collecting, but
then, like, after this COVIDhit, it's been kinda crazy with
the prices.
Dan (07:24):
I've noticed that as well. And it kinda feels like a lot of
hobbies have been hit by this.It's just that 2020 was like the
year that everything kinda feelslike it exploded. And I have a
feeling that this is gonna be atheme because just for some
inside baseball for everyonelistening, I actually have
already recorded episode two ofthis podcast, and that that
(07:45):
comes up in that episode. Welike, it's the exact same thing
for the subject of the nextepisode as well.
As soon as COVID hit, thisparticular hobby just exploded.
I get I'm just teasing you nowfor the next episode. So with
that coming up soon, I actuallywanna get into, like, some of
the prices of this stuff becauseI have my own kind of, like,
experience to share, and I'msure this is, like, this will
(08:06):
relate to you as well. Take aguess as to how much you think a
copy, like an authentic copy ofPokemon Ruby is going for right
now on eBay.
Wilbo (08:15):
Like a $112.
Dan (08:16):
That's pretty close. That's pretty close. So the range could
be for for one that doesn't looktoo bad, for like, it's kinda
beat up, but the label's stillthere and stuff. I I see one for
$75. There is one kinda similarfor $80, but I don't have to
scroll far to find one's a $130.
And they they're boasting thatthey replaced the battery in it.
Wilbo (08:37):
Actually, those so in those games for the the battery,
the save doesn't matter, becauseit's on like the the RAM.
Dan (08:44):
Oh, what's the battery for in those in the Game Boy Advance
ones?
Wilbo (08:47):
It's for time based events. So like your berries
won't be able to grow. That'spretty much the only downside.
Dan (08:53):
Okay. I was thinking of the Game Boy ones. Yeah.
Wilbo (08:56):
Yeah. The Game Boy ones, the battery matters.
Dan (08:59):
So new battery, your berries will grow. That's good.
Yeah. $70 is pretty consistentfor a beat up copy of Pokemon
Ruby. But if you wanna find onethat looks nice, $120,140.
There's another 140. I'm justscrolling through eBay right
now, kind of cherry picking thethe big ones. And this is like
the journey I recently went onbecause I'm also trying to
(09:20):
collect these games again. Andthe thing that I found very,
very interesting is thatalongside these 70 to a $140
copies of Pokemon Ruby, thereare $20 copies of Pokemon Ruby.
Wilbo (09:32):
Interesting. Wow. Why don't I just buy one of those,
Dan?
Dan (09:35):
Why don't you just buy one of those?
Wilbo (09:38):
Because they're fake.
Dan (09:39):
This is why I wanted to talk to somebody about this
because I I was like, And youclick on them, and, yes, they
are fake. And usually, theperson listing it is proudly
selling it as inauthentic. Like,they they'll use words like,
hey. This isn't authentic, orthey'll say a non OEM version of
(10:00):
the game. Oh, yeah.
Which is just really funny. Andthey do sell them at reasonable
prices. And you look at thepictures Yeah. And it it does
when you compare them side byside, it does look like they're
a little off, but they look goodoverall. Like, they look really
good.
Wilbo (10:14):
They are they look really good.
Dan (10:16):
The reviews are also positive, meaning people are
buying this stuff and going,yeah, it works.
Wilbo (10:20):
Yeah. So it does work, like, but there's, like, a high
risk that one day your save filejust won't be there anymore.
That's like one of the mainproblems with these fakes in my
opinion. It's just like the savereliability and then also the
compatibility with like If Iwere to buy a fake copy of
Pokemon Ruby, I wouldn't be ableto connect that to like Pokemon
(10:42):
Colosseum or something or Iwouldn't be able to trade with a
real copy. Well, some of themdo.
Most of them don't work with areal copy if you were gonna
trade Pokemon over.
Dan (10:52):
Why is
Wilbo (10:53):
that? I Because the ROM is a little different I think.
I'm I'm not entirely sure. Forexample, like when I was at a
classic game fest, it's like afestival I went to that sells
classic games. Yeah.
I, took my Analogue Pocket whichis like this new, generation of
Game Boy that plays Game Boygames that it's like a fan made
(11:16):
Game Boy that uses a chip calledlike an f FPGA? FPGA. That's
what it was.
Dan (11:22):
I always mix up the letters but I know what you're talking
about.
Wilbo (11:24):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, the they, they
emulate what like playing likeon a real console would be.
But it's like with a new screenand new battery life and all
that jazz. But anyway, there'sthis feature on it where you
could put a game in and you cantake a snapshot of it and you
can see the name of the game. SoI was looking at this copy of
Pokemon Emerald because, like,this guy wanted to sell me one.
(11:47):
And I took a snapshot of it andit said a different name than a
regular real genuine copy. Sothat's one way I was able to
tell.
And then like the label is justlike ever so slightly different
and you can like look sincethey're translucent and like see
the inside of the board to seeif it's different.
Dan (12:05):
Yeah. Always look a little bit
Wilbo (12:06):
Yeah. Yeah. A little bit off.
Dan (12:08):
So how did this go? Like did you did you break the news
to this person that they havelike a fake copy of the game?
Wilbo (12:15):
I did in fact do that. Because like okay, it was like a
little bigger of a retailer andthey had like a few copies of
Pokemon Emerald. I would saylike two or three. And the other
two were genuine but that onewasn't. And so I told them and
then they're like, oh, don'twanna sell a fake copy.
Thank you. And then they took itoff the shelves. And I guess
they didn't put it back, so theyprobably bought it from somebody
(12:38):
too. Yeah. Unfortunately, theyjust have to eat the loss there.
Dan (12:41):
That's unfortunate. I mean, as long as they had legitimate
copies amongst the fake ones, II give them the benefit of the
doubt that they probably didn'tknow what they were.
Wilbo (12:49):
I don't think they were trying to scam me or anything,
but it's it's like kinda crazythat you have to look out for
that kind of stuff. And mostpeople won't even notice because
most people that's why they gotsuch good reviews on eBay. They
just wanna play the game, youknow. They don't care about all
the trading or connectivity toother games and stuff like that.
For example, I like on Redditand stuff, I I like look at the
(13:13):
classic game kind of subredditsto see what people are saying.
And this one person was reallyupset that they couldn't
transfer their Pokemon upanymore from Emerald because
their copy was fake. It wouldn'tconnect to Pal Park, which is
how you transfer your Pokemon upall the way to the DS one. I
feel kinda bad.
Dan (13:29):
Yeah. I didn't know that these had like limited
functionality. I figured whatwas happening is that the
bootleggers were flashing thewhole game onto the cartridge.
And as long as on the cartridge,like, what what is the
difference at that point? Like,because these get these things
come into existence inNintendo's factories.
Why why can't somebody make asmaller version of that factory
in their in their garage andmake these? I guess that's a
(13:52):
factor a of like what you getwhat you pay for.
Wilbo (13:54):
Yeah. I think they're using like cheaper chips too and
everything, you know. So likethe cost to make them is a
little cheaper than Nintendo andthat's why they can sell them to
so cheap and everything.
Dan (14:06):
So when you're at this like event that you're at, I like, it
kinda surprises me that youfound this at an event.
Wilbo (14:12):
Yeah. I was surprised too. I was like, woah, an actual
fake copy of something. This iscrazy.
Dan (14:17):
Yeah. I I would expect a seller who is doing this
professionally to kind of likedo those checks, you know?
Wilbo (14:24):
Yeah. They had to like pass it off to a few people and
then this guy was like, oh,yeah. This is fake.
Dan (14:30):
Right. And the the thing is too the Analog Pocket is not the
only device that can kind ofdetect this stuff. I have the
Epilogue I forgot what it'scalled, like, Epilogue Pro or
something. It's a it's a littledevice that sits on your desk.
You plug it in the USB port, andyou can take any Game Boy, Game
Boy Color, Game Boy Advancegame, pop it in there.
And the whole point of thisthing is if you are going to do
(14:52):
a battery replacement to saveyour save data or something like
that, you can back up thecartridge and it can, like,
store your save data for youwhile you do the battery
replacement and then flash yoursave back onto the cartridge,
which is great. Like, nicelittle game preservation win.
But it also tells you if thegame is fake.
Wilbo (15:09):
Yeah.
Dan (15:09):
Yeah. It's a simple little $60 device and you plug the game
in and without you asking it, itjust has a thing where it says
like authentic. And like oh,cool. Okay. That makes me feel
good.
I didn't I didn't get, aninauthentic game. In some cases,
people wouldn't even think aboutthat. And so just imagine that
little light turning red andyou're like, oh, shoot. Oops.
Wilbo (15:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I understand the appeal of like
playing the fake games thoughand like why because they
they're so cheap and like yousome people just want to
experience a bit of nostalgia.But like, if you're wanting to
keep your Pokemon and liketransfer them up, not that like,
not that many people are gonnawanna do that.
So they should at least labelthese very clearly that they're
reproductions, but a lot ofpeople don't do that. And some
(15:51):
people just think they're buyingthe real one.
Dan (15:52):
It is like, I I guess, a larger problem and one that will
persist as time goes on. Andthat is like one of the things I
wanted to chat a little bitabout today because I've been
wondering the ethics of this. Sowhen I found this copy of like
Pokemon Ruby and I startedlooking at the other Pokemon GBA
games, because I I would likeall of them, I was thinking to
myself, what who who'sbenefiting from this? So you
have the people who are charging$102,100 dollars in some cases
(16:16):
for these copies of games. Thenyou have the people who are you
could kind of look at it one oftwo ways, breaking the law by by
remanufacturing these games thatthey don't have permission to
remanufacture, or providing aservice to people like you said,
who don't necessarily need allthe functionality.
They just wanna play this gamethat they never got to play when
they were younger. Then you'veanother option. You could skip
(16:38):
both of those parties who don'twork for the Pokemon Company or
Nintendo and just pirate thething, which also doesn't feel
good.
Wilbo (16:46):
That doesn't feel good at all. No.
Dan (16:48):
And it's this big ethical dilemma. Another example, I'm
sure you've heard of I'm sureeveryone's heard of it by now.
DK Oldies is like one of thebiggest online used game
retailers that there is.
Wilbo (16:57):
Oh, yeah.
Dan (16:58):
And a lot of the prices I'm seeing over there are they
compare pretty heavily to theeBay ones. I think they are
probably themselves going oneBay and buying up the cheaper
ones and put pull them over totheir store. I don't know that.
I would just how do you get usedgames for if you're a used game
store? You wait for trades andor you go and source them.
So the price of Pokemon, I thinkfire red on DK oldies was
(17:21):
shocking. If you go on theirwebsite and type in Pokemon fire
red, the game is listed on liketheir page in a few different
ways. There's like a bunch ofout of stock ones, and there's
one, like, in stock listing. AndI click on that. So it says
$254.99, but they cross thatout, and it actually says $170
is, like, the the deal that'sgoing on right now.
(17:42):
Like, okay. That kinda matchessome the eBay listings a little
bit more. When you click intoit, you find that there's two
options. There's a goodcartridge and a cosmetically
flawed one. If you want the goodcartridge that has like there's
more like pristine condition,that is the $235.
And that's even weirder. Yeah.So it's it's $102.35 dollars,
still still discounted,supposedly. And then the
(18:03):
cosmetically flawed one is theone that is a 170 ish dollars.
And Yeah.
That's a lot. Like, even thecosmetically flawed one is at
the price where on eBay, thegames are looking a lot better.
Like, the cosmetic flaws arealmost indistinguishable if
they're there at all. Like, it'speople who take really good care
of them that sell them for thoseprices. And that's kinda what
(18:24):
we're working with right now interms of ways you can get your
hands on these games.
Wilbo (18:28):
Yeah. And and like, I I I also don't like with DK oldies
that you can't really see thething you're buying. It's like,
you will be buying this, it'llcome how it is. We'll just give
you one of something. But likeon eBay, you can see exactly
what it is.
So but I understand theconvenience, I guess.
Dan (18:45):
Right. And that was like my biggest thing too is is it says
cosmetically flawed and it hasthis big disclaimer is like it
could have all kinds of stuffwrong with it. But I do think
that if you're going to ask thatkind of money and I don't wanna
pick on them specifically. Like,a lot of people pick on them.
Other other stores that sellused games also have pretty wild
prices.
Yeah. I I think though that youowe it to customers to show them
(19:07):
exactly what they're buying. Andthe only other comparison I can
really make in terms of price islike, what what where else can
you get this for reasonableprice? And I you think GameStop,
they sell used games. The thingis GameStop's stock of old games
is not great.
They kinda stopped selling oldgames for a while, and then they
brought it back. So I think theyoffloaded a lot of that stuff,
(19:27):
and they're kind of rebuildingtheir supply. But they have
Pokemon Fire Red version for,for for pro members, $53. Except
they don't.
Wilbo (19:35):
Wait. They well, okay. Sometimes, like rarely. GameStop
recently has been having somestocks of some retro games and
they've been pretty good prices.So you might get lucky one day,
but then like, usually theydon't really have a good stock
of games that are really old,unfortunately.
Dan (19:52):
Yeah. Often it will tell me that I can actually like put it
in the cart as long as I'mwilling to verify my address.
And then as soon as I verify myaddress, it's like, oh, we don't
have that.
Wilbo (20:00):
Okay. Wait. Can I tell you a story about GameStop? Yes.
Okay.
So I used to work at TropicalSmoothie which is like the
smoothie place and they alsoserve some food. But next to
Tropical Smoothie was aGameStop. So like every day
after my shift, would just,like, go in the GameStop and,
like, talk to people aboutgames. Because, like, I didn't
(20:21):
have a lot when I went toschool, not a lot of people
liked video games.
Dan (20:25):
Oh.
Wilbo (20:25):
And so I was, like, I was in, like, high school at this
time. And they would have, like,some older games and this is
during the Xbox March period oflike selling games. And so they
would have like a shelf for oldretro games and stuff for pretty
good prices. So like apparently,they have like a set time that
(20:45):
they let it sit on the shelfbefore they get like too much
inventory that they want to likemake room on the shelves to put
new inventory on.
Dan (20:54):
Okay.
Wilbo (20:55):
And with the old inventory, they would destroy
the, the old games, basically.Because they didn't, corporate
didn't really see, like, thevalue in them. And so, not only
would they throw them at so theywere throwing them out at just
like in the dumpster and notreally doing anything to them.
(21:16):
But people started likerealizing that GameStop was
doing this so they woulddumpster dive. And you could
even find like old videos onYouTube about GameStop diving.
People still do it but theydon't really throw away a lot of
retro games anymore.
Dan (21:30):
Are they still throwing away games in general?
Wilbo (21:32):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They are. No way.
Yeah. Yeah. So, well, it's notas much but they do throw away
like some games and game cases.I watched one recently actually
and there was like, I don'tknow, some like Lego games that
were still in the case. Somelike things they don't really
deem that worth, you know?
(21:52):
But they still do throw awaygames. They would throw away
like crazy stuff back in the dayand people realized this and
started like dumpster diving forit. But then, GameStop realized,
that they were dumpster divingand they just didn't want people
on their property doing that.So, they started instructing the
employees to destroy any gamesthey were throwing away. So they
would like take scissors todiscs and like, take like
(22:16):
another scissor and like cutcartridges like DS cartridges
and all that and like throw themaway so they can't be used.
So I was talking when I wastalking to the workers they were
like, yeah, it's it's bad. Andthey like they weren't allowed
to take anything home either.
Dan (22:33):
I'm gonna scream. I I just can't imagine. So like you sell
your games to GameStop. Yousell, like, a Pokemon cartridge,
you're done with it, but maybeyour old save data is on there
and you you you go you go homethat day and you think someone's
gonna, like, maybe see myPokemon and all the funny
nicknames I gave them and allthat stuff. Nope.
Right in the incinerator. Justgone.
Wilbo (22:54):
Yeah. I don't know how how long exactly they sat on the
shelves,
Dan (22:58):
but yeah. It probably I have to imagine it's a pretty
significant amount of time, butthe idea that this is happening
to this day still makes me wantto just rage. There's so much
waste in the world. Like, okay,my horrifying story about people
throwing stuff away. If anyone'sever worked at a grocery store,
I'm sure you can relate to this.
The at grocery stores, a lot ofthem have like a a deli kind of
(23:21):
area and they make like freshfood all all day, you know, and
people can come up and getchicken or pasta salad or
whatever. I would come in. I wasI was working like overnight for
a while, and I did not do thatvery long. It's a it's a lot. So
I would get to be there at theend of the day when everyone is
kinda wrapping up theirdifferent sections of the store,
and that was when the deli wouldcome in.
(23:42):
And oftentimes, we're talkinglike two trash cans the size of
big drums, like 50 gallon, or II have no idea what the the size
would be. Massive trash cansabout, you know, half as tall as
a person, and they were full tothe brim of food that didn't get
sold that day. Yeah. And theywould be dumping that out. This
is very common.
A lot of stores, grocery stores,do this, and there's there's
(24:06):
different reasons they'llthey'll tell you. It's like,
well, we can't really give someof this food away. It's gonna be
it's gonna go bad too soon, andthen then reliable if someone
eats it and gets hurt orwhatever. Like, there's all
kinds of different things thatthat go on that companies do to
kind of justify throwing thingsaway like that. But video games,
like, can we not just donatethem to like a children's
(24:27):
hospital or something?
Wilbo (24:28):
I know. Right? Like, they did just like a set aside a
separate bin or something? Ugh.They thought basically, they
were very forward futurethinking.
They were like, okay, peoplearen't gonna want the older
games when they can just get thenewer ones. We gotta put up the
new so they they reserved a lotof their shelves for like the
(24:49):
new Xbox games or something likethat. Like a lot of copies of
Call of Duty and all that so,people could have enough stock,
I guess.
Dan (24:58):
I get it. I I mean, the store has limited space on the
shelves.
Wilbo (25:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan (25:03):
But to tell the employees, uh-uh. You can't take this home.
We they so they know it'svaluable. Like, oh, well, that's
like another form ofcompensation. Like, we can't
work that in.
And you can't give them away.You can't donate them. Like, it
would be just a tax write off.That's the thing. Companies love
a tax write off.
You could just donate. You couldtally up the value of all these
games, have these overworked,underpaid employees sit there
(25:25):
and scan all the games into somesystem that tallies them all up.
You put them in a big cart andyou take them down to your your
local video game food bank andyou're like, here. This is this
is all the stuff we didn't sellthis year. Do you know what
Wilbo (25:41):
a SKU is, right? An SKU? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
That's like basically theidentifying number of like how
you determine what a product isor whatever. They deleted, like,
because I talked to theemployees about this, they
deleted all of their older SKUnumbers for the the older games.
Eventually, at one point in onecertain year, I don't remember
(26:03):
when it was, like probablyaround 02/2010 or something like
that, somewhere in that range,They just deleted all of their
old SKUs and like got rid of allof their old stock and just
didn't carry it anymore. So likeI'm pretty sure they had like a
massive purge during that daywhere they just like got either
sold at a sale of what their oldgames or threw them away. I
(26:25):
don't know.
Dan (26:26):
Wait, was this an accident? Like they didn't mean to?
Wilbo (26:29):
No. This is this is corporate. Because I I also did
research about this before thispodcast just to make sure I had
it right because it soundedcrazy in my head. Okay. The
corporate basically said thatthey don't wanna carry the older
games anymore because theydidn't see the value in them.
They just wanted to sell thenewer releases and digital
(26:49):
cards.
Dan (26:50):
I'm gonna have to ask you to link me to this story just so
I can put it in the show notes.I I want I want people to able
to see this for themselves. Thisis
Wilbo (26:56):
I I will.
Dan (26:57):
This is information that's publicly available. This isn't
some big scoop or anything. I'mjust shocked because I naively
thought that these games atGameStop, like, they didn't get
sold, we're just kind of sittingin the back or maybe they ship
them off to a more centralizedwarehouse where they could just
be sold over time online?
Wilbo (27:14):
Yeah. I think they do have warehouses for it, but they
they must I I don't know all theinsider information.
Dan (27:21):
I'm just, yeah, my jaw is on the floor because I am here I
I'm like, Wilbo, I wanna do thispodcast where I talk about these
retro games because you're nevergonna believe this. But did you
know games from the year thatyou just said, like 2007 and and
beyond, are really hard to comeby now to the point where
they're being, like, resold forway nutty prices. And you're
(27:43):
like, oh my gosh. I can totallyrelate to that. I it's enraging
to think that some of the gamesI'm looking for right now
existed in droves.
Like, just so many copies ofthem are just lost because this
massive corporation was like,ah, you know, burn it. Just get
rid of it. I don't want itanymore. It's just a travesty.
Wilbo (28:04):
I have to imagine that they kept, like, I don't know. I
don't know what their warehousesituation is, but I have to
imagine they kept some of it.But then they, like, around 2015
or something like that or 2014,they quietly added back their
SKUs. So like, for older games.And they started selling them
again through like the GameStopclassic service because they saw
(28:27):
the demand.
But, at that point they hadalready destroyed or gotten rid
of their stock. Like a lot of
Dan (28:33):
This is exactly why I'm, like, getting into this stuff
again now. Just just not not Ididn't know this, but just the
idea that it's difficult to getthis stuff. It's and it should
be cherished. You know? This isstuff that we should value
because our options are like,our other options are either,
you know, fight over the scrapsthat are left from, I guess, the
(28:55):
GameStop purge of the early twothousands, or we can all give
our money to bootleggers, or wecan emulate these games by by
getting them from dubious linksonline.
And it I don't think that's anyskin off Nintendo's back if
people do that because they theydon't give us a way to get these
games. The ones we're talkingabout specifically on their own
(29:17):
modern services. Like, thePokemon games don't exist in
currently, at the time we'rerecording this, don't exist in
the library right now, the GameWave events library. So until
that happens, people are makingthat that moral argument of,
like, oh, it's fine to piratethis. I don't if it's against
the law, my stance is we'll knowit's not.
Like, objectively, it's not finebecause we've made laws that say
(29:39):
it's not fine. But it's also notokay to like price them up at
these wild prices, making themto a point where they're
completely unattainable. Whatwhat tips do you have for trying
to like get your hands on stufftoday for a reasonable price?
Wilbo (29:53):
That's it's hard. Facebook marketplace has been
pretty like it but this is likeif you wanna go in person Mhmm.
You know, like make in persondeals. Facebook Marketplace is a
pretty good place for likepeople who genuinely wanna get
rid of their older games for afair price. And like people I
(30:13):
don't wanna say taking advantageof certain people but, some
people might not know exactlywhat they have.
You could, offer them a veryfair price that isn't like too
crazy but be like, oh hey, thisis a Pokemon game and it's
actually worth this. I'd bewilling to pay you this if you
come meet me in person, youknow? Is what a lot of people
have doing been doing to likeget better deals on those types
(30:37):
of games.
Dan (30:37):
Right.
Wilbo (30:38):
Other than that, it's been hard to come across. I
also, like, I wanted to playPokemon Ruby and Sapphire so I
bought Japanese copies becausethere's a lot more Japanese
copies of older, like, Japanesegames, that are, like, than, US.
So you would just have to playthe game in Japanese. Which I
(31:01):
did. I've been doing.
Did did you find it difficult orwas it Yes. Okay. It's a little
difficult but with a game likePokemon you're spamming the same
move often so like it's not toobad and then you could use
Google Translate or Lens orwhatever.
Dan (31:18):
Because even the remakes, the three d s remakes of, Alpha
Sapphire and Omega Ruby are alsono longer in print, and there's
no digital storefront to getthem from anymore. Like, those
are also games that if that Ihappen to own, thankfully, but
if you don't own them, there'sno, like, legitimate way to get
them other than these thingswe've been talking about. So
(31:38):
Facebook Marketplace is one. Iwill say that eBay, you know,
for for the the dangers I waspointing out earlier, it's still
probably my favorite way to getthis
Wilbo (31:48):
stuff. Yeah.
Dan (31:49):
Yeah. It just takes a bit of research. You wanna always
look at a couple things. Look atthe reviews of the seller. Look
at how long they've beenselling.
Because even if they're in thehigh nineties, meaning they've
had a couple negative reviews intheir time. If they've been
doing this for so many years,okay, people are bound to make
mistakes. But if they haven'tbeen around very long and you
see that they're in, like, thehigh 90 percentile of of
positive reviews, but they onlyhave, like, a few dozen reviews,
(32:12):
then there's a kind of a problemthere. That's that's a mistake
made in a very short amount oftime. And then my other my other
tip for eBay, pay attention tothe country it's coming from
because I've made the mistake ofbuying stuff that is actually
coming from, like, Japan orChina.
It's the English copy of, like,a game, for example. But thanks
to the moment in history we livein right now, there's tariffs on
(32:34):
everything. And so people willhappily sell you something and
you'll forget that, like, it'sgonna get shipped over here from
overseas, and then it's gonna behit with a tariff and you're
gonna have to deal with that. Sothose are kind of my tips. Make
sure it's within your homecountry for, like, the easiest,
smoothest transaction, and makesure the seller has good
reviews.
And make sure you read thedescription because if I didn't
(32:56):
read the description of thoseinauthentic games, I would never
have seen that they were openlyadmitting that the game was
inauthentic.
Wilbo (33:02):
Yeah. It's it's very important to read the
description. And it's like kindahard, like eBay's UI sometimes a
little hard to follow becausethey have like the product
description and then they havelike the seller's description of
the product. And so like, youhave to read very carefully and
make sure that you you can seewhat the seller actually wrote
compared to what like thegenerated whatever like Pokemon
(33:24):
HeartGold is a game where youcan but then the seller will be
like, this is a fake copy orsomething in the description,
the actual description.
Dan (33:32):
It's I mean, that keeps their reviews positive because
if they openly admit that andpeople know what they're buying,
then it's, you know, everyone'sfine. And then, I guess the the
last tip, which you've alreadykind of like talked about a
little bit, is just going out inperson to places like you went
to a game expo of sorts.
Wilbo (33:47):
Yeah. And I was able to get a good deal on a couple of
games.
Dan (33:50):
Was there anything in particular you're looking for
while you were
Wilbo (33:52):
I was. I was looking for Kirby Return to Dreamland.
Unfortunately, they didn't havethat. Well, they did. But the
problem is a lot of vendors getlike first pick of all the good
games and stuff and like somepeople get in early through
other reasons.
I don't really know. And then Iwas able to find a couple PS two
games and stuff, so that wasfun.
Dan (34:12):
Which ones?
Wilbo (34:12):
Oh, well, there's this game called Lifeline that I I
played on, like, the emulators.And so I I wanted to own a real
copy and so I bought it. It'sthis game where you use voice
commands to control yourcharacter and you guide her out
of a spaceship situation andyou're like the guy in the chair
(34:35):
who's on the security cameras.
Dan (34:37):
I don't
Wilbo (34:37):
know, it's a really unique game and I like it, so I
wanted it.
Dan (34:41):
How do you input the voice commands?
Wilbo (34:42):
You connect your it came with a headset mic that you
connect to the Playstation and,you say like, walk here, shoot,
dodge, dodge right. It does gettedious.
Dan (34:53):
Did you get that accessory? Did you need it?
Wilbo (34:55):
I do still need the accessory to Oh no. Play I
couldn't find it complete butapparently any headset mic will
work so. That was
Dan (35:04):
gonna be my next question, like, you just plug in whatever?
Okay.
Wilbo (35:07):
Yeah yeah yeah. I don't know. I like weird games like
that. There's like a charm toit.
Dan (35:11):
I've never heard of that. That sounds like I would have
had a blast with it, growing upif
Wilbo (35:15):
I had that. It could get a little frustrating. It gets a
little difficult.
Dan (35:19):
I was already yelling at the games. I mean, having them
hear me would probably have beenhelpful.
Wilbo (35:23):
But I love the story. It's it's really nice. It's
classic sci fi kind of thing.
Dan (35:28):
That's cool. My last tip for getting games as well is
gonna be buying a lot of games.And when I say lot, I don't mean
buy a lot of games. I mean, buygames that are in a lot
together. Like
Wilbo (35:40):
Oh, yeah. For sure.
Dan (35:41):
Yeah. And you can get some pretty good deals, especially if
now this is a risk. You'retaking don't know. I'm just
gonna put a disclaimer. You'retaking a risk if you're
listening to me right now and dothis.
But you can buy oftentimescartridges that are, like,
labeled as ones that are notworking. And sometimes, in fact,
in a lot of cases, it's really amatter of opening them up. Like
n 64, for example, you open upthe cartridge and you use
(36:03):
isopropyl alcohol and you gentlyscrub off the, you know, junk on
the contacts. And I've I watcheda video about this where someone
bought, like, a 100 or socartridges, and every single one
worked. They just took them allapart, did that, put them back
together, every single cartridgeturned on.
Yeah. So you can't you can't domuch if it's chipped or anything
(36:25):
if the if the motherboard hasbeen broken. Obviously, you
can't do much about that. But ifthe seller is saying, yeah,
these games don't reliably,like, turn on or whatever, but
there's stuff in there that youwant. There's not that much risk
if you're if you're willing toget a little technical, you're
willing to buy a couple extratools.
The and that's what got me into,like, some more some deeper
parts of this hobby. I'vestarted to fix up old Game Boys,
and I bought a a lot of sixbroken Game Boys. And three of
(36:49):
them came back to life just byopening them up and, like,
scrubbing them real good. Someof them were beyond repair. They
obviously had, water damage andand kinds of stuff wrong with
them.
Mhmm. And I was replacing thescreens anyway. All of them had
busted screens, but, like, itfelt really good to be able to
kind of, like, give some ofthese Game Boys a a new life
just because I wanted to. I justfelt like it. I I wasn't even in
the market for Game Boy.
I was just bored. And I'm like,oh, I I like doing these old
(37:10):
Game Boy mods. That sounds likea lot of Yeah.
Wilbo (37:11):
I love fixing up gold consoles too. That's what I used
to like like, even in college Iloved fixing up old Game Boy
SPs. It is really fun to likeclean it up, give it new life,
maybe do like a screen mod on itor something.
Dan (37:25):
Yeah. Classic console mods right now are just a really fun
way to get into these hobbiesand pretty accessible. I mean,
you'll you'll spend some moneyif you are gonna do screen
replacements and things likethat, but it it definitely gives
the hobby like this whole newkind of like purpose to it. You
you could turn around and maybesell those modded consoles so
(37:45):
they actually go to a home withsomebody who's gonna use them.
You could collect those yourselfand just have like a little
collection of like stuff thatyou fixed And I'm I'm really
like at a stage where I'm justgetting into all of that.
Wilbo (37:58):
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really fun to learn too. I know
this is like getting into thethe the nerd, really nerd stuff
though, you know. A lot ofpeople just wanna play their old
games but if you're willing to,it's a really fun like little
project to be like, oh, I wannamaybe clean up this old Game
Boy.
And some of the like, somethingas simple as like buying
isopropyl alcohol and cleaningit a little bit and like just
(38:20):
taking it apart is like a reallygood start if you ever wanted to
get into doing something likethat. So I think that's really
good advice.
Dan (38:26):
I'm also learning to solder and you you specifically, I
pestered a lot with like tipsand stuff like you
Wilbo (38:32):
Oh, yeah.
Dan (38:33):
You helped me find a good soldering kit. And then I I
don't even know how late it got.It must have been late for you
because it was late for me. Youwere still taking my questions,
like, while I was sitting theremaking a huge mess, in my
kitchen trying to fix this GameBoy.
Wilbo (38:50):
I love stuff like that though. I don't know. Even if it
like, the dead of night, I wouldanswer.
Dan (38:55):
Those I think sum up the tips pretty well. You can buy
sometimes broken games and as aslong as GameStop didn't take
their scissors to them, youcould probably fix them up and
have yourself a a nice littlecollection that didn't cost too
much, which is probably how I'mgoing to continue to expand my n
64 collection. Well, I thinkthis will probably have to be a
separate episode, maybe with youor or, I don't know, someone
(39:18):
else out there who gets one ofthese. I I actually bought the
the analog three d. Oh.
For anyone who doesn't know
Wilbo (39:25):
That looks nice.
Dan (39:26):
Yeah. So Wilbur earlier mentioned the analog pocket, the
FPGA console for Game Boy games.
Wilbo (39:32):
Mhmm.
Dan (39:32):
And what I just bought was from the same company, but it's
for n 64 cartridges. So you plugin your n 64 cartridge and the
promise is that it's going totake that and and upscale it to
like four k. And it is goingit's not emulating the game.
It's running the game onoriginal well, not a non
original hardware, but it isrunning the cartridge. And that
is so exciting because the gamethe n 64 games are the ones I
(39:55):
kept from childhood.
Wilbo (39:56):
Oh, awesome. Wait. What's your favorite n 64 game?
Actually, wait. This is anotherpodcast episode.
Dan (40:02):
It could be, but I will, you know, for for teasing
purposes, I it's not I don'twanna get anyone too excited. I
it's probably gonna be Mario 64because I'm that basic.
Wilbo (40:12):
Nice.
Dan (40:13):
But there's some others. Like, I have rampage, which is a
lot of fun. You're a monster andyou destroy a city. Mario Kart
was always great, and I I'mreally excited to play that
again, like, in a in a livingroom setting. I have the
controllers as well that eightBit Do made to go along with the
analog three d, which is not outyet at the time of recording
this.
They keep delaying it. They justdelayed it for, like, a third
(40:34):
time till, like, the end of theyear, which is really
frustrating. But I got thecontrollers, and they're really
cool. It's like, imagine ifsomeone made an n 64 controller
with all those buttons in theplace in the weird places that
they're in, but they made itfeel like a normal controller
and not that weird three prongedmonstrosity we used to play
with.
Wilbo (40:51):
That sounds really cool. I don't know. I I I like the
third party controllers that arecoming out nowadays. Like, I
have the, the SNES one from8BitDo, and it's it's really
nice.
Dan (41:01):
So They they have a lot. Yeah. That company in particular
has, like, a lot of differentneat controllers. So I I got a
couple of those, and it's justcool to imagine, like, pretty
soon I'm gonna have an n 64 thathas Bluetooth support and works
with my modern television. And Istill have my old n 64, but I
don't have, like, a CRT to playit on.
So whatever I plug it into, itjust looks terrible. I that's
(41:23):
the kind of gamer
Wilbo (41:24):
I That's how it's supposed to look, Dan.
Dan (41:26):
I know. I know. But that's kind of gamer I am. I love
playing old games with a freshcoat of paint on them.
Wilbo (41:30):
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's nice to see the polygons sharp
and like in four k too.
Dan (41:35):
It's so fun. And so I I'm I'm really looking forward to
it. The future of retro games,which is an ironic thing to say,
despite how difficult these areto obtain, looks really good
because the community has kindof come together and and made
some really cool stuff.
Wilbo (41:48):
Just to tie it in a little bit, you know how you
were talking about GameStop,like, cutting old cartridges and
stuff? Well
Dan (41:56):
I don't wanna think about it anymore.
Wilbo (41:59):
They would also do this with like because like they had
distribution cartridges for thePokemon and stuff, and so they
would cut them and some peoplehave went and repaired some of
them and like gotten themworking again. So I believe, you
know, some of the stuff that wasalready destroyed could be like
fixed and a lot of people are,like, making projects. For
(42:21):
example, if you have, like, areally water damaged version of
Pokemon Crystal, someone made,like, a whole new board you
could order for it and, like,transfer the chips and stuff. So
I think it's retro gaming isgonna be alive in like a lot of
different ways with like thecommunity making like different
options to bring, bring itmodern a little bit or like fix
(42:41):
old ones more easily.
Dan (42:43):
I I love that, the kind of project too. There's with the
modded Game Boys, they havesomething like that too, where
you can get a kind of a blankmotherboard and transfer the
chips of the Game Boy Advanceonto it and have, a brand new
Game Boy Advance. All you needis the CPU and the RAM. I did
not know that was a thing forgames, but that's not
surprising. I I think that everyeverything is being made for
retro games right now.
That is, that's just awesome. Ilove that.
Wilbo (43:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Dan (43:06):
Yeah. So, Wilbo, thank you for being the the first guest on
the podcast. I appreciate it.
Wilbo (43:11):
Hey. No problem. No problem.
Dan (43:12):
Where can people find you?
Wilbo (43:13):
They could find me at youtube.com/wilbosworlds. Just
all one word. W I l b o s world.Also on Twitch, I think. And
that's it.
Dan (43:24):
You think?
Wilbo (43:25):
Oh, no. No. I'm on Instagram, TikTok, all the
things too. Sometimes with anunderscore.
Dan (43:30):
Wait. Okay. So you might be on Twitch. You're definitely on
YouTube, and sometimes there'san underscore in your name.
Wilbo (43:36):
Yeah. So that that should give you all the information you
need to find me pretty much.
Dan (43:41):
I will just put some links, I guess, in the show notes.
Thank you to Wilbo, and we willsee you next time. Thank you for
listening to Sticker ShockCollector's Edition. You can
learn more about this episodeand our show by following us
Patreon. It's atpatreon.com/stickershockpod,
where you can subscribe for freeto see our show notes and maybe
any other images sent in by ourguests featuring their
(44:01):
collections, you know, thingslike that.
You can also find us on blue skyat sticker shock pod as well.
Our podcast artwork was createdby Han and music by composer
Cleo. We have new episodes everyother week, so hopefully we'll
catch you in the next one.
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