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Post by pheldge on Jun 28, 2010 23:47:36 GMT 2
I see your point, Michael. But we should not forget that Aris's work is based on serials provided by people, and also on those he can directly find in ebay's auctions.
So we can never be sure that serials database reflects exactly reality. Nobody ever wondered if serial stickers on TT were more fragile than on other games ? Who knows...
I mean, I just don't think we can draw absolute conclusions on that db. But saying that, it's not a spike to Aris, and I congrat him for his great work on this. This database is surely usefull, but I just say that thinks we can sort out are not easy to understand and could sometimes mislead us.
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Post by Aris on Jun 29, 2010 3:15:05 GMT 2
Very interesting information Aris and I'd like once more to congratulate you on your work! The last bit of information is peculiar because I've seen many mickey mouse and donkey kong circus panorama go for sale the past couple of years. Does that mean that the same games are being sold over and over again? And what about the tabletop games in the top ten? I would never place them in the top ten! Surely not 7 places above Egg!!!!! Michael Thanks Mike & Patrick! Patrick is sort of right, and so are you Mike. Those TTs can't be rarer than Egg, but, as both of you know, most of my serials come from ebay auctions, and while it's easy to take a picture of the back of a WS game, (I mean, what do you have? You got the front and the back, and that's all!) it's not that easy/common to find pics of the bottom of a TT game. (They take pics of the top, right side, left side, back, buttons, screen and battery area, but often miss taking a pic of the serial number strip) So, the result is, lots of TT auctions, but only a few actually have the serial number stated or even photographed. The rarity of games based on serial numbers is a good gauge, especially for games within a particular series, and if you were to remove the TTs, the rarity of those games are pretty much bang-on! As for the Panos, hard to say why they're so low. I mean, sure, DKC and MM are extremely rare, and we don't see a lot of them compared to other games, but I just started this database thing less than a year ago, with the majority of information coming courtesy of Patrick Weiss, and I believe his serial database collecting started 3 years ago or so. So, while I've seen a lot of TTs and Panos lately too, not all have clear serial numbers pictured, and believe it or not, some people get pretty paranoid when you ask them what the serial number is on the game they're selling. And lastly, it's a lot of work for one person to try and get serial numbers for 60 different games that keep popping up, in the hundreds (if not thousands...) on ebay, YJ, etc... Never mind just finding the games and trying to decipher the serial number on those auctions where the sellers are obviously photograph-challenged, it's also very time-consuming to keep clicking that "ask seller a question" link, then you have to choose what your question is about, then you have to type out the question, blah, blah, blah. Suffice to say, it takes a long time! Ideally, it would have been great if we were able to divide up some of the responsibility of obtaining serial numbers amongst collectors that were interested in doing so. But, we're all busy, and not everyone (including myself) can dedicate the time required to do this job, nor was there much interest from anyone in helping out, so, I do what I can to get as many serials as I can for all 60 games. I will admit though, I've focused more on the rarer stuff (Silver Series, Crystals, PS, CGL, Ji21 versions, etc... and have pushed getting serials for games like Bombsweeper, Blackjack, Pinball and other MS games, as well as MVS games, further down on the list of priorities! Keeping track of versions such as PS/NOA/Mego, CGL, Ji21, Tric-O-Tronic, Videopoche & Futuretronics, and then colour-coding the cells on Excel a different colour for each version, is very interesting, as it allows you to see how chunks of production were "assigned" to the different countries. I've even tried to keep track of the latest phenomena we discovered: (thanks to Ash) the Blue Mickey boxed games. I only have about 10 BM boxed game serials so far, but, there's definitely a pattern involved here. On a closing note, the serial number database is not foolproof. People can easily switch games from a Standard box to a PS box. They can switch around the paperwork from one version to another, or even remove the serial number strip from one game, and put it on another. (I've already seen examples of this as I pretty much know the serial ranges for all games, and some of these transposed serial numbers are waaaay off! LOL!!! ) But, for the most part, it's very accurate, and there is a lot of interesting information we can obtain from it, including starting and ending serial numbers for each game. I found this very interesting for the Supercolour series, as we pretty much narrowed down the first serial number being S1000000 or S1000001, and the last one being somewhere around S1400380. This would suggest that about 200,000 of each game was made, or at least, sold to the public (we would have no way of knowing how many games were made but never made it to store shelves for sale to the public). Oh, and let's not forget the white version of SS games! Based on our current information, there should be at least 3178 of these games out there!!! Okay, I've blabbed far too long, think of how many serial numbers I could have obtained if I didn't write this post!!! ;D AC out
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Post by mpanayiotakis on Jun 30, 2010 1:39:58 GMT 2
Well Aris, I think you can take it easy on this project and just observe auctions and/or use Patrick's database - there's no need to ask every seller about the serial. Emailing them back and forth and explaining etc. takes so much time and what with your boy and all you don't have the free time!! From my observations it seems that you're a perfectionist (and I don't mean that in a bad way) and you need to do everything right but you don't have to try so hard..
Anyway, you're right about the TTs so maybe they should be removed from your top ten rarity list as the number of serials we've got don't provide any useful information about rarity. The serial database as a source for statistical analysis is a great tool and even though there are a lot of auctions without serial numbers we can still derive interesting information about the games from it!
Michael
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Post by pheldge on Jun 30, 2010 10:13:31 GMT 2
Aris' new world : ;D
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Post by rensmits on Jun 30, 2010 11:38:45 GMT 2
I see the women in the red dress! Aris Anderson? ? He isn't here much lately, maybe he's following the white rabbit? René
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Post by Aris on Jul 2, 2010 2:28:53 GMT 2
Aris' new world : ;D Just call me Neo.... ;D AC
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Post by andycole on Jul 2, 2010 10:36:28 GMT 2
I think what Mike is trying to say, in a polite way, is that nobody cares about the serial numbers quite as much as you do, Aris. So don't bust a gut on our account!
Andy.
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Post by mpanayiotakis on Jul 2, 2010 15:45:04 GMT 2
No, I'm not saying that at all! I'm very interested in this project!!
Michael
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Post by davidhorizon on Jul 2, 2010 23:16:20 GMT 2
Well, I'm quite interested in the rarity of the games. I've checked the auction database at gameandwatch.ch. The conclusion is this top ten list of the rarest games bought at auctions:
1. Flagman 2. Judge (Green) 3. Super Mario Bros (Special) 4. Judge (Purple) 5. Balloon fight (Crystal Screen) 6. Mickey Mouse (Panorama) 7. Donkey Kong Circus 8. Crab crap 9. Egg 10. Super Mario Bros (Crystal Screen)
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Post by andycole on Jul 5, 2010 13:40:39 GMT 2
No, I'm not saying that at all! I'm very interested in this project!! Michael Very interested, yes. But not interested enough to volunteer to collect serials from auctions. We are all interested to a point, but not so interested that we'd give up our time to collect data the way Aris does. That's all I'm saying. I'm not sure how many people volunteered. Aris may be going it alone, which means he is extremely dedicated, or just has nothing better to do Andy
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Post by mpanayiotakis on Jul 5, 2010 18:53:41 GMT 2
What does one's interest on a project have to do with his free time? I just don't have the time to volunteer and that's it.. Sometimes I don't get your logic Andy..
Michael
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Post by Aris on Jul 6, 2010 7:34:14 GMT 2
What does one's interest on a project have to do with his free time? I just don't have the time to volunteer and that's it.. Sometimes I don't get your logic Andy.. Michael Only sometimes Mike??? ;D Andy - Well, I did use to have a hell of a lot more free time to work on the project, but, this is not the case anymore, so, I just update serials here and there whenever I can. The hard part about this project is that if you don't log every single serial number you see on ebay, YJ, and other auction sites, you may never see that serial again, which means there's a very good possibility that you lost out on getting that serial forever! Having said that, logging every single serial one sees, is practically impossible, not to mention, the person would get pretty bored quite quickly if they worked at such a pace. So, if I have extra time, I'll pull up YJ search, and log what I can from there. And if I still have more time, then, I'll peruse Tradera and marktplaats to see what I can find there, but, for the most part, it's ebay and YJ. Nothing better to do - ha! This project is very interesting to me too. Almost to the point of obsession, but not quite. As I've mentioned before, there are lots of interesting trends that have already come to light since I took on this project. The serial numbers for the Supercolour games alone, are quite intriguing, especially with the ever-sparse white versions, as well as having the starting and ending points for SS & CG. Believe it or not, it's exciting to add another white Supercolour game serial to the database, or even adding a serial number than ends up beating the current low/high serial number in the database for a particular game. Does anyone know what the range is for the SMBS games? Remember the discussions about whether 10,000 were made, or if was more like 9000 odd games or so? Well, from the database, I can tell you the lowest (earliest) serial number we have record of is 21792625 and the highest (latest) serial number we have record of is 21802365. This range covers 9741 games. Isn't that close to the amount of SMBS games we used to think were made? While we don't know the starting or ending serial numbers for the SMBS range, I do know that in the database, there is a DKJR NWS game with serial 21788072, and there is an Octopus WS game with serial number 21804910 (a gap of 16838). So, if we didn't already know that 10000 units of SMBS were made, the database would be able to tell us that, at the very most, 16838 were made. And we would be able to lower that amount as we found serial numbers for DKJR that were higher than 21788072, and serial numbers for Octopus that were lower than 21804910. As it stands, the most logical start and end serial numbers for the 10000 SMBS games would be: 21792500 to 21802499 or 21792501 to 21802500 Interesting stuff eh? Anyway, if anyone has any serial numbers for: - any Super Mario Bros. Special games
- any DKJR NWS games where the serial # is between 21788072 and 21792625
- any Octopus WS games where the serial # is between 21802499 and 21804910
please PM me with the serial number(s), or post them here. Thanks, AC
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Post by andycole on Jul 6, 2010 13:53:38 GMT 2
Jeez, I'm trying to defend Aris' corner and he still has a poke at me! It seems clear to me from Aris' post that HE IS the most interested person in this project, bar none. All I was trying to say on my first post (reply #96) was that Aris should only put in as much time and effort as he is happy with. Don't overdo it for the sake of anyone else. As soon as you start complaining about the time and effort, then you've gone too far, in my opinion, and it becomes work more than fun. I can see what you're saying about trying to catch every serial, otherwise you may never see it again but when you consider how many you miss because there is no serial number and the seller won't reveal it, you're missing loads already so you'll never have perfect results. I think the picture will become clearer the more serials we have, but that can happen just as easily with regular additions over time, as well as such an intensive effort over a short period. Andy
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Post by Aris on Oct 19, 2010 15:52:53 GMT 2
Just an update guys. I finally heard back from Taki regarding his White Spitball Sparky game serial, so, we now have 7 white SS game serials and 1 white CG serial. S1386042 White Version S1386333 White Version S1386797 White Version S1387548 White Version S1387599 White Version S1388646 White Version S1389220 White Version S1400380 White Version Unfortunately, his serial fell in the middle of our current known range, so, it didn't help us narrow down or lengthen our current hypothesized range. Nonetheless, I was very happy to add one more of these extremely rare serial numbers to the list! Regards, Aris
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Post by andycole on Oct 19, 2010 17:40:29 GMT 2
I'll give the guy I know one last chase-up.
Andy.
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