Games
How to Tell a Genuinely Rare Retro Game From a Merely Expensive One
"Rare" is the most abused word in a game listing. Here's how to tell genuine scarcity from a common game wearing an expensive word – before you pay the premium.
Jonas Krogh
Market Insights
Why FPGA Consoles Are Quietly Eating the Retro Market
Ask anyone who tried to buy an original Super Nintendo last year and they'll tell you the same thing: a decent boxed console isn't the casual pickup it was five years ago. Loose consoles still turn up cheap, but clean examples with the right cables and
Condition & Grading
Buying a Game Gear or Lynx? Check These Failure Points First
Pop the battery covers off a Sega Game Gear and sniff. That faint fishy smell is leaked electrolyte from failing capacitors – an amine odour every Game Gear tech knows – and it means the console in your hands is running on borrowed time, if it runs at all. Cartridge collecting is
Condition & Grading
The Original Xbox Clock Capacitor Is Eating Your Console
Every unserviced original Xbox from the early production runs is carrying a small time bomb on its motherboard. It's called the clock capacitor – a stubby little component whose only job is to keep the system clock ticking while the console is unplugged – and on revision 1.0 through
Condition & Grading
How to Grade GameCube Discs, Cases and Console Bundles
Tilt a GameCube mini-disc under a desk lamp and turn it slowly. Honest wear looks random – a stray arc here, a fingerprint there. But if the whole surface carries one uniform, circular swirl from hub to edge, like it went for a ride on a buffing wheel, you'
Condition & Grading
What Separates a Shelf-Worthy Mega Drive CIB From a Beater
The hinge gives it away every time. Open a supposedly mint Mega Drive case and a healthy clamshell swings freely and clicks shut with a firm snap; a tired one creaks, wobbles on a single pin, or simply falls into two halves in your hands. Sega shipped its 16-bit
Condition & Grading
How to Grade a PS1 Disc Before You Buy or Sell
Hold the disc under a lamp and tilt it. If the underside glows that deep, smoky black, you're holding the real thing – Sony pressed original PlayStation discs with black-tinted polycarbonate on the read side, and nearly thirty years on it's still the fastest authentication check
Xbox Series
Collecting Xbox Series X|S Before the Discs Disappear
The Xbox Series S can't read a disc. There's no drive to attach, no workaround – the small white half of Microsoft's November 2020 launch pair simply assumes you'll never own a physical game. For collectors, that one design call splits this generation
Xbox One
What the Xbox One Actually Leaves Behind for Collectors
Pick up a Day One 2013 controller and you're holding the receipt for one of the strangest console launches ever attempted. Chrome D-pad, DAY ONE 2013 stamped across the face, and in the box it shipped in, a one-time code for a commemorative achievement. Microsoft built
Xbox 360
Buying an Xbox 360 Without Inheriting the Red Ring of Death
The most honest number on a used Xbox 360 isn't the asking price – it's the amp rating printed beside the power socket. Flip the console over. 16.5A means a launch-era Xenon, 14.2A means a Falcon, and 12.1A means a Jasper – the one
Original Xbox
The Original Xbox, the Duke, and the Capacitor Time Bomb
Somewhere inside almost every early original Xbox, a capacitor the size of a fingernail is quietly deciding whether that console lives or dies. If yours has been sitting in a loft since the Halo 2 days, the decision may already have been made – and you won't know until
Game Gear
Why Every Unserviced Game Gear Is on Borrowed Time
The listing says "tested – powers on." The photo shows Sonic frozen on the title screen, and the description never once mentions sound. Experienced Game Gear collectors read that silence the same way: the capacitors are going, and the seller either doesn't know or doesn't