hhmmmm….
Now I cannot remember every single PCB I bought in the last 15 years, not even the really rare ones....
But I due tend to remember the ones I wanted to buy (or should have bought) and lost it to someone else. Out of the tiny hand full of RARE shit I lost:
US version of Aero Fighters Special: Was on vacation, staying in Florida overnight waiting to get on a cruise ship with my wife. So I had some time to kill and I scanned eBay and saw it. I emailed Smitdogg about it and by the time we connected Grant Porter of TX bought it.
World version of Dancing Eyes sold by a guy in Illinois who had (has) all the Sammy protos and the Atomiswave protos. Same guy who had the Sammy Zombie Raid Japan & US proto chips and the Trophy Hunting test location I just bought. Had just the bottom board with the DC2/VER.C sticker and of course the program flash ROMs. It went unsold for $19.99 for one round when I found it, got outbid when I tied to buy it.
El Tiempo Fin: Out bid by an infamous Japanese collector who had to pay a pretty penny due to my snipe I set. This collector is well known for his willingness to pay a fortune for a PCB he wants. Rarely if ever gets outbid.
Purple Magic: I personally put in a bid of $375 for this PCB that I though was WAY too much for it and figured with that price I'd win no matter what. But the PCB sold for over $500 and that was like 10 years ago. If you check the unMAMEd page and see the shots from the auction that I supplied. So yes I was very involved with that one. And as it turned out it was bought by a person who was determined that a MAME friendly person would never own it.
You see it was back in the day when people were actually afraid of MAME and refereed to it as the BORG of emulators. People said MAME was absorbing all the "good" emulators and killing off innovation and emulation in general. All at the same time the "word" got out the Dumping Project (yes the old one with the Guru heavily involved) was gunning for Purple Magic. So said person out bid us on the PCB and it disappeared into the black hole of emulation lore and legend.
I've also learned my lesson not to wait or worry about if I can afford to spend the money or not. If it's something rare, it's best to just buy it and worry about the recovering from the financial hit or the argument with my wife.
All of which brings us to the last week:
For the first time in 15 years that I have been scouring eBay (US, FR, UK, IT and others) we saw a PCB that is basically a clone but one that's only been heard of and never seen. We the Dumping Union bought it
Then we had a Korean seller teased us with in game snaps of Tom Tom Magic and Metal Freezer. Some eight or so years later we found a Metal Freezer but not the same licensed version the seller showed. Then finally a Tom Tom Magic PCB shows up and we worked together to buy it. See: http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Number=376345
It's gotten to the point where people check their PCBs against what's in MAME. If it's not in MAME they think they have hit the mother load of all gold mines. So we're held hostage buy this greed. Even for crappy worthless Korean pieces of crap.
Not to mention a few weeks ago a certain PCB showed up on Yahoo Japan with a STARTING price of 2,000,000 Yen (Yes that's two MILLION). So rare and ultra rare PCB prices are hitting the stratosphere. That's where we've been kind of lucky with our timing and our crowd funding drives.
All for the sake of history. So yes, the DEVs play a part, the dumpers play a part... but if not for the donators no one gets any joy!! Dumps with no Devs means no games, no dumps for Devs to emulate means no games.
Which ever side of the fence you stand on, it takes everyone.
BrianT
Edited by BrianT (05/23/18 04:49 AM)
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