Collecting MSX games

Thank you that is helpfull! I'll lurk and comment here for times to come hahah!

I have the Konami published Japanese version of Road Fighter. It's not in my trade/sell stack but it's not a high priority for me so I could sell it. I'm in the US.

I think the early Casio version sells for a bit more. That's just a collector's value attached to being more uncommon so I wouldn't worry about it unless you get one for cheap.

If you don't really need the boxes and manuals, you will save up to 10x on games and you will find them much more frequently. My most wanted game, I've only seen come up for sale complete once in about 5 years of looking (it's possible that I missed one in the earlier years) and it sold for 120,000. At the time I just thought that was way too much. I've seen the same game cart only three different times and it maxed out around 20,000.

Here's a big tip for searching on Japanese websites: use Japanese characters to search even if the title is in English. It's much more common for sellers to type out the name in Katakana and rarely is it not written in Katakana. If you want, you can do a back-up search in English but it's not likely to find more titles this way. Only once did I find something this way, a copy of "Girly Block" which wasn't also listed with "ガーリーブロック".

Compare this search: "Road Fighter MSX" to this one: "ロードファイター msx"

Just head on over to Generation MSX, type in the name of the game you want, and copy the Japanese characters. Simple!

Most MSX games lurk in the Computers category, but some are hiding in the Video Games category. Some deals sneak by this way sometimes.

Anything listed by Satopin is about 2x the average price even if it's common, so don't consider those listings to be the real price.

I bought something from him on eBay, before I realized it was satopin I was buying from. The game I got back was overpriced (I was getting desperate, so I decided to buy it anyway), but the worst part was that the game I got wasn't the one in the photo. He refunded me, but I had to pay for the shipping back (which luckily eBay refunded in form of a coupon). His eBay handle is teruminkeiichi.

I'm in the Netherlands so shipping will be high. I'm looking for a complete edition preferably in good condition

Great tip but my Japanese kinda sucks. I have no idea where to begin with a simple thing like registering...

This one is easy, you don't register! It wouldn't do any good anyway because the vast majority of sellers on Yahoo Auctions Japan will not ship internationally.

The key is to use a proxy service. They have a business location in Japan where they will place an order for you and hold the items for 30-45 days. That way, you can continue to purchase games for a month and have them shipped to you all at once. You just pay a fee per item, which is usually a couple dollars.

The most popular two are Buyee and FromJapan. Buyee has better customer service because they will pack any items however you want and you can request photographs of the way that items are packaged before confirming international shipment. The downside with Buyee is that they don't use FedEx or DHL. The closest thing you have is EMS but that is actually more expensive with large items. Shipping something like an MSX through EMS is expensive and slower than it is with DHL or FedEx. The other advantage to FJ is 45 days of holding time vs. 30 days with Buyee. Personally, I use FromJapan for the majority of my purchases, and I'll ship 30-45 days worth of purchases at one time. There are more specific considerations that I could help you with when you get closer to that point. Like, I'd avoid shipping heavy hardware in the same package as games with cardboard boxes, because they will sit stuff on top of the boxes. Also, sometimes you have to try the shipping several different ways to find the best one.

Also, definitely use auto-translation. I use Chrome almost entirely for Japanese pages. Set it to always translate Japanese and you should be able to understand well enough to navigate.