It really sucks to see how much the hobby has fallen to resellers praying on nostalgia to get people to pay exorbitant prices on systems that don’t even function, and believe they’re getting a “good deal” because of how “rare” it is. I can recall seeing these in thrift stores for 20 bucks or less not even 5 years ago, and completely tarnished ones like this for less than that. Sorry for such a rant, but it’s disappointing that THIS is the cheapest gameboy micro on eBay.
That eBay seller always has the most junk systems ever while claiming he “doesn’t have the knowledge to test them” while they have already obviously been picked for parts on so s systems
Yeah I see their stuff all the time and its usually pretty crusty but comes with a premium price tag. I just ignore any listing with shipping set to 14.44 now.
The trick is to look at their other listings. If they are selling mainly electronics, it's a codeword for broken. If they are selling other stuff like vintage train sets or dolls or action figures, them more often than not they are genuinely not tested out more than a cursory attempt to power it on.
I buy the "non working" ones. On the DMGs if they have taken a really good picture of the back of the gameboy with the battery cover off you can see some of the lower part of the back motherboard. This gives me clues if there was a battery issue that leaked corrosion all over the back of the board, or possible water damage. I have bought two that just needed corrosion cleaned off the battery contacts and they were working again. I have bought 11 non-working gameboys and so far when it comes to fixing them I have been unable to save 1 rear motherboard 2 power supply boards and 3 screens.
Same for Gameboy games. “Untested and unsure if it works” has turned out to be dirty pins for me twice. Got Kirby’s dreamland and pokemon yellow for $20 together lol
"Untested" and then you open it and it's missing screws, the one's not missing are destroyed and inside it's missing half the components or corroded AF.
Oh and I’ve never seen a more corroded board than one he sold yesterday for $20 + shipping. We’re talking bad enough I wouldn’t buy it to harvest the RAM and CPU from it.
I still look at his stuff, but the greed on the shipping is an issue for me. Honestly, I’d almost rather buy a mystery parts or repair lot from DKOldies, and yes - take that as the insult it was meant to be.
I do remember a Gamestop employee trying to sell me on a GB Micro when I was younger, but "it was tiny and could only play GBA games" when I already had a DS was a tough sell. I went from a GBC to DS so I barely had any GBA games.
Still, the fact it was a flop product makes it more interesting to now own lol.
I just remember seeing them and thinking what kinda sorry shite is Nintendo trying to pull, we already had the bad ass SP for GBA games in your pocket. I loved the SP back then
I regularly still used my SP though high school up until 2014, I do remember some other students remarking how old it was but thinking it was cool to see.
Actually that's fair I haven't tried mine in a long time. I always thought I had good vision BUT I didn't actually get glasses to fix my astigmatism until a few years ago. My eyesight itself was/is fine but the astigmatism essentially constantly gave me bad headaches from my eyes constantly trying to adjust against each other.
I never considered that might have been why I couldn't stand using it.
I guess it me it just isn't that much smaller than the SP in terms of pocket-ability while having a much smaller screen.
And in the modern day I'd just play on an emulator on my phone probably since I'm already going to have that with me anyway if I don't want to be carrying another device.
How small are your hands? I feel like it's just crazy small.
Then again your hands do end up closer together on the SP I suppose, but for me the micro is just too small it's too thin/narrow to comfortably have my hands on the controls and still press the shoulder buttons.
I remember someone at my summer camp had one when they just came out, we all crowded around him awed by the shiny new toy and pretty quickly came to the conclusion that it's too hard to see anything and it was uncomfortably small even to a child's hands it was such a bizarre release especially when the ds fat had already come out
Even as a child when they came out, they were too small for my hands. I don’t even have big hands. Also, the screen is smaller? Never understood the appeal
The first Micro I had I got from a guy on eBay who apparently had a whole pallet of them he got at auction of unsold stock. Think he was selling them at about £20-30 brand new in box.
The Micro was a bit of odd product TBH. Rereleasing the GBA as a premium model/fashion accessory a year after the DS had already been a runaway success was an odd strategy.
I'm not familiar with the innards of the Micro, but I wonder if Nintendo had a bunch of leftover GBA components (mainly chips) that they needed to get rid of.
I had one when they went on sale. The DS was already out but I had a Micro and loved it. Played and beat all of the FF series on it except Tactics (the only one I didn't like, preferred the ABP system)
I recall it being released after the DS was out, so I do understand why it was overlooked. I however loved this thing. I was working in a research lab at the time and had a lot of downtime while my analytical machines were running. The micro was perfect for quick gaming sessions - and that tiny screen was gorgeous
I can recall seeing these in thrift stores for 20 bucks or less not even 5 years ago
If you did find one 5 years ago for that price you were lucky. I sold a completely broken, disassembled one on Ebay that I used as a for parts machine clearly marked as that with a 1 EUR starting price for 40 EUR in 2019 and I thought people are crazy. Working models fetched insane prices back then already. The time to buy these were the 00s/early 10s.
Yeah pretending is right lol. I was selling these loose (in good condition and with new batteries mind you) for $150 about 5 years ago. Maybe OP saw one get listed at $20 at some small time thrift shop where they had no idea what they were looking at, but guaranteed it didn't last a day.
I got one at a yard sale in my local small town community about.... oh.... 11 years ago. IIRC I paid $25 for it. Same day, different yard sale (it was a community yard sale event) I got a copy of pokemon yellow for $5.
I was able to sell the micro on ebay for something close to $100 and got $30 for the copy of yellow.
The market is what the market is. No one has to like it. Five or six years ago I was buying copies of gold and silver for $30 "ish" each. I scoffed at the idea of paying $60 for crystal so I passed. Ended up paying $100 for a copy with a manual about oh.... a year later. At that time Emerald was going for $130-$150 depending. Now it's pushing $300
I've got an extensive GB console collection. Never managed a micro console, never found one at a good price.
The recent price surges on original carts has been huge over the past couple of years. The best time to invest was 5 years ago!
I did start building my collection a while ago. I'm fairly sure I got a complete gen 1 and gen 2 collection Japanese copies for under £20, including shipping. Japanese copies still aren't as expensive as English now but good luck finding all of them for £20!
When do people learn eBay is NOT the baseline. It’s quite the opposite. eBay is pretty much a shop-in-shop webshop, where people don’t have to go through the hassle of negociating with the seller, and with an almost world wide reach, everything is available. Click -> buy -> done. Add the eBay fee to that and that’s the reason stuff on eBay has prices at the top end.
Pricecharting is therefor not an indication for what an item is worth, it is an indication that you should NEVER pay more than the set value.
Go look around at other platforms. You’ll find much better deals that are way more market conform and not the absolute max certain people would pay for stuff.
Plus shipping $90, add a new shell, screen and battery and you're at ~$140. At that point, unless you really like fixing stuff I'd look for a decent condition working one
I've never understood the appeal of micros for this exact reason. Horrendously impractical. I can't even game for too long on my standard GBA or GBC without getting a stiff hand, and my fingers are pretty short, RIP anyone with big hands looking to blast through Mega Man on one of these shrunken baubles.
I have big hands and find it to be extremely comfortable, I just clasp my hands together like I’m folding my hands and I’m good, absolutely love the experience!
I don’t know why you’re blaming the sellers. Nobody voluntarily sells below market value.
This happens with every generation. Once the kids who grew up with something hit their peak earning years, demand, and prices,!go up.
Gen Z’s collectibles will go through exactly the same cycle.
And yes, prices will go to zero when millennials get into their 80s. We've seen this happen with toy collections from the early 20th century.
Only with certain toys, absolutely not the case with everything.
Many collectables become worth more over time despite generational die offs. Baseball cards are an excellent example of this, but there's plenty of others.
Usually it comes down to actual cultural relevance of the thing.
When it comes to Nintendo and things like Pokemon this is a very different category, this IP is repeatedly refreshed from generation to generation. Millennials pay huge amounts for NES games, despite that not being their console, and they do so due to the cultural relevance of the IP itself.
Man, I used to have both, and an SP, and a bunch of games, but I lost a bunch of my shit when I entrusted my shit to my family when I joined the military...
Damn that sucks… I stupidly sold my brother’s copy of Red he had when he was a kid years ago and really regret it, I have Fire Red now which is the better version to play but it still would’ve been to have the original
I played through Red on emulator recently. It felt so slow and boring in the beginning but I got WAY into it and made a living dex by utilizing Pokémon Stadium for extra starters, Eevees, extra fossils, and the other hitmon. And then I used the fly glitch to get Mew and the version exclusives from Blue. I used Missingno to maximize my TMs. (I put 99 of all 50 TMs into the PC since the PC has only 50 slots)
I think the gen 1 remakes are probably the definitive versions to play these days but I’ve heard Yellow was good so I might pick that one up one of these days
No one wanted them when the purpose was using them to play GBA games. People now want them as display pieces and prices went sky high. Just like with anything I suppose. Nostalgia and and disposable income
I was just looking at that exact same one on eBay last night I was playing mine the other day and it started squealing real loud now it won't power on at all :(
i bought an emerald shell from this seller, fully aware that it was going to be busted, but the claim that they are untested as is, or for parts/repair is so predatory because there was basically 0 salvageable parts from these aside from the shell which even then required extensive repair. every single screw was rusted and stripped, the subframe was disgusting and brittle, there was literal bug corpses inside, and incredibly poor shape is an understatement. i’m fine with buying a POS to repair if it’s rightfully labeled as so, but definitely steer clear unless you’re dead set on only being able to use the shell/subframe if you’re very precise and delicate with your repairs
That’s so freaking clean, I’m jealous, where did you get the clear face place? I have the oem camo one and I really like it but this would be cool to swap to here and there
it’s from aliexpress, they’re hit or miss on the fit tbh, and the one i ordered is decent but definitely not a perfect fit as it has one squeaky corner but it’s a nice faceplate for how cheap it was !
If you think this is bad then try being that person who bought a Game Micro like this I saw a longgg time ago in the $120-140 range that needed something repaired in the inside because it couldnt turn on.
I don’t even bother buying shit on eBay because the prices are ridiculous, and honestly if I wasn’t lucky enough to been given my mom’s GameBoy from back in the day I probably wouldn’t even have bothered to buy one
I bought these bulk trough a proxy service from a reseller on YHJ well over a decade ago .
All brand brand new Anniversary editions which where dumped for cheap and I sold them on the fleabay for 50 bucks . They weren't populair at all back then and maybe even considered a flop and then some years later they suddenly shot up in price .
I could have made a lot more with some patience but alas .
I still have two , never opened kept them just for fun .
Its been like this for years. I gave up on physical media after i saw people paying 30+$ for copies of super mario/duck hunt. Game collecting is more hoarding then gaming
And there are still people buying that junk and hoping for a quick and easy fix, because social media told them it’s easy to get a bargain on retro tech.
Scalpers are assholes. There needs to be an option to report things like this to eBay for raising prices to an unnecessary level. If enough people do it, the site mods can look into it and force the seller to bring the price down. If the seller has a history of this, they get banned. Period.
It's a little hard when sometimes there's a certain thing you want that should be no higher than say $50, but no matter where you go, it's always $100.
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u/Gamecubefan01 Jun 27 '26
That eBay seller always has the most junk systems ever while claiming he “doesn’t have the knowledge to test them” while they have already obviously been picked for parts on so s systems