26 replies to this topic

[beamer320i]

Hi all,

Just stumbled on Gold Mine by Spectra Video on www.atarimania.com, is this the rarest Atari 8-bit cart? Have been collecting carts for a few years now and still use Andrew Kriegs list for gauging 8-bit cart rarity values, it hasn't been updated for a while but take it is still relevant?

Just wondered what you guys would class as the top five rarest 8-bit carts? (Commercial releases)

[nosty]

I use Andrew Kriegs list too cause it's handy. But I can't find many cartridges on this list. For examlpe there are many Atari cartridges used in industry - very rare and unpopular.
I don't agree with Andrew's rarity values. I use my own rarity estimation system based on eBay.

[Tempest]

My list sort of goes like this:

Gold Mine
Matterhorn
Espial
Synassembler (only available in cart form via mail order IIRC)
Austin Franklin 80 Column cart


Tempest

[R4ngerM4n]

Tempest, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:06 PM, said:

Gold Mine
Matterhorn
Espial

Ok, these ones are rare but not the rarest. I think there popped up at least 3 Gold Mines (also boxed ones), something like 5 Espial carts (also boxed ones) and even more Matterhorn carts (though no boxed ones!) during the last years.

The rarest commercial carts I have ever seen are cartridges made by Ravensburger: Kindercomp (one known to exist), Weltraumkolonie (one known to exist) and Fratzenschneider (one known to exist).

[Larry]

Tempest, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:06 PM, said:

My list sort of goes like this:

Gold Mine
Matterhorn
Espial
Synassembler (only available in cart form via mail order IIRC)
Austin Franklin 80 Column cart


Tempest

If you've seen one on eBay, etc. -- apx. how much does a Synassembler cart go for? (I've got one that I bought at a hamfest years ago.) It is translucent red, so I'm pretty sure it is an original.

P.S. The Austin Franklin 80-column was a (right) cart? I always thought it was a board like the Bit3. Any links to a picture of one?

Edit: I found this after I posted the reply.
http://www.atarimaga...uctReviews.html

Evidently you need the board and the cart to have it work.

-Larry

Edited by Larry, Fri Nov 20, 2009 5:27 PM.

[Tempest]

Larry, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 5:17 PM, said:

Tempest, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:06 PM, said:

My list sort of goes like this:

Gold Mine
Matterhorn
Espial
Synassembler (only available in cart form via mail order IIRC)
Austin Franklin 80 Column cart


Tempest

If you've seen one on eBay, etc. -- apx. how much does a Synassembler cart go for? (I've got one that I bought at a hamfest years ago.) It is translucent red, so I'm pretty sure it is an original.

P.S. The Austin Franklin 80-column was a (right) cart? I always thought it was a board like the Bit3. Any links to a picture of one?

Edit: I found this after I posted the reply.
http://www.atarimaga...uctReviews.html

Evidently you need the board and the cart to have it work.

-Larry

Yes I believe that's how the Synassembler was sold. The one I saw was just a board, but it would make sense that they would put it in one of their empty cases.

Tempest

[vcsdream]

How about Pandora Software, Powerstar, that's a pretty rare cart
and Hypnotic Land from Lindasoft

Edited by vcsdream, Sat Nov 21, 2009 3:06 AM.

[nosty]

I wrote about Atari cartridges used in industry, like this:
http://www.atarimax.com/technfo/cgixl/
or this:
http://www.atariage....__fromsearch__1

But, what about these Arabic cartridges? I have 3 only (from Egypt) but see the numbers!
This is definitely not a homework.

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[beamer320i]

I remember seeing Hyponitc Land on ebay a couple of years ago fetching over £250!!!

As regards gaming carts, the following don't seem to crop too often (or ever!) on ebay, etc., are they out here in your collection?

Blue XEGS:

Choplifter (Enhanced)
Karateka

or Fort Apocalypse by Synapse

I recently picked up a mint Bounty Bob Strikes Back! (sans box but with poster), not ultra rare but a great playable cart

[mimo]

beamer320i, on Sun Nov 22, 2009 4:16 PM, said:

I remember seeing Hyponitc Land on ebay a couple of years ago fetching over £250!!!

As regards gaming carts, the following don't seem to crop too often (or ever!) on ebay, etc., are they out here in your collection?

Blue XEGS:

Choplifter (Enhanced)
Karateka

or Fort Apocalypse by Synapse

I recently picked up a mint Bounty Bob Strikes Back! (sans box but with poster), not ultra rare but a great playable cart

was that the one being sold by mays computers?
nice condition if it was

[beamer320i]

was that the one being sold by mays computers?
nice condition if it was


I picked it up off ebay from polly.esther who is selling off his collection, another game crossed off my 'Wanted' list along with M.U.L.E. (disk) courtesy of a Canadian seller!

[deathtrappomegranate]

beamer320i, on Sun Nov 15, 2009 3:30 PM, said:

Hi all,

Just stumbled on Gold Mine by Spectra Video on www.atarimania.com, is this the rarest Atari 8-bit cart? Have been collecting carts for a few years now and still use Andrew Kriegs list for gauging 8-bit cart rarity values, it hasn't been updated for a while but take it is still relevant?

Just wondered what you guys would class as the top five rarest 8-bit carts? (Commercial releases)

It's probably an impossible to question to answer definitively.

Rob Catron just sold a cart on ebay that was previously unknown, and is, to date, the only known copy. That one was a HAM radio utility cart. There are probably quite a few other specialist carts with very low production numbers that remain unknown. Some Arabic carts were mentioned above, and Hebrew carts also exist. The Atarimania team is aware of at least one other undocumented cart, but we haven't been able to resolve some copyright issues with it.

The situation with games is slightly clearer, but, even then, there might very well be some carts that are unknown to the 8-bit collecting community. When Atarimania first uncovered a Gold Mine cart, it was the only one known to exist at the time, but several more have since been found. Interestingly, more of them have been boxed than not. "JamesTheOrangeCat" bought a complete A8 "Food Fight" cart on ebay, and this is still the only example to have surfaced, AFAIK.

None of the XEGS-specific titles from Atari is especially rare. Summer Games and Karateka are the toughest to find of them. As for BBSB, the cart itself appears on ebay quite often. The box, though, is much more elusive. Rarity and value are related concepts, but are not the same. BBSB, like M.U.L.E. , is a prized title, and often sells for more than other carts of similar or greater rarity. Gameplay, nostalgia and kudos are probably important in these cases.

Unfortunately, production numbers are not readily available for most A8 carts, so the experience of collectors is vital in the determination of rarity. The "Rarity" forum at Atarimania was introduced with the idea of helping to bring the experience of the A8 community to bear on these questions, but the level of input so far has been disappointing.

[Tempest]

deathtrappomegranate, on Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:36 PM, said:

"JamesTheOrangeCat" bought a complete A8 "Food Fight" cart on ebay, and this is still the only example to have surfaced, AFAIK.

Eh? Food Fight for the 8-bits is a 4 or 5 at best. Or are you talking about something else completely?

Tempest

[Mitch]

Tempest, on Wed Nov 25, 2009 7:24 PM, said:

deathtrappomegranate, on Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:36 PM, said:

"JamesTheOrangeCat" bought a complete A8 "Food Fight" cart on ebay, and this is still the only example to have surfaced, AFAIK.

Eh? Food Fight for the 8-bits is a 4 or 5 at best. Or are you talking about something else completely?

Tempest

I was wondering that myself since I own a copy of Food Fight.
Mine looks like this one.

Mitch

[deathtrappomegranate]

Tempest, on Wed Nov 25, 2009 7:24 PM, said:

Eh? Food Fight for the 8-bits is a 4 or 5 at best. Or are you talking about something else completely?

Apologies!

<blush>

I meant "Fast Food".

"Food Fight", of course, is pretty common. In mitigation, I had just cleaned up the kitchen after it had been the victim of a terrorist attack by a 2-year-old armed with dinner of mass destruction, so I might have been a little distracted

[poobah]

deathtrappomegranate, on Thu Nov 26, 2009 4:58 AM, said:

dinner of mass destruction

priceless

[atari-passion]

Hello,

Conquest of the Crown by lindasoft is rare cartridge boxed.....





Arnaud

[deathtrappomegranate]

Merci, c'est une image très belle!

That is still the only legitimate copy ever to have appeared on ebay, AFAIK.

Thanks for giving us a glimpse of it again!

[warerat]

Quote

P.S. The Austin Franklin 80-column was a (right) cart? I always thought it was a board like the Bit3. Any links to a picture of one?

Edit: I found this after I posted the reply.
http://www.atarimaga...uctReviews.html

Evidently you need the board and the cart to have it work.

-Larry

Ironically I just came across an incredible find-- an Austin-Franklin board, with RGB connector, cart, manuals, and box-- all in working condition... I am in the process of scanning everything I have for this as I've noticed documentation for this is pretty much non-existent except for a few magazine reviews. I've already dumped the character ROMs and the program ROM on the cart. I also got a Bit 3 and a Axlon Rampower 128K in the same lot.

The way the cart and board work is unique, but somewhat similar to the Bit 3 in the sense that they take up all of $D5XX and $D6XX (which are mapped to Slot 3 on the 800). On the Bit 3, the firmware for the display drivers is on the card itself. On the Austin-Franklin, you get twice the display memory (4K vs 2K for Bit 3), but there's no on-board ROM for the firmware-- hence the cartridge. The cartridge goes into the right slot of the 800 maps its 4K ROM into the $D5XX address space, 248 bytes at a time. There's a fixed eight-byte window in the page where the cart registers are accessed, but essentially the last 16-bytes of the page aren't usable. Also looks like they did direct OS calls for the screen editor in the ROM. The Bit 3 uses a 6545 CRTC, the Austin-Franklin uses a SMC9007. The font on the Austin-Franklin is larger than the Bit 3 and is pretty nice. I just hooked it up to a TTL monochrome monitor and the quality is excellent.

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[deathtrappomegranate]

Nice find!

[Ransom]

Very, very nice indeed! Thanks for sharing!

[AB Positive]

I'm curious as to a halfway decent rarity guide too... I just picked up an InHome Soft Baseball for the A8 and rarities are kind of all over the place (R7 at Digital Press, R9 on Atarimania... don't know any other guides...). I paid a pretty low price for a supposedly 'rare' cart so I'm not terribly worried, plus it's from my home country so I like it.

I'm not terribly experienced with formal guide making, but I'm a great researcher and would help if someone's up to spearheading a list.

-AB

Edited by AB Positive, Fri Dec 4, 2009 11:44 AM.

[AtariLeaf]

AB Positive, on Fri Dec 4, 2009 11:43 AM, said:

I'm curious as to a halfway decent rarity guide too... I just picked up an InHome Soft Baseball for the A8 and rarities are kind of all over the place (R7 at Digital Press, R9 on Atarimania... don't know any other guides...). I paid a pretty low price for a supposedly 'rare' cart so I'm not terribly worried, plus it's from my home country so I like it.

I'm not terribly experienced with formal guide making, but I'm a great researcher and would help if someone's up to spearheading a list.

-AB

I have one of those Inhome Baseball games too. Got it at a Value Village months ago for $2
Question - Why is the cart of Zaxxon so rare? Its an 8 is it? Would seem like a common game to me (I have one, thats why I'm wondering)

A loose cart of zaxxon went for $75 US a couple days ago for example

Edited by AtariLeaf, Sat Dec 5, 2009 1:53 PM.

[mimo]

Rarity does not always translate to value, I have some rare cassette and disc games that are worth next to nothing.

[AtariLeaf]

mimo, on Sat Dec 5, 2009 2:28 PM, said:

Rarity does not always translate to value, I have some rare cassette and disc games that are worth next to nothing.

The issue I'm seeing is the opposite, a supposedly common cart like Zaxxon commanding big bucks. Unless for some reason Zaxxon was primarily on other media for the A8's like disk or tape with the cart being an afterthought.