A brand new copy of Sonic 2 for Game Gear sold last month

[xelement5x]

A brand new copy of Sonic 2 for Game Gear sold last month

If this is true — and it should be said that even the person reporting this isn’t exactly sure what is going on — someone last month bought a brand-new copy, at retail, of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Game Gear. Repeat: this is not aftermarket, gray market, eBay or a used game. Twenty-six-year-old packaged goods, for a video game platform discontinued during the Clinton administration, was sold by a retailer last month just like it was 1992.

That fascinating oddity came this afternoon from Mat Piscatella, who is an analyst for the NPD Group covering video game sales in the United States. So, this is not some weirdo wearing Zubaz pants, drinking Crystal Pepsi and referring to GameStop as “Babbage’s”; he’s a games industry professional with access to highly detailed information about when and how video games are sold.

Source:
https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/st...94384846389249

Writeup:
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp...2-npd-oddities

[Genesis Knight]

With all the millions of sales it's more likely that someone manually keyed a SKU wrong or otherwise made some error in inventory.

[drludos]

Can't it simply an actual brand new copy of the game lost in a gameshop storage area for years?
(the article mention it could be related to Toys'R US liquidation in the US).

Who knows, maybe somewhere, there are even rarer games lying around in a gameshop or toy store shop storage area...

[Sik]

Yeah, probably it was forgotten many years ago in the storage of some old Toys R Us store that is now closing shop and trying to get rid of everything to cover up the costs. We may see more of this in the future seeing as those stores are closing en masse.

And the idea that somebody picked it up without much thought isn't that unusual, how many times did we see in this forum people talking about some good deal they found by pure luck in a local place?

[profholt82]

So, this is not some weirdo wearing Zubaz pants, drinking Crystal Pepsi and referring to GameStop as “Babbage’s

That had better not be a veiled reference to me.

[StuOhQ]

That had better not be a veiled reference to me.

I'm pretty sure that goes for a lot of us on here haha

[MathUser]

So, what is special or unique about this sale?

[Bramsworth]

So, what is special or unique about this sale?

What's special here is that this was a recorded sale of the game at a retail store for the first time since a store probably reported selling a copy of it since the 90's. Meaning the UPC code was scanned and the sale was registered in some sales system.

I'm somewhat surprised the game even was still registered in their systems. Always wondered if scanning the UPC for something at a store that sold these things in the past brought up anything or not.

[Sik]

When you're keeping inventory you want to make sure everything is included in case of audits… If the cartridge was left behind in storage since the '90s it was likely still in the inventory (since it was never explicitly removed). There's probably some other old stuff in there that got sold but for whatever reason didn't attract as much attention (maybe they had a policy of clearing old stuff but somehow that cartridge got lost in a corner or something and they found it again while taking everything out?).

Also I think it was confirmed that somebody had indeed bought a cartridge?

[2097]

i bought one the other month

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/392416097155

[Sik]

To make it clear, the original news was that a Game Gear game got sold at a retail store (rather than e.g. eBay), which means somebody had it in inventory and it checked past a barcode scanner (as if it was a modern game sold at retail). Which also meant that technically a game sale for a Sega console registered in NPD's data for 2018 (lol).

[2097]

To make it clear, the original news was that a Game Gear game got sold at a retail store (rather than e.g. eBay), which means somebody had it in inventory and it checked past a barcode scanner (as if it was a modern game sold at retail). Which also meant that technically a game sale for a Sega console registered in NPD's data for 2018 (lol).

Ahh Makes it clearer to read the whole post lol !