EarthBound Price Update (Oct. 2013)

Every month I update the average price of EarthBound stuff on buyearthbound.com to help fans get the best possible deal and avoid paying too much. Although I didn’t update last month because I’m a big dummyhead.

It’s been a while since EarthBound was released on the Wii U, so I suspected that physical copies would’ve gone down further in price. And yep, it pretty much did!

Average Prices:

• EarthBound cart: $149 (down from $163, lowest: $61.00 / highest: $230.00)
• EarthBound guide: $86 (down from $111, lowest: $15.40) / highest: $179.99)
• EarthBound complete set: $462 (up from $452, lowest: $280.00 / highest: $1275.00)

So it looks like the cartridges are finally starting to come down in price! Even if $149 still seems like way too much; I remember just five years ago when they were going for $75 or so. Actually, that’s why I was utterly floored when I saw that cart that sold for $61! That’s craziness! And then that guide that sold for $15? I’ve NEVER seen an EarthBound guide sell for that cheap. Even when it was released I think it cost more than that. I hope this is the start of a trend… although there were a few cart-only listings that sold for over $200, so who knows.

There was also a brand new, complete copy that sold for well over $1000 – I think that’s the reason the average price for a complete set is slightly up. Without it, the average price drops to just $380… which is a pretty huge deal! So all around, it looks like prices are still on their way out of crazytown.

While working on these numbers, there were a couple of other things of interest I came across:

• Someone posted a listing for an EarthBound cart but for some reason they chose to use a picture of that EarthBound cart-shaped bar soap instead:

  Luckily, someone said something to the seller, and then some ACTUAL photos were eventually included

• A bunch of people have e-mailed me to tell me about a new type of EarthBound cart that’s been appearing on eBay. It’s some sort of reproduction cart of an EarthBound old fan hack based on my EarthBound localization analysis and was never fully completed. Also, some new people have suddenly been asking me questions on how to complete this hack, so I can’t help but wonder that there’s some sort of connection.
• While on the topic of conspiracy theories, while going through the auctions over the past month, I kept hitting on auction listings that ended on exactly $142.50. Sometimes they would happen all in a row, too:

  I’ve actually noticed similar behavior over the past many months too, just with different numbers. I used to think it was just a coincidence or just an eBay bug, but it seems pretty odd. Is this a normal thing on eBay? Has anyone else seen this sort of thing before? I guess it could just be coincidence, it’s just had me curious for a while now

Whew, that was a lot of info to compile! So, with all that said, if you’re ever looking to buy a physical copy of EarthBound or the guide or a complete set, check out the info on buyearthbound.com for more tips and info!