Explore: handheld game
Explore matching items from sellers across Europe.
Related buyer guides
Condition & GradingBuying a Game Gear or Lynx? Check These Failure Points FirstPop the battery covers off a Sega Game Gear and sniff. That faint fishy smell is leaked electrolyte from failing capacitors – an amine odour every Game Gear tech knows – and it means the console in your hands is running on borrowed time, if it runs at all. Cartridge collecting is mostly about cosmetics. Classic handheld collecting is about the hardware itself, because on a Game Gear, an Atari Lynx or an early PSP, the shell can be showroom-clean while the inside is quietly dying. Here's how to
segaWhy Every Unserviced Game Gear Is on Borrowed TimeThe listing says "tested – powers on." The photo shows Sonic frozen on the title screen, and the description never once mentions sound. Experienced Game Gear collectors read that silence the same way: the capacitors are going, and the seller either doesn't know or doesn't want to say. Sega's 1990 handheld is a strange collectable. It's essentially a Master System you can hold – a Z80 heart pushing a 4,096-colour palette onto a backlit 3.2-inch screen while the Game Boy made do with four shades
nintendoBuying a Game Boy Advance Without Getting a Fake CartTwo cobalt-blue Game Boy Advance SPs on the same shelf: same clamshell, same honest scuffs, same price. Flip them over and read the sticker on the bottom – one says AGS-001, the other AGS-101. That middle digit is the whole ballgame, and if the seller hasn't mentioned it, you should be the one who checks. The GBA is the rare platform where the hardware revision routinely matters more than the game in the box. It's also – less charmingly – home to some of the most counterfeited cartridges in all