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playstationCollecting the PS4 Before Nostalgia Beats You to ItSony built exactly 12,300 units of the 20th Anniversary PlayStation 4, painted them the same grey as the 1994 original, and watched them evaporate. That was December 2014 — barely a year into the generation. The PS4 announced it would be a collector's console almost immediately. Most of us were too busy playing Destiny to notice. Now the generation is properly over, and the window where PS4 hardware and print runs are still cheap and plentiful is closing the way these windows always do: slowly,
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
GlossaryWhat CIB, Loose and Sealed Really Mean on a Game ListingSet two copies of Rayman for the original PlayStation side by side. The early North American printing lives in a tall cardboard long box, roughly the proportions of a VHS tape. The PAL copy sits in a standard CD jewel case. Both sellers can honestly describe theirs as “complete” — and they'd be promising you entirely different stacks of cardboard and paper. That's the trouble with collector shorthand. CIB, loose, sealed, NIB — the words sound precise, but what they actually cover shifts with pl