final fight cd wrote:you need money to make money.
and if anybody had the money, and was devoted to this project, and got the ball rolling that person would make a killing. not only would they sell like hotcakes on this site, but they would probably sell pretty damn good on ebay. plus, you could sell them to other websites and stores and make even more money. i have searched online for new replacement cases for some time now, and cannot believe nobody is doing this.
than again i know nothing about what it takes to make plastic cases. maybe i am wrong and somebody has already crunched the numbers and figured out making a respectable profit would be next to impossible.
I think you are VASTLY over estimating the market demand for these cases.
i don't think i am. i think they would sell well. i am not saying the person is going to be a millionaire and will be able to quit his day job.
what do you think happened when somebody said, "i am going to make a retro clones of video game consoles. you got people like you saying, "are you crazy?! nobody is going to want to play 8 and 16 bit graphics anymore."
i think there are enough retro gamers out with beat-to-hell sega cd and sega saturn cases that would love to do nothing more than to replace the cases. hell, i would buy 50. and in a few years when i acquire 50 more shitty ass sega cd/saturn cases i would buy 50 more.
Granted these are molds for everything in the system plus carts and controller pieces, but they are quoting $250,000 for creating and making the molds. So lets make some guesses at simplifying down to 3 pieces, not needing time to actually design them as it would be a copy, but still having the setup costs. Heck, lets say it costs 1/10th of the costs that those molds cost. That's still $2,500 just to have some injection molds made. Then you need to have, or have access to the machine that melts and injects the plastic into the molds as well as the raw plastic pellets to make the cases with. Even renting time for a facility to hook up your molds and make a production run will run in the thousands and the very least. Making a run of 1000 or something is going to end up costing way more per case than even collectors are willing to pay.
Well, while you would still have to pay to have the molds made up, you could just get a production run in China for like 1 cent per case. The cost of the molds and shipping is what really sucks. If some one invested the money in the molds and got a few thousand made up, they could try to at least break even on it, then profit from the next production run. Who has the money to do this? That's the real question!
It can't be THAT hard, we've seen this in a few places already. The guy at Retro USB has NES cases made up, and now he has the case for his SNES flash cart. If he can make up NES cases and sell them, I'm sure it's completely feasible for some one to get Saturn cases made up. Just don't expect to make money off it, at least until you break even.
here are 5 "brand new" sega cd/saturn cases. he has 3 or 4 separate listings for these, which puts him at 15-20 in total. price is kind of hight, especially with the 9 dollar shipping.
i am assuming he didn't pay to have these manufactured. maybe he bought a case of brand new sport games and is just selling the case?
dsheinem wrote:I thought we had a thread on this before, but I can't find it. Does anyone know of a place online where these can be purchased (individually or in bulk)?
I am NOT interested in converting to DVD or universal cases, so that option is out. I'd also like to avoid buying cheap/sports games just for the cases. Has anyone ever found a place to buy these? Anyone know who made them back in the day? Maybe we could ask some company if they have some hanging around? Or to make a special batch from old molds? Maybe we could special order a large lot?
Not quite clear. The PS1 long boxes have individual game cardboard surrounding the black plastic case. Seems hard to reproduce that individual game cardboard cover with no clear protective plastic as in a DVD case.
As for the Japanese PS1 fat clear cases, to me way too brittle as in regular jewel cases.
That said I do like the long box ridged edges, but they are fatter and take up more room then a regular DVD case.
dsheinem wrote:I thought we had a thread on this before, but I can't find it. Does anyone know of a place online where these can be purchased (individually or in bulk)?
I am NOT interested in converting to DVD or universal cases, so that option is out. I'd also like to avoid buying cheap/sports games just for the cases. Has anyone ever found a place to buy these? Anyone know who made them back in the day? Maybe we could ask some company if they have some hanging around? Or to make a special batch from old molds? Maybe we could special order a large lot?
Not quite clear. The PS1 long boxes have individual game cardboard surrounding the black plastic case. Seems hard to reproduce that individual game cardboard cover with no clear protective plastic as in a DVD case.
As for the Japanese PS1 fat clear cases, to me way too brittle as in regular jewel cases.
That said I do like the long box ridged edges, but they are fatter and take up more room then a regular DVD case.
In the US we got a mix of four different PS1 cases:
Giant jewel boxes ala Saturn and Sega CD.
Fully cardboard Sega CD/Saturn styled cases.
Cardboard over a plastic skeleton Sega CD/Saturn styled cases.
The standard jewel cases we're all familiar with.
My Consoles: Genesis - Nomad - SegaCD - GameGear - Sega Saturn - Dreamcast - NES - SNES - N64 - Gamecube - Wii - Playstation - PSone & LCD - PS2 - PS3 - Xbox - 3DS
Niode wrote:Send him a dodgy cheque. Make it out to Scammy McScammerson.
