Soundtrack Central The best of VGM and other great soundtracks

Please sign up or log in for the best forum experience!

    Pages: 1

Rrolack Jan 14, 2018

There are certain VGM albums that I've had a great deal of trouble selling.  Much more than I ever would have thought.

As an example, I have a copy of "FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES Opening Theme - Yae : Sound of the Wind":

http://vgmdb.net/album/1882

which I've had on eBay for more than a year now.  For the last few months, the asking price was only $4, but still no takers.  As a result, I've had to drop the price to $3:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/192404715884

I realize this probably isn't a rare album, but for $3, I would expect at least one taker smile


Does anyone else have VGM albums that you just can't move for the life of you?

FuryofFrog Jan 14, 2018

WHAT!!! I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THAT ONE FOR SO LONG! WTH!!!!


I have never sold any of my VGM.

Rrolack Jan 14, 2018

FuryofFrog wrote:

WHAT!!! I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THAT ONE FOR SO LONG! WTH!!!!


I have never sold any of my VGM.

I thought this post was a joke, but the $3 album is now indeed sold!

layzee Jan 15, 2018

My oldest albums worth mentioning that refuse to be sold are (from ancient to old):

Romancing Saga Original Sound Version (original print book-style case). y u no sell, Kenji Ito. Though to be fair, I've sold multiple copies of this. Just this last copy doesn't want to go.

More SQ. There's Asian women on the front and back covers of this Square Enix album so I assume that the reason it doesn't sell is because Final Fantasy fans are racist. Or sexist. Or [insert -ist] here.

Lost Child Side-X. It's a niche album from a niche composer and a niche (arguably) music genre. I accept.

Gensou Suikoden: Tierkreis - Special Drama CD. A non-music album of a not entirely positively received Suikoden game. The disc is filled with Chinese people talking or something.

Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time - Arrange Album. Four words: So Alone, Be Sorrow.

Rrolack Jan 15, 2018

layzee wrote:

More SQ. There's Asian women on the front and back covers of this Square Enix album so I assume that the reason it doesn't sell is because Final Fantasy fans are racist. Or sexist. Or [insert -ist] here.

It seems like the SQ series is not universally loved to say the least.  In my case, I somehow ended up with an extra copy of More SQ and needed to sell it.  I only got $7.50.

The_Paladin Jan 15, 2018

Well, I'm not sure I've ever sold anything I listed on this forum, but there's the matter of not wanting to sell it if you're not going to get a reasonable return.  I'm sure if I started at a dollar I could sell a bunch of the albums I have but I'd rather hold onto them than get a pittance.

Qui-Gon Joe Jan 16, 2018

layzee wrote:

Romancing Saga Original Sound Version (original print book-style case). y u no sell, Kenji Ito. Though to be fair, I've sold multiple copies of this. Just this last copy doesn't want to go.

This one doesn't surprise me because for some reason I see tons of this in every used shop I go to in Japan every summer.  No clue why this one ended up so common and some of the other book-style releases are SO rare (looking at you, Mystic Quest).

longhairmike Jan 17, 2018

my mystic quest goes right back into the plastic sleeve after each use. and i open the book only bout 30 degrees so i can get the disc out without putting any stress on the spine

Qui-Gon Joe Jan 17, 2018

longhairmike wrote:

my mystic quest goes right back into the plastic sleeve after each use. and i open the book only bout 30 degrees so i can get the disc out without putting any stress on the spine

Mine was in decent-but-not-great shape when I got it, which is actually probably for the best in this case since I actually listen to it and don't have to be super paranoid!

layzee Jun 14, 2018 (edited Jun 14, 2018)

-My five next hardest-to-sell VGM albums-

Lost Child Laox Original of Contents Special Version
Lost Child Special CD Sofmap Version
Obscure items and with not many tracks. More PC contents than music contents.

Tama-Soft Artist Collection kt2: For You… From Here The Edge
Obscure artist but I figured at least one person out there in the world would grab this album. Apparently not.

Legend of Heroes III: White Witch JDK Special Vol. 2
Old school Falcom and old school Legend of Heroes. Too old for kids these days I assume.

Ys: The Oath in Felghana Super Arrange Version
Unsellable despite being brand new and sealed.

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Original Soundtrack Consumer Edition
Decent few vocal tracks but mostly ambience/story scene music. Okay.

-Five VGM albums that I did sell recently after a long time of not selling-

The Songs of Zemeth - Ys VI Vocal Version
I like this album so not sure why it took that long to sell. Mint condition too.

Spectral Force: Itoshiki Ja'aku Original Soundtrack
I don't care about this franchise, it just came to me as part of a lot. I priced it to sell and it took a while. Fair enough.

Preprimer M-Fujisawa & Pre-Project
Old school Falcom and understandably hard to sell: no useful keywords for search purposes.

Tales of Phantasia Original Soundtrack Kanzenban
Not sure why this had no bites. It's Tales of Phantasia (the best Tales). It's Motoi Sakuraba. It's the PS1 synth update of the Super Famicom game. Maybe my high standards and analness prevented it from selling - I said the discs had a few or some scratches. It's not as bad as I made it sound. Honest!

Metal Gear Acid & Acid 2 Original Soundtrack
Okay, it's not part of the main MGS series but the copy I had was in mint condition and with a fair price (IMO). I think an MGS fan should've grabbed it from me much earlier.

layzee Jun 14, 2018

Rrolack wrote:
layzee wrote:

More SQ. There's Asian women on the front and back covers of this Square Enix album so I assume that the reason it doesn't sell is because Final Fantasy fans are racist. Or sexist. Or [insert -ist] here.

It seems like the SQ series is not universally loved to say the least.  In my case, I somehow ended up with an extra copy of More SQ and needed to sell it.  I only got $7.50.

I wouldn't say the SQ music are always in my playlist but the first is still the best (SQ Chips). Still no takers though (I'm selling a copy).

The_Paladin wrote:

Well, I'm not sure I've ever sold anything I listed on this forum, but there's the matter of not wanting to sell it if you're not going to get a reasonable return.  I'm sure if I started at a dollar I could sell a bunch of the albums I have but I'd rather hold onto them than get a pittance.

Indeed, I could get rid of everything in my house (and my house itself) for $1 but sometimes there are things not worth getting out of bed for (e.g. shipping an item that has been sold for $1). I do try to charge a fair price though and even if it's not, there is the "Best Offer" option available.

Qui-Gon Joe wrote:

This one doesn't surprise me because for some reason I see tons of this in every used shop I go to in Japan every summer.  No clue why this one ended up so common and some of the other book-style releases are SO rare (looking at you, Mystic Quest).

longhairmike wrote:

my mystic quest goes right back into the plastic sleeve after each use. and i open the book only bout 30 degrees so i can get the disc out without putting any stress on the spine

Qui-Gon Joe wrote:

Mine was in decent-but-not-great shape when I got it, which is actually probably for the best in this case since I actually listen to it and don't have to be super paranoid!

Some complaints I have with the book-style albums is that the white tray yellows easily (and can't be replaced), the spine can deteriorate, the booklet can stain the tray and the tray can stain the booklet (and can't be replaced), and the spine card (or rather, spine rice paper) is hard to remove and damage easily.

That said, I will always treasure my FFMQUSA OSV. Wonder why it never had a jewel case release when all other games of its era did (e.g. R-Saga series, Seiken series, FFIV, etc).

GoldfishX Aug 25, 2018

These are historical prices, not current. I forget the last time I listed CD's for sale, since the VGM market seems to have plummeted and selling barely seems worth the effort.

Depth Fantasia - No one's heard of the game. And frankly, the music is average at best. I probably needed to drop the price on it to about $10 (from $15 or $20). For that price though, I'm okay with it sitting around and bloating my collection.

Rockman EXE 1-3 Collection - I figured this one would sell early on a long time ago, but I had like two people decide they didn't want it and it sat around with an $18 price tag on it for awhile. I've since pulled it back and happy I didn't sell it.

War-Zard - Even at $10, I couldn't make this thing go away. Worth keeping nowadays for the nostalgia and a reminder of old-school Capcom. Music-wise, $10 worth of value is a stretch. Theme of Leo Bonus Track is almost worth $10 on it's own though. Shame the rest of the soundtrack isn't anywhere near this good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzb3C_DpNHk

Atelier Marie (reprint) - People didn't want it for $15 or so back in the day. Too late now, I'm glad to keep it around. One of those unsung PS1-era heroes. To be fair, nearly every Atelier soundtrack I've had is hard to listen straight through and they all benefit from a bit of filler trimming (same deal with Rockman EXE). The artwork for the series over the past 10 years or so has gone to hell, so more reason to own the older soundtracks (Marie/Lilie/Judie and the Iris ones).

Zwei!! 2008 and Zwei Super Arrange Version - Two others I had practically tried to give away in the past. Welp, not anymore. Keepers. Shoutouts to the clown on VGMdb that kept trying to talk my price on Super Arrange past $8. Is haggling becoming more of a thing nowadays? Some people are just plain obnoxious with it.

Sega Arcade 80's Volume 2 - Didn't sell at $10. Buyer's loss, it's a great little CD. I THINK this is the only CD in existence with Bank Panic music on it. And extra Wonder Boy music is fine by me (this was initially expendable after the 2CD Monster World album came out).

GoldfishX Aug 25, 2018

The_Paladin wrote:

there's the matter of not wanting to sell it if you're not going to get a reasonable return.  I'm sure if I started at a dollar I could sell a bunch of the albums I have but I'd rather hold onto them than get a pittance.

Quoting for truth. My post above reflects this.

longhairmike Aug 26, 2018

GoldfishX wrote:
The_Paladin wrote:

there's the matter of not wanting to sell it if you're not going to get a reasonable return.  I'm sure if I started at a dollar I could sell a bunch of the albums I have but I'd rather hold onto them than get a pittance.

Quoting for truth. My post above reflects this.

too bad we didn't get the same enjoyment out of our college textbooks

Judgment Day Oct 30, 2018

layzee wrote:

I wouldn't say the SQ music are always in my playlist but the first is still the best (SQ Chips). Still no takers though (I'm selling a copy).

That Seiken Densetsu Final Battle / Mana Palace remix by Sexy Synthesizer...If I had a Top 50 VG songs of all time, whether it's OST or an official remix, I'd put that on the list. I played this song to death when I first got the soundtrack. So good.

layzee Dec 2, 2018

-My five next hardest-to-sell VGM albums- Part 3

Final Fantasy IV Piano Collections
I thought this would've sold by now. It's Final Freakin' Fantasy Four.

Final Fantasy X Vocal Collection
Yeah okay, it's not everyone's cup of tea. Part drama tracks and part vocal songs as sung by the original Japanese voice actors. It would probably be funny if they localised this album back then and have the English voice actors try to sing.

Creid - Yasunori Mitsuda & Millennial Fair
One of my favourite Mitsuda soundtracks. To be fair, I have some room to lower the price before I get a guaranteed sell.

Myth - The Xenogears Orchestral Album
It will sell. Sooner or later.

Falcom JDK Band Diva Kotera Kanako Sings 1+2 (Limited Set)
Pretty obscure limited set (I had to add it myself to VGMdb). I thought some Falcom-loving vocal song fan would have bought it by now. Comes with bonus DVD with, if I remember correctly, singing lessons from the "diva" herself.

-Five VGM albums that I did sell recently after a long time of not selling- Part 2

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Original Soundtrack Consumer Edition
This album was listed on my previous posts, so good to see it go.

Lost Child Original Soundtrack Side-X
This album was listed on my previous posts, so good to see it go.

Parasite Eve - Original Soundtrack
This one took surprisingly long to sell because 1) it is a great album in its own right and 2) new Yoko Shimomura fans after Final Fantasy XV.

Final Fantasy IX - Original Soundtrack Plus
AKA the leftover tracks that didn't make it to the main soundtrack.

SSteele1994 May 27, 2019

Hi there,

I came across this post today and thought I'd comment. I have been trying to sell a decent percentage of my collection, but interest level does seem very low. Part of the dilemma is I never know how to price the CD. I want to try and strike a balance between market value and pricing it to move. Does anyone happen to know if there is a price estimator on VGM CD's? I can't seem to find one on VGMDB. (For reference, Price charting is a site that gives estimated values on games / it would be cool if something was out there for VGM CD's).

But, otherwise, yes - I am finding that, generally, I have to lower the price to the absolute bare minimum I'm willing to accept before it receives any attention.

Best,
-Shawn

layzee May 28, 2019

Game music CDs has always been niche and in the current era of streaming/digital soundtracks and the eventual disappearance of CD players, even more so. I think that is the main obstacle in trying to offload soundtracks at a reasonable price in this day and age. Other possible reasons include the prevalence of bootleg/pirate soundtracks being sound in the Western market that drives down the prices of genuine ones. A search for "Final Fantasy soundtrack" on eBay for example already brings up bootlegs in the top ranking results. They are unavoidable and leads casuals to thinking that these represent the "market price" of whatever they're looking for. Another issue is that eBay does not have a dedicated category for "game soundtracks" (that I'm aware of) so it's somewhat of a hassle to find VGM without also bringing up unwanted search results.

As for the topic of "market price of VGM" I generally subscribe to the belief that, outside of popular sought-after soundtracks (like the 3 Super Donkey Kong OSTs) or in-print currently for retail sale ones, there isn't really a market price as such. The selling price of an album is simply whatever the potential buyer feels it is worth at the time. Or if the buyer specifically wants your album, then they will buy it, regardless of price (within reason of course). Whether your album sells at the price you want depends on how long you are willing to wait for the perfect buyer, and how lucky you are. Of course, as you said, if you want to appeal to the casual bargain hunters, then you can easily clear your stock if you price everything at $5, and even then, some albums might not go the first time.

I don't think the game music market is large enough to warrant a price charting tool in the same way as the used game market. The used game market consists of casuals (people who buy recent games and sell them after they're finished) and the hardcore game collectors. In my opinion, just owning a game music album already makes you hardcore.

So what are some actions you can take to sell your load (outside of charging pennies for them)?

1) Take decent or good photos of your albums. Half of the photos on eBay are blurry/unclear or stock photos. The latter is an automatic avoid from me.
2) Describe the condition of the album reasonably. The majority of VGM condition descriptions are generic/auto-filled so you have basically no idea what you're getting. From my experience, even if you have a bad condition item but you accurately state the condition as well as offer an appropriate price, buyers will take it. Better the devil you know, as they say. Needless to say, people would be more willing to pay more for a better condition item. The double-edged sword of course is that this higher price blocks buyers on a lower budget.
3) Play up the fact that your album is genuine, not a bootleg. Once a buyer is redpilled about the existence of cheap bootleg copies and what they are worth ($1 + shipping at best), there's no going back.
4) Sell internationally. With risk comes reward (big $$$). It is often my international buyers that know a good deal when they see one and have the wallet to match.
5) Offer combined shipping. Everyone loves combined shipping and to spread the cost of shipping over multiple albums. This of course works better if you have a decent amount of albums to sell so they can pick and choose.
6) Try to sell your albums in different markets. eBay is obviously the first place any seller goes to sell. vgmdb would be second choice. In third place would be via "social media" or internet forums for specialised topics (e.g. RPG fans, retro gamers, Nintendo fans etc). The latter however, like CD players, seem to be dying out too.

Unfortunately for you, you already do most of the above things, to a higher standard than me even. In this case, I can only suggest being patient and praying to lady luck for that single buyer to come across your listings. There is precedent: me finally selling albums that have been on sale for far too long.

Examples to follow in my next post:

layzee May 28, 2019

Right after I made my previous post in December last year, I managed to offload some older albums. And more since then till now.

-My five next hardest-to-sell VGM albums- Part 4

Shadow Hearts II - Original Soundtracks
This boggles the mind. Out of the 3 games, this is considered by fans the best, and out of the 3 soundtracks, also considered the best. So why is this still collecting dust without a sale? Only explanation is probably both the franchise and developer is dead so nobody is aware of its existence.

Zwei!! - Original Soundtrack 2008
Wonderful Falcom soundtrack. Wonderfully brand new and sealed. I wonder then, why I can't sell it? And I'm not the only one in this thread that can't.

Chaos Legion - Original Soundtrack
Another mind-boggler. Before he became a Street Fighter household name, he was composing dark gothic soundtracks like Chaos Legion. And a great one at that.

Final Fantasy X-2 - Original Soundtrack (Limited Edition)
Sure musically it's not to everyone's tastes, but it's 1) Final Fantasy, 2) Limited Edition, 3) Mint condition, and 4) Not even priced that high (IMO).

Final Fantasy I - Symphonic Suite
Orchestral version of the original game that started the franchise. It's been a long time since I last heard it but I do remember liking it.

-Five VGM albums that I did sell recently after a long time of not selling- will be discontinued.

Soto Sep 10, 2019

layzee wrote:

Tama-Soft Artist Collection kt2: For You… From Here The Edge
Obscure artist but I figured at least one person out there in the world would grab this album. Apparently not.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one having trouble unloading kt2 albums despite how good they are. The Shadow Hearts and Chaos Legion ones you noted in the most recent post are definitely mindbogglers, as those are two of my favorite VGM albums.

layzee Sep 13, 2019

Some of my older stock managed to get sold since last time I posted which is good. Some still collect dust. Hence, now for a new installment of:

-My five next hardest-to-sell VGM albums- Part 5

Final Fantasy XI Original Soundtrack (Limited Edition)
A quality soundtrack to a, I assume, quality game (by MMO standards) (I haven't played it). I am open to the possibility I priced it slightly too high.

Gensou Suikoden II Music Collection Orrizonte
Arranged version of some selected tracks. The series seem to be dead so fair enough if I can't sell anything GS related.

Wild Arms Music the Best Rocking Heart
I was going to say "speaking of dead series" but then I remembered there was some revival of this franchise recently, albeit in the form of a mobile game. So basically a dead series. I recall reasonably enjoying this album back then.

Wild Arms II: 2nd Ignition Original Soundtrack
Ditto.

Tales of Legendia Original Soundtrack
I recall this Sakuraba-less OST getting some praise back when it was released. Or maybe brand name is important and the reason I am unable to sell it now is because it's Sakuraba-less?

Soto wrote:
layzee wrote:

Tama-Soft Artist Collection kt2: For You… From Here The Edge
Obscure artist but I figured at least one person out there in the world would grab this album. Apparently not.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one having trouble unloading kt2 albums despite how good they are. The Shadow Hearts and Chaos Legion ones you noted in the most recent post are definitely mindbogglers, as those are two of my favorite VGM albums.

Both of my SH and CL remain unsold to this day. To add insult to injury, a very obvious SH2 OST bootleg copy was sold for a higher price than my authentic good condition copy. Ridiculous.

Latest Updates

Board footer

Forums powered by FluxBB