Part of Simon's Nintendo collection

Today we are starting a new series of posts here on beforemario. There is a growing number of fellow collectors of Nintendo toys and games out there, and I thought it would be cool to get to know some of them, and to take a look at their collections.We kick-off by travelling down-under, where we meet Australian collector Simon Sharratt. He will introduce himself, and guide us through his quite impressive collection."Hi there, my name is Simon, and I collect the vintage toys and games that Nintendo made all those years ago,. I live in Brisbane, Australia and when I am not searching the internet to feed my collection/habit, I work in an operating theatre assisting with anaesthetics. I have only been collecting for just over a couple of years so far, but I am quite proud of what I have managed to collect already.I got into collecting vintage Nintendo stuff through a chance discovery on eBay one day. At the time I was buying NES/SNES/N64 games, when I saw a listing for the Pix’N Love book,by Florent Gorges . It looked interesting and I soon found my way to the Pix’N Love website to find out more and I ordered a copy. When my copy arrived I was just amazed at all the great stuff within its pages, I’d known that Nintendo had originally started out as a playing card company, but I never knew that they also made a lot of cool and sometimes crazy toys and games!So of course I had to start searching for this stuff on eBay, and it wasn’t too long before I had found and bought my first items, the, and one of the three. Slowly, more and more bits and pieces appeared on eBay, mainly from international sellers in Japan, but sometimes from the USA, the UK, South America and Europe, and I even managed to get a couple of items from here in Australia. Nowadays, most of my purchases are made through Yahoo Auctions Japan, where I have a person who bids on items on my behalf, then sends bulk packages to me here in Australia.Unfortunately, my current home doesn’t have enough space to put all of collection out on display. Usually I have it securely locked away in storage, but for this occasion I have brought it all out, to catalogue and take photos of for this blog.""In the first picture above, I have some of my board game collection; you can see I have all three versions of the, two of the three versions of, and some of the versions ofthat Nintendo made. Interestingly, the one in the bottom left hand corner displays the Big N logo instead of the NG logo, the Big N logo variation does not appear in the Pix’N Love book.Also in this photo there is aset of games,and. I also have doubles of both theand.""Here are more of my board game collection plus some playing cards; the completeis displayed across the top and beneath that I have two of the five games in the. The other board games areand, both of which are unplayed as the collection of pieces within are still sealed,andIn the bottom right hand corner are some of the, and in the bottom left corner there is the game setalong with a, a, and some western style playing cards. I have doubles of theand the, and I also have another better qualityon its way from Japan.""In this picture are my Disney/Nintendo board games, these are the board games I prize the most. Across the top areand. In the middle row there areand two, the bottom row also has twoin the middle along with one of the, a pair of, and the.""Next up I have mycollection; you can see one of thevariations, along with the, two. There is also some of thehere too; I have aandas well as theI had some issues getting theand theinto Australia, the packages were scanned and opened by Customs and both were confiscated because I did not have the necessary permits to import replica weapons into Australia!! I had to make application to the Police to get the permits, and then post them off to Customs for their release, and then pay extra postage to get them delivered from Sydney to Brisbane! Ironically, it turns out that I don’t need a replica import permit for them here in Queensland, but because they came through Sydney, New South Wales, where a permit is needed, Customs seized them because I didn’t have the permits. So if any other Aussies are reading this, check with Customs and the Police to see if you need any special permits to bring these into Australia.In the rest of the picture there are twowith thespelling mistake variation, anand a, twoand, and finally one of Nintendo’s crazier gadgets, theor.""In this photo, I have mycollection. In the middle are myand, and on the left hand side are my CTG 6 variations, at the top is the Sharp licensed, beneath that is the, and the bottom two are actually both. I’d purchased a couple of years back when I started collecting, what I thought at the time was just a normal, but it wasn’t until I’d pulled everything out of storage that I discovered that I had two House Shanmen!! I have since purchased a normalwhich is en route to me now from Japan.On the right hand side of the photo are my CTG 15 variations. At the top is athat has red text and graphics colouring on the box, instead of the usual blue colouring as shown on thebox beneath. I had never heard nor seen this variation before, and I’ve only just recently purchased it from a seller in Japan. As far as I can tell, the only difference between the blue and red variations is the different colour, everything inside the box appears to be a normal. At the bottom is of course aIn the rest of the photo you can see two, including the Australianversion, unfortunately both are missing various bits and pieces, and in between them is a. On the bottom row there is a, two versions of the, and aand a. In the middle there are three colours of the American release of thecalled, one of which is inside a cardboard box.""Finally in this last photo, are the remaining items in my Nintendo collection. Across the top you can see a, a, and a. On either side of them I have a, atoy, and anset. On the next row is a, a blue and redand a whiteJust in front of them are some small boxes of, and the two chair sets are actually still sealed with N&B sticky tape. On the third row is, a, a, anand one of the. Finally at the very front are myFor quite some time now I have been trying to track down theversion of the, but just in the last few days I have managed to find one and it is currently on its way to join my collection. I am also waiting on another Disney board game, the, plus I have also just bought a version of, anand the. I am trying hard to track down the Sharp licensed version of the CTG 15 calledSo I hope you have enjoyed looking at my collection of Nintendo toys and games, I’m quite proud of it and I hope it inspires others to go searching high and low for those elusive items! Good Luck!!"Thanks Simon, for taking the time to show us around your wonderful collection! Hope that some day you will find room to display it all permanently, as it is really worth it.Now that we have met Simon, the question is: who is next? [The answer: it is Fabrice !]Do you also collect Nintendo toys and games? No matter how large or small your collection is, if you have been at it for years or just started recently, we would love to hear from you. So, if you want to show your collection and tell us about it, please get in touch