I had some Konami sample, beta/pre production copies from Dennis Hemmings, Konami's UK PR man, last I heard is that he is retired, perhaps even dead now? Who knows?
However, they went to STT, and none of them had nicely printed labels on them, and they where handwritten. I suspect these are not genuine. Maybe it STT can display some pictures if he has any?
djh1697: The samples from Dennis - there was actually one very nicely printed/labeled cart: Synthetisizer with completely different kind of graphics as the Japanese release version has.
The carts sold by eskroto looks genuine to me. I know that a few of each are existing. I have similar Salamander and Gradius 2 carts. Salamander has just the same ROM as normal release version, but Gradius 2 is different. For these I haven't seen similar constant "copy production" as did exist for the other samples (hand written codes/dates in them). Was it someone from Netherlands who made the copies?
But yes, being careful is not a bad idea. Nowadays it's easy to get the nice labels printed for cheap. However, I know that eskroto bought these items a long time ago and I saw also personally at least some of the YAJ auctions he won... Those days making the copies was a pretty much different story cost wise. And values for these items were also very low compared to nowadays.
What comes to JE-700 - it's a pity that the original cable was lost from many boxes (I know a few people who have this empty box). I have one complete. It has a cable and white carton insert as well. No manual (afaik the back of the box has succifient information) and I have never seen a manual for this.
Thanks for your words Saku, as always very appreciated.
I have records for all my purchases in Yahoo Japan for the last 25 years and as Saku said all those were bought long time ago.
Nemesis 2 was bought in 1997
Salamander in 2005
MG2 sample around 2006, don't have the exact record but have record for other stuff bought at the same time.
Multiplayer cable in 2005
In all those years i have seen in Yahoo few copies of each one:
Nemesis 2 maybe 3-4 copies
Salamander maybe 4
MG2 sample only 2
Multiplayer only the one i own
Saku probably has seen a few more as he has been collecting longer than me.
Yes, unfortunately it is empty. Only person that i know with the complete box and cable is Saku
I know its en empty box but not long ago an empty box from Tetris for Megadrive was sold for around 5000 euro iirc. If you know the history behind Tetris for Megadrive you will know that only 3-4 copies exist in the world. (Maybe it was box + manual, not sure now)
Again things worth according how much people want to have them. That box is extremely rare, never been up for sale before, at least in Europe and only have seen this one for sale in Japan for the last 25 years.
