Not looking good, that is for sure.

Jordan I am about to answer yours PMs over at NA in a few. Sorry for the delay, been crazy busy.

Read it and what a bunch of bullshit.  So his response is that he was just a lazy guy?  Wow, how heartfelt.  I skimmed it pretty quick, so unless I missed something this is a decent damper on my opinion of the scene anymore.  It's been going downhill for awhile and for a pretty respected member to ditch it is lame.

Well, INTERPOL is just an email away...

And Stan, I know how you feel man...This is the second time in 6 months that I've been ripped off.  In 3 years it hadn't happened to me before.  If I was collecting for any reason other than my love of the NES, I'd just sell my shit and be done with it.  This hobby's almost becoming too much of a hassle these days.

I guess greed is human nature but that is no excuse at all.  I hate a scammer and I hate someone who would steal from someone else.  With this hobby and life all we really have is our word and our ingetrity, and money can't put a price on that.  I hope Hounder realizes that and takes the steps needed to make it right with people.

Martin I am so glad you wrote that on the homepage cause I really do hope it might make a potential future scammer thing twice.  You will get caught at some point and when you do it will not be pleasant.  What Hounder done is mail fraud and he really could go to jail for it and have to pay stiff fines.  I think that is what brought him out of the clost anyways.  I sent him some emails and I know Dain and wiz both left he voice mails.  Tis a sad day for the NES community, Hounder had a nack like I have never seen for finding graet stuff and my own collection would be missing some very cool stuff if it wasn't for trades with him.

For a new collector in the online community this kinda thing really stinks.  Of course, I always hesitate before I complete a transaction online, but we go off each others trust with these forums to help each other achieve our collection goals.  I feel bad for the people who had to go through this situation and hope it never happens to me.


Martin posted a good point about collectors, you need have a story why you collect the things you do, not just because it's valuable, that's what causes greed.  I collect Nintendo since it was the first system we had as a family, N64 since it  was the first system I purchased myself.  I have valuable things in my collection, but I would never in a lifetime use those items to scam someone.  I would like to make some money off them if I did ever sell them though.

I never delt with Hounder persoanally, but I looked at him as one of the super collectors like NGD.  It's kinda sad to see someone you thought you would like to emulate do a thing like this.  I just hope he makes good with everyone. 

X

I have a feeling Hounder has more problems in his life than NES games. That's why yes I understand being mad at him, but why I also have some sadness. It's never fun to watch someone crash and burn. There's more behind this than some guy trying to rip off people. There's a reason.

I personally don't think this is a straight scam, I think something probably did happen to the kid that he's just not talking about.  Saying he was lazy was retarded and one of the stupidest excuses I've ever heard.  It really takes someone idiotic to want to just take so much money, especially from friends, so I'd bet he's got something pretty serious going on.  Who knows, drugs maybe?  I'm not sure, but I really hate this shit.  I don't even really have an inclination to collect rarer games anymore because they're so high, but what I still don't get to this day is what in the hell has happened to this scene?  I haven't been around since the beginning but I've been here quite awhile and have seen many different people come and go.  It seems that since I've been here the whole thing has turned into an eBay business filled with tons of assholes.  To use an example I always do, and this is what drew me more to this, the SMS community is FECKING TIGHT.  Anyone even takes a manual from someone they're shit on and pretty much can forget being taken seriously ever again.  There's this one guy on eBay who was a notorious asshole and eventually got caught by eBay I believe, kicked off and then started a new account.  No one buys his shit though because we spread such a bad reputation about him and he's still trying to sell rare games he stole from people for three times their worth.  People in that scene just don't put up with the bullshit and don't do it in the first place, I really don't get what happened to the NES scene and I can't even begin to explain what I mean, things just fell apart rapidly around three years or so after I started hanging around.

and the fact that the NES scene is about 10 times larger than SMS.  SMS can have a more tight nit community cause there are less people around to collect.  NES was more popular and more successful than SMS so you have to deal with more crap.  Just part of it it I guess.