Just to put the word out here as well: I'm currently bidding on a lot of about 28 handheld games. Mostly Game & Watch, but a smattering of Gakken and Casio games as well.
I fully expect the auction to go for upwards of 2000-4000 EUR, most likely towards the middle-high end of that estimate. Anything less than that would be an insult to the seller (and not meet the reserve price, which I've already determined to be 1500 EUR), and anything more than that would be stupidity on the part of the buyer (since the games could be bought individually for that much).
I've put out a call for pledges on Twitter, IRC, and MAMEWorld, so I'll make the same offer here: If you want to contribute towards the funding drive, post here with a pledge for how much you'll be willing to send in the event that I win the auction. Until and unless I make the winning bid and post proof of having won, no money will change hands, as it would be a colossal pain to refund tons of peoples' donations in the event that I don't win.
If you're interested in seeing the auction itself, PM me and I'll send you a link to it. Just keep the link on the down-low, as snipers are real, and a real pain.
Given that some people have pledged a certain amount but pledged to potentially go higher if needed, the current min/max pledge totals are: 1535 USD (low end), 1810 USD (high end).
Also @Sean, I have to say, thanks for making the SVGs and ROM-bit photos so accessible. Makes it easy for me to throw an LCD+ROM pic onto Twitter in order to keep the hype up for the LCD auction of doom.
@Sean nice timing =) Both S5+S6 are wired to Pause? Or was it a typo?
Yeah, I was trying to get it in before the deadline, but had trouble cleaning the die. I'm not sure if I'm overheating the epoxy when I'm de-globbing them, or if it's a different epoxy that doesn't react to nitric acid the same way, but 5 of the last 10 Tiger dies have had plastic on them that I couldn't remove with nitric acid, even after multiple washes. So I tried sulfuric acid and that worked. I reduced the amount of time that I put them in Whink to remove the top metal layer, but I went too low and had to clean some of them twice, then bumped it back up and it was a little too long.
S5 and S6 are tied together. Also, there were 3 sets of traces under the action button, but it only had a contact for the center one. The top one was connected in parallel with the center one, but the bottom one was connected to K2. I'm not sure if they reused a PCB or if they simplified the game and removed a button.