Overall game collecting is on the decline and has been since 2016 for the most part. Going on Price Charting and looking at the overall price trends for most retro consoles will show that most retro consoles have dropped in value quite a bit or at the very least leveled out. There are a handful of retro consoles that are rising in value like the Genesis and N64, but I'm pretty sure they will eventually follow the same trajectory as the other retro consoles that are dropping or plateauing.
Beyond what the more objective data is showing, there have been a lot of retro game stores that have gone under in the last 2-years in my state. Part of it is the general economic climate we live in, but also has to do with less people shopping at these stores. As for the retro game stores that are still around, they are having to turn to ebay to fill their store with games since not enough is being traded in to keep people wanting to visit. What is being traded in is stagnating, as is a lot of the ebay stock which is typically rarer, more desirable games that don't commonly come in, especially now. In the case of one store, the owner, who is a massive collector, has been downsizing his personal collection to fill his store shelves. However, you'd think this would be bringing in a lot of people, but instead the games are just sitting, at least for way longer than they would have just a couple years ago. Related to retail stores, I've seen a glut of retro games at used media stores that have been traded in, and a lot of it isn't moving like it would have a few years ago. This brings me to my next point.
Interest is declining, a lot! Stores are getting stuff in still, but a lot of that stuff us just sitting there for way longer than it used to. This indicates that supply and demand coming to an equilibrium, with supply gradually outpacing the demand. Sure, some are games selling still, but for the most part, more and more retro games are accumulating, a lot of these being good titles too. Going a bit deeper, there have been a lot of collectors in my area, some of them having Flea size collections that have left the hobby and sold off their collections. There have been a lot of famous (and some infamous) resellers in the area that abandoned retro games too. Sure, there are still some very passionate collectors that still heavily collect, but there are far fewer people doing this than there was in 2017 and especially in 2016 or 2015.
As for my personal feelings towards collecting, I did give up on it, mostly. I decided this summer that I had accumulated too many games, many of which I don't really care about. Essentially what I did was find most of the games I did care about, and then I was like "hey, wouldn't be fun to track down those other interesting games too?" and so I did since at the time it was easy to find cheap cool and rare games. After I got a lot of those cool and rare games I wanted, I then wanted to find a bunch of moderately interesting, obscure games and that's where I was a for a few years leading up to me deciding I didn't want to collect anymore. Where the "mostly" given up part comes in is I will always love video games and there are many games in my collection I have no intention of ever getting rid of. On top of that I still do buy games that I think look fun and if they are fun enough I intend on keeping them. I guess where things have changed is I only buy games that I have the intention of playing shortly after buying, like as in within a couple of weeks. The only exception to this is if the game has sentimental value, which I just want for that reason mostly. However, I rarely make these sentimental purchases anymore since I found most of those games back when I first started collecting, or over the last few years. Still there are a handful I'm still after.
As for hunting for games, there is little to no point anymore for me. As I said, I have almost every game I've ever wanted, so scouring thrift stores, garage sales, or even game stores for those last few games is not worth my time or money; I could easily go online and just purchase them there without having to drive around, waste gas and time, and potentially not find them for months or years. Speaking of places to find games, without exceptions there are no good places in my area to consistently look for cheap games anymore; the thrift stores have been insanely greedy and overpriced for years now, our one flea market has very few games anymore, and the ones that are there are overpriced or in poor condition. The game stores in my area are all overpriced, and the biggest chain of them is run by a guy who has a weird vendetta against me that I still don't understand. And garage sales are mostly pointless at this point, unless you do what one guy I know does and simply goes door to door asking if people have video games they'd like to sell. This guy still finds some excellent stuff, however the amount of time and effort he puts into this is way more than I'd ever be willing to do. That leaves used media stores, which have been the only place in recent years where I occasionally find a good price on something, but this has become fairly rare to the point where I barely fo to these stores anymore. I pretty much just go to Gamestop, buy the new game I want to play and i'm done with it. Or I go on ebay and buy them since it requires little to no effort on my part.
This was definitely one of my longer posts, but I had a lot to say about it since it's not only something I find interesting, but is also personally relevant at the moment. So no, collecting games is not that much fun anymore, especially retro games, and that seems to be the general zeitgeist within the collecting/retro gaming world. There are exceptions to this, but overall the hobby in general is on the decline and I believe this will continue until very few people are actually doing it anymore.