Retro Game Price Inflation

[atariboy]

Every time I go to a flea market and they have a gold cart thats what they say "Very Rare". I one time had seen a weird gold cart and the guy had painted a Super Mario Bros. 3 cart. It was actually a pretty good paint job but the screw holes gave it away and I knew there was no such cart but he said it was a very rare cart from Nintendo and he had it for $200.

[scott]

Now that's just crooked.

[pceslayer]

Every time I go to a flea market and they have a gold cart thats what they say "Very Rare". I one time had seen a weird gold cart and the guy had painted a Super Mario Bros. 3 cart. It was actually a pretty good paint job but the screw holes gave it away and I knew there was no such cart but he said it was a very rare cart from Nintendo and he had it for $200.

What color was it?

[disgaeniac]

I think another reason why demand has risen a lot is also due to the inevitable fact that all video games will be digitally distributed sooner or later, making physical copies more in demand.

I agree.

I remember when (PS1) games that were semi-rare started to become available to buy digitally from the PSN as "PS One Classics"...many of my collector-friends were distraught because they'd worry that since the digital-version could now be bought for much less than the physical copies were going for...that any/all of their ps1 collection would be greatly devalued.

I never agreed w/ this because the people who were interested in/willing to pay high prices for hard to find physical releases always have...and always will be...*primarily*..."Collectors".

A collector may buy (if it ever becomes available) a digital Suikoden 2 (to personally play)...but that doesn't change how rare & hard it is to find sealed/mint-condition w/case & manual copies of the game.

Also, like the above poster said - a digital only future can only increase the value/raise the prices of the (then extinct) physical games that you actualy...*OWN*.

[atariboy]

Every time I go to a flea market and they have a gold cart thats what they say "Very Rare". I one time had seen a weird gold cart and the guy had painted a Super Mario Bros. 3 cart. It was actually a pretty good paint job but the screw holes gave it away and I knew there was no such cart but he said it was a very rare cart from Nintendo and he had it for $200.

What color was it?

It was the grey cart just painted gold. Also the back caution sticker was missing.

[jcalder8]

I think another reason why demand has risen a lot is also due to the inevitable fact that all video games will be digitally distributed sooner or later, making physical copies more in demand.

I think that as digital distribution becomes more common that the average game will drop in price but games that aren't released as DD will stay strong. The average person does not need or possibly want a physical copy. Look at what has happened with CDs since digital distribution became more common.

An example is Earthbound, if they never release it then the price will continue to rise but if they were to try and make as much money as possible and release it for every system to come out for the next 3 generations then the price will drop, I think.

[hexen]

It's something that I frequently discuss with my friend. I am not so optimistic about the future, though. Supply is only going to dwindle more, and regardless of demand ignorant resellers (see: The Devil) will think every NES cartridge is worth 20x it's weight in gold and buy up everything they see. The golden age is over - I'm just thankful for what i was able to snag before it ended several years back. The final nail in the coffin for me was when Half Price Books started pricing according to internet prices. It was the last bastion of hope, an official store selling games for a flat, cheap price in my area, but it has since become one of the worst priced sellers. On the bright side Goodwill seems to be making a comeback - for awhile they would put every game they got in the bid case, which was terribly frustrating, but I've gotten some amazing deals over the past few weeks.

[htimreimer]

I think another reason price has risen is because a lot people think that  because its old its worth a lot which is wrong the reason why games from the ultima series or the rare nintendo world championships go for so much is that they either have big fan base or rare

[george]

I think a lot of gamers are hitting the age of their 30s and they want those classics they grew up with.

Also, on eBay, you can find that classic game easily, but you have to pay a premium for finding it so easily. Want it cheap? Then hit up the garage sales. 

[gecko101]

I think it may be just the fact that these consoles are getting older. The nes is 28 years old l think. That would mean it would be harder to find working games and units now. it also would be possible that game collecting is just hyped right now.
Once I went to a game store and they were selling sonic the hedgehog 3 for $10.99!
Either way games are getting way more expensive and sadly I think it's going to stay that way.

[htimreimer]

Want it cheap? Then hit up the garage sales. 

or you can go to a thrift store the saskatoon value village is where i got sonic the hedgehog in mint for 4 dollers

[desocietas]

I think a lot of gamers are hitting the age of their 30s and they want those classics they grew up with.

Also, on eBay, you can find that classic game easily, but you have to pay a premium for finding it so easily. Want it cheap? Then hit up the garage sales. 

This.  We're nostalgic and have money (kind of) to buy things now. 

[theflea]

Its funny 10 years ago I was made fun of collecting old video games, people treated them like old VHS tapes are today. a rare game I payed $40 for 5 years ago goes for over $200 now. Personally if i walk into a store or at a flea market and find a game with no price, ask how much? and get "hold on let me look it up" as he looks it up on ebay i walk. I don't mind paying a fair price on a game, but if you go by what sellers are posting games at buy it now or high prices on Amazon. Then don't expect to sell much and you might have trouble paying the rent.

 

[blipcs76]

Its funny 10 years ago I was made fun of collecting old video games, people treated them like old VHS tapes are today. a rare game I payed $40 for 5 years ago goes for over $200 now. Personally if i walk into a store or at a flea market and find a game with no price, ask how much? and get "hold on let me look it up" as he looks it up on ebay i walk. I don't mind paying a fair price on a game, but if you go by what sellers are posting games at buy it now or high prices on Amazon. Then don't expect to sell much and you might have trouble paying the rent.

Yeah, I found a NES R.O.B. at a garage sale a few months ago and they had $50 on it.  Not sure if it worked or not, but I offered $20 to them for the "Nintendo robot " to the lady who was at the cash table.  They told me to ask one guy and as I made my way over there another guy rudely cut me off and said "No! They're twice that much on eBay!"  So I naturally walked off.  I hadn't priced them in a while, so when I got home and looked up actual auctions, most were ending around $60. 

I don't understand people who look at Buy It Now prices on eBay and think they'll get that amount on a garage sale.  When you've got people who are specifically looking for your item online and won't pay what you're asking with BIN, what makes people think that some random garage sale customer is going to pay top dollar?  Ugh.

I get irritated with people who look up the BIN price of their items and then ask that on their garage sale as much as I hate people who thumb through stacks of games and scan the barcodes of every single game to look up it's value.  I've spent years learning what games are rare and valuable and now some reseller with a smartphone is going through and snatching the best games.

[hexydes]

I think a lot of gamers are hitting the age of their 30s and they want those classics they grew up with.

Also, on eBay, you can find that classic game easily, but you have to pay a premium for finding it so easily. Want it cheap? Then hit up the garage sales. 

This is exactly it. For those in your late 20s-early 40s, remember how baseball cards were huge when you were a kid, and there was a huge market for them? You know why that was? Because that's what your dad collected when he was a kid, and he was trying to recapture a part of his youth. Demand up, supply stays the same, price goes up. There were obviously some rare cards out there, but the market peaked when people were buying entire seasons of that current year in order to get a rookie card of that year's top player(s), because it would be "a good investment". Most of that stuff isn't worth much now, because that generation got over it.

Same thing will happen with our generation. The big differences in video games compared to cards are:

1. Games/systems cost a ton more to buy as compared to pictures of people on cardboard. It was so easy for a mom to throw out some "silly cards" after their kid went off to school, not to mention they are much smaller (again, easier to toss).

2. Mass production. Most of the games for the mainstream systems were made in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions (or tens of millions sometimes). I don't have any stats to back it up, but I would be willing to bet that there were a LOT more copies of Earthbound made than 1914 Babe Ruth rookie cards.

We're definitely in a bubble, and it will collapse as the people in our generation with only a passing interest/nostalgia move on to other things. If we learned anything from housing in 2008, what happens when a bubble pops? Good news for you collectors out there.