Priced To Sit vs. Priced to Sell

[mayberry]

I have this ongoing mental rolodex of the various shops and pricing on retro games (primarily NES, since that's what I collect).  I have come to notice that some titles are priced to sit and others are priced to sell.  It's as if some titles aren't even meant to be sold, some for nefarious purposes, and others for reasons unbeknownst.

Vintage Stock hoards copies of SMB3, Marble Madness, TMNT Arcade, etc all for 5-10 over the going average.  I figure these are their show pieces.  It's like street cred under glass.

Game Xchange has Zelda, SMB 2 and 3, Final Fantasy, etc all for $35.  I figure this is because their pricing geeks have no clue what games are worth and price based on name alone.  Some games -- like the American Video version of Impossible Mission 2 -- sell for $3 or less.

A pawn shop near here has Nobunga's Ambition 2 for $75.  I haven't figured this one out yet.

Anyone else noticing this?  I hope I have explained it well enough. O_O

[soera]

Lol do you live in OKC? Cause that is my area and we have exactly the same thing (other than that pawn shop finally sold Ambition 2).

[scott]

A place over by me has games priced all over the place some deals are worth it, others not so much. Though I did notice they have Iron Storm for Saturn listed for a little less than going price on Ebay and Amazon... It's sat there for months though. I credit that to a low interest in Saturn games in my area. The also have Powerslave for Saturn also, for way more than what going price is... so I have no idea what they are thinking on their pricing.

[darko]

The one nice thing about the Vintage Stocks in OKC is that they price the CIB items the exact same price as the carts by themselves. Sure, finding one is lucky at best, but when you do it's a nice surprise.

[foxhack]

I was in Tennessee visiting my sisters a couple of years ago and we went to this huge indoor flea market - a really nice place, btw - but there were a couple of retro game shops that had stuff like Metal Gear Solid for $30 and Final Fantasy VII for $80. It was ridiculous.

[teknophyl]

There's a shop about a half hour from me with similar pricing... they have some nice pieces, but I think they take advantage of the fact that they are the "only game in town". And in this case, everything they sell is overpriced. They're selling GBA SPs for $60 used... but they established their cred to me right away with their Vectrex and some excellent JP imports that are way out of my price range.

They rely a lot on their arcade though, which gets a lot of traffic. So I don't see the pricing changing anytime soon.

[mayberry]

My leading theory is that some games are literally meant to never sell. I think some stores like having all those big name brand games on display.  Flea market guys are the worst.  I would almost swear that some of the priced to sit games at flea markets are priced that way so these guys don't have to part with the pieces.  It's a weird phenomenon.  Reminds me of the "yard sales" on Hoarders where picture frames are $10 each, etc.

[blipcs76]

There's a couple of different game stores in my city that have a good selection of retro games and they're not priced too bad.  One is definitely worse though. For example, they have a handful of common Saturn games on display, the cheapest of which are around $10.  They're never going to move at that price.  There's just no market for Saturn games around here.

[darko]

I think a lot of it has to do with ignorance when it comes to Flea Markets. The same could be said about certain stores as well. They just see the name Mario and think it's worth something. I don't really think retail stores are concerned with pricing things too high to actually sell. That makes zero economic sense. The chain stores (Vintage Stock for example) most likely have set prices for certain sought after titles based on the fact that the can sell them at that price. Just because a couple of the stores around you have copies that sit doesn't mean that another store isn't selling one copy per day at the same price.

If a company really priced things to sit, they would do just that...until the store went out of business. GameXchange in OK is a prime example of this. They don't follow the rules of supply v demand and are now suffering for it here. Most of the stores around me have been cut down in size, relocated to smaller (cheaper) storefronts, or have closed all together.

[teknophyl]

There's just no market for Saturn games around here.

And I think that's where from a business standpoint the prices will fluctuate so weirdly. If you already have shelf space, there's no reason to price it to move just to get rid of it at a loss. The product cost is already assumed in getting it from wherever it was gotten, so in the end it costs the business zero to leave it there.

That being said, I bet if asked, they'd move on the price, especially if its a small shop.

[jobocan]

The thing about games that are "priced to sit" is that, eventually, there's going to be someone dumb enough to pay the super high price. I mean, there are people on Kijiji over here selling super-common NES games for 15-25$ each, and people are actually buying them, it's crazy. Heck, I've seen people ASKING to pay that much for them. Stuff like "Hey guys on kijiji, I'm looking for earthbound and would be willing to spend 200$ on the cartridge alone!".... I mean, what?
I don't really have any retro game stores to speak of around here, beyond a reseller at a local flea market... but even that place has ridiculously-priced items that actually sell from time to time.

[amauriel]

I think the other thing with the "priced to sit" is that some people don't want to see something leave their collection.

I was in Cleveland and there's this amazing vintage store...games, toys, clothes, the lot. They had a Vectrex for $250. We ALMOST bought it, before some Googling determined how out of price that really was. This has been a few years ago, and the Vectrex was about $150 at the time.

We then head to a used game store that I had found online. We spent about $150 and that got us the Vectrex they had (at $50), plus a couple of Coleco SuperAction controllers ($2 each, they didn't know what they were and I recognized them), a light phaser for the Genesis, connectors and cables we had been missing, a bunch of N64 games, a couple Jaguar games, etc. Two huge bags of stuff, plus the Vectrex. Those guys seemed pretty sad when we told them we were just there for the weekend and it'd probably be a year before we'd be back. (Side note: The last time we were back in that store I scored the Japanese N64 version of Ocarina of Time for something like $12.)

The point of the story is that the vintage store needs to say that they have rare consoles and games...and the rare ones do not come in as often. If they price something rarer completely out of league, they can then keep that advertising going until something better comes in, then drop the price and make their profit. And if someone comes in willing to pay the exorbitant cost in the meantime, more profit for them.

[jobocan]

We then head to a used game store that I had found online. We spent about $150 and that got us the Vectrex they had (at $50), plus a couple of Coleco SuperAction controllers ($2 each, they didn't know what they were and I recognized them), a light phaser for the Genesis, connectors and cables we had been missing, a bunch of N64 games, a couple Jaguar games, etc. Two huge bags of stuff, plus the Vectrex. Those guys seemed pretty sad when we told them we were just there for the weekend and it'd probably be a year before we'd be back. (Side note: The last time we were back in that store I scored the Japanese N64 version of Ocarina of Time for something like $12.)

The point of the story is that the vintage store needs to say that they have rare consoles and games...and the rare ones do not come in as often. If they price something rarer completely out of league, they can then keep that advertising going until something better comes in, then drop the price and make their profit. And if someone comes in willing to pay the exorbitant cost in the meantime, more profit for them.

That store sounds awesome >_<  I paid 150$ for my Vectrex from someone on Kijiji, and the controller needed repairs (which I have yet to do.... too bad finding Vectrex controllers is nearly impossible)... though it did come with a bag full of atari games as well.

I get what you're saying though, it makes sense in a way... though I'll say it's a shady practice, and I like to not shop at stores that do stuff like that... like the one store in the shopping centre here that has a boxed bally astrocade for 300$ (or was it 400? I don't remember).

[mayberry]

The point of the story is that the vintage store needs to say that they have rare consoles and games...and the rare ones do not come in as often. If they price something rarer completely out of league, they can then keep that advertising going until something better comes in, then drop the price and make their profit. And if someone comes in willing to pay the exorbitant cost in the meantime, more profit for them.

This is what I'm talking about. :)

I'm whittling down the points now, but it seems to be three different scenarios for games priced to sit:

1. Deliberate marketing practice designed to increase visibility while also increasing sales of lesser priced games
2. A psychological issue(disorder) wherein the seller cannot part with the product
3. Brand convolution leading to inappropriately priced goods

So, sometimes games priced to sit are done so with a conscious or unconscious decision to do so based on misguided promotional value or inability to cope with loss (respectively).  Other times it is an inadvertent action based on derived emotional value rather than supply/demand.  And games priced to sit determine the value/prevalence of games priced to sell (subject to environmental variance within the establishment in which they are sold).

At some point I will whittle this down to a single line, "string theory" style equation.

[pceslayer]

@amauriel I will have to visit said stores next time I am in Cleveland!