Retro collecting is dying!

[jcalder8]

Yup I said it. I don't mean that it will be dead in a week or anything but I am calling it now that it will be dead within two years(really one and a half years since it is more likely to die over the summer than around Christmas)

Over the last year I have seen the posts and interest on 3 of the forums that I frequent drastically decline. Long time users no longer posting and a lack of new users joining(of course this site is awesome(because of me.... and a little bit of soera) so it is still growing). What this says to me is that interest is starting to fade. It happened with sports cards and comics and it will happen with retro video games.

Over the course of the year I think we will start to see an increase in the number of Ebay sales, everything from low end to high end, sales will be strong and people who are late to collecting will continue to buy or collectors will still need to pick up the missing items to their collections. The sales will increase because of the bump in resellers it is now more common knowledge that video games are worth uber monies(lol). This will over saturate the market and as the demand decreases resellers will end up being stuck with items they can't give away ex: SMB/DH. When this happens it's only a matter of weeks until the whole market crashes.

The expensive items will always hold their value but, for example, Final Fantasy VII will plummet in price because there are so many of the damned things(lol).

So what do you think? Am I on the money? Do you think it will happen sooner? Later? At all?

[soera]

Heh first off thanks for the props!

But in seriousness, I tend to see that its not necessarily going to die ... but its going to move onto a different kind of retro. Cartridge people are one brand of people and, for the most part, a lot of the serious hardcore collectors have gotten what they were looking for. Not all, but a lot. Soon its going to get into another type of retro collecting and thats going to be disk game collectors. They arent the type of people that are going to be scrounging the thrift stores and what not looking for nice CIB games cause, honestly, they arent to be had often at places like that. They are going to be the crowd that grew up with internet and are going to be buying every single piece of their collection on Ebay/Amazon/Craigslist and what not. And they arent going to be visiting websites looking for games cause every one of them is going to be on those places they search. I tend to see Dreamcast/Saturn/PS1/Gamecube stuff rising a lot soon.

[hexen]

No. Retro collecting is far from dying... if anything it is becoming way too mainstream. The ludicrous price jumps over the last couple of years on pretty much EVERYTHING is pretty solid evidence to this, I would say.

However, if you are right and people are becoming less interested in collecting old gaming stuff, I welcome it. I welcome it with open arms. If I can go somewhere and not have grandpa think his copy of Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 is worth $50... if I can go somewhere and not have a reseller buy up everything he sees and mark it up 1000%... then it will be some kind of miracle. However, while this nice little scenario you've laid out would be ideal, it isn't happening. Prices will continue to go up as hipsters with no idea of what things are worth continue to buy things at prices that are absurd and make people think it's ok to sell them for such prices.

TL;DR: No, it's not dying.

[jobocan]

I frankly don't think so. Maybe something will happen so that prices might start going back down in price to something more reasonable... But this is a fad that won't end for a while, especially with all the youtube channels and websites dedicated to retro collecting like the Game Chasers and such.

[htimreimer]

its not dying but it is slowing down and i can see what soera said happening which is not a bad thing, it will still take 2 to 8 years before the market stable again but it will  happen

[darko]

I don't see it dying completely. Video games are a huge defining characteristic for Generation Y (and the later years of Generation X). There will be a nostalgia factor there until we're all dead and gone. Collecting might slow down, but I highly doubt it will ever die off completely. Video games are a massive entertainment empire now. As long as we have video games being made there will be new blood brought into collecting. The numbers will more than likely dwindle as time moves on, as those interested in playing the older titles grow up in a world without physical media. As far as in the next 2 years? No.

Most collectors are between the age of 25 & 35 that I've met (getting to the point where they have some disposable income). I think this is the key factor when it comes to looking to the future of collecting. You have the SMS/NES collectors (those who grew up with the systems as their primary) that are now between the ages of ~ 30-35+, the 25-30 age range out looking for SNES/Gen nostalgia, and the 20-25 year olds looking for N64 & PS1 stuff. My ages might be a little off but I think you can see the picture I'm trying to draw. I realize that most of us on this site are collecting across platforms and generations, but not everyone does this. The biggest price divergence at the moment seems to be in the SNES world, where games have basically doubled or tripled in price over the past year or so. The same thing was going on in the NES world several years ago. We'll see the same thing going on with the N64 & PS1 libraries soon enough.

I think another system that is about to see a hefty price bump is the GBA. Consider this: if you're favorite system is the SNES (which seems to be the retro system in the highest demand at the moment), you're more than likely going to like the offerings from the GBA library. At the same time, you're going to have collectors that grew up with the GBA as their primary handheld coming into the marketplace. (we're going to have an overlap in interest). Thus, a price spike in GBA games. I don't think GBA titles will get totally out of control, but I think they will be inflated for a year or so while the overlapping interest drives up demand.

[jcalder8]

No. Retro collecting is far from dying... if anything it is becoming way too mainstream. The ludicrous price jumps over the last couple of years on pretty much EVERYTHING is pretty solid evidence to this, I would say....

This is why I am saying that it is dying. To use a Yogi Berra quote "Nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded" Everyone knows that they are worth so much but from what I have seen there aren't as many people collecting. Having more people selling than buying is never a good way to keep value up.

I don't think collecting well continue on much past the SNES. Gaming in general was more mainstream by the time the N64 was done it's lifespan so unlike previous console generations most people who wanted it had it. Also in my opinion SMB holds up better than Mario 64. I have an easier time getting my son to play classic 2d gameplay than dated 3d. I think most people who grew up playing Goldeneye and the like have moved on the COD and Halo. I went back and tried to play some Goldeneye and it was fun for the nostalgia but honestly I would just rather play a modern FPS if I was in the mood and I think the same can be said of most 3d games.

[htimreimer]

the biggest problem with the snes and the reason i dont have one is because the prices for the console and games are way too high for a something that was as mass produced as it was and i think the reason for the high prices is this retro gaming fad thats not going away anytime soon

[turf]

Do I think collecting is goonna die?  No.
Do I think there is a "bubble" that is going to pop? Absolutely.

Prices are becoming overly inflated and too many people are buying games as an investment. People buy stuff up and try to flip the games for a quick buck. Sound familiar? This is the housing market about 2005.

[darko]

This is the housing market about 2005.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I don't know anyone who's out getting a sub-prime loan to "invest" in video games

Which brings me to another point - if you are in this thinking that you're (not you Turf, the collecting world) going to someday turn a big profit, you're wasting your time and money. Seriously. If you get lucky and find a copy of EB for $5.00 then good for you, sell that crap. If you're holding out for the peak of video game collecting to unload, you might have missed it. If you're spending money on collecting for personal reasons (like the nostalgia factor, want to have a hobby that the whole family can participate in/enjoy, etc) then carry on!

Video game collecting is a very inexpensive hobby when compared to most other things. Collecting isn't going to make any of us rich (unless one of us starts up a store or something that turns into the next GameStop).

[scott]

I have an easier time getting my son to play classic 2d gameplay than dated 3d.

As much as I love my Saturn, I'd say anything in the N64, Saturn, PS1 era has a hard time holding up and doesn't age well. Though PS2 games and Xbox games seem to be more resistant to aging, in my opinion. I can play PS2 games all day long and not have any issues with them looking crappy. ha.

I agree that there is a bubble, but I don't think collecting is going to die, not as long as new systems come out and games remain physical objects. IF the console market moves heavy into digital, I'll eventually think of their games in the same light I think of most PC games. "worthless". Not worthless as in resale value, but more in the need to worry about keeping back ups and whether or not I'll lose my collection to hard drive/hardware/DRM failure.

[jcalder8]

Do I think collecting is goonna die?  No.
Do I think there is a "bubble" that is going to pop? Absolutely.

Prices are becoming overly inflated and too many people are buying games as an investment. People buy stuff up and try to flip the games for a quick buck. Sound familiar? This is the housing market about 2005.

You're right, it's not going to fully die but the bubble is about ready to burst.

The housing market is a great example.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I don't know anyone who's out getting a sub-prime loan to "invest" in video games

Some people have, just like they did with comic books. Also it's not the hoarders that is the problem it's the people who are trying to make a quick buck. At the second hand store I used to work at I would price video game items ridiculously high because I knew one reseller would buy it no matter what. The highest I hit was 39.99 for a loose N64 console which he bought as soon as he saw it. I dropped the prices back down after that because I felt guilty about it. This is the kind of person that is going to burst the bubble because he will never get back his investment and kids who wanted the N64 growing up got one for the most part so they don't feel the need to get it like the SNES and NES generation.

[htimreimer]

when it comes to all digital download games, i think sony and microsoft will go all in for it but i doubt nintendo will go all in

[darko]

The housing market is a great example.

Totally disagree. The reason the housing market collapsed has very little to do with the people buying and flipping houses. It had mostly to do with predatory lending practices and horrible, horrible banking rules and government regulatory decisions. It's true that there was a supply/demand imbalance, but that "bubble" was only possible because of the artificially inflated purchasing power of the consumer. There's a big difference between running up a couple of grand on a credit card and owing $500,000 - $1.5 million on a home. Ebay doesn't run like Freddie Mac.

Some people have, just like they did with comic books.

Comic books might be a great example.

[jcalder8]

Totally disagree. The reason the housing market collapsed has very little to do with the people buying and flipping houses. It had mostly to do with predatory lending practices and horrible, horrible banking rules and government regulatory decisions. It's true that there was a supply/demand imbalance, but that "bubble" was only possible because of the artificially inflated purchasing power of the consumer. There's a big difference between running up a couple of grand on a credit card and owing $500,000 - $1.5 million on a home. Ebay doesn't run like Freddie Mac.

I will freely admit that there was a lot more factors that went into the housing crash but I was looking at it from people who know nothing about houses are buying houses. Just because you can go out and spend 60 on FFVII doesn't mean that it makes good sense to do it in the same way that with the banks poor lending practices people were able to go out and spend 600,000 on a house that is either A not worth it or B they are not able to afford.... yeah let's just say that comics are a great example and move on