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| I heard retro game prices have peaked |
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| bikingjahuty:
This is mostly anecdotal, but I do believe that the retro craze, including prices, has peaked and it is gradually declining. I have been trying to downsize a little recently and have several highly collectable, desirable games on ebay at the moment, all at competitive prices and no one seems to be biting. it isn't just me either, people either seem to be waiting for auctions now or someone to post a specific game really low, which brings the price down overall even more. I have noticed this on nearly every game I've been selling, which again, is a personal account, but having sold many games over the past several years, I can't recall it being this hard ever to get a fair price for your games on ebay. The other part of me that thinks that the retro collecting craze has peaked is the amount of collectors I've seen leave the hobby over the past year and a half, some with massive collections (4000+ games). Being a regular at various retro game stores around town, I have also seen for the first time in years retro games remain on shelves for more than a few days, and in some cases gradually accumulate over time. A few store employees have even backed up my statement about collectors leaving the hobby, stating that they are getting people in on occasion who decided to sell of their collections to the store. I think we as game collectors assume that far more people are into this hobby than there actually is, and I honestly beleive that not only are people just getting bored with the hobby and wanting to move on, but also many collectors have everything they want, or close to it, and see little desire to buy games they've had now for years. I think what this all means is that prices will gradually come down on everything. Certain games like Contra or Super Metroid which aren't rare, but highly sought after will probably see the biggest decline in price, while games that are genuinely rare will probably still be insanely pricey, but they will get slightly cheaper. Sadly, prices will never return to their pre-collecting craze levels, but hey, as long as games like Super Mario World are going for around $5 again and a lot of the resellers get out of the hobby, I wont complain much. |
| burningdoom:
--- Quote from: scoobs22 on July 01, 2017, 11:05:43 am --- --- Quote from: dreama1 on June 30, 2017, 08:58:38 pm ---I heard retro game prices have peaked, and are beginning a slow decline as of 2016/2017. Examples include earthbound and wild guns. Any truth to this? --- End quote --- These games are no longer being produced. As long as there is demand for these products with a static supply, prices will trend upward over the long term. Econ 101. --- End quote --- That's not necessarily true when it comes to collectibles, though. Collector market bubbles burst, and interest rises and fades with trends and changing generations. The baseball card market bottoming out in the late 80s is a perfect example. Or the bubble-burst of the comic collector's market in the 90s. |
| sworddude:
With lose carts I think it will happen allot sooner if it happens. Cib is more collectible especially in very good upwards condition wich is harder to come by and in allot of cases not readily available in the better shapes. The amount of excellent condition boxed copies is far less than the amount of lose carts available. That being said I can imagine the market really crashing and if it happens I'd say at least after 20 to 30 years when there is a chance that nobody cares, This will than also apply for more rare consoles such as pc engine neo geo etc since the generations do not really about those consoles. but than again does one want to wait that long for really cheap games if it happens ofcourse. It kinda seems less enjoyable to get into the hobby when your allot older in less healthy condition litterally. There is a reason why people pay high prices now. There are however always emulators, so to be fair gameplay wise no one can complain at this moment and it will only become allot easier as the time progresses. |
| bikingjahuty:
--- Quote from: sworddude on July 01, 2017, 07:01:08 pm ---That being said I can imagine the market really crashing and if it happens I'd say at least after 20 to 30 years when there is a --- End quote --- I think 20-30 years is wayyy too generous an amount of time; I'm think by the end of this decade it'll cool off a lot, and by around midway next decade we may actually see prices on many things down to pre-2010 levels again. Collecting trends correspond with age cohorts coming of age, getting careers, getting disposable income, and they likewise die with many of them taking on financial responsibilities (kids, marriage, mortgage, car payments, ect) that leave little room for collecting things from their childhood, and in some cases forcing them to sell off. Right now, the cohort of kids that grew up in the late 80s to early 2000s are this coming of age group, and while collecting may spread to PS3/360 collecting, like it has with SNES or NES, I highly doubt it will. Pretty much once the current wave of collectors gives up on collecting retro games from the 80s and 90s, nobody is going to give a shit about those games anymore, certainly not a bunch of kids that were born in the mid 2000s who don't even know what a PS2 is. As someone else pointed out, collecting trends have come and gone over the years and follow the same pattern. Video games are no different. |
| kamikazekeeg:
It's why I think we see Microsoft supporting backwards compatibility with the original Xbox. Those that grew up with that era of gaming are older now and in that right place to market too. Those of us that grew up in the 80's/90's era of gaming have largely gotten what we wanted, or hit the point of "too much" and scaled down or sold most of it off to pay for something else more important. That in turns puts games back on the market and leads to more supply, where less demand then means lowers prices. I'm curious if we'll see any significant rise with gaming based on the later generations. Nintendo inherently has a stronger collector potential than other systems, no matter the generation, and there is already a market for it, but in a few more years, more of the young people from that time will be at the point a lot of us were a few years back and may want to get those games back. I'm just curious if it'll have the same support the older generations had. Cartridges as they are seem like they have more collection potential and not too mention with how easy it is to have bad discs that are unusable compared to cartridges. |
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