General and Gaming > Classic Video Games

I heard retro game prices have peaked

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bikingjahuty: --- Quote from: sworddude on July 02, 2017, 02:02:06 pm --- --- Quote from: bikingjahuty on July 02, 2017, 11:59:11 am ---The craze has already been in full swing since 2013 so it is now 4-years in. That is a lot of time to go to thrift stores, flea markets, ebay, and the like to get what you want. Very few of us are The Flea and literally collect everything. If we were than 30-years might be a realistic time table for this all to end. And whether pre-2010 prices will happen is to be seen, but it surely will not happen on everything. Things like Little Samson, Hagane, and Sculptors Cut will never go back to what they used to be worth, but I can honestly see them losing at least half their value in 8-years. And even though you do not see the value in things like baseball cards, Beanie Babies or Atari games does not mean that others can't. I have no idea how old you are, but assuming you are in your 20s or 30s, you can appreciate things like SNES or Saturn games. Likewise someone who grew up in the 50s will have a easier time getting into baseball cards because that was a big thing back then. Atari collecting was popular in the late 90s to mid 2000s because that age group was in their 20s and early 30s at the time, and it died out in less than a decade. --- End quote --- I do see why people appreciate them for example atari games.  It's not for me gameplay wise. Than again the NES is only 8 years younger than the atari 2600 why is there no nes crash yet. Surely many nes collectors are in the same age group as the atari collectors back than?  Some years ago already actually. The same thing should happen however nes games are actually a bit better than the true basics wich is why the crash hasn't happen yet. Atari games are less fun than nes games. They are actually starting to look like something with genuinly good games. Even new 8 bit games are made since there are people who prefer these kind of games and the art style for them games. Why are so few people collecting for like colecovision, and all those other atari like systems because they are super basic in sound and grapics. Usually for the people that have these systems with some games It's more as a collectors piece wich is barely used at all. Atari is almost pure nostalgia while nes onwards is actually pretty solid attracting also other people without nostalgia. Has nice music and the grapics look nice especially in some games with it's own 8 bit style. I can't say the same thing for atari. I grew up in the 16 bit era yet I do find master system and nes games fun to play because they have something. atari however is not that interesting I do see why people appreciate it but I can't get into these games. One can appreciate things but not all things that are appreciated should be considered fun by everyone. Obviously the same thing can be said for the golden 16 bit era but at the very least it is allot more solid and a large group of people pay good money in most cases for gameplay. Obviously a collector pays more for cib stuff and the rarities but also players have to pay allot for just cart only or games with missing pieces. The big money in atari was mainly reserverd for the games wich were really rare not really for gameplay. obviously games like pacman had value in the craze but overall it was more for collectability with the high ticket items. Most of the good games on atari were not rare at all so i'm pretty sure for most players money wasn't an issue at all especially lose cart collectors unless you were going for a full set and or rarities wich is pretty impossible for atari. i'm not saying that a crash will never happen, but the nes crash should have happened by now quite some years ago if were going with your theory. --- End quote --- NES was not in full blown pandemonium until the late 80s. Sure, people owned one as early as 85 when it came out, but he mainstream didn't really latch onto it until around 88 or 89. But at this point I'm splitting hairs a bit. The main point is that people born as early as the mid 70s and as late as the mid-90s are the ones fueling the collecting craze, which started about the same time for all post 2600 consoles up to probably PS2. So even though it did come out only a few years after the hayday of Atari, it wasn't widely collected for until 2013, along with most other consoles of the 1990s. Another trend I've noticed is how people have been jumping from one console to the next once they are satisfied collecting for the console they started with. A lot of NES collectors became SNES collectors when they could not longer obtain certain NES titles, or maybe they finished collecting for it. Then the SNES crowd jumped to Genesis, which then jumped to Saturn, and so on, and so on. However, at this point, there is not a mainstream console released up to the PS3/Wii/360 that has not seen a significant bump in interest from collectors, save maybe the OG XBOX (which baffles me since it has a very good library). So unless a bunch of people jump on board heavily with PS2 collecting or move onto the 7th gen, I don't see collecting expanding much more. I truly believe that video game collecting has hit a wall and it'll only become less popular, and for the most part less expensive from here on out. I've seen too many correlations for me to believe it is a coincidence or that this collecting trend will last over a decade while none of the others have. Sure, many NES games are still fun to play, but so are reading comics, which had a huge collecting scene in the 90s. On top of that, this assumes that most collectors collect to play, which from what I've seen in person and online is the exception and not the rule. Most video game collectors collect to scratch the itch of nostalgia that becomes harder and harder to satisfy the more games you collect and the deeper you get into the hobby. Eventually, spending nearly a grand on a CIB gem on the NES loses its value. A ton of games sitting on your shelf eventually lose their meaning or at least do not have the same positive reinforcement they did when you first started. Also, as I said, people change as they get older and adopt responsibilities that make being a hardcore collector less achievable financially and logistically.

scoobs22: --- Quote from: burningdoom on July 01, 2017, 06:34:42 pm --- --- 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. --- End quote --- "As long as there is demand...."

Warmsignal: I'd say we're fast approaching the point where many people will stop buying because of the prices. When most consoles start to average $30 - $40 per common/popular game, I can see people finally saying no. If that happens, then things might change. Fads come and go, so that's another factor. Most of us are generally in the same age range and have been doing this for roughly the same amount of time. A lot of folks will reach a point where the novelty wears off. A lot of us are starting to get a bit older, focusing more on family, career, and whatever trend comes about next because I think this one has just about been done to death. You don't see a lot of tweens and teens getting hardcore into old-school game collecting. So it's gonna happen. Is it there yet? Probably not, but it isn't far off.

tripredacus: You cannot take the entire market as a whole. You can only use console to region groupings to determine pricing. For example, I can't compare the market of 2600 US vs Genesis US vs Saturn JP vs SNES NA and have them all the same. It doesn't work. It is true that each console/region goes through trends. Atari 2600 US is well past its peak by now and we will see some other consoles pick up the pace (such as PS1 US) and others fall back down such as SMS.

Warmsignal: --- Quote from: tripredacus on July 07, 2017, 10:58:53 am ---You cannot take the entire market as a whole. You can only use console to region groupings to determine pricing. For example, I can't compare the market of 2600 US vs Genesis US vs Saturn JP vs SNES NA and have them all the same. It doesn't work. It is true that each console/region goes through trends. Atari 2600 US is well past its peak by now and we will see some other consoles pick up the pace (such as PS1 US) and others fall back down such as SMS. --- End quote --- What about for example SNES NA vs Saturn NA? Saturn was a flop, yet the prices on it are still higher on average than the very nostalgic SNES. PS1 NA was a very popular platform, yet it remains with a lower average of prices. What about more modern platforms with really expensive games like PS2 and GameCube? Even Wii U? That to me is indiciative that you can take them all as a whole. The same people who will pay out big money for a "rare" PS2 game are essentially the same ones collecting SNES. I think most collectors are cross-platform, cross-gen collectors who basically go for most of the mainstream consoles all at once. Everybody is in competition over just about everything, in my view. Hence we've seen averages increase with every platform save 7th gen, since the mid 2000s.

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