VGCollect Forum
General and Gaming => Classic Video Games => Topic started by: mayberry on May 01, 2012, 09:31:05 pm
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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
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 $10. They're never going to move at that price. There's just no market for Saturn games around here.
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I think a lot of it has to do with ignorance when it comes to Flea Markets. The same could be said about certain stores as well. They just see the name Mario and think it's worth something. I don't really think retail stores are concerned with pricing things too high to actually sell. That makes zero economic sense. The chain stores (Vintage Stock for example) most likely have set prices for certain sought after titles based on the fact that the can sell them at that price. Just because a couple of the stores around you have copies that sit doesn't mean that another store isn't selling one copy per day at the same price.
If a company really priced things to sit, they would do just that...until the store went out of business. GameXchange in OK is a prime example of this. They don't follow the rules of supply v demand and are now suffering for it here. Most of the stores around me have been cut down in size, relocated to smaller (cheaper) storefronts, or have closed all together.
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There's just no market for Saturn games around here.
And I think that's where from a business standpoint the prices will fluctuate so weirdly. If you already have shelf space, there's no reason to price it to move just to get rid of it at a loss. The product cost is already assumed in getting it from wherever it was gotten, so in the end it costs the business zero to leave it there.
That being said, I bet if asked, they'd move on the price, especially if its a small shop.
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The thing about games that are "priced to sit" is that, eventually, there's going to be someone dumb enough to pay the super high price. I mean, there are people on Kijiji over here selling super-common NES games for 15-25$ 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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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@amauriel I will have to visit said stores next time I am in Cleveland!
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@amauriel I will have to visit said stores next time I am in Cleveland!
The place that had a bunch of cool stuff (and toys! so many 80's toys! even a TMNT blimp!) but that was completely overpriced was Big Fun Vintage. The place that had the good deals and has had some really random stuff is Video Game Connection. (It's got the best-worst storefront sign ever.)
The last time we were there, we found this other random vintage store. It's called Star Pop and you should probably call before you go, as it's one guy and he doesn't really do a good job of keeping his hours. However, last time we were there, Ronalopolis scored both sets of the Resident Evil Video Game Stars figurines, and I got a Harvest Moon game, a TurboGrafx game or two, and THIS (for $8!):
(http://i.imgur.com/Kck07l.jpg)
I also scored a couple of packs of Reboot trading cards and some other random 80's/90's stuff. Super fun place!
Edit: Also, how have you been? Haven't seen you around!
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Wowza that is one awesome glass!!
Ive been MIA because work and females are killing me! Both require more time than I really want to give. lol :/
That and always broke..
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I work in a game store and I'm our retro game guy. I take care of everything from N64 and back.
I hope it doesn't make us as game store employees sound like jackasses, but when we buy games from people we have to take into account that the service of cleaning and maintaining the flow of these games has a price of its own.
For example, you can buy a copy of Donkey Kong Country for SNES or Super Mario 3 for NES online for 12 or 15 bucks. and thats what we will pay people copies of them for. Its more or less the convenience factor, along with the running a business / paying employees factor.
Even though I work at the store and buy games from the store, I still buy lots of games elsewhere for more reasonable prices when theyre the more common titles.
Super Mario Bros. 3 I just bought at a yard sale... like 10 times hahaha. Upgraded the label condition a few times for the one I kept, then used any that I found extra to trade with other people for different games.
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For example, you can buy a copy of Donkey Kong Country for SNES or Super Mario 3 for NES online for 12 or 15 bucks. and thats what we will pay people copies of them for.
Your store pays ebay prices for retro games? You're not going to be in business very long doing that. How do you make any money?
Where is this store? If you're paying prices like that, I'm bringing my dups to you.
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we dont pay those prices for all games, more just the popular ones, and even some of those we still pay a bit less. and after all our payout is said and done, even with our mark-up (SMB3 we sell for 29, Dr mario for 12, the DKC SNES titles for 29, 34 and 39 respectively, along with Conkers that we give 50 store credit for and mark up to 129) we still can't keep them in stock.
Id also rather not say what store I'm at because the owner is a very paranoid guy who doesnt like our information given out, and if I say the name of our company in this thread Im sure he would find it in search results at some point while hes searching on the internet.
But yeah, even at the 29 to 39 prices for common games, we still can barely keep them in stock.
Sometimes the store owner will just go on eBay and order lots of games in bulk (the other day he ordered 20 SMB2's for NES at c.12 dollars a piece, and we will sell them at 34 and have them gone within a couple weeks.
Its wild seeing the gme collector lifestyle from both sides of the table these days, as the collector and also the seller.
You're not going to be in business very long doing that.
And actually we're just celebrating our 25th year as one of the most successful retro game stores in Western Canada! :D People travel from all over Western Canada to come to our store, also from the northern states (I know it sounds bad, but I cant remember which State we border on here in Alberta. I'm originally from Nova Scotia so Im still getting used to everything out here haha).
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That absolutly blows my mind. There is no way I would pay those kind of prices, but I guess people do every day.
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Yeah i know. Every time someone comes in and buys Conkers or Chrono Trigger (which we sell both for the same price) it blows my mind. But when you think about it, standard retail mark-up is always c.50%. so if we go online and order a game into our store at 60 bucks, then we need to c. double that to also pay for making it worth our time to order it in and process it.
But don`t get me wrong... I would neeeeeeever pay 130 for either of those games! Haha.
EDIT:: We did have a Bubble Bath Babes come into the store one time! It wasnt me that did the payout though. Where I know what games are worth I really try my hardest to give people the best cash / store credit I possibly can. Im the nice pothead guy that works at the store haha.
The one who processed the lot with BBB knew the customer had noi idea what they had, so the store literally pulled an 800% profit on it. They gave the guy $1 cash per game in the lot.
But that actually really pissed me off. If I would have been handling that transaction he would have at least walked out of our store with a few hundred dollars. Something more reasonable.
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There's a video store in town that sells every non-sports game for $25, cart only. It's ridiculous! And the sports games went for a dollar each (some CIB), so I don't see why games like Pinball Dreams and Road Rash 2 have to be so goddamn high.
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If anyone sees a priced to sell copy of X-Com: UFO Defense on PSX in the longbox, would you pick it up for me? I'd appreciate it.
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If anyone sees a priced to sell copy of X-Com: UFO Defense on PSX in the longbox, would you pick it up for me? I'd appreciate it.
I'll keep an eye out for it...
Does this have anything to do w/ the new X-Com: Enemy Unknown game that just came out?!
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Yeah, it's really good, so I'd like to get the original (yes, I know the original, original came out on PC, but I really like PSX versions of PC games for some reason).
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Is *EVERYTHING* turn-based/menu-based in the new game?
Basically, is it playable for a one-handed gamer?
Thanks :)
I like a lot of PS1 versions of games, too :P
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Yeah, nothing is timing based except for multiplayer. You should be able to play it without a problem.
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Yeah, nothing is timing based except for multiplayer. You should be able to play it without a problem.
Thanks, godnightshade!
That made my morning :P