ebay and prices of games

[final fight cd]

if you are like me you feel that retro video games are WAY too overpriced. it just blows my mind that FFVII - the second highest selling game on the ps1 -can fetch prices around the $50 dollar mark. even earthbound, which according to racketboy is not rare at all, goes for around $100 dollars cart only. complete bullshit.

where do these prices come from and what makes ebay the grand aurthority for prices? is there an official price guide for video games, much like baseball cards?

i get the impression people are just posting values of items based off of other seller's values, which is why prices are so high.

what do you people think?

[dedalusdedalus]

Supply and demand. Read about it sometime.

[Octopod]

Hype. There are more copies of FF7 than there is demand for it. It is all hype. That is why some games that are actually rare (rarer than ff7 anyhow) are worth no more than a few bucks.

[JWatts]

Ebay is fun because you have single buyers meeting with single sellers. A situation which eliminates consumer surplus (the monetary value between what they had to pay and what they were willing to pay. The people who want the item (game) the most are willing to pay more for it than you (in this case). They pay exactly what (or a little under) what they think it's worth to them and experience no consumer surplus.

When you have a product on store shelves it's different, one producer and many buyers, and it must be priced such that they sell to the right number of people. For those who would have purchased it for higher than retail price (had they been forced to) they have a surplus that they would not have had otherwise, because they would have purchased the game up to a given price.

I think your demand for games is simply too elastic, economically speaking of course.

well, that's at least the simple version of it.

[enderfall]

You can try videogamepricecharts.com, but it's hardly definitive. It is your best bet to evaluate pricing though.

The bottom line though is that if you think something is overpriced, speak with your wallet by not buying it. If people are willing to pay that price, then that's how much the game is "worth".

[JWatts]

to add to it though, game developers and publishers are constantly trying to create methods of limiting consumer surplus by offering limited, collectors and expanded editions or games and also by offering DLC. Both of which up the cost of a game to the consumer, again, lowering consumer value. And because of DRM (for DLC) arbitrage is very uncommon, so the splitting of the consumer base is highly successful.

[zakfa]

I guess the value of the item is what someone on ebay is willing to pay for it. The prices remain high and constant because it is too easy to flip it for a profit.

But yeah I'd really like a complete boxed earthbound but it costs an arm and a leg. Sometimes you get lucky and stuff slips through the cracks on ebay for 30% plus less than what it is usually selling for. But it takes a lot of work and dilligence and patience to find and win one of these auctions.

[Octopod]

Well let me ask you, why do you want a complete copy of Earthbound?


Edit: Bleh, anyways. Earhtbound is one of those hype games. Personally I do not see it but a lot of people do I guess. Earthbound is worth money because there is hype around it and the hype makes collectors want it or it draws attention to the game and people interested in the genre become aware when they may not have without the hype. Both increase the amount of money people have to pay, I suspect though that the hype with Earthbound makes it a supply and demand issue. I'm not sure if any of that makes sense lol.

[Hatta]

Thankfully, we have emulation and flash carts. Ownership of the actual game is optional. I shudder to think what the price situation would look like if there were no other options. As it is, retro gaming is quite cheap in terms of dollars per hour of enjoyment. That is, if you play the games instead of just put them on shelves.

[Octopod]

Thankfully, we have emulation and flash carts. Ownership of the actual game is optional. I shudder to think what the price situation would look like if there were no other options. As it is, retro gaming is quite cheap in terms of dollars per hour of enjoyment. That is, if you play the games instead of just put them on shelves.

Indeed. And if you truly want the game to play they really are not that expensive. A new video game cost $60 and most retro games with a value are well under that. People think a game that fetches $20-40-60 whatever is expensive but it is no more expensive than if you bought a game at the store. People just want to get shit for cheaper than the perceived value so they can feel like they got a deal or that they pulled one over on someone.