Price Charting ads

[Ack]

So today while reading the news I came across an ad for Price Charting on The Telegraph. The picture showed a grey Nintendo World Championship cartridge and proudly proclaimed it was worth $9,000. I bring this up, first because I was unaware that Price Charting was offering ads on websites, and second because I figured this would provide some interesting fodder in the debate about why game values have steadily increased.

[soul_hacker]

I really don't know how I feel about price charts for games. There are way too many of them with wildly different prices. I think the best way for there to even be real pricing is by taking all sold auctions of a game from ebay and taking an average from that every few months to a year. Otherwise, who is anyone to give a price?

[Retrodude]

why game values have steadily increased.

Because people are greedy and they think their stuff is worth more than it is, that's why. This very thing happened before with the comic book market and fortunately, the market collapsed and all the greedy people went away and left comics collecting to people who are actually comic book fans. Nowadays, whatever kind of comics you collect, you can do so without breaking the bank. I keep hoping the same thing will happen to the retrogaming market, and I'm sure it will eventually, but my patience is growing thin already.

[Krejlooc]

why game values have steadily increased.

Because people are greedy and they think their stuff is worth more than it is, that's why. This very thing happened before with the comic book market and fortunately, the market collapsed and all the greedy people went away and left comics collecting to people who are actually comic book fans. Nowadays, whatever kind of comics you collect, you can do so without breaking the bank. I keep hoping the same thing will happen to the retrogaming market, and I'm sure it will eventually, but my patience is growing thin already.

This is a false equivalency - that people who pay a lot for video games are "greedy" and not "actual [video game] fans."

You're in denial if you think the value of this stuff is going to decrease. Value is supply and demand, and supply is shrinking. Within the next 5-10 years, we're going to be hit with a massive surge of cap plague, too. Finding a working Sega Genesis, for example, in 10 years is going to be exponentially more difficult than it is today, because a good 90% of them are going to fail en-mass. Unless, like me, you've gone through and replaced all your caps, your stuff will break. Very soon.

No, the value for this stuff has gone up for the obvious reasons - disks break, games die, hardware stops working, and people still want this stuff. The internet, and sites like this very one, enable people to educate themselves on games they might not have looked into prior. Less supply, more demand.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Retro gaming seems "trendy" right now for a number of reasons. This could easily be a fad that will pass within a number of years. I can see the bubble bursting eventually, demand decreasing, and prices dropping. In fact, I hope this happens.

[Krejlooc]

Retro gaming seems "trendy" right now for a number of reasons. This could easily be a fad that will pass within a number of years. I can see the bubble bursting eventually, demand decreasing, and prices dropping. In fact, I hope this happens.

I think you're generally overstating the popularity of retro gaming. Yes, it's prominent in the indie scene... but it always has been. It's prominent because those sorts of games are generally easier to make. However, I don't think that means consumers in general are gobbling up anything retro, and that certainly doesn't translate into buying actual retro games.

I don't think this is a fad, because fads imply popularity. Nor do I think values will decrease for the reason I posted above. The supply is about to get very constrained.

[AppleQueso]

why game values have steadily increased.

Because people are greedy and they think their stuff is worth more than it is, that's why. This very thing happened before with the comic book market and fortunately, the market collapsed and all the greedy people went away and left comics collecting to people who are actually comic book fans. Nowadays, whatever kind of comics you collect, you can do so without breaking the bank. I keep hoping the same thing will happen to the retrogaming market, and I'm sure it will eventually, but my patience is growing thin already.

This is a false equivalency - that people who pay a lot for video games are "greedy" and not "actual [video game] fans."

You're in denial if you think the value of this stuff is going to decrease. Value is supply and demand, and supply is shrinking. Within the next 5-10 years, we're going to be hit with a massive surge of cap plague, too. Finding a working Sega Genesis, for example, in 10 years is going to be exponentially more difficult than it is today, because a good 90% of them are going to fail en-mass. Unless, like me, you've gone through and replaced all your caps, your stuff will break. Very soon.

No, the value for this stuff has gone up for the obvious reasons - disks break, games die, hardware stops working, and people still want this stuff. The internet, and sites like this very one, enable people to educate themselves on games they might not have looked into prior. Less supply, more demand.

I really don't think hardware failures have much, if any impact on the aftermarket value. It's not like earthbound carts are suddenly failing en masse or something.

No, this is a speculator bubble.

[Krejlooc]

I really don't think hardware failures have much, if any impact on the aftermarket value. It's not like earthbound carts are suddenly failing en masse or something.

No, this is a speculator bubble.

Hardware failure doesn't have impact on the aftermarket value currently because nothing has failed en-mass. The few systems which have already succumb to cap plague have seen their prices sky rocket - compare the price of a capped Turbo Duo to an uncapped Turbo Duo for example.

I can only guess that you guys have no experience in other collector's markets. This isn't a bubble. It can't be a bubble without mass adoption. There isn't a tenuous floor that's going to fall out. Everybody who buys this stuff, is interested in this stuff, and won't stop being interested in this stuff. The number of people out there looking to "game" the system to make ridiculous profits are a tiny portion of the market.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Retro gaming seems "trendy" right now for a number of reasons. This could easily be a fad that will pass within a number of years. I can see the bubble bursting eventually, demand decreasing, and prices dropping. In fact, I hope this happens.

I think you're generally overstating the popularity of retro gaming. Yes, it's prominent in the indie scene... but it always has been. It's prominent because those sorts of games are generally easier to make. However, I don't think that means consumers in general are gobbling up anything retro, and that certainly doesn't translate into buying actual retro games.

I don't think this is a fad, because fads imply popularity. Nor do I think values will decrease for the reason I posted above. The supply is about to get very constrained.

I've worked at elementary and middle schools for the better part of a decade. I know this is totally anecdotal, but the retro scene is "hip" right now. I have kids asking to borrow my SNES and Neo Geo carts (lol). You can buy Atari and NES logo t-shirts at Target. My local retro store is packed with kids - they are indeed buying the games. It's a popular thing, but there's no guarantee it will stay popular.

I don't entirely disagree with you though. I think hardware failure will drive prices up somewhat, which is why I'm trying to scoop up any remaining consoles I want ASAP. Finding a "still working!" Genesis on CL today is no big deal (in fact it's the type of thing gougers write to justify ridiculous prices) - it may be extremely relevant in 2025.

The speculators and gougers are affecting prices too, of course.

There's more than one factor at work here.

[isiolia]

Another angle that doesn't get brought up much is that we've also gotten into the era of auto-adjusting prices. People selling items on Amazon, for example, can put in upper and lower caps. Not just 3rd party sellers, but the primary site too. Newegg had some snafu with an SSD or two that had hundreds of dollars added to the price automatically due to high interest.

I think you wind up seeing some of the perceived values because of the price on some items automatically spiking up as they come close to selling out. How many current-gen games out there have "new" prices on Amazon well above original retail simply because there aren't many of them left (consider, say, DOA4 for example)? You wouldn't have had that years ago. They'd simply sell out at the regular price.

'course, that's not really a video game specific thing, or likely the deliberate actions of speculators or whomever. It's just a side-effect of the same online shopping that can be so phenomenally great in other respects.