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[Retrodude]

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

Exactly. The argument I've been trying to make all along is that things have gotten to this state entirely because of the speculators and gougers. It only took a few of them to get the ball rolling and once people saw that at least a few folks were actually dumb enough to pay those prices, everybody started doing it thinking they could get rich on this stuff. If you are the kind of person who tries to justify grossly and blatently overcharging with all the bogus "free market" "supply and demand" nonsense, you're part of the problem and need to get the *&%$ out.

[MrPopo]

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

Exactly. The argument I've been trying to make all along is that things have gotten to this state entirely because of the speculators and gougers. It only took a few of them to get the ball rolling and once people saw that at least a few folks were actually dumb enough to pay those prices, everybody started doing it thinking they could get rich on this stuff. If you are the kind of person who tries to justify grossly and blatently overcharging with all the bogus "free market" "supply and demand" nonsense, you're part of the problem and need to get the *&%$ out.

We've said it before. Take a fucking macroeconomics class.

[Ack]

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

Exactly. The argument I've been trying to make all along is that things have gotten to this state entirely because of the speculators and gougers. It only took a few of them to get the ball rolling and once people saw that at least a few folks were actually dumb enough to pay those prices, everybody started doing it thinking they could get rich on this stuff. If you are the kind of person who tries to justify grossly and blatently overcharging with all the bogus "free market" "supply and demand" nonsense, you're part of the problem and need to get the *&%$ out.

So how much should they cost, and who should be setting the price?

[AppleQueso]

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.

The thing with this 'cap plague' doom and gloom you're talking about is that it hasn't happened in older consoles yet. Why should we expect there to suddenly be a huge mass failure of Sega Genesis consoles in 5-10 years when it hasn't even happened to Atari 2600s?

Besides, it's not like cap replacement is especially expensive or difficult to do. It's a fairly simple fix, really.

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.

There didn't need to be 'mass adoption' when the Atari cart prices balooned and then plummeted a few years ago.

I'm sorry, but straight up hardware failure is a pretty poor explanation for, say, why many SNES carts have doubled and even tripled in price over the past year alone.

[Retrodude]

Here, read this:

http://nescollector.zamaman.com/?p=1

This is exactly the philosophy I think we should all be going by and if the market actually reflected what this guy is saying, it would be a lot more reasonable and there wouldn't be much to complain about. The only thing I disagree with him about is that there are lots of good games even among the so-called "garbage" titles.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I think Retrodude is talking about games like Final Fantasy VII, which continues to be sold at inflated prices despite a huge supply.

Regarding the "dying off" of media - did the price of floppy disk games (C64, Amiga, whatever) rise when people realized how prone to failure and corruption the disks were?

[Ack]

Here, read this:

http://nescollector.zamaman.com/?p=1

This is exactly the philosophy I think we should all be going by and if the market actually reflected what this guy is saying, it would be a lot more reasonable and there wouldn't be much to complain about. The only thing I disagree with him about is that there are lots of good games even among the so-called "garbage" titles.

...you realize that has nothing to do with economics whatsoever but instead gives advice on how collectors should shop around. In fact he even points out that games are often priced highly but can sometimes be found for cheap, such as the comment on Ninja Gaidens usually being $12 but occasionally found for $0.99. This has practically nothing to do with pricegouging by sellers and more to do with practical experience as a buyer. It's more a "succeed this way while everyone else pays too much money" kind of deal. Or better yet, "take advantage of the sucker sellers" as opposed to the "take advantage of the sucker buyers" philosophy you so detest.

[AppleQueso]

I think Retrodude is talking about games like Final Fantasy VII, which continues to be sold at inflated prices despite a huge supply.

FF7 is going for a lot less now than it did a few years back.

[Retrodude]

I think Retrodude is talking about games like Final Fantasy VII, which continues to be sold at inflated prices despite a huge supply.

That's it. Thank you, Bone. I can see paying more for games that are legitimately scarce, but the common titles (which make up the vast majority of any console's library) should rightfully be priced less because you can find them almost anywhere.

Also, no offense intended, Ack, but it has seriously gotten to the point where the second someone brings up "economics", I put them in the column of people contributing to this mess even if they're not intending to. All you're doing is giving gougers more ammunition to justify what they're doing.

[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.

The thing with this 'cap plague' doom and gloom you're talking about is that it hasn't happened in older consoles yet. Why should we expect there to suddenly be a huge mass failure of Sega Genesis consoles in 5-10 years when it hasn't even happened to Atari 2600s?

Besides, it's not like cap replacement is especially expensive or difficult to do. It's a fairly simple fix, really.

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.

There didn't need to be 'mass adoption' when the Atari cart prices balooned and then plummeted a few years ago.

I'm sorry, but straight up hardware failure is a pretty poor explanation for, say, why many SNES carts have doubled and even tripled in price over the past year alone.

It hasn't happened in Atari 2600's because those systems didn't use the types of caps subject to cap plague. Cap plague is a specific instance of a specific type of capacitor manufactured between about 1986 until about 1999. And the systems within that time span have already started failing. En-mass.

As for the price of fixing capacitor problems - you're correct in that the BOM is pennies. Are we to expect that skilled labor should be done for free? Regardless of how low the barrier of entry to this skillset is, it's still something out of the grasp of the majority of people who collect. You charge for labor if there is a demand for it, and there definitely is.

You've also reduced my argument to a single point. I'll repeat it for you:

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'm not saying hardware failure is the sole reason for price inflation. As someone pointed out above, it's a combination of many factors. I do believe that hardware failure, going forward, will drive the price of post-crash collecting through the roof, though.