Ebay: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[Gunstar Green]

In my earlier example of Castlevania Chronicles more than doubling in price, I often wonder what kind of factors are involved. Is it Youtube exposure? Legitimate rarity? Human stupidity or greed, like cha cha is assuming? I find it difficult to believe that it's a "natural" kind of appreciation(or whatever counts as natural on Ebay) considering it seemed to happen almost overnight. It's mind-boggling, and the market truly does seem senseless at times.

For Castlevania games, it's just the fact that they're Castlevania games. I do think the Internet has also done a lot to expose more obscure entries in popular franchises like Chronicles to interested fans.

I mean think about it. The GBA and DS had a long string of Castlevania titles that created lots of new fans of the series and that well has dried up. I feel like Castlevania is a franchise with a lot of new-ish fans looking to discover the rest of the series, and it's a series that already had a lot of old fans to begin with.

It's a very popular franchise with its own dedicated fanbase. There are people who aren't necessarily retro game collectors that collect just Castlevania games because it's their favorite. The same can be said for many of the popular franchises. It's not necessarily just the retro collectors out to buy stuff like old Castlevania games.

That said the actual rarity doesn't always match the demand. It's not really senseless though, if people are willing to pay higher prices then those prices will creep up. All it takes is for people to purchase it at that price for others to raise their prices to match. Even common retro games still carry the perception of being a limited commodity with no new ones being made, even if there are more than enough copies floating around out there so that everyone who wants one can have one.

It doesn't have as much of an effect on stuff like Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt because there's just so many copies that you're practically tripping over them every time you go looking for old games.

Then you get stuff like Dracula X and Mega Man X3 which are both part of a popular franchise and with a more limited production run so completionists are willing to shell out more for a copy. This is where I just say screw it and buy the much more common Japanese versions. (Though some of those prices have started creeping too...)

[Retrogamer0001]

I've decided to stop torturing myself with even looking at Dracula X, the Pocky and Rocky games, and ANY Mega Man game for the SNES - prices continue to climb up and up and up. It's a sad day indeed...

[AppleQueso]

TBQH the problems being brought up in this thread are one of the reasons I'm going to be selling everything off soon.

The ways in which you have to carefully strategize your purchases in order to make game collecting affordable nowadays... it's just not something I'm at all interested in doing. It wasn't the reason I got into collecting.

(Plus I have a lot of life shifts going on and I can't really justify sitting on the amount of money that stuff is worth when I rarely play the games and cheaper modern alternatives are available. Simply put I need the $$$)

More power to anyone who sticks with it, but unfortunately I think I'm done.

[dsheinem]

on eBay and "inflated" market prices:

Isn't the market for retro games just like the market for anything else and mostly a simple matter of supply and demand?

eBay completed auctions are by far the best indicator we have of what fair market value is for any given game at any given time and long has been. It's what most people on B/S/T use as a baseline, for sure. I never really understand the threads/posts that are upset about how "unfair" or how "insane" prices are since they've always fluctuated over time and you can find plenty of examples of games/system libraries/series/genres that have dropped in price while others have risen.

I kind of understand the annoyance with a vendor at a flea market or retro game store that prices something way out of whack with eBay prices but, again, if someone is eventually willing to pay it and they have no problem sitting on it, I don't see what's so horrible about the practice.

My point is no one is trying to inflate the market or force the "little guy" out of it, and all this hypothesizing about "who's to blame" is just a bit much.

And all this nostalgia for a better time for the market is also a bit overblown, as things on eBay now aren't significantly different than they always have been. Some searching shows examples:

~9 years ago people were complaining about the price of stuff like Ikaruga: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=747#p747

~ 8 years ago complaints about Rondo of Blood: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 5938#p5938

~6 years ago the price of Saturns: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 694#p11694

~4 years ago this thread focused on "inflated" prices for a bit: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=21448

I am sure with a little digging here and on other forums you can find many more examples like this from the "mythical time" of five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, etc.

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On bargain hunting

All that said, certainly it is harder and harder to find interesting (or any) games from the 80s or 90s at places like yard sales and flea markets, since for the most part people who might put those games out at a yard sale would have done so a long time ago and people at flea markets aren't finding them in their regular haunts very often. But, yard sale and flea market hunting almost always yields games from the 2000s (PS2/Xbox/Wii) these days, much in the same way that they used to yield games from the 90s in the 2000s (eBay has been around since the mid-90s and eBay game sale stories were making national headlines by the 2000s).

In other words, the slow down and turn over is normal, natural, and to be expected. There's no great conspiracy that people stopped putting NES games out at yard sales because they were holding on to them to make thousands because...the internet. In ten more years people will be lamenting that all they can find at yard sales are PS3 and 360 games, and that the days of finding a good Xbox game at a yard sale are long done

All of that said, the best places to find bargains are the same as ever: yard sales (just not for 90s games), antique stores or flea markets (especially with revolving vendors), online gaming forums, classified ads (perusing or placing), craigslist, etc. There's always been high priced nonsense to wade through to find the good stuff in these venues, so that hasn't really changed either...

[wclem]

There is also a ton of cheap but good stuff to be had. Hell, most of the NES library can still be had for less than ten bucks. Unless you have to have the best and most elite games you should be able to find a ton of goodies around.

It is a lot of work but that is the nature of having a hobby. The fun of it, it is what it is all about. I am also telling everyone I know who collects is to pick up the current gens stuff while it is cheap before it gets out of reach. Stuff is also peaking and I do not care what anyone says, it will drop. How much, I do not know, but it will. The people willing to pay the high prices will dry up and so prices will drop as sellers want to move inventory. Every collectible I can think of gets hot, prices rise and then it tails off.

Also, I tell people that carts do not have to be perfect. If I can get an Earthbound for 100 bucks with some label tearing rather 150 for a perfect label, guess what I am gonna buy. At least I have it. Get the word "mint" out of you vocabulary. Collect to play, there is no other reason to collect. So if it works with a label tear then so what. I wouldn't walk away form a disc only copy Albert Odyssey for 50 bucks just I would get to play it. I have binders full of disc only games, that maybe one day I will get to complete. Till then I am playing them with a smile on my face! Every time I see someone post they would never buy a disc only game I smile. Good, leave it there for me!

These are just my thoughts, nothing more.

[Opa Opa]

^I don't know about searching for disc-only titles (I'd never go that far) but you can get great deals on crap labels; sometimes you can get up to half off the normal price. A great budget strategy!

[AppleQueso]

I don't believe there's any sort of "conspiracy," I just think there's definitely a lot more people in the whole collecting game then there was several years ago, and it's definitely making for a lot more competition if you're trying to buy stuff. That definitely contributes to rising prices.

[dsheinem]

I I just think there's definitely a lot more people in the whole collecting game then there was several years ago, and it's definitely making for a lot more competition if you're trying to buy stuff. That definitely contributes to rising prices.

See I am not convinced that this is the case. If anything, there might be spikes of collecting interest around big retro-news stuff like the Retron 5 release or some crazy new auction (e.g. The Guinness one…), but on the other hand all the official digital re-releases and availability of emulation-friendly platforms like the Ouya might signal to people that there's no real need to go and collect cartridges and discs. As we've seen with forum membership and the history of the BST section, there's plenty of people who regularly both enter and exit the hobby too...

[AppleQueso]

I don't see how "retro game collecting is more popular now than it was 5-10 years ago" is a controversial or contentious statement.

[dsheinem]

I don't see how "retro game collecting is more popular now than it was 5-10 years ago" is a controversial or contentious statement.

It just strikes me as a claim without any support, and i just don't know that it is true. What evidence is there one way or another that more people are collecting games today than they were in 2009 or 2004?