VideoGamePriceCharts.com

Post by **Doctor Fugue** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 11:17 pm

I started checking out videogamepricecharts.com; great idea but I'm a little confused.

Are these prices for new, used, or just the game without box, or some combination of these?

And a lot of the prices seem very low. F355 for the DC says it costs 6 bucks but that would be only for a scratched up disc with no box or manual. And a new game like Stuntman: Ignition for the 360 says it costs 18.45, which is half what it costs in stores (yes, stores charge too much). But the cheapest new Stuntman (with a quick glance at eBay) is 20 bucks and amazon.com is 28.99.

So does the site include auctions where the game sells lower than a buy-it-now price?

I would like to use the site as a resource, so I'm just curious how it works. Thanks!

Post by **mason** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 1:00 am

the prices in store are to include added expenses, need of expansion and the overall coporate attiude. which means it's always higher. To price games to sell, go by the demand price. And your best source of tthat is to go on ebay and look at what the average ending bid of an item is.

Post by **Doctor Fugue** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 5:25 am

Maybe I wasn't clear enough...I know how prices work and I'm not looking to sell my games...I'm just wondering how that particular site gets their prices since they claim to get them from amazon and ebay but those prices are usually much higher than videogamepricecharts.com.

Post by **racketboy** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:26 am

I'll point JJ (the owner of the site into this thread) -- I'm sure he'd be glad to explain it in more detail...

Post by **jjgames** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:17 am

I would be happy to explain some how the site gets its prices and what the prices mean.

We basically check Amazon and Half.com daily to see which items have sold on their site for every video game in our database, currently we only have partial eBay data for sales but we are working on adding their prices as well for every game too and will hopefully have that by the end of the month. We also use sales data from JJGames.com which is the video game retail site I own.

Our site does not discriminate based upon the condition of the games or what is included like the box and instructions or just the game. At some point we would like to provide these as separate prices in our system but it is hard to differentiate automatically between different sales and what the condition is for each sale.

The prices on our site are very good at showing the price to pay for used games and games in good condition but not perfect condition. This is because the we average all the price points together to give one price to the users and this price usually works out to be the same as a used game in good condition.

The guide is a good standard to go off of but is not perfect. There are limitations to getting the data automatically for that many games. Some of the limitations are:
1. Very rare games that don't sell very often will have erratic prices because there are not as many price points. Its much easier to pin down a price on GTA Vice City compared to Persona 3.
2. The prices aren't differentiated based upon condition or completeness. If you are going to buy a game you can check the site to see if it is relatively close to what you are considering. If the game is complete and in perfect condition you should pay more than we list. If you see the game at a pawn shop for half of what we show it is worth then you should definitely buy it because it is a steal.

I hope that answers some of your questions. Please let me know if you have any more.

Post by **racketboy** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:29 am

Thanks JJ
And just some clarification, since we have been collaborating on the rare & valuable games articles, I've been giving him feedback on how to try to get more accurate pricing -- especially on the rare games.

I've also been doing some other eBay-specific pricing to make the prices on the articles more accurate.

Post by **Curlypaul** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:09 am

Have you considered doing this for the UK market? The prices you list are still pretty useful to me but the rarity/desirability of some games does differ, especially the games that we never got released here.

I have been developing a web crawler for the last 2 years and I thought that this would be a nice use for it and I had been considering some of the limitations that you have descriped, its pretty much impossible for the software to accurately pick whats included in the sale. Some ebay sellers might list a game with 'complete' in the title when it has a box and a manual, yet I would call a game complete only if it had all the printed materials like registation cards and that foam sheet you got in saturn game boxes and so on. I know I am sad.

I wondered if grabbing the images and storing them on a file server would be useful for reviewing the average prices. When considering buying/selling something it might be nice to look at a few of the most recently sold items to assess the condition and level of completness. Might be more disk space than its really worht though

Post by **jjgames** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:24 am

Curlypaul wrote:Have you considered doing this for the UK market? The prices you list are still pretty useful to me but the rarity/desirability of some games does differ, especially the games that we never got released here.

We haven't really planned out expanding to other markets. We are focusing on the US market for now, but if this site becomes successful we could definitely expand into other markets and even other products. For now we want to focus though so the video game prices are as good as they can be here first.

Curlypaul wrote:I have been developing a web crawler for the last 2 years and I thought that this would be a nice use for it and I had been considering some of the limitations that you have descriped, its pretty much impossible for the software to accurately pick whats included in the sale. Some ebay sellers might list a game with 'complete' in the title when it has a box and a manual, yet I would call a game complete only if it had all the printed materials like registation cards and that foam sheet you got in saturn game boxes and so on. I know I am sad.

Exactly, that is what makes it very hard. We think we can separate out new games at some point because eBay, Half, and Amazon all have their own tracking for "new" so we don't have to worry about the users wording. We can just look at the sites field and see if it is new or not.

Curlypaul wrote:I wondered if grabbing the images and storing them on a file server would be useful for reviewing the average prices. When considering buying/selling something it might be nice to look at a few of the most recently sold items to assess the condition and level of completness. Might be more disk space than its really worht though

That is a good idea. I don't know if we would be able to do that now though, with the limited storage we have and programming time. I could see that being helpful though. We are thinking of adding direct links to eBay, Amazon, and Half so people can see exactly what page the prices came from or buy it themselves.

Post by **Doctor Fugue** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 7:52 pm

Thanks JJ and racketboy for the information!

Keep up the good work on the price charts. As you say, it would be great if sometime in the future you could distinguish between used and sealed games; and also the price of imported games.

I pretty much only buy sealed imported games and those prices can be wildly different between different sellers...Space Channel 5 can be bought sealed for 9 dollars or 50 dollars depending on which HK seller you talk to.

A chart for Radiant Silvergun would be hilarious because of its perceived value. Play-asia is selling a sealed copy for 500 bucks!

Post by **ott0bot** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:43 pm

I just checked it out and I think this site is pretty helpful. This site gives you averages on what the games actually sold for, rather than what people are trying to sell them for. I checked out alot of the PS1 games listed and they seemed pretty close.

I would say you should make seperate entires for black label and "greatest hits" PS1 titles. Sometimes there is a big difference, like with Xenogears. And there are also some games that aren't on the list like "RayCrisis," "Einhander" and "Irritating Stick."

Also, I didn't find a Sega Cd section.

Sometimes it is really hard to pin point the prices on alot of these games. Some people charge ridiculous prices especially on Amazon and on many of the Ebay buy-it-now stores which are hoping some sucker who really wants the game will just pay it rather than be paitient and wait for some decent auctions. I guess thats a "convienence" fee.....

All-in-all its a nice site, good resource.

Also, another idea....
Once Racket gets the game database he was talking about up, you could put links to the that and people could view the artwork and game info from a good source. Amazon reviews and places like Gamespot just miss the mark entirely sometimes. just a thought.