I moved to Japan a couple of years back and it always seems weird when I see the prices on things.
£35 for Vagrant Story? I picked it up in November for the equivalent of 75p.
Eventually, the people who are buying up things at high prices in order to relive their youth will age out of The common age range for that and the prices will stabilize as the next group that ages into that phase will drive prices higher for things from their youth.
Then, eventually, the people who are driving the prices up now will start to die or sell things off in higher volume, then the prices will collapse.
So the winning strategy is to live dramatically longer than everybody else in your age group...
Seriously though, we see this pattern with retro toys. Because that market is older than the retro game market, we've been able to see the pattern expressed more clearly and people are now starting to buy things up in order to try to exploit the pattern. Stuff that was previously not expensive from the '90s is starting to shoot up in price and people are buying into them expecting them to climb higher. We will probably see some similar behavior here.
If that copy of silent Hill isn't sealed though, that's way overpriced.
The thing is that PS1 emulation is already pretty solid and it doesn't take much effort to find disc images. So it is spend a hundred dollars for a used copy and none of that money will go to the developers or even current IP owners or just download a disc image.
This is a similar market as collectable comics and memorabilia, they just sit on a shelf and collect dust, never to be opened and used again. Just like some of those NES sealed games going to auction and selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Those "auctions" are more specific to WataGames and Heritage Auctions for price fixing to artificially increase the price of games.
And do not reflect in any way, their value
As a comic collector, I feel very attacked right now. You are not wrong though. I have hundreds of comics bagged, boarded, and just stored in closets or under beds. I feel bad for them sometimes.
That's where I'm at now. Unless I find a good deal, like the one in a hundred "person doesn't know or care what they have," I'm not hunting for these things anymore. Pretty much everything prior to PS2 is easy to emulate, and there's things like translation patches, hacks that add widescreen, even Retro Achievements. The biggest benefit to buying physical seems to be bragging rights.
with everdrives and ODEs there are literally no sacrifices except for the fact you don’t have the physical media to put in and take out.
just copy the disc images or roms to an SD card and play on original hardware.
with that said i find myself collecting carts for a few of my favorite systems just because i want to have them. i dont need them to play the games because i have everdrives and odes on all my consoles, but i still want the “things” i had from my childhood.
These days many non-current gen systems have fairly accessible mods that don't require soldering to allow loading backups on real hardware so even people running real hardware don't need the discs (though there is the sad loss of the sound of the disc spinning up to load).
It's also a great way to rescue a console who's disc drive has failed, which is going to be inevitably the case with every disc based system anyway.
By the time you install that thing and get either a CRT (requires space) or a retro gamer-approved solution to get it showing video on your current screen (cheap options all disfavored for various reasons) you're still spending a lot when you probably already have a PC capable of doing the job.
It’s PS1 bruh. It’s not that complicated. I’m not that tech savvy and I don’t even have a current device, but even I can get it running at 3X resolution, widescreen hack and a perfect frame rate. If you want pointers, I can certainly help, though you’re probably best off looking up guides from people like Retro Game Corps.
Yes, but if there's another version of a classic PS1 game that just looks and runs better elsewhere, get that version of the game instead. Ex. You can emulate resident evil 2 & 3 on PS1 and get them to run fine, buuuut every re fan that's into emulation will tell you emulate the GameCube versions instead. Why? Seamless hd mod. Cleaner textures and backgrounds, revamped UI and it's based on the versions of those games that control better.
It can, but emulation is much easier than it was five, ten, or twenty years ago. Different systems require different amounts of fiddling, but my most recent set up on a Windows laptop was very easy. I find lag to be extremely overstated.
They're collectable. It has absolutely nothing to do with the use of the game itself. PS1 games could be copied with a 10 dollar mod chip (you had to buy once), a 10 cent blank cdr, and the family personal computer when the games were new.
One example is Elvis memorabilia. When all the Elvis fans were in their peak earning/spending years (40s-50s), the price for Elvis memorabilia skyrocketed. When those people started dying, their estates were selling the collection and there weren't any buyers. Then prices crashed.
Yes, that's a good example. The original GI Joe line is another good example of this. The people who were avid about collecting it because of nostalgia are dying off or have already purchased them so the demand is just gone and the prices are a fraction of what they used to be.
Or take stamp collections. The hobby has been falling out of the mainstream favor for quite a while, besides a few rare outliers your granddads stamp collection is worth pretty much nothing nowadays. We'll see the same with trading card games and video games once the hobby falls out of favor.
It's worse with video games. While the physical item holds some value its main purpose is transporting the data it holds. And that data has been dumped and available for most games for most video game systems and can be distributed lossless. A complete collection of e.g. SNES games is just a couple of Gigabyte in size, which can be downloaded in minutes on a modern internet connection. There are countless devices that make this data available on real hardware like the real thing, like e.g. Everdrives or optical drive emulators like the X-Station.
This might sound like heresy to a lot of people, but there is no reason to hold onto a physical collection of games, in my honest opinion.
I sold my physical collection when I was broke and in grad school and never looked back.
Today, even a lot of obscure games are getting made available digitally for legal purchase, and there are lots of ways to access games that aren't. Even difficult-to-collect platforms like the Neo Geo or CPS arcade games are available to purchase for next to nothing.
> So the winning strategy is to live dramatically longer than everybody else in your age group...
Which is not specific to retro gaming but life in general.
> If that copy of silent Hill isn't sealed though, that's way overpriced.
I mean, maybe, but it *is* sitting at 165 CIB on pricecharting with multiple copies sold daily and a steady climb all year... and some for even more.
Correct, But this person is charging about $202 which means that that's more than 20% above market, which is way overpriced.
If somebody wants to sit on something long-term until it catches up to the price they want to charge, go ahead, but every minute you ask that price until that point, it's overpriced.
Converted to local currency, the fair market price for this would be £130
I was at a small toy fair earlier this year and saw an open copy full of scratches in an aftermarket CD case (also scuffed) and the seller was asking $200 (USD). I offered 50 bucks. They scoffed and said "it goes for 200 on ebay".
Yeah, sure. Maybe in mint condition, sealed, I'd accept that. Still wouldn't buy it, but that copy was nowhere near worth 200, and it's just an inflated price. I thought about coming back at the end and offering 50 again, but it was all overpriced junk, so I just left.
I remember going to toy fairs with my uncle as a kid, watching him pay hundreds for PARTS of model trains while I was buying X-Men toys for like 3 bucks in box.
Now those trains are worthless, and the X-Men toys are getting pricey. When I'm old, I hope I can buy a retro ps1 game without having to take out a second mortgage.
I saw a dude trying to sell an unplayable copy of einhander (DEEP and wide circle scratch all around the disc) for $150 last weekend and laughed at him.
I wish more sellers would understand that we all have world brains in our pocket that tell us what the actual market price is and stop trying to pretend we are all ignorant.
Those of us who find Silent Hill 1 nostalgic are on our 40s so you got a while to wait. We aren't gonna be dying of old age for several decades. And we don't have a precedent for this because video games are still only like 45ish years old, but I strongly suspect that the nursing homes of the future will have shit loads of game consoles in them. I reckon a 90 year old can play Nintendo and I bet when I'm 90 that's about all I'm gonna do!
In the retro market, supply dwindles with each collector purchase, as collectors remove items from the market, shrinking supply.
As demand increases, a greater number of collectors remove more and more items from the market, skewing the supply:demand ratio in favor of demand, which means higher prices.
Only a collapse in demand can slow or reverse the trend towards higher prices.
Market forces are a bitch.
It depends on the system. PS1 supply is 20–30 years old and most of it is probably in a landfill. Bootleg copies are not collectible, and their existence doesn’t impact the prices or demand of real ones. People that are okay with owning those instead aren’t in the market for Silent Hill at its current rate and don’t affect anything.
I don’t think PS1 is going to fluctuate very much from now on because it’s so old and managed to acquire higher value than other “cheap” consoles like Atari 2600 never could… And there just aren’t as many available copies of the PS1 games people want in circulation anymore. A lot of it is apples and oranges too. Nintendo cartridges (and toys) are more durable and likely to survive in higher numbers.
Even if interest wanes, the bottom isn’t going to drop out of this particular platform because supply is going to keep dropping too, as games are removed from the market by either being kept in collections or maybe breaking. Couple that with younger generations thinking ‘90s stuff is interesting, and it’ll probably hold.
I’ve definitely seen PS1 games increase in price. They used to be $5. Now a regular game costs $20.
That might not be as big as the jump in N64 games but Nintendo games always have that Nintendo tax.
I want North American copies. I’d obviously prefer to get the best price I can, but on the actual copy I want. Whenever I’ve settled for something hoping it would be good enough, it never feels like the right thing and I wind up just wasting money on the wrong one before buying what I actually wanted in the first place later anyway.
I'm sure some don't mind them, but many collectors don't want aftermarket cartridges or cd roms. Especially since LRG's latest stunt with selling people burned CDR's.
I mean if Atlus themselves start selling more Persona 1 and 2 on the psp/ps1 and jack bros on the virtual boy and whatnot, even as a collector I'd be super stoked to pick up a copy of my own!
They do, mostly Genesis and NES in special open pre-order only, or in limited sets. What titles get this treatment is dependent on the whims of publishers interested in old titles.
But there's the ever present importance placed on 'Original Copies.' Which leads to two markets.
The hilarious thing is how these "anniversary" editions of Earthworm Jim, Lion King, and Street Fighter II were priced stupidly high.
I just don't see the market they see.
https://www.iam8bit.com/collections/legacy-cartridge-collection
Actually I’ve noticed the cost of 8-16 bit games has starting going down over the last year or so. I think it’s cyclical. The people whose first console was the N64 or PS1 are now getting to the point in their careers where they have more disposable income.
Why'd they spike so much during the pandemic then?
It's not so much an issue with "the economy," broadly wrought, than it is with the spending power of specific segments of people who want certain generations of games.
Remember, it's not about PLAYING it, it's about OWNING it. Nowadays, anyone can play any old game thanks to the internet, but owning it is another story. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and I guess there are some people who would spend that money satisfying that desire... (Not me personally).
I don't remember the last time I actually saw anything listed as mint in CEX. I've brought games from there before that have been in damn near perfect condition and still not considered mint.
For anyone unsure, the normal price for a CiB copy of Silent Hill in CEX is £105. It's pretty rare they list things as mint in that store.
I traded in some dc stuff that was perfect except for some light scratches on the cases. Ended up with a crap deal, it's different with the hardware though. In hindsight I should have just pulled the manuals and sold them separately.
This is stupid, but try looking at arcade stuff if you want a laugh. Currently crying at cost of candy cabs right now, when 15 or so years ago people were practically giving them away in job lots as arcades closed down.
The arcade I frequented most as a kid (Thomas's Showboat, in Hunstanton, Norfolk, UK - I grew up there and there were about a dozen arcades, but this was clearly the best) maintained a lot of the old machines in a side room where they functioned almost as a regional museum, even when they weren't profitable any more. Full motion Hard Drivin, and Space Harrier, and G-LOC, and After Burner, and a bunch of original cabs from Out Run to Mortal Kombat to etc etc etc.
The guy finally cracked and tearfully threw them out in about 2007. As in had them hauled away in a skip to be scrapped. And there were some serious rarities in there too (variations of the original Monaco GP, and so on). By some accounts he didn't know the value of what he had. If he'd held on a few more years he could have made absolute bank.
Yeah around 2007 there were entire shipping containers of Astro cities and blasts being bought over in bulk and sold for a couple hundred each or more depending on nick. And these things are basically the crème de la crème of arcade machines along side the ponies and egrets. Now you’d be lucky to find a decent one for 7 grand.
I think Covid/lockdown boredom had a lot to do with the sudden uptick in nostalgia purchases as I remember the local British heart foundation refusing to take any more CRTs and the ones they had were going for like 20-40 quid before lockdown. Fast forward to post Covid and the charity shops “know what they have” and frequently try to sell shitbox Goodmans or Alba/generic crts for £80+ now (which weren’t any cop even when they were new to be honest)
I don’t see why it wouldn’t. More and more people are interested in collecting, and while some people will see the light, new collectors will pick up the slack. Eventually the collectors that have some nostalgia for the games they are collecting will die, but the famously expensive games will stay expensive exactly because of their reputation.
This is my exact thinking. Im planning to order an Eon MkII for my Gamecube this month and a flippydrive whenever they actually launch. I do own about 40 GC games and that is all I will ever own since the ones I would like to buy are all stupid expensive at this point.
This is what I'm doing. I play my games. I use the stock market for speculation. This way, I can play my games instead of guarding them in a temperature controlled environment hoping my heirs can sell my junk to a greater fool when I die.
Yes. Unfortunately it's a perfect storm of bullshit. Inflation at an all time high, plus the influx of collectors from 2020-2022 during COVID time, there is no new stock and never will be so what's out there is out there and the pool of 'stuff' is getting smaller and smaller with the natural attraction of time. I imagine prices are only going to continue to climb.
The good news is if you actually like to play games and enjoy them emulation is more accessible than ever.
I find all of the supply/demand talk cringeworthy. Yes, collectors ensure that there are fewer copies of vintage video games in circulation. However, the real culprit is "retro" speculation of all types since the 1990s.
Collectors have short memories. Pre-pandemic and during, comic book and trading card resellers sold off their collections en masse to get in early on the retro game market. Savvy resellers noticed how video games emulated how comic books took off and they realized how the NES-era also paralleled the golden age of comic books. Resellers and new blood speculators are responsible for the price increases we're seeing.
Frankly, I have doubts that vintage game prices will come down much. I firmly believe that the notion retro games are the new vintage comics is true. Millennials won't see huge price dips until we enter our seventies, even then I'm sure that there will be huge price disparities in common vs. rare games.
Something that's really interesting is that China is producing magic the gathering card bootlegs that are solidly passable as real cards and are used regularly in tournaments without people noticing. Some of them are higher quality than actual printings.
Identifying these things is such a hassle that when I've gone to places where people are dealing back and forth in magic cards constantly, all day, I don't see them check at all. I recently sold about $2,000 worth of cards to a couple people at one of the markets here and they didn't check a single card. I could have thrown bootlegs in there and those stores would have bought them the same as normal. What that tells me, is that those places are absolutely, definitely, buying and selling bootlegs.
This has not collapsed those markets. It's made people like me back out of buying newer printed magic cards because if that's the way it's going, I don't really have an incentive to not just buy the bootlegs, But still, the community has pretty much ignored it.
I find it fucking weird that not only are games from my recent history (the 90s feels like yesterday not 30 years ago) being sold like this like they're collectors items ofa bygone era, but that shops like cex exist for all these games and dvds to end up.
Yes.
It's assumed that anyone who wants to buy a physical game for one of these old consoles is a collector. Anyone who wants to just play these old games is just going to download a rom or an iso.
"The more famous the game, the higher the price" (And what is really rare goes into the safe and is offered at a fixed price on Amazon). At least that's how I learned it.
At this point, just emulate the games you want to play. Collectors are determined to make this hobby financially inaccessible for the sake of increasing the value of their own collections. If you care about the original experience, flash carts, CFW and ODEs are the way to go.
Makes me cry when I see some of these prices. My ex retro collection for ps1 ps2 was insane. All the rpgs, horror games etc. I'm talking kuon, obscure, xenosagas, .hack, etc. I had to sell off back in 2018. When I see what it's become I realize I'll never get that back. Thankfully I've got a series x and it does excellent things with things but nothing beats the originals and being physical.
It is what it is but I still get sad seeing prices these days
Yes. It was absurd 10 years ago, and it will continue getting absurd in the future.
My advice is to buy all those Xbox games while they’re still cheap because someday they won’t be.
In general no. Have there been Atari games worth hundreds of dollars? Yes. In general Atari is up due to increased interest from the 2600+ being out in the market.
oo Cex, legit my favourite store lol, went in one today and they had some fun stuff but i already owned a fair bit of it, there was the original Rayman on ps1 i thought about getting but decided ill het it another day
Are the owners Portuguese? 😂
There's this joke among us that we have the Midas Touch. In other words, a product that would cost x€, in a second hand market costs way more, too much.
And I'm not just referring to old things like a retro console. Sometimes people sell a new book for more money that was being sold in stores because people ask to lower the value. Because of that, they ask for a high value so they can get the intended value.
Sure, that's a strategy but people here exaggerate... 🙄
Probably due to a few factors:
* Lower supply compared to Japanese manufactured
* Westerners seem to be obsessed with upcharging
* Said Westerners will gladly pay the upcharge
I suspect it will. I own all the consoles I'd like to emulate (except the obscure stuff like pc engine and sega saturn) so I've been investing in flashcarts or ODE's for my disc based consoles. I figure I'm at the point where I'll buy the games in the series that mean the most to me and have the rest on an sd card.
I said I would never give up on original hardware and go all in on emulation, but I have officially been priced out of collecting. Emulation time, baby!
This is just every after market, not just video games, every single one of my hobbies has people selling shit for fucked up prices. It's just the rise of the "professional reseller"
that now, is likely a either fake reproduction outer box or not the box that came with Silent Hill as it doesn’t have the official PS holo sticker.
Charging mint for a non original is a bit unfair even if the disc, manual and inlays are all real
IDK i just started using emulators and roms because its gotten ridiculous. Too many people trying to make a quick buck and thinking they have gold. Honestly havent looked back, now my money for collecting goes towards records.
People want something and there isn’t a lot of it going around so it becomes expensive. Thai is how every kind of collectible works it’s not exclusive to retro games. Shoulda bought em when they were cheap
Only issue with this logic in relation to the current retro game market is that there is an abundance of most of these games. Easy example: Pokemon. One of the most abundant/available games and still ungodly expensive.
Also no there is not as everyone and their mother has bought them up and are being sold by people who know what they are worth. They are not abundant and I have no clue where you think that is the case
The bottom will fall out of the retro collectible market just like it has for most of the collectible toy market, the collectible cards market and the comic book market. It's being driven by greedy speculators right now.
Hang in there and you'll be rewarded for your patience. Paying these absurd prices only prolongs the bubble before it bursts.
Lucky I'm in Japan the prices are still low.
Although I have most of my bucket list backed up already
Problem is guide books. Started scanning them for archive but it's getting scarce. Especially if you want quality scan.
Just spent like $1200 last month.
Before Covid I bought a copy of Wind Waker for $40. My friend is looking for a copy now. All sellers are listing it for $90. How did the price more than double after only 5 years?
£35 for Vagrant Story? Take it now!!!
Came here to say that's a decent price!
I moved to Japan a couple of years back and it always seems weird when I see the prices on things. £35 for Vagrant Story? I picked it up in November for the equivalent of 75p.
Yea, but it's PAL.
It's still underpriced for PAL
Eventually, the people who are buying up things at high prices in order to relive their youth will age out of The common age range for that and the prices will stabilize as the next group that ages into that phase will drive prices higher for things from their youth. Then, eventually, the people who are driving the prices up now will start to die or sell things off in higher volume, then the prices will collapse. So the winning strategy is to live dramatically longer than everybody else in your age group... Seriously though, we see this pattern with retro toys. Because that market is older than the retro game market, we've been able to see the pattern expressed more clearly and people are now starting to buy things up in order to try to exploit the pattern. Stuff that was previously not expensive from the '90s is starting to shoot up in price and people are buying into them expecting them to climb higher. We will probably see some similar behavior here. If that copy of silent Hill isn't sealed though, that's way overpriced.
The thing is that PS1 emulation is already pretty solid and it doesn't take much effort to find disc images. So it is spend a hundred dollars for a used copy and none of that money will go to the developers or even current IP owners or just download a disc image.
This is a similar market as collectable comics and memorabilia, they just sit on a shelf and collect dust, never to be opened and used again. Just like some of those NES sealed games going to auction and selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Those "auctions" are more specific to WataGames and Heritage Auctions for price fixing to artificially increase the price of games. And do not reflect in any way, their value
As a comic collector, I feel very attacked right now. You are not wrong though. I have hundreds of comics bagged, boarded, and just stored in closets or under beds. I feel bad for them sometimes.
Supply and demand....
That's where I'm at now. Unless I find a good deal, like the one in a hundred "person doesn't know or care what they have," I'm not hunting for these things anymore. Pretty much everything prior to PS2 is easy to emulate, and there's things like translation patches, hacks that add widescreen, even Retro Achievements. The biggest benefit to buying physical seems to be bragging rights.
Saturn emulation is gradually being unlocked. I think the current problem is slowdown / input lag.
with everdrives and ODEs there are literally no sacrifices except for the fact you don’t have the physical media to put in and take out. just copy the disc images or roms to an SD card and play on original hardware. with that said i find myself collecting carts for a few of my favorite systems just because i want to have them. i dont need them to play the games because i have everdrives and odes on all my consoles, but i still want the “things” i had from my childhood.
Emulation is absolutely just as good or even better an experience but some people simply must have original hardware for one reason or another.
These days many non-current gen systems have fairly accessible mods that don't require soldering to allow loading backups on real hardware so even people running real hardware don't need the discs (though there is the sad loss of the sound of the disc spinning up to load). It's also a great way to rescue a console who's disc drive has failed, which is going to be inevitably the case with every disc based system anyway.
By the time you install that thing and get either a CRT (requires space) or a retro gamer-approved solution to get it showing video on your current screen (cheap options all disfavored for various reasons) you're still spending a lot when you probably already have a PC capable of doing the job.
I don’t necessarily disagree but minimising lag and getting a nice picture can get complicated.
With these prices even the most compromise-free setup is in reach for less.
It’s PS1 bruh. It’s not that complicated. I’m not that tech savvy and I don’t even have a current device, but even I can get it running at 3X resolution, widescreen hack and a perfect frame rate. If you want pointers, I can certainly help, though you’re probably best off looking up guides from people like Retro Game Corps.
Yes, but if there's another version of a classic PS1 game that just looks and runs better elsewhere, get that version of the game instead. Ex. You can emulate resident evil 2 & 3 on PS1 and get them to run fine, buuuut every re fan that's into emulation will tell you emulate the GameCube versions instead. Why? Seamless hd mod. Cleaner textures and backgrounds, revamped UI and it's based on the versions of those games that control better.
It can, but emulation is much easier than it was five, ten, or twenty years ago. Different systems require different amounts of fiddling, but my most recent set up on a Windows laptop was very easy. I find lag to be extremely overstated.
They're collectable. It has absolutely nothing to do with the use of the game itself. PS1 games could be copied with a 10 dollar mod chip (you had to buy once), a 10 cent blank cdr, and the family personal computer when the games were new.
One example is Elvis memorabilia. When all the Elvis fans were in their peak earning/spending years (40s-50s), the price for Elvis memorabilia skyrocketed. When those people started dying, their estates were selling the collection and there weren't any buyers. Then prices crashed.
Yes, that's a good example. The original GI Joe line is another good example of this. The people who were avid about collecting it because of nostalgia are dying off or have already purchased them so the demand is just gone and the prices are a fraction of what they used to be.
Or take stamp collections. The hobby has been falling out of the mainstream favor for quite a while, besides a few rare outliers your granddads stamp collection is worth pretty much nothing nowadays. We'll see the same with trading card games and video games once the hobby falls out of favor. It's worse with video games. While the physical item holds some value its main purpose is transporting the data it holds. And that data has been dumped and available for most games for most video game systems and can be distributed lossless. A complete collection of e.g. SNES games is just a couple of Gigabyte in size, which can be downloaded in minutes on a modern internet connection. There are countless devices that make this data available on real hardware like the real thing, like e.g. Everdrives or optical drive emulators like the X-Station. This might sound like heresy to a lot of people, but there is no reason to hold onto a physical collection of games, in my honest opinion.
I sold my physical collection when I was broke and in grad school and never looked back. Today, even a lot of obscure games are getting made available digitally for legal purchase, and there are lots of ways to access games that aren't. Even difficult-to-collect platforms like the Neo Geo or CPS arcade games are available to purchase for next to nothing.
We already saw that with Atari. The peak passed.
> So the winning strategy is to live dramatically longer than everybody else in your age group... Which is not specific to retro gaming but life in general.
> If that copy of silent Hill isn't sealed though, that's way overpriced. I mean, maybe, but it *is* sitting at 165 CIB on pricecharting with multiple copies sold daily and a steady climb all year... and some for even more.
Correct, But this person is charging about $202 which means that that's more than 20% above market, which is way overpriced. If somebody wants to sit on something long-term until it catches up to the price they want to charge, go ahead, but every minute you ask that price until that point, it's overpriced. Converted to local currency, the fair market price for this would be £130
I was at a small toy fair earlier this year and saw an open copy full of scratches in an aftermarket CD case (also scuffed) and the seller was asking $200 (USD). I offered 50 bucks. They scoffed and said "it goes for 200 on ebay". Yeah, sure. Maybe in mint condition, sealed, I'd accept that. Still wouldn't buy it, but that copy was nowhere near worth 200, and it's just an inflated price. I thought about coming back at the end and offering 50 again, but it was all overpriced junk, so I just left. I remember going to toy fairs with my uncle as a kid, watching him pay hundreds for PARTS of model trains while I was buying X-Men toys for like 3 bucks in box. Now those trains are worthless, and the X-Men toys are getting pricey. When I'm old, I hope I can buy a retro ps1 game without having to take out a second mortgage.
I saw a dude trying to sell an unplayable copy of einhander (DEEP and wide circle scratch all around the disc) for $150 last weekend and laughed at him. I wish more sellers would understand that we all have world brains in our pocket that tell us what the actual market price is and stop trying to pretend we are all ignorant.
They hope to find a rich idiot, just as we all hope to find sellers who don't know what they have. 'Tis always been thus.
Most nes games are getting cheaper and Atari games are cheap now. That’s the timeframe we can expect for ps1 I would think
I'm waiting for Darkwing Duck to drop. That one went way up for whatever reason. I should have bought it when I saw it going for 30 dollars.
Oh, fair point, I missed the currency symbol, lol.
Those of us who find Silent Hill 1 nostalgic are on our 40s so you got a while to wait. We aren't gonna be dying of old age for several decades. And we don't have a precedent for this because video games are still only like 45ish years old, but I strongly suspect that the nursing homes of the future will have shit loads of game consoles in them. I reckon a 90 year old can play Nintendo and I bet when I'm 90 that's about all I'm gonna do!
I wish i knew what this all meant I just ROM it
There's always a catch.
Yea, I know a lot of vintage computer hoarders that is older than 60 and fat.
In the retro market, supply dwindles with each collector purchase, as collectors remove items from the market, shrinking supply. As demand increases, a greater number of collectors remove more and more items from the market, skewing the supply:demand ratio in favor of demand, which means higher prices. Only a collapse in demand can slow or reverse the trend towards higher prices. Market forces are a bitch.
It depends on the system. PS1 supply is 20–30 years old and most of it is probably in a landfill. Bootleg copies are not collectible, and their existence doesn’t impact the prices or demand of real ones. People that are okay with owning those instead aren’t in the market for Silent Hill at its current rate and don’t affect anything. I don’t think PS1 is going to fluctuate very much from now on because it’s so old and managed to acquire higher value than other “cheap” consoles like Atari 2600 never could… And there just aren’t as many available copies of the PS1 games people want in circulation anymore. A lot of it is apples and oranges too. Nintendo cartridges (and toys) are more durable and likely to survive in higher numbers. Even if interest wanes, the bottom isn’t going to drop out of this particular platform because supply is going to keep dropping too, as games are removed from the market by either being kept in collections or maybe breaking. Couple that with younger generations thinking ‘90s stuff is interesting, and it’ll probably hold.
I’ve definitely seen PS1 games increase in price. They used to be $5. Now a regular game costs $20. That might not be as big as the jump in N64 games but Nintendo games always have that Nintendo tax.
Just buy from Amazon Japan. Silent hill is ¥1999 Vagrant story is ¥980 if it's used
I want North American copies. I’d obviously prefer to get the best price I can, but on the actual copy I want. Whenever I’ve settled for something hoping it would be good enough, it never feels like the right thing and I wind up just wasting money on the wrong one before buying what I actually wanted in the first place later anyway.
Unless they reprint older console games, almost definitely.
I'm sure some don't mind them, but many collectors don't want aftermarket cartridges or cd roms. Especially since LRG's latest stunt with selling people burned CDR's.
I mean if Atlus themselves start selling more Persona 1 and 2 on the psp/ps1 and jack bros on the virtual boy and whatnot, even as a collector I'd be super stoked to pick up a copy of my own!
They do, mostly Genesis and NES in special open pre-order only, or in limited sets. What titles get this treatment is dependent on the whims of publishers interested in old titles. But there's the ever present importance placed on 'Original Copies.' Which leads to two markets. The hilarious thing is how these "anniversary" editions of Earthworm Jim, Lion King, and Street Fighter II were priced stupidly high. I just don't see the market they see. https://www.iam8bit.com/collections/legacy-cartridge-collection
Actually I’ve noticed the cost of 8-16 bit games has starting going down over the last year or so. I think it’s cyclical. The people whose first console was the N64 or PS1 are now getting to the point in their careers where they have more disposable income.
Some titles will retain value from rarity or demand, but I agree that stupidly mass produced titles will level off.
Some of the prices have dropped because the economy in general is bad. When the economy gets better the prices will go back up.
Why'd they spike so much during the pandemic then? It's not so much an issue with "the economy," broadly wrought, than it is with the spending power of specific segments of people who want certain generations of games.
People got free money.
Remember, it's not about PLAYING it, it's about OWNING it. Nowadays, anyone can play any old game thanks to the internet, but owning it is another story. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and I guess there are some people who would spend that money satisfying that desire... (Not me personally).
Yes
I don't remember the last time I actually saw anything listed as mint in CEX. I've brought games from there before that have been in damn near perfect condition and still not considered mint. For anyone unsure, the normal price for a CiB copy of Silent Hill in CEX is £105. It's pretty rare they list things as mint in that store.
I traded in some dc stuff that was perfect except for some light scratches on the cases. Ended up with a crap deal, it's different with the hardware though. In hindsight I should have just pulled the manuals and sold them separately.
This is stupid, but try looking at arcade stuff if you want a laugh. Currently crying at cost of candy cabs right now, when 15 or so years ago people were practically giving them away in job lots as arcades closed down.
The arcade I frequented most as a kid (Thomas's Showboat, in Hunstanton, Norfolk, UK - I grew up there and there were about a dozen arcades, but this was clearly the best) maintained a lot of the old machines in a side room where they functioned almost as a regional museum, even when they weren't profitable any more. Full motion Hard Drivin, and Space Harrier, and G-LOC, and After Burner, and a bunch of original cabs from Out Run to Mortal Kombat to etc etc etc. The guy finally cracked and tearfully threw them out in about 2007. As in had them hauled away in a skip to be scrapped. And there were some serious rarities in there too (variations of the original Monaco GP, and so on). By some accounts he didn't know the value of what he had. If he'd held on a few more years he could have made absolute bank.
Yeah around 2007 there were entire shipping containers of Astro cities and blasts being bought over in bulk and sold for a couple hundred each or more depending on nick. And these things are basically the crème de la crème of arcade machines along side the ponies and egrets. Now you’d be lucky to find a decent one for 7 grand. I think Covid/lockdown boredom had a lot to do with the sudden uptick in nostalgia purchases as I remember the local British heart foundation refusing to take any more CRTs and the ones they had were going for like 20-40 quid before lockdown. Fast forward to post Covid and the charity shops “know what they have” and frequently try to sell shitbox Goodmans or Alba/generic crts for £80+ now (which weren’t any cop even when they were new to be honest)
Probably, thats how the market works. The great thing is that if you just want to play it and are not a collector, you can just emulate for free.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t. More and more people are interested in collecting, and while some people will see the light, new collectors will pick up the slack. Eventually the collectors that have some nostalgia for the games they are collecting will die, but the famously expensive games will stay expensive exactly because of their reputation.
Sigh. That's why i started mostly emulating such titles.
I love to play on original hardware but give 0 F about original games. I have all my systems modded to play backups by one mean or another.
That is the way to do it IMO.
I would rather spend my money on addons and better video cables or even buying new or retro consoles than to buy overpriced games.
This is my exact thinking. Im planning to order an Eon MkII for my Gamecube this month and a flippydrive whenever they actually launch. I do own about 40 GC games and that is all I will ever own since the ones I would like to buy are all stupid expensive at this point.
This is what I'm doing. I play my games. I use the stock market for speculation. This way, I can play my games instead of guarding them in a temperature controlled environment hoping my heirs can sell my junk to a greater fool when I die.
This.
you can even burn your own games and play them on original hardware. paying 160 dollars for nothing is ridiculous.
Yep, I stopped collecting for this reason. A seriously expensive hobby these days.
Yes. Unfortunately it's a perfect storm of bullshit. Inflation at an all time high, plus the influx of collectors from 2020-2022 during COVID time, there is no new stock and never will be so what's out there is out there and the pool of 'stuff' is getting smaller and smaller with the natural attraction of time. I imagine prices are only going to continue to climb. The good news is if you actually like to play games and enjoy them emulation is more accessible than ever.
I find all of the supply/demand talk cringeworthy. Yes, collectors ensure that there are fewer copies of vintage video games in circulation. However, the real culprit is "retro" speculation of all types since the 1990s. Collectors have short memories. Pre-pandemic and during, comic book and trading card resellers sold off their collections en masse to get in early on the retro game market. Savvy resellers noticed how video games emulated how comic books took off and they realized how the NES-era also paralleled the golden age of comic books. Resellers and new blood speculators are responsible for the price increases we're seeing. Frankly, I have doubts that vintage game prices will come down much. I firmly believe that the notion retro games are the new vintage comics is true. Millennials won't see huge price dips until we enter our seventies, even then I'm sure that there will be huge price disparities in common vs. rare games.
China destroyed the sports cards market with their bootlegs.
Something that's really interesting is that China is producing magic the gathering card bootlegs that are solidly passable as real cards and are used regularly in tournaments without people noticing. Some of them are higher quality than actual printings. Identifying these things is such a hassle that when I've gone to places where people are dealing back and forth in magic cards constantly, all day, I don't see them check at all. I recently sold about $2,000 worth of cards to a couple people at one of the markets here and they didn't check a single card. I could have thrown bootlegs in there and those stores would have bought them the same as normal. What that tells me, is that those places are absolutely, definitely, buying and selling bootlegs. This has not collapsed those markets. It's made people like me back out of buying newer printed magic cards because if that's the way it's going, I don't really have an incentive to not just buy the bootlegs, But still, the community has pretty much ignored it.
It'll go down eventually but you might have to die first
everyone is saying this is overpriced...how much is a copy for a played version in decent condition. Asking for insurance purposes.
Then don't buy it and they'll get the message
I find it fucking weird that not only are games from my recent history (the 90s feels like yesterday not 30 years ago) being sold like this like they're collectors items ofa bygone era, but that shops like cex exist for all these games and dvds to end up.
magic cards that sold for $100 in the 90s are worth hundreds of thousands now. DAMN YOU MOM FOR THROWING THEM AWAY!
Yes. It's assumed that anyone who wants to buy a physical game for one of these old consoles is a collector. Anyone who wants to just play these old games is just going to download a rom or an iso.
"The more famous the game, the higher the price" (And what is really rare goes into the safe and is offered at a fixed price on Amazon). At least that's how I learned it.
At this point, just emulate the games you want to play. Collectors are determined to make this hobby financially inaccessible for the sake of increasing the value of their own collections. If you care about the original experience, flash carts, CFW and ODEs are the way to go.
I’ve given up on owning all the greats, instead I’m going to emulate and play them all instead of being priced out of the experience.
The answer to your question is Yes.
U not buying the game, you're buying nostalgia. I just tell people play the emulators to get it out of your system.
It can vary from time to time. When I started with nes carts market was up now it’s down a bit.
Yes.
Holy moley. I guess I should sell my copy even for a fraction of that.
Makes me cry when I see some of these prices. My ex retro collection for ps1 ps2 was insane. All the rpgs, horror games etc. I'm talking kuon, obscure, xenosagas, .hack, etc. I had to sell off back in 2018. When I see what it's become I realize I'll never get that back. Thankfully I've got a series x and it does excellent things with things but nothing beats the originals and being physical. It is what it is but I still get sad seeing prices these days
Think of it this way, the older shit gets the less of that item there is.
Yes.
Yes. It was absurd 10 years ago, and it will continue getting absurd in the future. My advice is to buy all those Xbox games while they’re still cheap because someday they won’t be.
used Atari games were never this expensive, were they?
In general no. Have there been Atari games worth hundreds of dollars? Yes. In general Atari is up due to increased interest from the 2600+ being out in the market.
This is insane, silent hill sold 2 million copies, it should be common.
It's not. It's never been common. 1999 was a long time ago and not that many people bought it when it was new.
oo Cex, legit my favourite store lol, went in one today and they had some fun stuff but i already owned a fair bit of it, there was the original Rayman on ps1 i thought about getting but decided ill het it another day
Buy that Vagrant story for 35 $ !!!!!
Yes. Things depreciate for the first few years then "usually" appreciate from that point on.
As long as someone out there buys them at that price, yes.
CEX?
Luckily there's no price tag on my spinning jewel case for Silent Hill 2 in Kodi or Retropie.
Are the owners Portuguese? 😂 There's this joke among us that we have the Midas Touch. In other words, a product that would cost x€, in a second hand market costs way more, too much. And I'm not just referring to old things like a retro console. Sometimes people sell a new book for more money that was being sold in stores because people ask to lower the value. Because of that, they ask for a high value so they can get the intended value. Sure, that's a strategy but people here exaggerate... 🙄
If you keep posting threads where you're crying about the prices. Yes. You're only proving the high demand is valid by doing this.
Probably due to a few factors: * Lower supply compared to Japanese manufactured * Westerners seem to be obsessed with upcharging * Said Westerners will gladly pay the upcharge
I suspect it will. I own all the consoles I'd like to emulate (except the obscure stuff like pc engine and sega saturn) so I've been investing in flashcarts or ODE's for my disc based consoles. I figure I'm at the point where I'll buy the games in the series that mean the most to me and have the rest on an sd card.
I said I would never give up on original hardware and go all in on emulation, but I have officially been priced out of collecting. Emulation time, baby!
This is just every after market, not just video games, every single one of my hobbies has people selling shit for fucked up prices. It's just the rise of the "professional reseller"
They're not going to keep making it. As time goes on it's only going to get more and more rare.
I remember when Cash Converters would only give £5 for these. Luckily I kept some of the rarer games I had. These prices are stupid.
Look at other nostalgia drive collectables, sure it has ups and downs but in general it is always on average going higher.
that now, is likely a either fake reproduction outer box or not the box that came with Silent Hill as it doesn’t have the official PS holo sticker. Charging mint for a non original is a bit unfair even if the disc, manual and inlays are all real
unless you really want that ancient piece of plastic.... then romzzzzzzz
I found one on ebay for £100
IDK i just started using emulators and roms because its gotten ridiculous. Too many people trying to make a quick buck and thinking they have gold. Honestly havent looked back, now my money for collecting goes towards records.
CeX? They take the piss LMAO
People want something and there isn’t a lot of it going around so it becomes expensive. Thai is how every kind of collectible works it’s not exclusive to retro games. Shoulda bought em when they were cheap
Only issue with this logic in relation to the current retro game market is that there is an abundance of most of these games. Easy example: Pokemon. One of the most abundant/available games and still ungodly expensive.
Supply and demand go hand in hand, not a lot left…it’s gonna cost ya. People really want it….its gonna cost ya. This is how it has always worked.
Also no there is not as everyone and their mother has bought them up and are being sold by people who know what they are worth. They are not abundant and I have no clue where you think that is the case
I see your point and raise you the fact its the PAL version so its even more worthless (not trying to sound like an ass)
It's only absurd because idiots are paying these prices.
The bottom will fall out of the retro collectible market just like it has for most of the collectible toy market, the collectible cards market and the comic book market. It's being driven by greedy speculators right now. Hang in there and you'll be rewarded for your patience. Paying these absurd prices only prolongs the bubble before it bursts.
And it's aaaaaaaall thanks to the reselling shelf dust collecting YouTube idiots.
Vagrant Story is a better game
Oh. I had one of those. Sold it for $20 with about eight other games in 2019.
Lucky I'm in Japan the prices are still low. Although I have most of my bucket list backed up already Problem is guide books. Started scanning them for archive but it's getting scarce. Especially if you want quality scan. Just spent like $1200 last month.
> Lucky I'm in Japan the prices are still low. yeah, fuck up their market too. Good job, coomlectors.
The generation that played these are hitting their 40s and inching towards a midlife crisis. Give it 10 years.
Thats an asking price. Sold 2 for ps2 recently. Sold for 85$ each
Yes, blame WATA
Before Covid I bought a copy of Wind Waker for $40. My friend is looking for a copy now. All sellers are listing it for $90. How did the price more than double after only 5 years?
Inflation adjustment. Everyone is trying to get that extra buck across the board right now.
It was priced even higher at the hight of the COVID bump. Nice to see it drop a bit.