The Price of Retro Games

Double post

Covid over the past 17 months has helped shoot up the prices of a lot of things, including retro games. Everyone and their mother got into older games from March 2020 due to lockdowns all over the world, shops closed, no leaving your town etc, so prices shot up due to demand. Its that simple.

Its the same with all hobbies over this time, prices shot up for everything second hand.

No idea when they will go down though. maybe in the next year or two perhaps.

My original reply was just saying how people can't go out anymore and spend their money on nights out, holidays etc, so people have a lot more to spend elsewhere.

Couple that with a lot of people being more nostalgic for simpler (non covid!) times and it's made the price of collectables across the board shoot through the roof. Videogames especially as you can stay indoors and hide from the virus while playing them.

I've had to completely stop buying new games on ebay as a result. Be interesting to see if they come down again when things get a bit more back to normal.

Definitely struggling with prices now, especially thanks to eBay and it's annoying global shipping program being super common with US sellers in particular.

What was attractive before was the prices, coupled with my seeming immunity to getting charged VAT on imports via AnPost for whatever reason, so I hoovered stuff up. But now not only are things more expensive, but I'm paying extra charges and not very cheap shipping! 🤷🏻‍♂️

Whilst there has been an upward trend in "retro = profit" over the last few years as everyone and their granny gets in on what they think is a gold mine, I think Covid has set it into overdrive to ridiculous levels. People who now find themselves stuck at home with the above mindset have discovered ebay and suddenly think their loose collection of cartridges consisting of Sonic the Hedgehog, Madden Football/Ice Hockey 95, and [Insert Soccer game name here] are worth £100 each with a straight face.

Speaking from a Sega Megadrive perspective, it's gone bonkers for PAL games, particularly where the 32X is concerned. The price jumps on such games would put pre-WW2 Weimar Germany's inflation woes to shame, with games rapidly climbing into the triple digit range that were maybe £60 complete in box two years ago. Some megadrive games really seem to have become insanity central price-wise, and whilst I get the rarity of some of them, the asking prices for loose or incomplete copies is just mind boggling, like Castlevania: the new generation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the Hypterstone Heist, or Mega Turrican. It's all gone from collectible to Gordon Gecko of Wall st. levels of greed now.

Adding to the out-and-out-greed factor are some of the repro asking prices. When you are being asked to shell out £300 for a repro of a game (in this case Darxide for the 32X; coincidentally the estimated value of a legit copy now, excluding that absolute plank in Dubai asking for £6k), you know it's all gone horrendously tits up.

I cannot see the prices falling back to more realistic levels now that they have gone up into the stratosphere - at least not for a long time - because nobody wants to admit to themselves that they were taken for a mug. Best that one can do right now is apply an extra level of scrutiny before buying a game that seems a tad on the high side of asking prices.

I think you and me are visiting the same charity shops. I never find anything of interest in either of my two local shops. It doesn't make sense. You'd think the law of averages would dictate that at least once in a blue moon, something of interest would turn up. But no.. nothing.. ever!

I suppose it's possible that old console games like Master System, MegaDrive, Snes, PS1 etc. are deemed too old and most likely dumped rather than take up shelf space. However, I've had my suspicions for awhile now that anything of a retro nature is being 'cherry picked' by whoever sorts out the stock.

Either that, or some clever customer has an arrangement with the staff to 'put aside' any old video games.

If it is the latter.. I wish I had thought of it first.

TBH, it'll be six of one and a half dozen of the other. I have heard of people having first dibs sweetheart deals with charity shop staff. Whether those deals are off or on the books I couldn't say. That being said, more and more I think it is the charities themselves have someone on staff who has an idea for pricing since I've found quite a few charities selling games on ebay (I've bought a few at decent prices but it's hit or miss with the asking prices) among a whole host of other stuff.

TBH, anything home/garden recreational-related has seen incredible demand over the last 18 months. Board games, computer games, table top wargames, garden games, anything that can entertain a family at home ... demand and consequently pricing has gone bonkers.

Yup. Im Officially out of collecting. What I have now I hold. Im going to whack up a couple of boxed super nintendos and super Famicoms and about 80 SNES games in the next few weeks as a job lot (all doubles) and then im out. I only collect SNES now and im at the point where if I want a game it's over €80... To me, that's insanity and I can't keep doing it. I have everything I ever wanted with the SNES and for the last few years I was just buying games because I didn't have them.

Yeah, it's possible to get caught up in collecting for collecting sake. So almost seeing games more like stamps, there are rarer ones you want for your collection etc.

I did it for years myself, thankfully when this were about ten times cheaper than they are now. Wouldn't dream of spending the cash some people do on games these days, it's lunacy.

I was looking for Maniac Mansion for the C64 but there is no way I am paying +€500 for this...