Look at these prices...unreal right ?

[CIB_Wholesale | 418]

1 hour ago, Dumars2001 said:

 if you have anything sealed, rare or minty, I would hold and not sell right now

if you own some of the sought after titles, you can sell them and buy a new car or house.

 

agreed!

crypto, cash, paper, houses, cars, auction houses, plastic cases all get duped by the printer owner

according to charting it's almost impossible to get a rare game for cheaper than you sold it for given more time

Cardboard diamond hands all the way

Edited April 26, 2021 by SealedWholesale

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

1 hour ago, Dumars2001 said:

if you have anything sealed, rare or minty, I would hold and not sell right now (even though you could probably get 25x or more than what you paid for for some of your games). Just my humble opinion.

man, when that SMB went for $100k on Heritage Auctions and we were all talking about what b.s. it was, we should have been buying with reckless abandon. 

I have to be honest, personally, this isn't fun anymore. It used to be you could make a list of games you wanted to get, slowly work through it, in a few years or whatever you could hit your goal, have some stories to tell, etc. Now? Oh, you don't want to pay $10k in one go at current fair market value to pick up the 200 or so games you plan to collect? well sucks to be you, that set is going to be worth $30k in a year, you may as well just factor that in to your thinking right now. Bleh. 

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

Is Wata so backed up that a game I can buy on Amazon for $50 in 9.4 condition is worth $420 graded? For everyone saying how Wata buyers have an eye for the exceptional, high end, and rare, there are so many people buying mundane games for big prices too. This is not in exceptional shape, it's not the desirable variant, and of course it's not even off the market. It is a bargain bin, off the shelf Wii U game in a fancy case. I also see people on social media hoarding multiples of these later-release Wii U BOTWs to go with their Mario 3D All-Stars. Just insanity. Can't wait to see the first Mario 3D All-Stars on Heritage.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284266926787?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&toolid=10001&campid=5337463817

Here's a video called "My Sealed Game Investments" with a few of these too. Imagine how many people are going to buy "1 to play, 1 to keep sealed" of BOTW2 after all this madness too.

Edited April 26, 2021 by DefaultGen

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

People think they are front-running the next wave of hot investments this way. And I guess they are paying for the convenience of not having to do the effort. What they don’t realize is that if everyone has a graded copy, then it’s not likely to go up in price much.

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

Damn, this guy popped into the Facebook groups with a CIB Stadium Events find and sold it within 6 hours, didn't even wait for people to get off work! Reminds me of the guy who brought an NWC to Pink Gorilla and sold it the same day. I hope these people aren't getting taken for a ride. I can understand not wanting to deal with grading and auction houses, but man, someone who really, really wants one is going to wake up and kick themselves over this. If someone paid like 100k, power to you king: Jeremy McDowell.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

2 hours ago, MiamiSlice said:

I have to be honest, personally, this isn't fun anymore. It used to be you could make a list of games you wanted to get, slowly work through it, in a few years or whatever you could hit your goal, have some stories to tell, etc. Now? Oh, you don't want to pay $10k in one go at current fair market value to pick up the 200 or so games you plan to collect? well sucks to be you, that set is going to be worth $30k in a year, you may as well just factor that in to your thinking right now. Bleh. 

I'm not done collecting, but I understand that the glory days of my collecting are over. The days of garage sale-ing, going to local stores, finding local deals, trades etc, are MOSTLY gone. I'm sure something will happen here and there, but I know that the bulk of my collecting going forward will be online/ebay/forums/groups etc. It's kind of sad to come to terms with that but it is what it is. Those of us that collected pre retro boom in 2010 and then pre grading boom in 2018 or so, we will always remember the great deals, the amazing finds, etc. 

[RH | 4,903]

I definitely think there is going to be a crash in all of these crazy prices, but the question I can't quite answer is if at-large this is a fad (think POGs and Beanie-Babies) or if this is just a surge that's happening as video games are becoming the next collector/investor market place like ball cards and and comics once became.

If this is a "fad" the crash will be hard and there's hope to one day get some of this stuff at a reasonable price (although significant bag holders rarely sell at pennies on the dollar).  If it's not a fad, then I could see there being a market contraction of probably 25% from the peak of interest and then prices will slowly go down to match.  Regardless, prices really are crazy.

I've already mentioned Chibi Robo.  I'm burned about that one, but I count it as my fault.  I had my chance for 20 years.  I also asked around on NA for a left-handed bros in early 2018, maybe it was even late 2017 and no one reached out to me.  I just wanted to get a "first edition" SMB3 because it's my favorite Mario game and I recall being in Walmart near launch day picking it up, so a "first edition" was the copy I had as a kid.  I'm kind of ill that if I want it now (CIB) it's going to cost me an arm and a leg and back then I was willing to pay $150 for a nice copy, and I was told I was over paying. 

Edited April 26, 2021 by RH

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

@DefaultGen ha, you were watching that thread too? I was living vicariously in there like I do. That whole thread was a trip.

@CodysGameRoom there's still hauls out there! I see people finding stuff at flea markets, thrift stores and garage sales all the time. My area sucks for these but I see other people finding stuff, all depends on the area. I was even wondering if prices might come down a bit this year as we might have a healthy season of garage sales leading to more supply showing up on eBay and such. 

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

4 minutes ago, RH said:

I definitely think there is going to be a crash in all of these crazy prices, but the question I can't quite answer is if at-large this is a fad (think POGs and Beanie-Babies) or if this is just a surge that's happening as video games are becoming the next collector/investor market place like ball cards and and comics once became.

If this is a "fad" the crash will be hard and there's hope to one day get some of this stuff at a reasonable price (although significant bag holders rarely sell at pennies on the dollar).  If it's not a fad, then I could see there being a market contraction of probably 25% from the peak of interest and then prices will slowly go down to match.  Regardless, prices really are crazy.

I've already mentioned Chibi Robo.  I'm burned about that one, but I count it as my fault.  I had my chance for 20 years.  I also asked around on NA for a left-handed bros in early 2018, maybe it was even late 2017 and no one reached out to me.  I just wanted to a "first edition" SMB3 because it's my favorite Mario game and I recall being in Walmart near launch day picking it up, so a "first edition" was the copy I had as a kid.  I'm kind of ill that if I want it now (CIB) it's going to cost me an arm and a leg and back then I was willing to pay $150 for a nice copy, and I was told I was over paying. 

I have a 5.0 for sale, Wata graded. I think I had it at $500, I'd have to check and make sure it hasn't gone up too much since then.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

6 minutes ago, MiamiSlice said:

there's still hauls out there! I see people finding stuff at flea markets, thrift stores and garage sales all the time. My area sucks for these but I see other people finding stuff, all depends on the area. I was even wondering if prices might come down a bit this year as we might have a healthy season of garage sales leading to more supply showing up on eBay and such. 

For every deal there's the pawnshop selling sports games for $15 or the guy at the garage sale trying to get         eBay money for his box of NES games. I agree the deals are there but it's still getting more and more difficult.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

i was going to ask what the thought is about wata stuff going for peanuts once big $$$ gets bored...

[LifeGame | 760]

I’m also a bit bummed with those prices since if it keeps up i can definitely say goodbye to a few games i wanted sealed but at the same time i dont really mind since i only buy a few games here and there now because i have almost everything i want.

 

What i really don’t understand is some people paying those insane prices for graded ps2 GT Auto’s that come from the ultra common trilogy boxset, you can still buy these boxsets brand new...

 

[Naked Warrior | 288]

I've been following this thread for a while and it felt at first like most people were just amazed by the crazy prices, but it feels more and more like people are lamenting not being able to buy certain games they wanted...I hear you, but we should keep a few things in mind -

1) Many of us had lots of years of "cheap" game buying.  I started in 2016, so maybe not as many as others, but I am still so grateful for all those Goodwill finds and mispriced eBay listings (which you can still find pretty often!).  I mean, I never got to experience buying NES CIB games for less than $100, but it doesn't really stop my aspirations.

2) We have a lot of options as game collectors...Unless you are a hedge fund manager, NIB full sets for pretty much any system pre-Xbox/PS2/GCN is going to be near impossible...but that doesn't mean you couldn't collect mint CIB...or not-so-mint CIB.  I really only collect CIB games, but I've thought about what would happen if I couldn't afford it anymore...I would move to just collecting cart/manuals and make custom cases...and I'd lower my expectations on condition (although TBH, mine are already pretty low).  I have always been a Nintendo kid, but I started collecting SEGA stuff this year - Do you know how many CIB Genesis games cost more than $500??? Two! (Outback Joey doesn't count, and you know it). I can get like 7 of the 10 best/rarest GEN games for the same price as a CIB copy of Hagane on SNES or 4 of the 10 for the same price as a CIB Chrono Trigger (which is not rare AT ALL) and it has opened my eyes to a ton of great new (to me) games.  I bet a lot of people on here have never looked into handhelds or more recent consoles like the Xbox 360 or Wii (which have tons of great games for less than $20 CIB right now...)

3) You can always unlock the value in the games you already have...I don't even know how many games I have, but I know I have over 1000 different CIB GBA games (including the GBA videos)...at least 350 of those are terrible...even if I sold/traded them for $3 each, I'd have $1,000 to re-deploy - I could buy like 1/4 of the 3DS library for that much!

Point being, we've survived this long, we can continue to collect (but might have to make a few more sacrifices) if we want to, and there is a huge, undiscovered world of games out there for almost everybody! Keep your chin up!

P.S. I do think the sealed/graded market will crash hard...I don't see who the end buyer for multiple $60,000 Pokemon games is...I mean, there probably are a dozen or so end buyers for something like that, but when you eventually have 10,000 graded copies, those twelve people are going to be pretty full...right now people are just trading them between each other to prop up the value...the end user demand has got to be super low...but I hate to say the CIB market is probably not coming down anytime soon...for the exact reasons I mentioned above - All those people who wanted sealed/graded/mint are going to start settling for something cheaper and realize, "You know what, a 7/10 box for $100 provides a lot more utility for me compared to a 10/10 sealed for $30,000..."

[OptOut | 8,884]

Just collect Japanese games, no one gives a fuck about those, lol!

I'm swimming round like a pig in shit over here, got more cheap games than I know what to do with!

[fcgamer | 4,723]

52 minutes ago, OptOut said:

Just collect Japanese games, no one gives a fuck about those, lol!

I'm swimming round like a pig in shit over here, got more cheap games than I know what to do with!

Like Power Rangers SFC

[AdamW | 713]

7 hours ago, docile tapeworm said:

i was going to ask what the thought is about wata stuff going for peanuts once big $$$ gets bored...

I think it's possible for some games that just aren't very interesting which people bought on the bandwagon. Like, uhh, BOTW, or Pokemon games after say Gen IV. I'm with @Naked Warriorthat at some point the market will realize there isn't actually sustainable demand for fifteen thousand sealed copies of Omega Ruby at $500 each.

This is what happens when collectible bubbles pop, as I see it - the core stuff that people who actually like the hobby want doesn't drop much - it may dip, and activity may flatten out for a bit until buyers catch up to what people are willing to sell for - but the third tier stuff people bought just as speculation bait may get dumped off as they lose interest.

But OTOH, big $$$ may just shrug and figure it'll sit on them until maybe they get valuable again. You've gotta consider that people who can drop thousands of dollars on something they maybe don't even really care about a lot usually don't need that money, and they probably have storage space to burn. They can leave it parked in an asset class for decades waiting for it to come good again, if they feel like it.

[GPX | 1,369]

7 hours ago, AdamW said:

I think it's possible for some games that just aren't very interesting which people bought on the bandwagon. Like, uhh, BOTW, or Pokemon games after say Gen IV. I'm with @Naked Warriorthat at some point the market will realize there isn't actually sustainable demand for fifteen thousand sealed copies of Omega Ruby at $500 each.

This is what happens when collectible bubbles pop, as I see it - the core stuff that people who actually like the hobby want doesn't drop much - it may dip, and activity may flatten out for a bit until buyers catch up to what people are willing to sell for - but the third tier stuff people bought just as speculation bait may get dumped off as they lose interest.

But OTOH, big $$$ may just shrug and figure it'll sit on them until maybe they get valuable again. You've gotta consider that people who can drop thousands of dollars on something they maybe don't even really care about a lot usually don't need that money, and they probably have storage space to burn. They can leave it parked in an asset class for decades waiting for it to come good again, if they feel like it.

At the moment it’s literally a gamble if you’re choosing to buy 5 digits or more items. They can go up, but they can easily also go down. The problem is that if you take a punt, and it goes down, then your life circumstances will drastically change.

It’s not the same as 2 years ago where things were much more predictable, and it flowed a sense of logic over the spanning 2 decades prior. Currently the only logic I see is excessive hype and market manipulation to the nth degree. Particularly, some of the end prices on the WATA common stuff in common condition just makes me cringe as a 10 year collector. It’s genuine LOL!

[Tanooki | 4,933]

You cringe at it for a decade, I cringe buying second hand for over 25 years now, then feel sick.

I'm to where I'm just going to offload anything I'm certain I don't want to bother sitting on anymore with games, secondarily old toys and electronics.  As long as I stay under the 2021 year tax cap (20k) it's all flying primarily on ebay by the end of the year.  I had being that aggressive as it's time and life sucking, but once it's gone problem solved.  Let someone else profit more off it, or get what they got coming for speculating like morons.

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

9 hours ago, AdamW said:

But OTOH, big $$$ may just shrug and figure it'll sit on them until maybe they get valuable again. You've gotta consider that people who can drop thousands of dollars on something they maybe don't even really care about a lot usually don't need that money, and they probably have storage space to burn. They can leave it parked in an asset class for decades waiting for it to come good again, if they feel like it.

I don't know man, from seeing this day in and day out for the past year I'm pretty certain some people are spending money they cannot afford to lose, and that's not good. I'm not convinced they can all just sit on the stuff and wait for prices to come back up. But we will see. 

10 hours ago, OptOut said:

Just collect Japanese games, no one gives a fuck about those, lol!

Bleh. I'm not into this. It just drives up the prices of Japanese games anyway, as the demand shifts over, and plus I would be buying a bunch of stuff that looks nice but I don't actually have any sentimental attachment to it. And also, the resale value is not the same... I've seen people with stacks of Japanese games struggle to find other buyers (outside of obvious stuff like Pokemon)... if you ever decide to let it go, it's harder than letting go of US stuff. 

I've been tempted on occasion, especially with Kirby's Star Stacker, to just pick up the JP version because the US version is so hard to find now, but it's a dumb cop-out... if I can't get the US version, I just won't have it. That's my thinking. 

Edited April 27, 2021 by MiamiSlice

[AdamW | 713]

@MiamiSlice I agree that's a key question. Things could play out very differently depending on how many people are in the market with money they can't afford to lose, and how the wider economy goes.

[OptOut | 8,884]

@MiamiSlice I understand your sentiments about Japanese stuff, it was kinda tongue in cheek anyway what I said!

But, also, I'm not American, I have very little US stuff, and Japanese games are local to me here in Taiwan, so it's very fortunate that I get to build my collection out without really seeing the kind of compromise you're describing.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

52 minutes ago, MiamiSlice said:

I don't know man, from seeing this day in and day out for the past year I'm pretty certain some people are spending money they cannot afford to lose, and that's not good. I'm not convinced they can all just sit on the stuff and wait for prices to come back up. But we will see. 

Bleh. I'm not into this. It just drives up the prices of Japanese games anyway, as the demand shifts over, and plus I would be buying a bunch of stuff that looks nice but I don't actually have any sentimental attachment to it. And also, the resale value is not the same... I've seen people with stacks of Japanese games struggle to find other buyers (outside of obvious stuff like Pokemon)... if you ever decide to let it go, it's harder than letting go of US stuff. 

I've been tempted on occasion, especially with Kirby's Star Stacker, to just pick up the JP version because the US version is so hard to find now, but it's a dumb cop-out... if I can't get the US version, I just won't have it. That's my thinking. 

Japanese games definitely have high value, and there's definitely been a huge increase in demand where OptOut and I live, compared to ten years ago, with prices drastically increasing and supply diminishing too. It's generally only noticeable though in certain markets, such as Famicom, Sega Mega Drive, etc. No one cares about Japanese N64 or Dreamcast, though actually that's not exactly true either, as there are some titles that have increased quite a bit in price for those too.

Over the past few years, my interest in collecting has decreased drastically, and a large part is because little turns up on game hunts here, and the vast majority of stuff online is being sold by resellers for high prices, across platforms.

A lot of these games are then sold abroad to folks in the west, reminiscent of the situation with Japan. I find it frustrating and sad, as the locals are just f*ing up their own cultural history with this mentality.

 

[phart010 | 1,707]

I used to think that there would be a crash in retro game collecting. But now I’m starting to think that it’s actually asset inflation caused by money creation. We are seeing inflation in many things: stocks, commodities, crypto, real estate, collectables, cars, you name it. Even consumer goods are beginning to see some price inflation.

Everyone is busy “investing” their money into things rather than spending it in the real economy. Unfortunately, parking money into these investments means the money is no longer circulating quite as much through the real economy (ie. services, restaurants, tourism, consumer retail, staple goods, etc.)

Indicators that the real economy is not getting the money circulation it needs (money velocity) means the government will just pump more money into the economy in the hopes that the additional money in people hands will stimulate more spending in the real economy. But instead people just take that additional money and invest it, which creates even more inflation in these investments. 

[AdamW | 713]

Oh, yeah, that's definitely a factor. But fundamentally if you're trying to predict the future, the problem is there's a morass of contributing factors and it's hard to figure exactly how significant each is. General asset price inflation due to extremely easy money policies and very poor bond returns is a factor. More people with more money getting interested in games - either as an investment/speculation vehicle, or just actually being interested in game collecting - is also likely a factor. And pure speculation is probably also a factor.

The result of all those things combined over the long term, and the response to potential significant events like an economic crash or a significant rise in interest rates etc...well, it's really hard to guess.

(BTW, I think you have your cause and effect kinda the wrong way around...people aren't spending less on services/restaurants/tourism/retail/staple goods because they put all the money in assets, they're spending more on assets because the pandemic restricts how much they actually can spend on all those discretionary categories. People who would've spent $5k-10k on a vacation now have that money sitting around and some of them have an itch to do something with it...)

[Naked Warrior | 288]

I don't believe the current prices for anything not sealed/graded are hugely inflated...I think people forget about the demand side of the equation...they look at CIB Pokemon games going for $300+ and they think, Why?  There are literally millions of those...but they forget how the videogame market evolved, and the wave of demand that could be coming.

Most of us were probably NES generation (I would have been 6 or 7 when it first was catching on in the US), but back then, and thru my middle/high school years there was still a lot of stigma around videogames - I didn't meet one girl/woman who regularly played videogames until I was in college.  Pokemon came out in 1998 - my final year of high school.  For kids who were 7-10 years old in that timeframe, I feel like that was the turning point when video games went from a niche/nerdy time waster, to a full-fledged cultural phenomenon, not only for boys, but for girls as well.

Now those 7-10 year old kids are 30-33 years old...just starting to make the kind of money that allows them to buy the things they've always wanted...or the things they've lost/had to sell over the years.  And there are at least double the amount of them (men AND women) that there were 10 years ago when we hit our 30's and started buying NES/SNES.

Anecdotally, I work in an industry that is almost opposite of the videogaming industry, but the 20-something women who start work with me almost always have some videogaming experience.  For many it is Pokemon, some had Animal Crossing.  A lot of them played Wii when it came out.  All of them play games on their phone.  They always have a good time playing Mario Party or You Don't Know Jack, or other non-twitchy games.  And the 20-something dudes are the same as we were when we were 20, except they have a ton of appreciation for "old school" games...(although I find they only ever want to play N64 (MarioKart, Goldeneye, NBA Hangtime) or Gamecube (Melee, Super Strikers)).

That's why I'm so certain your "Marios/Pokemons/MarioKarts/Mario Parties/fun co-op experiences" will continue to rise - not as fast as in the last year or anything, but the people's frothing demand for these games always increases!