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55 minutes ago, doner24 said:

Your Shantae example isn’t helping your argument as that would literally beat any financial market you could play % wise. Multiply that by thousands of games and you could see why some people actually consider their collection an investment. It’s no different than more mature collectibles like comics and baseball cards. People have been making mints speculating on them for decades. 

People who can read the market and buy in, sell, and rebuy in, etc, will make infinitely higher amounts of money. One of my friends from NYC is a multi millionaire and I seriously doubt a single collector ever became as such due to flipping videogames. Once again there is a huge difference between working with something liquid such as cash where you can effectively keep placing back what you're earning because it's a generic thing, versus selling something you might not be able to regain. If I sell my Shantae today for 1200 and think maybe it will lower to 800 later and rebuy it, I made 400 bucks, I also risk it increasing and never being able to get it at a price I can pay again. I lose nothing specific when I invest the market, but I lose something physical entirely in the other instance and also have to deal with all the issues that can entail (scum bag buyers, storage, risk of storage, etc).

 

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/stock-price-history

There is of course the obvious ability to make more immediate huge amounts of money if you truly have the talent to read markets, where as no such thing exist in gaming typically, we have no potential for something to just double next year on any good authority, but with stocks you can take 10k and turn it into a million if you truly are great at it. Of course, not all stocks have risen as the one I linked, but not many games have increased in a meaningful way either. Those Atari 2600 games or 60 percent of the NES library still haven't raised that much unless you bought them new in their release and kept them sealed.

I'm not saying money can't be made, I could effectively make double my money back i'd guess and that would be a pretty penny, but I had I never started collecting and made smart market decisions i'd likely be much more wealthy today, I just didn't have the foresight then. I can take 50k and turn into 100k if I have such a read on the market, but you can't do that practically with videogames, videogames usually require many many years if not decades to appreciate as such. 

If you want another example, Shantae came out in 2002, Amazon stock in 2002 was 10 dollars, now it's 3200. Even if the normal person bought one copy of Shantae and put 30 bucks into Amazon, they would have made almost 10000 dollars on that money. Some person might say well DUH that's AMAZON, well guess what, most games don't become Shantae or Little Samson either.

Edited by goldenpp72
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48 minutes ago, DeuceGamer said:

Wonder how/if this will affect prices? Fox News Business has an article about Super Mario Bros selling on heritage auction.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/vintage-super-mario-bros-video-game-sells-for-114000

Interesting read but some spin in there. The first copy for 100,150 never sold at auction it was a private sale.

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11 minutes ago, goldenpp72 said:

People who can read the market and buy in, sell, and rebuy in, etc, will make infinitely higher amounts of money. One of my friends from NYC is a multi millionaire and I seriously doubt a single collector ever became as such due to flipping videogames. Once again there is a huge difference between working with something liquid such as cash where you can effectively keep placing back what you're earning because it's a generic thing, versus selling something you might not be able to regain. If I sell my Shantae today for 1200 and think maybe it will lower to 800 later and rebuy it, I made 400 bucks, I also risk it increasing and never being able to get it at a price I can pay again. I lose nothing specific when I invest the market, but I lose something physical entirely in the other instance and also have to deal with all the issues that can entail (scum bag buyers, storage, risk of storage, etc).

 

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/stock-price-history

There is of course the obvious ability to make more immediate huge amounts of money if you truly have the talent to read markets, where as no such thing exist in gaming typically, we have no potential for something to just double next year on any good authority, but with stocks you can take 10k and turn it into a million if you truly are great at it. Of course, not all stocks have risen as the one I linked, but not many games have increased in a meaningful way either. Those Atari 2600 games or 60 percent of the NES library still haven't raised that much unless you bought them new in their release and kept them sealed.

I'm not saying money can't be made, I could effectively make double my money back i'd guess and that would be a pretty penny, but I had I never started collecting and made smart market decisions i'd likely be much more wealthy today, I just didn't have the foresight then. I can take 50k and turn into 100k if I have such a read on the market, but you can't do that practically with videogames, videogames usually require many many years if not decades to appreciate as such. 

 

Video Games are becoming a good alternate asset investment. Something cool to collect and great that they are finally getting their just due but I've made a lot more in standard investing (stocks & real estate) in the last 20 years..... and I have been collecting (1996) longer than I have been investing (2003).

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18 minutes ago, goldenpp72 said:

People who can read the market and buy in, sell, and rebuy in, etc, will make infinitely higher amounts of money. One of my friends from NYC is a multi millionaire and I seriously doubt a single collector ever became as such due to flipping videogames. Once again there is a huge difference between working with something liquid such as cash where you can effectively keep placing back what you're earning because it's a generic thing, versus selling something you might not be able to regain. If I sell my Shantae today for 1200 and think maybe it will lower to 800 later and rebuy it, I made 400 bucks, I also risk it increasing and never being able to get it at a price I can pay again. I lose nothing specific when I invest the market, but I lose something physical entirely in the other instance and also have to deal with all the issues that can entail (scum bag buyers, storage, risk of storage, etc).

 

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/stock-price-history

There is of course the obvious ability to make more immediate huge amounts of money if you truly have the talent to read markets, where as no such thing exist in gaming typically, we have no potential for something to just double next year on any good authority, but with stocks you can take 10k and turn it into a million if you truly are great at it. Of course, not all stocks have risen as the one I linked, but not many games have increased in a meaningful way either. Those Atari 2600 games or 60 percent of the NES library still haven't raised that much unless you bought them new in their release and kept them sealed.

I'm not saying money can't be made, I could effectively make double my money back i'd guess and that would be a pretty penny, but I had I never started collecting and made smart market decisions i'd likely be much more wealthy today, I just didn't have the foresight then. I can take 50k and turn into 100k if I have such a read on the market, but you can't do that practically with videogames, videogames usually require many many years if not decades to appreciate as such. 

 

You are missing the point, the returns on games have beat the market the last decade, without fail. It’s the scale that can’t match the market and why your friend is a multi millionaire, I.e. he’s likely trading many stocks at a time versus one sale of $400 to $1200. 

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9 minutes ago, doner24 said:

You are missing the point, the returns on games have beat the market the last decade, without fail. It’s the scale that can’t match the market and why your friend is a multi millionaire, I.e. he’s likely trading many stocks at a time versus one sale of $400 to $1200. 

Sure, the point being that unless you're buying the right games and buying massive amounts of them only to wait decades, there is no logic in using them as 'investments' especially since the immediate return is almost entirely pointless in comparison. Someone who tells me they are 'investing' money in videogames comes off as a fool, someone who considers it a viable asset that is growing in value, sure, that's fine.

 

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amzn

 

Nothing in gaming can achieve this, not even the most extreme cases, and there are a lot more Amazon level stocks out there then there are Haganes.

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Moderator · Posted
1 minute ago, goldenpp72 said:

Sure, the point being that unless you're buying the right games and buying massive amounts of them only to wait decades, there is no logic in using them as 'investments' especially since the immediate return is almost entirely pointless in comparison. Someone who tells me they are 'investing' money in videogames comes off as a fool, someone who considers it a viable asset that is growing in value, sure, that's fine.

Well I’ve invested heavily in both video games and stocks the last decade plus with the caveat that my games are a hobby. I’m $30K into my games and they are worth $300K, I think anyone that thinks that is foolish is a fool. 

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7 minutes ago, doner24 said:

You are missing the point, the returns on games have beat the market the last decade, without fail. It’s the scale that can’t match the market and why your friend is a multi millionaire, I.e. he’s likely trading many stocks at a time versus one sale of $400 to $1200. 

I think singling out one game is bad...... I bought Amazon in 2003 at $35.40 a share...... now I would say it has out performed Shantae. Looking at everything as a whole is a bit tricky because everyone's cost basis is different............ when did you buy, was it new or used.... condition. Too many factors to really compare. 

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6 minutes ago, doner24 said:

Well I’ve invested heavily in both video games and stocks the last decade plus with the caveat that my games are a hobby. I’m $30K into my games and they are worth $300K, I think anyone that thinks that is foolish is a fool. 

Curious, was that over 10 or 20 years, or more? I'd like to know what configuration of games did that and why stocks wouldn't do better. If you bought into Amazon 10 years ago at 118, they are worth 3,200 now.

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Moderator · Posted
10 minutes ago, Mr. CIB said:

I think singling out one game is bad...... I bought Amazon in 2003 at $35.40 a share...... now I would say it has out performed Shantae. Looking at everything as a whole is a bit tricky because everyone's cost basis is different............ when did you buy, was it new or used.... condition. Too many factors to really compare. 

Agreed, look at game chart data from somewhere like GVN vs a general stock market chart the last 10 years. I play the market for both, in collecting full sets and playing the market (mostly Mid-large cap mutual funds). My games have done better percent wise since I started in both in 2010 even though I have more money in my stocks. 

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10 minutes ago, goldenpp72 said:

Curious, was that over 10 or 20 years, or more? I'd like to know what configuration of games did that and why stocks wouldn't do better. If you bought into Amazon 10 years ago at 118, they are worth 3,200 now.

See below this post of yours. 

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5 minutes ago, doner24 said:

Agreed, look at game chart data from somewhere like GVN vs a general stock market chart the last 10 years. I play the market for both, in collecting full sets and playing the market (mostly Mid-large cap mutual funds). My games have done better percent wise since I started in both in 2010 even though I have more money in my stocks. 

I had sold my VGA 85+ NWC back in 2013 for $8300. I've had more than that in stocks since then and I'm guessing the NWC would be worth more today, although that's an outlier compared to someone that had a collection worth $8300 in 2013.

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12 minutes ago, doner24 said:

See below this post of yours. 

If your growth was 10x, Amazon was 30x over 10 years, see my point? It just doesn't work out no matter how one can slice it, it's an investment in that it's an asset you attained that has grown, but it's not something someone should be doing specifically to make money if that is their goal.

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Never will or at least that's the plan. I love my collection and the joy will come before money any day. However, the thing is I have limited space hell, I have a storage unit with about 40% of my collection in there right now. Yet, I keep on just getting more and more stuff so at one point, I would have no choice, but to sell and rotate some stuff until I get a bigger house.

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5 hours ago, goldenpp72 said:

Yeah. My collection has raised from like 225k to maybe 275k, so 50 thousand dollars across thousands of games. While the increases have been impressive overall and extremely so in specific instances, it isn't anywhere near enough to bother. I've spent over 10 years collecting and I can make almost 6 figures a year just by working, if I was looking to 'gain' by investing i'd be pumping money into stocks and other things. I made 20k profit out of an Apple stock back a few years ago in just a year, the only reason I haven't been able to keep at it were multiple moves and job changes but I hope to learn more about investing and get more growth out of it in the coming years.

It's bizarre to me that people have money to play with, enough to play with to buy old videogames, but they somehow come to look at them as an 'investment' when far superior options exist if you care to learn about them, options that don't involve losing something you may actually want. Then again, almost everything I own is something I find interesting and want to own it, i'd rather all of my stuff had cost a dollar simply because I wanted it, not because it 'might pay off one day'. I suppose if you just casually bought a bunch of stuff for 5-10 bucks and it's worth thousands it would make sense, you didn't have a lot of money and now you can have more, but when I already spent 400 bucks on a copy of Shantae it being worth 1200 now, 800 isn't going to change my life.

I would need to be able to make enough money to change my life to consider it, otherwise I can just keep working and making money that way while investing like most people do. You also have to look at it from a practical sense, while one stock might not gain you a double profit, you can pump in and out as many as you'd like, so if you know what to do and have say, 10k to throw around, you'll get a lot further than when dealing with things as limited to find such as impossible to find videogames. 

I suppose it all just boils down to different people and opinions, I have an area setup to a degree that merely being in the room makes me feel happy, it's magnificent to me. If I just had a few old games lying around worth thousands and didn't really want them anymore sure, though to be honest considering i've always been at odds with sealed collectors and such as well, it's probably just down to the fact I don't buy things I don't actually ever want to use, if I wanted to do that and make money, i'd buy stocks, sterile as they are it serves that function.

If you're looking at it from a 20 year period, that still makes no sense, you'd literally have to store, take care of and offload that item and do so with the proper timing, trading and profiting off videogames is in no way the smarter way to make large amounts of money. Give a smart investor and game collector 10k right now, and they will make far more making intelligent decisions in any normal investment market than they would with games. If it's just about the money to you, you could be doing a lot better than storing your copy of a game that may either be worth 5k one day (unlikely) or your game that went from 40 to now 80 years later. When you consider how much a mint shape copy of say, Mario 3 is worth today vs when it launched combined with inflation, the odds aren't in your favor unless you were sitting on tons of discounted copies of Shantae, Hagane and Little Samson for decades.

Your collection only increased 50k on an initial investment of 225k?  If that is really the case then, yes you are right, stocks would have been better BUT how did it only increase that much?  If you got in 20 years ago your collection should have doubled or tripled in value by now.  Not sure what you were buying 20 years ago.

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19 minutes ago, goldenpp72 said:

If your growth was 10x, Amazon was 30x over 10 years, see my point? It just doesn't work out no matter how one can slice it, it's an investment in that it's an asset you attained that has grown, but it's not something someone should be doing specifically to make money if that is their goal.

Not everyone is wise enough / lucky enough to invest only in Amazon.  Of course that would be better.  I'm talking about a diversified portfolio where you are looking at a 7-9% annual return and probably even less.  

 

Investing all one's money in Amazon would be like investing all your money only in Stadium Events, NWC carts, Little Samsons, etc. 10 - 20 years ago.

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3 minutes ago, tbone3969 said:

Your collection only increased 50k on an initial investment of 225k?  If that is really the case then, yes you are right, stocks would have been better BUT how did it only increase that much?  If you got in 20 years ago your collection should have doubled or tripled in value by now.  Not sure what you were buying 20 years ago.

I meant this year with the covid boom as it were, I didn't begin 20 years ago but I did maybe.. 11 or 12, I'd say double is about right. Though the amount of work and effort that went into that, now that's another story. Anyone who has collected for a decade or two probably know's it isn't quite that simple 😛

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1 minute ago, tbone3969 said:

Not everyone is wise enough / lucky enough to invest only in Amazon.  Of course that would be better.  i'm talking about a diversified portfolio where you are look at a 7-9% annual return maybe even less.  

 

Investing all you money in Amazon would be like investing all your money only in Stadium Events, NWC carts, Little Samsons, etc. 10 - 20 years ago.

There are many stocks like that though, if you were to take the most holy grail of all video games and put them against the holy grails of stocks, stocks will win, and if you were to use simple volume as a method, stocks will REALLY win, because for every Little Samson there are about 1000 other games that sit there barely increasing in value. If you were to look at the stock market as a whole over a decade it's easily worth more ratio wise than gaming.

And again, this disregards all elements such as dividends and the ability to trade much more of it, etc. The idea of picking Amazon was simply to refute the cherry picking that goes on, for every Hagane there are many more Amazon like stocks, and of course the fact most people 20 years ago, they weren't buying more than a single copy of a game, they just happen to now own something worth something you know? If someone were to say today, I want to invest and make money, i'd very much never even muse the idea of games because the return time period is simply too huge and too small, it's a fun asset to collect that has a strong history of growing in value fairly well, that's it.

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17 minutes ago, goldenpp72 said:

I meant this year with the covid boom as it were, I didn't begin 20 years ago but I did maybe.. 11 or 12, I'd say double is about right. Though the amount of work and effort that went into that, now that's another story. Anyone who has collected for a decade or two probably know's it isn't quite that simple 😛

Well I have been collecting games for 25 years and while stocks are much easier to invest in I get much more joy out of collecting video games.  I have been in the market for about 15 years.  My games have performed much better investment wise.  I also love the thrill of the hunt.  Finding a break out stock at a cheap price isn't as fun as finding a box of CIB NES games at a thrift store for 50 cents each (which really happened to me.)  That score was actually the reason for my first post ever here on NintendoAge.  Is it possible to dig that old post up?  That would be cool.  Cmon, I know someone on here could find it for me.  I want to take a trip down memory lane.  I had the same tag name: tbone3969.

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1 minute ago, tbone3969 said:

Well I have been collecting games for 25 years and while stocks are much easier to invest in I get much more joy out of collecting video games.  I have been in the market for about 15.  My games have performed much better investment wise.  i also love the thrill of the hunt.  Finding a break out stock at a cheap price isn't as fun as finding a box of CIB NES games at a thrift store for 50 cents each (which really happened to me.)  That score was actually the reason for my first post ever here on NintendoAge.  Is it possible to dig that old post up?  That would be cool.

Collecting used to have a thrill to it (not so much to me now due to the way the market has shifted) but again that kind of brings in an element that is irrelevant and perhaps concerning. A person who enjoys finding an item but doesn't really like it enough to keep it and then in turn wants to sell it when it increases in some way, that's not really a collector or a smart investor, it's more like a hoarder who knows how to make a decent margin off of what they horde i'd say. 

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Another thing I consider is that when I sell a stock that I made a little money on I have to pay capital gains tax.  When I sell a game I pay no taxes.  That is huge for my wallet.  And yes I know about the 20k annual 1099 reporting requirement on eBay.  I just make sure to never go above 20k and I sell a bunch via cash deals.  If you factor in capital gains tax then games win hands down as far as an investment.

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1 minute ago, tbone3969 said:

Another thing I consider is that when I sell a stock that I made a little money on I have to pay capital gains tax.  When I sell a game I pay no taxes.  That is huge for my wallet.  And yes I know about the 20k 1099 reporting requirement on eBay.  I just make sure to never go above 20k and I sell a bunch via cash deals.  If you factor in capital gains tax then games win hands down as far as an investment.

While true, that is effectively tax evasion. To my understanding selling things even in a garage sale, you're supposed to pay on it, even if no one does. Stocks being so easily traced might be a disadvantage but the world is catching up, a lot of us have to pay sales tax on eBay now for example, making it even less efficient on the margins. 

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Just now, goldenpp72 said:

While true, that is effectively tax evasion. To my understanding selling things even in a garage sale, you're supposed to pay on it, even if no one does. Stocks being so easily traced might be a disadvantage but the world is catching up, a lot of us have to pay sales tax on eBay now for example, making it even less efficient on the margins. 

Call it what you want but it happens everyday.  Your telling me if you buy a game for $50 and two weeks later you sell it for $150 you tell the IRS about it and pay taxes on the gains?  Cmon dude.  While you are technically correct lets talk about real world moves here that put money in your wallet.  Sure If I sold a Stadium Events for 20k I would inform the IRS but that's about it.

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Just now, tbone3969 said:

Call it what you want but it happens everyday.  Your telling me if you buy a game for $50 and two weeks later you sell it for $150 you tell the IRS about it and pay taxes on the gains?  Cmon dude.  While you are technically correct lets talk about real world moves here that put money in your wallet.  Sure If I sold a Stadium Events for 20k I would inform the IRS but that's about it.

Oh I won't tell them shit, i'll circumvent those eBay fees too if I see an opening, just saying in the event we go into say, a cashless society and more advanced systems are in place, it might not be practical and it's tightening up every year i'd say. Still it's a nominal difference in the grand scheme, i'd be curious to meet a person who bought the holy grail games and had any idea they would raise in price, most of the time it was just some person who shoved it away in a tote and forgot about it not knowing what would happen. I think most of us collect because we love the hobby, and didn't factor the money element of it even if it matters now. It's simply not a viable thing to consider an investment unless you can tell me you knew the rares and patterns back then and were holding off for just such an occasion.

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1 minute ago, goldenpp72 said:

Oh I won't tell them shit, i'll circumvent those eBay fees too if I see an opening, just saying in the event we go into say, a cashless society and more advanced systems are in place, it might not be practical and it's tightening up every year i'd say. Still it's a nominal difference in the grand scheme, i'd be curious to meet a person who bought the holy grail games and had any idea they would raise in price, most of the time it was just some person who shoved it away in a tote and forgot about it not knowing what would happen. I think most of us collect because we love the hobby, and didn't factor the money element of it even if it matters now. It's simply not a viable thing to consider an investment unless you can tell me you knew the rares and patterns back then and were holding off for just such an occasion.

I hear what you are saying.  I'm just trying to justify my expensive hobby/habit.  lol

I always tell my wife "Don't worry honey.  If I needed to sell them we would make money."

 

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