Amermoe

I feel many of you are over-complicating an issue that's not very complicated. It's a simple equation of supply and demand, and the question you have to ask yourself is what will the demand of 'X' item be in the next 2, 5, 10 year period, and will there be enough supply available at that time to service that demand. If the market is saturated again, and supply overtakes demand, then prices will drop, because the consumer then has options, and has the power to negotiate price. What will the average, casual consumer, feel about their newly bought CIB copy of Silent Hill 2, or Mario Kart, 5 years down the line? Will they cherish it forever and want to collect more like it or will they simply tell themselves they can play the same game on current gen consoles for a fraction of the price and still get the same enjoyment. What about young kids, will they still cherish the same items as the generations before them, or will they value different things as culture evolves. These are the questions you need to be contemplating if you want to arrive at any sort of rational and informed conclusion. This is no different than any other collectible, be it MTG magic/Pokemon cards, sports cards, comic books, or any other pop-based collectibles. The demand for the majority of these items usually follows a very predictable short-term speculative cycle that builds and peaks 20-30 years after the product hits the market, and then gradually bottoms out the following 20 years after. Some items have staying power, most do not. The ones that do are typically propped up in the public domain by their developers, keeping them relevant/popular in a current market climate. Once they fall out of relevance, demand goes down, and if the present supply meets or exceeds the present demand, prices fall again. The only caveat to all this is market manipulation. Which does exist, and is very much an open secret. Sellers will deliberately short the supply to inflate the price and create an imbalance between supply/demand, which helps them move their product at unethical/astronomical prices, and then things spiral from there. There are known sellers who currently operate with this business model, and it works for them, and so be it. However, it does bring up other questions I'd rather not get into, which I have strong opinions about, but maybe I'll share at another time...

There's only a few that come close, and it depends on the condition and who's buying, but generally you're right no PS2 game is worth $3k. The only ones that come close, would be a graded sealed Rule of Rose, with very high gold grade, and maybe a sealed Wizardry also sealed in very high grade. Both of these titles have a very low print run, and both are very difficult to find sealed. If you happen to find either in pristine condition sealed, and authenticated by a grading company, some would pay a very high premium. The games themselves aren't that rare, but the condition is. Historically, those 2 titles have hit very close to $2k in the conditions I've described above. The only caveat to all this is you have to find the right buyer. The amount of people willing to pay those sorts of premiums for this condition is very very low.

I for one, do not like what is happening. I have pretty much most of the games I want already, so I'm not negatively affected by this trend. In fact, total value for what I have has shot up over 30% in the last 2 months alone. It's absolutely absurd, and I do not believe is sustainable. I will be closely following how the market behaves in the next months up until Christmas, which will be very telling to what trend it's heading towards (i.e. if everything will tank again). Right now is definitely a seller market, with the consumer being the general public and not the collector community. If you ever wanted to dump anything off, now is the best time to do it. Sadly though, I won't be taking advantage of any of it because I want everything I have. The silver lining to all this is though, if you chose to look at it this way, is that the PS1 is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Most of the attention has been set on Nintendo for more or less the entirety of the game collecting hobby. I do believe the original PlayStation is an historic platform, and deserves to be right up there with the original NES. So in a sense, it WAS undervalued, and I believe it remains undervalued, and still has a lot of room to catch up with Nintendo. Maybe in 10 or 20 years, people's perceptions will change and both platforms will be viewed in the same light. Or maybe all physical games will be worthless and obsolete, and only the true fans will continue collecting them as relics in a new age of digital media. Who knows, but it's interesting to think about.

Ok, so here's another update, although kind of late. When I reported her/him, it was around the 3rd of June, and their listings went offline until the 7th of June. Guess what happened the moment they had their items back up? yep, you guessed it 3 sales (at astronomical prices) on the first day back, and again the following day, and more consistently thereafter. Oh and by the way, they're selling Castlevania SOTN black label for $300, and Silent Hill 2 for $200 and apparently selling for that price, yeah sure. Take a look;

I am convinced it's a scam. Probably using multiple accounts to buy and resell the same items, either with people they know or somehow through the same person. The only thing I can think they have to gain from this is driving up the cost of the game so people get duped into buying at a new ceiling price? don't know. It could also be all counterfeits - but I doubt anyone is actually buying anything. An update on this; I reported their listing to ebay for fraud, and what happened next was interesting. Apparently, for 3 days, they took down all their listings, but just recently everything seems to be back up again. Either ebay investigated and weren't able to find anything on them, or they chose to remove all their listings. I also do seem to recall another seller doing exactly the same thing, and selling the same games. Probably just another shill account. can't seem to remember the name though...

The guy selling it (smpratte) is a very well known Pokemon card collector, so I doubt there is any foul play with the glue. He uploads weekly videos on youtube, I've included a link to his channel below. I'm honestly surprised he even had it - then again, not really cause he owns just about every major collectible - Micky Mantle rookie, Michael Jordan rookie, etc. He's also a major MTG collector, and one of only a handful of people to own a signed BGS 10/9.5 QUAD Alpha Black Lotus. If anyone doesn't understand what that is, it's the equivalent to the Holy of Holy Grails for MTG collecting. Some people value the card at just under $1 million, similar lower grade copies generally sell in the 6 figures at auctions. Should give you some perspective on who he is. Oh, and did I mention that he's the 2nd/third largest Pokemon collector in the world? He doesn't come off like he's well off, but his collection is valued well into the several millions. https://www.youtube.com/user/smpratte/videos

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 and Neverwinter Nights are very good. Fallout 1 & 2 are also very good. Heroes of Might & Magic 1 through 5 are great turn-based strategy games with RPG elements to them, and one of my personal favorite series Disciples 1 to 3.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/suzydicus/m.html?_nkw&_armrs=1&_ipg&_from&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2046732.m1684 Wondering what people think about the seller suzydicus; Selling FFVII and very desirable PS1 titles (Silent Hill, Xenogears, Castlevania SOTN, RE2, etc.) for the past 3 months at 2x or more market value, and seeming to have no issue selling with an endless supply of the exact games replenished right after each sale. Just a few days ago, was listing FFVII CIB for $400, then I called her/him out on it and now it's back down to $170, which 'apparently' was their 'sale' price for the last 6 or so sales that sold few days apart from each other (May 17, May 16, May 11, etc.), and each time with increased price. The entire thing reeks of market manipulation. This has been going on when FFVII was $45 game. So you mean to tell me that someone is paying $170 for FVII when there are countless other copies available for a fraction of the price...sure.

Die Hard Trilogy. I think you needs a Snatcher to compliment your Blade Runner comic.

Definitely selling games and grading games. The grading part for me right now is more of a necessity, I hate the process, but the end results can be satisfying (sometimes). Selling games and everything to do with it is something I absolutely dread. From packing to shipping to parting with things that quite honestly I'd rather just keep (including duplicates), I just can't do it because of the space. In my collecting life I think I've only sold like 10 games? and I have a very large collection.

Not many people care about this game, but I think it's a decent one. It's a Taito release for the playstation with interesting 3-D fighting mechanics.

I don't care how anyone tries to rationalize the approach. This buyer is going to lose $3k if he tries to sit on it hoping it will appreciate in value. There are thousands of these second print sealed copies of GOW still in circulation. Many of them still in mint condition as they are relatively new stock and stores couldn't unload them quick enough since it was near/after the end of PS2's life-cycle. If the buyer had any clue, the best bet would be to re-sell it now to someone equally as dull and re-coup the losses. To use the comic-book analogy, all 9.6 CGC graded comic books are practically worthless, as there are tens of thousands of the same grade in circulation. To obtain anything near value you have to go for 9.8+ grade, and those are usually hundreds in circulation. It's hard enough to speculate on legitimate limited 1st release print runs (like the original security seal GOW), and most of the time people will predict wrong and lose money. The odds of something like this retaining any value, outside the current short-term speculative bubble, is practically zero.

it doesn't even have the security seal! This is beyond madness, these guys have no clue what they're doing.

I'm a big time Squaresoft collector and fan, so I know what you mean. Squeenix doesn't get much of my love though...

I used to be in the same boat for limited games on the PS3/4 and had to stop for similar reasons. This stemmed from my PS2/prior mindset that special editions were something nice and truly coveted. Now every game released is a special/limited/collector edition and has to be 10 ft tall, which is pure madness. Now I will only buy maybe 1 or 2 collector editions per year of only games I truly like or have an attachment to. I've sold many of my big collector boxes, at a loss - which is to be expected, and looking to get rid of more.

I collect sealed games and stuff like this really does bother me. There's not much room for interpretation about the motive here. It's the sort of behavior that will eventually kill this hobby.

Guys, if you think that's bad, curious how you feel about this: Legend of Zelda - Rev A Clearly, it's either just a troll job, or a publicity stunt.

Love your Sega games. Great taste, I might add. The FFIII and Secret of Mana posters are also very nice!

That's actually hilarious!

Not sure, but he was on Nintendo Age and other game forums. I think if you do some digging, you can find out. All I'll say is the guy's collection is Legendary. I don't think anyone is close or will ever come close to what he has. If you can think of it - he has it. Everyone from the old NintendoAge graded forums will know exactly who I'm talking about.

I know of a certain someone who owns a VGA 95 copy. But the chance of him selling it is 1 in a billion. I'll leave you to guess who. His name rhymes with 'duck'.

Have you ever considered a retropie setup? those things are amazing, particularity for old console games. The polymega also is coming out pretty soon, but that thing's pretty expensive.

For what it's worth, I think the current prices are absolutely absurd. Everyone who owns an old game thinks they've won the lottery, and wants top dollar for items that are more or less worthless except in sentimental value. Particularly, I don't believe many of the current NES prices will hold. Once the digital age sets in, you will see a very sharp correction - except for the truly rare and desirable items. Those titles are probably never coming down in a very long time, but there's only a handful that have true organic collectible value. items that were mass produced in the millions or even hundreds of thousands, are not going to hold value long term. It's nothing short of speculative gambling , particularly for newer games, and anyone playing in that market to profit, only has a very short window to capitalize on (i.e. take advantage of) people's emotions - they are playing a fool's errand.

I'm kind of in the middle of this whole thing. I've owned sealed and boxed games from 20 years back, and always was satisfied with them without grading. I was the type to always have a play copy and a sealed copy. The whole grading thing took off only about 5 years ago. Since then I have slowly dipped into it mainly (1) because I realized my games were getting damaged and I needed a way to protect them and (2) to validate their condition - which was very important to me. The monetary value of it was never really a motivation for me. I think the entire hobby is in a very speculative bubble at the moment, and the prices will eventually correct. I'm perfectly happy owning what I have even if the price went to zero. Not sure what everyone's motivation to collect sealed is, but a big one for me is the cover artwork, and the box that I look at as its frame, but that's just me. Sometimes I will go after a game just because its cover art, even if its a terrible game. The grading process has been a mixed bag for me. I like what Wata is doing with the scaling system but disagree with some of their practices - I also think their cases can be improved, particularity for SNES. Same with VGA, there's a lot I don't like but they do some things better than Wata. I will say however, the Qualified/CIB never made much sense to me at all.