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Overpricing Wave


Edgarmcfly

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It's full name is Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Or, if you want to do it with the same mannerisms done with other consoles, "Nintendo Super Nintendo Entertainment System".

Feh... Kids these days. If it was not for the fact I am trying to both catalog and collect every disc-based home console port of every Street Fighter arcade game, as well as ones that sport the Street Fighter name, in Japan... I would not be too busy deciding on how I should collect these games! 😛

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6 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

Why did you buy it in the first place?  To sell or to collect?  

I personally have not sold anything i wanted to own.  With that said, I don't see these prices lasting, but could take a while to come down.

I collect, sorry for not specifying, I was referring to sell items that I have a twice 

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6 hours ago, Edgarmcfly said:

I collect, sorry for not specifying, I was referring to sell items that I have a twice 

Oh!  If I were you i'd dump em right now to be safe.  I can't see them getting any higher TBH.  Before COVID the market was really cooling off.  PS2/PS1/GC were about to take their turn on the nostalgia cycle so some of those were due, but this is just sillyness.  

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Editorials Team · Posted
11 hours ago, FenrirZero said:

It's full name is Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Or, if you want to do it with the same mannerisms done with other consoles, "Nintendo Super Nintendo Entertainment System".

Feh... Kids these days. If it was not for the fact I am trying to both catalog and collect every disc-based home console port of every Street Fighter arcade game, as well as ones that sport the Street Fighter name, in Japan... I would not be too busy deciding on how I should collect these games! 😛

N'Snez

That's what I'm calling it from now on. 

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13 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Buy low sell high.  I've moved $1,700 dollars in blu rays in the last month off this same madness.  Got thousands more sitting at my desk for whenever I get around to listing everything.

Very tempted to move some high end games too, but so far I've resisted the temptation.

 

You sold 3,400 blurays in 30 days? 😛

 

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Editorials Team · Posted
15 minutes ago, guitarzombie said:

But do you have Dawn of the Dead?  I got mine the day it was released.  One of 3 blurays I own, next to Predator and Manos the Hands of Fate

I had the Arrow UK release w/poster.  Sold it for some exorbitant amount.  Then I'll buy the inevitable reissue for $20.

I do have that Manos release.  Synapse ever puts it out of print and I'm cashing in though.

 

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4 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I only move the good stuff!

Come get your Arrows, Scorpions, Shouts, Screams, Criterions, Synapses, and Code Reds!

 

Ya, the Criterion Collection stuff is some spicy meatballs for sure. In all seriousness, I hope you make out like a bandit. 🙂

 

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Editorials Team · Posted
7 minutes ago, Shawn said:

 

Ya, the Criterion Collection stuff is some spicy meatballs for sure. In all seriousness, I hope you make out like a bandit. 🙂

 

I remember sitting in Barnes and Nobles during the half off sale, asking myself if I should buy some of the OOP Chungking Express and Le Cercle Rouge, or all of them.

Why the shit didn't I choose "all"? 😭

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1 hour ago, doner24 said:

Good luck if you think these prices aren’t here to stay. Might they come down a hair at some point....sure. But these early video games (In the life span of video games, like baseball cards) will only go up over time. 

As a seller of loose/playable games full time and a collector of CIB / sealed. IMO There’s 3 different things going on right now

 

1) the increase in loose, playable games, seems directly related to the quarantine, right? That should level off at some point. And should look much like the graph of total virus cases. When it goes down so will these prices. It’s tough to get loose inventory for the time being. Anything good anyway. the prices are so volatile. 
 

2) The increase in sealed prices, ( which I think you and Jone are answering for? ) Clearly, a completely different crowd of buyers. Sealed games have been on the increase steady since the fall of NA / Rise of WATA . Seems to have inflated during 2020, likely for a number of reasons. Don’t see that freight train stopping either. Agreed on that aspect
 

3) The cib, casual collectors market has been pretty steady, with some exceptions, which can be attributed to, new eBay users paying more because they don’t know (there’s a fuck ton of them), and catching the collecting BUG at the same time, and then the more seasoned collectors...with extra stimulus money, checks, etc. finally being able to knock off some heavy hitter checkmarks? 
 

GameCube and N64 have a habit of falling into both collectible/playable so they’re seeing the most spikes in sales, but Also, just the sheer number of sales is impressive .through 2018-2019 games were actually getting harder to sell. Loose N64 games like Mario kart went from average 50$-35$ over the past few years, until 2020. 

Edited by Snesfinder-
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One thing to keep in mind, since I see some replies focused on demand -- these collectibles have a finite, even diminishing supply. Things break over time, are forgotten, enter permanent collections, etc. Patience paid off in the early days of the hobby, because lots of goods were entering the secondary market from original owners. Various long-time collectors sold their collections in recent years and supply was so overwhelming that there was no perceived scarcity for many of the NES titles in CIB format. Demand was certainly down, but the pressure to buy (out of FOMO, for instance) was lower, so existing buyers could postpone. Any sense of a 'hunt' also disappears as a result.

Even if a large deal of the pandemic purchases are from casual users and not collectors, many of these purchases won't come back into the secondary market (anytime soon). The supply of games coming from original owners is also going down steadily each year. Great examples to benchmark are the more obscure items -- there has been a huge decline in obscure stuff coming from original owners, most of it is coming from other collectors now. I think there are many more FOMO purchases happening, but I don't see these buyers selling anytime soon either unless they went over budget due to FOMO. Supply is not going to replenish as fast as it has in the past and this will certainly have an effect on prices.

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I don't have much to add besides selling things that didn't sell at my last year's yard sale for $1 that have recently sold for $15-35. 

The perfect example of the price hike is Wii sports. I sold 1 copy disc only for $24 shipped and a "CIB" copy w the cardboard sleeve and manual for $35 shipped

Screenshot_20200620-084322.thumb.jpg.44ab45257bf728f6638011c242c4a0bc.jpg

So a game that sold 100M units (the M is for MILLION) spiked by x3. 

They say all ships rise w the tide and the tide is high. I do expect the tide to go down but only bc interest in playing old games has faded, not bc of some rushed sell off.

I think COVID collectors won't be satisfied reselling their games for 1/2, 2/3 or even 4/5 of what they paid a year or so ago. 

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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...  

Edited by Amermoe
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I think that certain things new found pricing will stay but I think as whole there is some room to cool off again. When life returns to normal and not so many people are cooped up and just playing games. There will forever be premiums for first party and other desirable franchises but I do seem some minor drop. 
 

I’ve been able to find a fair amount of deals lately regardless but I have been buying those weird NES shelf fillers. 

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46 minutes ago, ChickenTendas4PokeyEater said:

It isn't a question about supply. It's simply demand at this point. People don't care that Wii Sports was bundled with every Wii and sold a hundred million copies, they just want it and they want it NOW. The majority of games spiking aren't anywhere near rare, they're either heavily talked about "hidden gems" (like Earthbound), or they're the commons that are just really desirable. The bigger items might go up $100, but they aren't doubling or tripling like commons.

I disagree. With the unemployment rate at 20%, stimulus checks pretty much gone, and unemployment benefits slowing, these things will undoubtedly flood the market. You're out of money, what's the quickest way to make a little cash? Sell something! But I think people will be in for a scare when they need money and their used Switches aren't selling at $500.

I'd be interested to see how things play out with these stimulus checks. As of right now, people receiving them (poorer income households) do not have to pay income taxes on the extra money. However, we as a country are already way in debt. Could taxes increase as a result of the stimulus money as the US scrambles to pay off its ever-growing debt? We were already 20 trillion down, I wonder how much we owe now 😞

It is a question of supply tho. Consider the listings low to high. If supply is as fast as demand, the price never gets to troll levels and new sellers never have incentive to list at troll levels ($35 for Wii sports for example).

Also, all games are spiking. It isn't just the games profiled in the pics in the thread this far. It's every game. So the demand is heavily outweighing supply right now. Also, the reason they aren't doubling and tripling is bc it's harder to triple $300 than it is $9. Smaller margins are easier to exploit thus the *big moves* are all in low $ games.

Further, the buyers of these inflated prices are just that: BUYERS . They are not sellers, or savvy shoppers even, or else they wouldn't pay these prices. So when fallen on hard times, theyre not going to have the wits to sell their  wares. If they had their wits we wouldn't be here in the first place!

My brother and his wife combine make north of $125k and both had been laid off and managed to put $8k in their savings during the last 3 months of unemployment. They're not lower middle class and they live in a low standard of living state. He just went back to work and didn't skip a beat.

The reality is, the stimulus and UC benefits may prove to be the biggest transfer of wealth in our time. And these fuckers are buying video games with it. Take advantage while you can bc these chickens will come home to roost.

I'm not mad, when it's a sellers market - sell. When it's a buyers market - buy. I feel bad for anyone buying video games on eBay right now. You're better off going to a dealership and losing a couple grand when you pull off the lot.

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The thing with N64/GameCube/Wii games though when compared to other pop based collectibles, is they have a functionality inherent to themselves that non-collectors pay for.  So you have two separate buyer pools competing for supply.   Basically, whenever the gamer market takes over for demand on something, I sell without hesitation.  I cleared my Gamecube Mario party's and TTYD, and made out like a bandit as far as I'm concerned. I missed out on selling animal Crossing for $100 because I was in COVID lockdown... Remember when Melee was a $100 game too?  Good times.   

When the gamer demand reaches fever peaks, sell to them.  These are some of the most printed games there are, prices won't sustain.

When collectors are pushing a game into a "bubble", you have to be far more savvy regarding what to hold/sell, or accept that you may not be able to find the item "cheap" again if you do decide to sell.  I missed the wave to sell spirits and spells for $300 and now look, eBay flooded with new supply given its new valuation.

You just have to be engaged in the market daily and you'll be able to play the ebbs and flows pretty well.

Edited by Maertens29
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  • 2 weeks later...

Lots of full time minimum wage employees that were getting $330 a week pre covid got laid off, filed for unemployment and are now getting unemployment plus an extra $600 per week from the federal government to spend on retro video games..

That’s not to mention the $220 billion in stimulus checks paid out. I’m not complaining, but when you add all that money into circulation, it’s gonna cause price inflation into certain spending categories.

Also many young people have made tens of thousands gambling on Robinhood over the past two months.. when you make it big gambling, you gotta blow it on fun things, like video game collecting.

I think that we may be in a bit of a bubble at the moment. Prices will either come back down eventually with a restabilized economy, or if this is the result of price inflation then our salaries will increase to catch back up with the new higher market prices.. Or maybe civilization as we know it will just come to a downward spiral  🤮

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  • 4 weeks later...

I had a discussion with some friends early today about the game inflation. If the government does not extend the bonus $600 unemployment after this week we could see a decline in prices. I say we see what happens. Just a possible prediction. Don't spend $120 on a CIB Pokemon Red just yet.

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This has everything to do with the pandemic. People are stuck at home and out of work so they need something to do. Back in March I had a lot of retro video game consoles which were sitting for months. All the sudden I was getting messages for local pick ups and Ebay sales to the point where I was out. Part of it I believe is because Game stores closing as well and stuff is just harder to find. Same with cartridges especially the popular titles. Right now is the time. Once people get back to work it will decline so sell now if you have the chance. This isn't just for video games. Other random non video game things sold quick that sat for months. 

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That's what I'm doing.  Did a sale of 60 items, a few were for others, for 5 days that ended on Friday and 20 of them sold.  Refreshed tonight with 55 a few remaining of the others along with mine in this too but added some new.  Almost immediately a BIN pay was done on a chromecast audio streaming device and also a 1982 vintage lego set that was complete.  That really threw me off it went that fast.  I may have to dig out more electronics and toys I've been sitting on as it's not just games that are hot.

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