What is “fair market value”?

[GPX | 1,369]

In the past, I find myself having a roughly good idea at what the market value is for X game on X platform for X rarity. Nowadays, with the recent rise of WATA/HA combo and the pandemic craze, I can confirm I no longer have any clue on the market trends!

Also with the era of CIB-grading, it has really made guessing a price far more complicated now than ever. Previously, there seem to be 2 distinct groups of CIBs and sealed games, and their prices were usually fairly distinct. With graded CIBs, there seems to be more a price continuum between the graded CIBs and the graded seals. What fits where on the price continuum seemingly murky as mud.

So with the above in mind, I thought it’d be interesting to hear how people formulate a “market value” for certain items? Do we simply rely on a recent sale on an auction site? Do we check off on price charting sites and take them as gospel? The average of a handful of recent sales of similar condition? I mean, WTF is “fair market value” nowadays?

 

 

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by GPX

[fcgamer | 4,719]

I generally sell obscure items that are truly rare, compared to some big the "rare" stuff I see being sold. Just browse through my sales page and you'll know what I'm getting at, I mean, what should I price an untested bootleg Turbo Graphx Hu Card at?

After awhile I just got a "feel" for what I thought fair market value is, generally not based off auctions or price charting sites, rather experience. And most often, I'm right on the dollar, should I compare my items/prices to others'

I don't think it's something to over analyse.

[GPX | 1,369]

15 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

I generally sell obscure items that are truly rare, compared to some big the "rare" stuff I see being sold. Just browse through my sales page and you'll know what I'm getting at, I mean, what should I price an untested bootleg Turbo Graphx Hu Card at?

After awhile I just got a "feel" for what I thought fair market value is, generally not based off auctions or price charting sites, rather experience. And most often, I'm right on the dollar, should I compare my items/prices to others'

I don't think it's something to over analyse.

The current market in graded games is probably not affecting your field as much regarding Asian games and the bootleg variety. 

I agree it’s not something to over analyse, but worthwhile to review the situation in real time. In the past, you can blindly jump into buying a game, and even if you sell at a loss, it would likely to be less than $1000 loss. With the market the way it currently is, a bad buy can theoretically force you to sell your car to recoup the loss!

[fcgamer | 4,719]

25 minutes ago, GPX said:

The current market in graded games is probably not affecting your field as much regarding Asian games and the bootleg variety. 

I agree it’s not something to over analyse, but worthwhile to review the situation in real time. In the past, you can blindly jump into buying a game, and even if you sell at a loss, it would likely to be less than $1000 loss. With the market the way it currently is, a bad buy can theoretically force you to sell your car to recoup the loss!

Bootleg games market is currently in the rise, last year one title sold for four figures for a bootleg, yeah.

If you bought your games for gaming purposes, it's quite possible / likely you got it from a boot sale or a junk shop for pennies on the dollar. If that's the case, if you flip it to a guy for $4000, and he sells it for $8000, what's the problem? You ultimately made a nice amount of money, especially considering your initial costs, the guy that resold it made exactly the same as you. Is the problem that you could have sold it for $8000 and left money on the table? But then again do you have the connections to close that deal? Who knows.

Everyone likes money, sure, but if you're in the hobby just got the money then...well I don't know what to say. And just to make it a point about something: I own about 12 Sega protos, including a Sonic proto. I honestly wouldn't care if the value is $100 or $100000, as the purchase price was $20 iirc. I don't care about fair market price or whatever it is, the thing that is relevant to me is what I initially paid, and that only becomes relevant if I choose to see the item. 

*Shrugs shoulders* I see games , not dollar signs, and I honestly think my collection's value is six figures.

 

[DefaultGen | 5,397]

If you have an item identical to some graded HA sale, you still can't get HA prices for it. Normal Ebay sold listings are closer to reality. The market of people buying "a near mint CIB" and "specifically 9.0 CIB I am buying that number" are mostly different people.

I'm bidding hard for stuff I really want, and letting plenty more stuff go that isn't worth their exponential prices to me right now (relative to what's on my want list that hasn't exponentially gone up). Trying to get something nice today for yesterday's market price can be tough when things are falling upwards.

[a3quit4s | 4,092]

I used to rely on pricecharting and gamevaluenow but I’ve seen a lot of games I am looking for not be based on auctions. It’s all BIN and Best Offer now. eBay sold is better for me for loose stuff. 
 

I can’t even imagine what the graded market is like right now; fair market seems to be limited by the imagination of the seller. <Insert SMB least I’ll take $1 million meme>

[DefaultGen | 5,397]

18 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

I used to rely on pricecharting and gamevaluenow but I’ve seen a lot of games I am looking for not be based on auctions. It’s all BIN and Best Offer now. eBay sold is better for me for loose stuff. 
 

I can’t even imagine what the graded market is like right now; fair market seems to be limited by the imagination of the seller. <Insert SMB least I’ll take $1 million meme>

The price tracking sites are missing a LOT. I don't know if something changed or what. GVN's last CIB sale of The Immortal is from August 2020, but there are 5 of them in Ebay solds. I basically stopped using them both because games have bigger price gaps based on condition, and they're missing tons of data.

Edited February 26, 2021 by DefaultGen

[Splain | 2,560]

The platform has a huge effect on the value. If I sell something on HA vs eBay vs privately on VGS, it's going to sell for 3 different prices. I guess that's because of fees (and the stuff those fees pay for), which people are willing to pay to get more eyeballs (or the right group of eyeballs) on their listing. If you try to sell something on Reddit for the exact value shown on PC or GVN, which are eBay prices, you're going to get some pushback.

Maybe there needs to be separate tracking tools for non-eBay platforms.

[Code Monkey | 2,005]

20 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

The price tracking sites are missing a LOT. I don't know if something changed or what. GVN's last CIB sale of The Immortal is from August 2020, but there are 5 of them in Ebay solds. I basically stopped using them both because games have bigger price gaps based on condition, and they're missing tons of data.

I can tell you exactly what they're doing wrong in their API. I wrote my own competitor with my own API script and compared it to both Price Charting and Game Value Now for sales of 1942 which seems to be the most commonly sold game I see. Mine caught 8 of the 9 recent listings, Price Charting caught 1 and Game Value Now caught 0.

Once it goes live soon, you'll see what I mean and you'll no longer have this problem.

[RH | 4,895]

5 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

I can tell you exactly what they're doing wrong in their API. I wrote my own competitor with my own API script and compared it to both Price Charting and Game Value Now for sales of 1942 which seems to be the most commonly sold game I see. Mine caught 8 of the 9 recent listings, Price Charting caught 1 and Game Value Now caught 0.

Once it goes live soon, you'll see what I mean and you'll no longer have this problem.

Are you scraping data or using an API?

[Code Monkey | 2,005]

2 minutes ago, RH said:

Are you scraping data or using an API?

Technically I'm using their API to scrape data. It was murder to try and interpret but I have it figured out now, it works great. It's already live, I just don't want to post it yet until I get all the required data in there. I'm currently using assets I don't own so I need to work that out first.

[RH | 4,895]

2 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Technically I'm using their API to scrape data. It was murder to try and interpret but I have it figured out now, it works great. It's already live, I just don't want to post it yet until I get all the required data in there. I'm currently using assets I don't own so I need to work that out first.

Lol, I understand that last bit. Been there.

Here's what I don't get about some of these crazy prices. Sure, we've seen some crazy spikes and specific markets have skyrocketed. However, if you told me 2 years ago that this was going to happen, one of the markets I would have assumed would have really exploded would be RPGs. Sure, they have gone up but when I look at games like Chrono Trigger, compared to the rest of the market, I'd assume a nice CIB copy would be worth $2,000 or more but no. A copy for auction in great shape, with a registration card went for just under $1,000. Yes, that is more than 2 years ago but the spike does not compare to, say, everything Gamecube or even worthless, sealed NES tapes.

[a3quit4s | 4,092]

46 minutes ago, Splain said:

The platform has a huge effect on the value. If I sell something on HA vs eBay vs privately on VGS, it's going to sell for 3 different prices. I guess that's because of fees (and the stuff those fees pay for), which people are willing to pay to get more eyeballs (or the right group of eyeballs) on their listing. If you try to sell something on Reddit for the exact value shown on PC or GVN, which are eBay prices, you're going to get some pushback.

Maybe there needs to be separate tracking tools for non-eBay platforms.

I remember when PC and GVN was where you started with price as a seller and worked your way down to meet in the middle with a buyer. Now it’s become where you start and add 20% and don’t bother negotiating. If you’ve got a store and employees sure I get you have overhead but a lot of people are just getting greedy; which is fine because it is your property. It’s really the buyers pushing the market up anyways, apparently people who buy video games have all hit the lottery recently and are paying $50 for River City Ransom. 

[GPX | 1,369]

4 hours ago, fcgamer said:

Bootleg games market is currently in the rise, last year one title sold for four figures for a bootleg, yeah.

If you bought your games for gaming purposes, it's quite possible / likely you got it from a boot sale or a junk shop for pennies on the dollar. If that's the case, if you flip it to a guy for $4000, and he sells it for $8000, what's the problem? You ultimately made a nice amount of money, especially considering your initial costs, the guy that resold it made exactly the same as you. Is the problem that you could have sold it for $8000 and left money on the table? But then again do you have the connections to close that deal? Who knows.

Everyone likes money, sure, but if you're in the hobby just got the money then...well I don't know what to say. And just to make it a point about something: I own about 12 Sega protos, including a Sonic proto. I honestly wouldn't care if the value is $100 or $100000, as the purchase price was $20 iirc. I don't care about fair market price or whatever it is, the thing that is relevant to me is what I initially paid, and that only becomes relevant if I choose to see the item. 

*Shrugs shoulders* I see games , not dollar signs, and I honestly think my collection's value is six figures.

 

The purpose of me making this topic isn’t to brainwash people into thinking that games are worth purely with dollar signs. More the issue of a simple term that previously made sense to my relatively mathematical brain (“market value”), but now it just seems a whole bunch of random numbers with the current selling prices. 

The far more important issue though, is to encourage everyone to think a bit deeper before a spend/bid, or otherwise it can quickly turn into a gambling act. By that I mean the act of potential huge profit but also potential for astronomical losses as well.

[Tanooki | 4,929]

10 hours ago, GPX said:

In the past, I find myself having a roughly good idea at what the market value is for X game on X platform for X rarity. Nowadays, with the recent rise of WATA/HA combo and the pandemic craze, I can confirm I no longer have any clue on the market trends!

Also with the era of CIB-grading, it has really made guessing a price far more complicated now than ever. Previously, there seem to be 2 distinct groups of CIBs and sealed games, and their prices were usually fairly distinct. With graded CIBs, there seems to be more a price continuum between the graded CIBs and the graded seals. What fits where on the price continuum seemingly murky as mud.

So with the above in mind, I thought it’d be interesting to hear how people formulate a “market value” for certain items? Do we simply rely on a recent sale on an auction site? Do we check off on price charting sites and take them as gospel? The average of a handful of recent sales of similar condition? I mean, WTF is “fair market value” nowadays?

 

 

 

I don't know if my idea is popular or not, but I don't monitor stuff actively unless I'm really after it, and IT is Gameboy family games.  Suddenly with the start of this year prices spiked on all sorts of stuff that in all reality never should have like 2x or higher basically like overnight as December to Jan-Feb is jarring.  So to answer your question.  My market value is 2020 and before.  I refuse to be clowned and taken advantage of by predatory people looking to wreck another platform.  I also feel it's temporary unlike many others, it's currently in a fishing stage.

From what I've seen a large majority of the clown prices thankfully are going unsold.  The some that do seem to stick are a mix of the super cheap stuff because a 2-4x boost off a dollar title isn't going to hurt, and the other end o the spectrum is the nasties like Kid Dracula, Amazing Tater, etc and well if you were already willing to take a 3 figure bath on it, what's another $100 or 200 right?  Seems to be the dumb logic.  A good many others, and there are exceptions due to some pedigree (like Crystalis GBC went from a $15-20 to a $30ish game in like a week or two,) most are still selling to the honest brokers not trying to set a new high bar, and those twits just keep reposting and praying.

Right now, using the term fair market value, it just doesn't apply.  Nothing is fair about what has happened to most gaming platforms, and beyond into other mediums.  2020's dumpster fire setup a perfect storm of fear, shut ins, shut downs, free gov't cash, and tax refunds (this time of year last year) that let people see whatever would stick, could stick, and it grew out from there.  Any price aggregate site is pretty clear where you see a slow rolling hill or a nice decent slow couple percent incline, and then wham, it's like going up the worlds tallest roller coaster in a matter of weeks or a month or two.  I think not.  Artificial as can be and non-sustainable.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,011]

I can totally relate to the OP. I saw a CIB copy of Mario 64 that was players choice sitting on ebay for $60 shipped and it looked like it was in good shape, no crushing it huge dents. When I looked through the pics one both of the tabs were ripped off which of why it was sitting.

So while no real immediately visibled damage, even small flaws just tank the value in this market. 

[GPX | 1,369]

On 2/27/2021 at 5:05 AM, Splain said:

The platform has a huge effect on the value. If I sell something on HA vs eBay vs privately on VGS, it's going to sell for 3 different prices. I guess that's because of fees (and the stuff those fees pay for), which people are willing to pay to get more eyeballs (or the right group of eyeballs) on their listing. If you try to sell something on Reddit for the exact value shown on PC or GVN, which are eBay prices, you're going to get some pushback.

Maybe there needs to be separate tracking tools for non-eBay platforms.

You raise a point in which I feel needs further discussion. In the past, a game usually has a “market value” range, and you can roughly know what it goes for on eBay, real game shops, online forums, Facebook etc. 

Now, the prices on HA are currently not transferring over proportionally to eBay (or anywhere else). The mere fact, that if the prices are correlational between HA and eBay, people would sell on eBay without the need for hefty HA fees. We need to also ask why the trend for some people willing to spend 6-7 figures on HA, instead of spending 10-50 times less for an item on eBay of exact same condition? Some highly questionable sold prices (on HA) also with some items sold that are still quite common to find in mint condition, ungraded.

[Splain | 2,560]

42 minutes ago, GPX said:

You raise a point in which I feel needs further discussion. In the past, a game usually has a “market value” range, and you can roughly know what it goes for on eBay, real game shops, online forums, Facebook etc. 

Now, the prices on HA are currently not transferring over proportionally to eBay (or anywhere else). The mere fact, that if the prices are correlational between HA and eBay, people would sell on eBay without the need for hefty HA fees. We need to also ask why the trend for some people willing to spend 6-7 figures on HA, instead of spending 10-50 times less for an item on eBay of exact same condition? Some highly questionable sold prices (on HA) also with some items sold that are still quite common to find in mint condition, ungraded.

"questionable" is right. Who is browsing HA that isn't browsing eBay? And how are there enough of them to drive the prices that high? Is eBay for plebs and they, for whom money is no object, just can't be bothered?

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

17 minutes ago, Splain said:

"questionable" is right. Who is browsing HA that isn't browsing eBay? And how are there enough of them to drive the prices that high? Is eBay for plebs and they, for whom money is no object, just can't be bothered?

I wonder the same thing. It's like the HA bidders just wait for an auction catalog and pick what they want from there instead of logging on ebay and looking for games.

[GPX | 1,369]

1 hour ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

I wonder the same thing. It's like the HA bidders just wait for an auction catalog and pick what they want from there instead of logging on ebay and looking for games.

There must be some new breed of buyers, because if you’re a typical speculator, investor, collector etc., you’d want to browse around as much as you can to save on costs and maximise on profit. Even as a regular buyer, why wouldn’t you browse on eBay first? No login required to browse on item prices..

23 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Right now, using the term fair market value, it just doesn't apply.  Nothing is fair about what has happened to most gaming platforms, and beyond into other mediums.  2020's dumpster fire setup a perfect storm of fear, shut ins, shut downs, free gov't cash, and tax refunds (this time of year last year) that let people see whatever would stick, could stick, and it grew out from there.  Any price aggregate site is pretty clear where you see a slow rolling hill or a nice decent slow couple percent incline, and then wham, it's like going up the worlds tallest roller coaster in a matter of weeks or a month or two.  I think not.  Artificial as can be and non-sustainable.

Forget “fair market value”, just asking on “market value” seems to be a tough-to-work-out formula. 

Perhaps, 

“Market value” (2021) = undefined ?

[DaddyMulk | 64]

I list stuff all the time on eBay (nothing graded; I’m not touching that gonzo side of the market) and look at a few different things when pricing what I’ve got: Past sales on eBay, the condition of what I have relative to both sold items and what’s available currently, what supply and demand looks like currently, etc. It sounds complicated, but I can often find that sweet spot to sell my wares quickly and maximize my profit.

I might use one of the tracking services as a guide if there is no past sales data (and if there are none of what I’m selling currently listed), but they seem to be lacking lately, especially when it comes to individual components (I sell a lot of manuals). ProTip: If a site tracks individual components and the total values of these for a certain game is less than half of what a CIB copy sells for, then their component data might be far off from reality.

[Tanooki | 4,929]

2 hours ago, GPX said:

There must be some new breed of buyers, because if you’re a typical speculator, investor, collector etc., you’d want to browse around as much as you can to save on costs and maximise on profit. Even as a regular buyer, why wouldn’t you browse on eBay first? No login required to browse on item prices..

Forget “fair market value”, just asking on “market value” seems to be a tough-to-work-out formula. 

Perhaps, 

“Market value” (2021) = undefined ?

Yeah pretty much you spelled it out right.  Whatever rolled into down is a new pack of completely greedy idiots hoping to luck into some sucker who is as fresh as can be that doesn't understand the concept of 'take 1min and click the SOLD(paid) option on ebay and learn' type of thinking.

Market value is as it appear snow, still pre-2021 given most sales are ignoring these disgusting individuals, at least for now, and I hope it continues.  There's just nothing left fair about it, you nailed it well, '2021 = undefined' as there's nothing sane to go by it.

Just today I got a game that used to be fairly worthless for the old fairly worthless price of $4 (Burgertime Deluxe GB) at a half price since they're not keeping up with the crap going on.  Check ebay, dumbasses are pushing it towards the $30 mark.  I intend to keep it, but it's nice to know I came out on top.

[sp1nz | 611]

Fair market value in my opinion is just the average of last x copies sold in similar condition...

BUT we're in a highly speculative era in the video game market, so many people are buying more on feelings than brains in some areas of the hobby and those prices can affect the future sales a lot when sellers get stubborn and don't want to sell for less than the fluke prices from uneducated buyers splurging on something. A good example of this uneducated buying is graded sealed Atari games; people think they're buying gold but the platform is already low demand / low value for majority of its games and many people are sitting on shipping cartons of sealed games, combine that with no population reports from grading companies and new buyer with too much money and no sense of the market will get burned or maybe they're just laundering money. You also have longer time intervals between sales when the supply is low, sometimes we're talking multiple years in open market, so you don't really have the data for "fair" price and you just have to consider how much something is worth for you in relation to what you know from past sales or the overall game collecting market. In general when a game has real demand I think it organically appreciates in value on a certain line and a lot of that is due to inflation.

The general game collecting prices can be like waves that rise and crash (or rise and level out) in different order depending on platform in question BUT when a market is injected with new blood and invigorated by hype you can throw all past data into the garbage bin for the time being - just look at Pokémon cards, future value can be there but it all hangs on relevance and staying power of the whole franchise.

Let's not forget that any collectible on eBay (and most other marketplaces) can be easily fall under market manipulation. Shill bidding, buying your own product and then re-listing it, hoarding and trickling supply, best offer sales not showing actual sale price, abusing search terms, ultra high price to appear highest on certain filters to promote yourself, listing same item multiple times to promote visibility, listing items with stolen or no pictures, trying to pass of fakes as authentic, auctions having "reserve price" setting while starting from the most minimum bid possible etc. - maybe some of that is "fair" play but some of it is causing big effects in perception and is not fair play at all. Auction houses eliminate some of those problems but the Wata Games + Heritage Auctions partnership seems like conflict of interest; no population reports, higher price is higher cut for the auction house, big hype machine for how video games are worth a lot - signaling to people outside of game collecting to hop on the train.

Maybe item sold with no reserve price on open market auction is an estimation of fair but all of the previous stuff still applies and it can distort the ending price. I have seen too many items sell higher on auction than better condition BINs readily available.

So technically there is no "fair", there is just you and what you know, and what you're willing to pay but if you pay out of the ass then joke's on you.

Edited February 28, 2021 by sp1nz

[Tanooki | 4,929]

3 hours ago, sp1nz said:

Fair market value in my opinion is just the average of last x copies sold in similar condition...

BUT we're in a highly speculative era in the video game market, so many people are buying more on feelings than brains in some areas of the hobby and those prices can affect the future sales a lot when sellers get stubborn and don't want to sell for less than the fluke prices from uneducated buyers splurging on something.

Let's not forget that any collectible on eBay (and most other marketplaces) can be easily fall under market manipulation.

Maybe item sold with no reserve price on open market auction is an estimation of fair but all of the previous stuff still applies and it can distort the ending price. I have seen too many items sell higher on auction than better condition BINs readily available.

So technically there is no "fair", there is just you and what you know, and what you're willing to pay but if you pay out of the ass then jokes on you.

I like this post, and your original description held true for quite awhile now.  But as you said, it's in weird valley now, and I don't even think speculative fits it, but what you said... not very smart people buying on feelings and not doing a lick of research.  They create just enough stupid sales that others selling go...damn I could make another 50% because those 2 guys did too...and with ebay free 50(200 currently) a month they don't care and leave it.  Stupid = dangerous -- whether you're buying, guessing on medicine or playing with explosives...someones going to get hurt.

Since you brought up Pokemon let's put another what the hell into this shall we?  Let's look at sealed red.  Set the line graph up to 5yr, set to NEW only, and observe from Jan2020 before and after, then look again at Jan 2021 forward.  There's some poke-speculation on feelings.  https://www.pricecharting.com/game/gameboy/pokemon-red#completed-auctions-new

This is as you put it, definitely market manipulation.  it's not hard when you get just enough shenanigans going on, and now the ultra exposure of the clearly questionable if not conflict of interest loaded fraud going on between WATA and Heritage.  Members of both on each others board, charging to grade and grading stuff people are already questioning quite high, then highly manipulating/pushing for HA to peddle the game for max profit so they get paid TWICE on the title without any of those important factors (pop reports, etc) falls into should be investigated for scam territory.  Those auctions even if they are new, most people don't get that, they see Mario and think they can make their dollar dumper then next gold weight sale.

Normally I'd have agreed with you, let the market decide, but now the market is so degraded into crazy behavior despite sales price evidence open auctions can fly at toxic stupid levels worse than a bin.  There's just nothing fair left, and little to do other than US not screw each other, and more continue to stop paying the asinine rates so it falls off eventually.  Once a dupe realizes they overpaid, they tend to not want to lose again.