Quote Originally Posted by Bojay1997 View Post
All you are talking about is a self-contained bubble, not a true market. You're essentially just moving the decimal point in your head reasoning that because you sold something for $10K, it makes it reasonable to also pay $10K for something. It's like the gambler who loses his life savings but figures he had a good run because he made millions over the years. The same thing happened with comics in the 1980s. People were scooping up new issues every week and flipping them a month or two later for 3-5 times cover price only to turn around and spend that money on equaly overpriced comics being sold by other collectors or shops. The same thing happened in baseball cards in the 80s and action figures. There is zero chance something like that can last. For a collectible market to thrive, you need to have long term fundamentals like reasonable certainly about supply, consistent or measureable demand and a proximity of perceived value to market pricing. These are mass produced items, not unique pieces of art or even things manufactured fifty years ago before anyone had any conception of collecting pop culture items. Paying thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for a video game which is not unique in any way is not something that is tied to real market conditions. I'm not saying you can't make money flipping games, obviously you and a number of other people do. All I'm saying is that if you're planning on retiring on your collection, you're probably in for a real shock down the road.

I also disagree that grading is "vastly embraced". If you look at sealed VGA auctions, it's always a matter of several dozen of the same people bidding on every item. It's the same people who hang out on the sealed game forum and Nintendoage. You certainly don't see many sealed Atari collectors or even that many sealed disc based collectors embracing VGA, it's almost all NES people. It's also not like hundreds of new VGA collectors are entering the market every day and VGA graded games are still only a very tiny proportion of all Ebay sealed video game auctions and a miniscule proportion of all game auctions period.

You're right, it is long-term collectors who don't embrace VGA. It's because we've been around long enough to understand the makings of a bubble and that things go up and down over time. Newer collectors come and go and ultimately, they overpay for stuff and end up getting burned when real life catches up and their credit card is maxed out and all they have is a small stack of games encased in plastic which are worth less than what they overpaid for them. How many 1980s comic collectors do you think have been able to take an early retirement by selling their collection? I sure don't know any, of course I was collecting 1960s comics in the 1980s, so while I'm not rich as a result, I certainly have a very nice collection that is also stable or growing in value over time.
You can't compare 1980's videogames to 1980's comic books or baseball cards. In 1985 how long had videogames been around compared to how long comics had been around at that point?

You are comparing comic books which sold for $1.00 brand new by the tens and hundreds of thousands to collectors who instantly placed them in protective sleeves to videogames that sold for $40 or $50 to people who planned to throw away the boxes and play the games. No one bought Donkey Kong Junior Math and stored it away new as an investment. The ones that did survive new and sealed (we are talking about less than 5 known Dk Jr math sealed copies) did so only on accident. Will more turn up? Sure over time more will turn up. Thousands? tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? umm no. The demand for this title will eat up any supply that is found. You won't find thousands of copies of this title new and sealed, ever.

You are trying to personalize this. You don't have the mindset or even know any of the people who have spent 5k or 10k for a single sealed Nintendo game. Not knowing them or not understanding them doesn't mean someone else won't pay those prices because you don't think it is sane. It doesn't work that way. I'm telling you it is my opinion that not only is not going to go away but that it will get worse because we are starting to see people like ex-comic collectors jump into this game now as well. They love the grading system and they are attracted to the big dollar signs and huge increases. To them and yes I have heard them say this, they are getting on at the ground floor and they have tons of cash to dump into this. They are used to comic book prices afterall where the holy grail of the hobby isn't 20-30k but a million plus.