Are $calpers and Re$eller$ getting worse ?

[Th3 hoff]

1 of our mods ( at a local website ) made this over the top YouTube video to start a discussion about re$ellers and $calpers.
They have been around for years but is the problem getting worse ?
And have the re$ellerS that target kids ( amiibo, skylanders, Disney ) lost all morals ?
Is reselling more accepted in the USA then in Europe ?



Best comment posted so far :


There are 3 types of resellers in my opinion. The first and most vicious one is the type you just portrayed. He's a mean son of a bitch who doesnt know anything about games but the value.The second type is the ultimate game freak. He just wants to be in and around games 24/7. This person started out as a gamer/collector. His game knowledge grew by the day and at some point he decides to open a webshop.The third type is the normal collector/gamer who accidentally picks up lots with doubles. He'd rather trade his games than sell them. But he has to make a buck or two to keep the hobby a fun hobby, so it doesn't get to expensive.

[FieryReign]

Well, I guess if people continue purchasing junk and supporting scalpers nothing will change. It's not hard to be patient, do some research, and find the games for retail price. Paying 2-3X the price of a new game is asinine. Don't know why people are so lazy and support that nonsense. I guess people enjoy getting their wallets raped.

That video was awful. I want those couple minutes of my life back.

[eskobar]

Most people forget how old vintage games are and many have an unreal price in mind because a few years ago they bought or could bought them them for X usd ...

If resellers or scalpers didn't exist, yes, many games we want could be cheaper, and yes, many of them could be gathering dust on a flea market, a little store or in the trash ... or in the hands of a few selected "collectors".

Its quite expensive to get a good vintage game and don't forget that this is not a necessary item, is not drinkable or eatable, you always can choose not to buy a game if its too expensive and you always have the option to go with the current of the last generation of consoles to keep gaming without spending many dollars ... or in the case of many vintage consoles you can emulate or purchase a flash rom cart and download the game you want.

There are always options, complaining and banning something is not the way to deal with a problem.

By the way, I am a reseller

[The 1 2 P]

I'm not sure if it's getting worse but it doesn't really affect me. Normally I would agree with the person who said that being patient helps(and it usually does) but the last time this discussion happened someone pointed out to me that not everyone's area/region/state/etc is as plentiful as the next person. So while I can wait around and eventually pick up a bunch of old Nes games from Goodwill that includes some rarity's not everyone else has that luxury. I personally don't buy anything that's vastly marked up so scalpers aren't getting my money but buying from reseller's is inevitable.

By the way, I am a reseller

I would guess that at least 70% of the people on message boards like this one are also resellers, including myself. But we all represent different levels of reselling. My collection was getting out of control so I had to start unloading stuff but also if I'm out and I see two cheap copies of something worth money then of course I'm going to grab both and keep one for me and sell the other one. Or sell both if it's something I don't want to play. It's an easy way to keep our collection's going with stuff we want while subsequently getting rid of stuff we no longer have an interest in or never got around to playing.

[Tanooki]

I haven't watched the video yet, and I'll update this with an edit if I do.

Going by the topic -- NO, just more concentrated closing more and more on local if not wider spread saturation. Three years ago is about when things broke towards gaining into the current saturation of scalpers at least as far as old video games go. When it became even more and more crowded those types then spread from just old stuff, but related items that give similar tinglies (like certain Amiibo of 8/16bit characters), and others who will find anything marketed as limited and then due to online discovered that it is so they run out and buy a bunch to make cash.

Is the problem getting worse? Definitely, more and more are doing it for various reasons, but mostly the three you said. Predatory types not caring where the dough comes from who doesn't even care about the materials. Those who are collectors getting extras or what not. Then you have those who could either trade/sell something because they get doubles or find a nice deal so they can still afford the hobby. I'll bluntly admit, I'm that last one historically speaking. If I can find a game for pre 3years ago plus price and I don't find I like it, I'll sell it on the lower end of current average because then I can afford something I'd like or even need(not even game related.)

Are these types that target kids items lost their morals? Debatable. They may never have had them, or they grew cold towards it for whatever reason. Let's assume they had them up front, but then because excuses and reality blur, they'll just got after an item as a catch all regardless if it burns a 10 year old kid or a 30 year old adult like the Amiibo pillage of the last year. Sure adults wanted stuff for memories like myself or for genuine game use, but the kids, plenty want those for Mario party, Smash, and the others for the WiiU and maybe the 3DS if they got the reader and then they can't get their favorite because they're all bought up and returned up days/hours later at like a 50% mark up. They know who they're impacting, they don't care if it's a kid or an adult or they'd do something different.

I don't know the system in Europe or systems if it's country specific, so that's kind of a silly question. Most societies were eventually developed or further developed using a system of barter(trade) and not just straight cash or precious minerals and gems to pay for stuff. It's in the blood and it's a fair option.

The problem is this time of year though really, the closer you get the Christmas this stuff picks up, and it's not just video games. I can remember past years where ELMO dolls went for stupid high prices and panicked parents paid so their kid wouldn't be crying on Christmas morning. I'd see Tickle Me Elmo on ebay or craigslist out west for like 2-3x the retail price or more and people paid it out of desperation to make some kid or someone else (if not themselves) happy for the season of giving/receiving. It's rotten but it's seasonal and sadly expected.

I would add this something I strongly wish a huge group stores on (amazon) and offline (target etc) could do. Limit all purchases of X item to one per customer, per payment option, per address that all gets logged into 'the system' anyway when you buy stuff. When any form of card (credit/debit) is used that scan gets not just the digits, exp date and security code but it sees a name and address as well tied to the card so that's doable, and those paying in cash have them require an ID check as least as a scare tactic(as that wouldn't be as effective as cards/checks.) Make it grossly it painful to people who want to harm others especially at Christmas. If a flipper can only buy a new boxed item (Amiibo, Elmo, etc) and that's it per payment option/per address they shouldn't be able to get easily more than 1 or 2 items per chain store. It should be easy to bar that garbage, but having it done just won't happen, and it could hurt people who may have a few kids who want the same thing, but in that case it kind of would be more of a needs of the many over the needs of the few or the one.


EDIT: Video has bad acting but at an amusing level due to the parody of the issue at hand. Personally it does nothing for me. I swore off buying NES/SNES games online a couple years ago and have bought less than fingers on my hands since locally. I don't get mad about it anymore and really don't care, don't really want to get on some resellers ass about it either as they don't care either or they'd stop. The farce will end when people stop feeding the animals. I changed gears to having a real pinball table, some legos, gameboy family and sega genesis to keep myself entertained and far more chill. So if someone was expecting a lot of me making tired posts tearing into idiots I'm not.

[calgon]

It's not on my radar since I haven't bought a "rare" game since jeez, probably street fighter zero 3 Saturn in 2010. It helps that I've never been into RPGs too much and already own just about everything I could ever want.

I guess it's just a logical progression of a hobby where people now have money to spend on items they didn't as a kid, plus YouTube shows. Overall it's fine by me as long as no one gets hurt

[Sailorneorune]

I understand reselling if it's within reason. For example: if someone here really wants an amiibo, but their FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) ran out. My GameStop has 3 or 4 of this amiibo left. I go to my GameStop, get extra amiibo A, and let person B know I picked it up. ~$14 for the amiibo, and another $3-4 to ship it practically anywhere in the US. If I had to check multiple locations, I may add another couple of bucks, so it's $20 shipped for that amiibo if, say, I had to pick it up at one of the Evansville or Owensboro locations.

I have no problem with people earning a little extra money, but it's gotten out of hand. Even relatively common NES games are setting people back about $20 a pop now. My copy of Pulseman will, for the foreseeable future, be a painful reminder of how batcrap insane the secondary market for retro games has become.

When you can get a Wii, the Virtual Console download of an OMGT3HR4R3Z game, and 10 more Virtual Console games of your choice for the same price or slightly less than the physical copy, the price of the game you desire has clearly gotten out of hand.

Some retro game fans are squarely in the NO DIGITAL!!!!!1 camp. For me, it's whatever is the more reasonable option.

buy EarthBound, get a Wii U free!*
(compared to just buying EarthBound on eBay. Plus you can play other stuff on the Wii U)

[Dashopepper]

I got a good example. Two Black Fridays ago my wife drags me to Best Buy. I find two brand new The Last Story Wii special editions for $20 each. I buy both. Keep one and sell one on Ebay for $56 the next day.

Was it more moral to leave the game sitting on the shelf at Best Buy? Should I have done a good deed and sold it on Ebay for what it cost me?

I don't necessarily think scalping is evil. It's a product of economics I guess. And when a company has enough supply to ward off scalpers you'll here people on the internet complain that limited editions aren't limited enough anymore.

[Gameguy]

Sometimes I feel bad just leaving something behind at a yard sale or thrift store if it's something that I feel deserves to be appreciated, at yard sales if stuff doesn't sell it's often just thrown out or left in "free" boxes at the curb even if it later rains. Or sometimes things like rare toys would just be bought by people who don't know what they have and let their kids trash it. I often pick up things like this, even if it's just for $1, then take it home, spend 20 minutes or more just cleaning all the dirt and/or stickers off of it, and then price it at $5 or so. I just want things to go to people who'll appreciate them. If stuff is priced too high I won't bother though, I don't want to throw away money I can't get back on things I don't personally want to keep. Plus if the seller prices stuff high, I doubt the stuff will just be thrown out or bought by someone who doesn't know what they're buying.

Of course finding stuff that actually has value is pretty fun. Trading that stuff for items of equal value I'm actually wanting is pretty rewarding. It doesn't happen too often though.

I've previously avoided buying some older big box PC games at a thrift priced $2.99 each. They were maybe worth $5-$10 each and I didn't want any of these to play so I left them. I later heard that after a couple weeks they were all thrown out as they didn't sell. This annoyed me quite a bit. I often buy stuff like this now just to keep them from getting trashed, even though I'm usually stuck with them for months or years until I can find someone who wants them.

[Tanooki]

I've done that slight upsell bit on cheaper stuff too as it just seems like recovery and relocation. I've got goodies out of it and some goodies I still have yet to rehome. Maybe you should inventory your special things as maybe someone here could help out with that.

[Atarileaf]

I've previously avoided buying some older big box PC games at a thrift priced $2.99 each. They were maybe worth $5-$10 each and I didn't want any of these to play so I left them. I later heard that after a couple weeks they were all thrown out as they didn't sell. This annoyed me quite a bit. I often buy stuff like this now just to keep them from getting trashed, even though I'm usually stuck with them for months or years until I can find someone who wants them.

As someone who's recently gotten into big box PC game collecting, especially late 80's to mid 90s Dos or early Windows stuff, this story stings a bit.

[eskobar]

As someone who's recently gotten into big box PC game collecting, especially late 80's to mid 90s Dos or early Windows stuff, this story stings a bit.

A bit offtopic but can't miss the chance to ask ...

are 80s, 90s and early 2k games playable on modern hardware? I have seen quite a few pc games and have always avoided them. I was a big fan of the PC in the 80s and 90s and in the time a few games weren't stable with contemporary hardware so I think that with modern hardware could be harder ... specially with 3dfx, power vr and riva stuff ...

Yesterday I saw: Lucas Arts Archives Vol. IV for $350 pesos (aprox. 21 usd) and passed it ... I really want to play Jedi Knight and the expansion on my laptop ...

[Atarileaf]

It's hit and miss. Really old stuff you should get an older 486 and dos or use dosbox, which is what I use. Some of the newer windows titles will work on modern hardware, some won't. Hard to say specifically which titles will or won't. I have an older Athlon XP system and an older PII system with Windows 98 so I'm covered to some degree with most of what I have.

What's sad is how hard of a time I'm having find an older dos computer. Not nearly as easy to come by nowadays, in these parts anyway.

[Greg2600]

I've bought many times from sites like A2600.com, tradengames.com, collectorscardsandgames.com, etc. Prices have been fair. On ebay, I'll bid on an auction sure, from time to time, but the majority of my buys have been lots of games or consoles with games. That's how you save $.

[kupomogli]

As long as the game isn't well known to be such a great game, the price is more than fair, although even games as like Brigandine, Suikoden 2, Tactics Ogre, etc, are fair priced because they're highly sought games. If you want cheap, some of the best games aren't as well known, so go after those games. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find what those games are than looking at every game available. You can't just go to a Youtube video of the best PSX, NES, N64, PS2, etc, games no one knows about, because those unknown games are just unknown to the vast majority of people who really don't know as much as they like to make it seem, and even then they'll be middle range costs.

These games are out of print titles that were $50-$80 when they were brand new, and most of the games can be found for a little more than half that cost complete(or less.) For older games I don't think resellers are a problem because they're keeping these games priced reasonable. If some random shmuck is going to sell Suikoden 2 for $10 at a flea market and some reseller nabs it and sells it for a much higher price, then it's the fault of the guy at the flea market, not the reseller. If you feel every game should be less than $50, then it's you that's the problem, not the reseller. Although I wouldn't put it past some of the resellers to have a bidding war against themselves in order to keep the price high, I mean 365 days a year someone is interested in purchasing all of these games that they'll bid back and forth? I think most people who still use Ebay know the cheapest way is to bid once at the highest cost you're interested in near the end of the auction.

However, I do think the resellers are a problem when it comes to newer games. When some amazing online deal goes live, it's usually resellers who take advantage of the deal being offered, crash the system, buy just about all of the stock, etc until the deal is removed from the system. The people who actually want to purchase the item are the ones that miss out.

[kai123]

I just don't buy into it anymore and I just pirate everything and spend my money on the current generation and PC games. I don't care about it anymore. Get a flashcart and be happy playing games. There is no reason to spend copious amounts of cash on older games. I will buy them up to $60. I just treat them the same as current prices. To each their own but I am much happier not "hunting" for games and just playing them now.

I have also stopped watching as many videos about games and stopped reading the news sites as much. It is such a waste of time. There are so many games I love that they just won't give the time of day. It keeps that feeling alive of going to a store and not knowing if anything new came out. Kind of like when I was a kid.

[FieryReign]

+1 What he said up there.^

[Tanooki]

I just don't buy into it anymore and I just pirate everything and spend my money on the current generation and PC games. I don't care about it anymore. Get a flashcart and be happy playing games. There is no reason to spend copious amounts of cash on older games. I will buy them up to $60. I just treat them the same as current prices. To each their own but I am much happier not "hunting" for games and just playing them now.

I have also stopped watching as many videos about games and stopped reading the news sites as much. It is such a waste of time. There are so many games I love that they just won't give the time of day. It keeps that feeling alive of going to a store and not knowing if anything new came out. Kind of like when I was a kid.

Piracy aside (mostly) I've done this too. As I said before I quit buying NES/SNES games 2 summers ago online cold as I got fed up with it all and the annoyance it was causing me. Locally I've avoided it almost completely too getting maybe 4-5 SNES and 3 NES games in all that time and nothing of any real interest/value to most. Well before that when I saw it going bad back in 2011-12 I capped myself. Cold hard cash, no more than original $50 retail on carts and $30-40 on handheld games, and I still stick to it. I don't NEED it, I want it, and I don't want it bad enough to harm myself getting a game when I can just fire it up on the computer or just not bother as I have enough as it is. I still like to hunt, but I widened it to cover antiques, vintage toys (30s-80s), Legos (loose or sets), and some old games but they're no longer the driving or primary interest to make things better. To do games I went into the Gameboy family and lately Sega Genesis as all that stuff mostly is very very cheap, few of the games break that $30-40 price tag and exceptionally few get over $50 especially as a game cart only and they seem stuck there which is great. You make do, you change tactics, and if you can't hack it, quit -- don't let them win, drive forward or change gears on your terms not theirs.

I've also mostly stopped reading game news, rarely look at a video unless i'm curious about an old game I'm sort of unfamiliar with to see how it 'long play's out without mindless people yapping to fill space to help decide. I'll go through modern gaming news media sites maybe once a week to 10 days, a little more frequently with a couple that cover android/ios releases (pocket gamer out of UK and droid gamers are great.)

[celerystalker]

Don't care to watch the video, but I l'm in the camp that just doesn't care. There's always something else to buy if I wwnt to buy games; I'm never trapped. Like Tanooki buying Genesis or GB games, there are also imports, oddities, and even games for the popular systems if you don't watch the same crap videos and media everyone else does and are willing to take some chances. If old games keep rising in price, it's no big deal to me. At least for me, where with baseball cards as a kid I could only dream of finding those Honus Wagners and Mickey Mantles, with video games I was in from beginning, and I still have a lot of what people want these days, so it's kinda neat from that angle.

Realistically, though, those of us who are in this to play and enjoy our games sometimes want to get angry about this, but they've become a collectible, with all of the ups and downs that brings. It's a different consumer base competing for the same product, and it's not completely unnatural or evil... it's just relatively new to the hobby, and it's not going away anytimr soon. So, best thing to do is mind your money and spend it wisely, understanding that you have options beyond just paying top dollar for what's hot.

Also, people should bear in mind that as easy as it is to call a reseller unethical, it's just as unethical to snake away someone's games at a yard sale that they didn't know better about when selling. I'm not a reseller and they don't need defending... but taking advantage of people is the same offense, regardless of from which direction you approach it.

[Tanooki]

I agree with you on that last part but not entirely. Someone at their garage sale will choose to research or not, or not even care to, before placing a price on a sticker. That's their choice. As long as you don't come up to them knowing you have a $30 game they marked at $10 and try and talk them down to 2 for $5 with one them being it I think it's moderately different. Pay what they ask, they're happy, end of story, but if you try and get one over on top when knowing the truth, that's just sleazy. Whereas online you don't have that choice anymore. You want Zelda for NES, you will pay $25 for it or get one in shabby shape. You can't argue that price unless it's a best offer deal, you do or you do not, same as the sticker at the garage sale. The guy online just wanted to match others online, the guy at the garage sale either isn't aware or doesn't care because they put the price on it. I'm not going to even scratch into that as a reseller finding a cheap sticker I'm just doing this from someone who would keep to play as that goes down that angry old rabbit hole of picking off stuff people could play so you can make a fast buck and people fighting over it despite the former seller getting what they want out of it.