vintage game magazines - hard to find, very expensive

[gbpxl]

I went on a buying spree last year and ended up with roughly 1,000 issues ranging from 1989 Nintendo Power to 2017 Game Informer. Almost all of them I got in wholesale lots off eBay and then there were quite a few I got from a second hand electronics store in town. There were a couple huge lots I got from some Craigslist sellers as well. I even went to Game Informer's office and bought a bunch of them directly from them. I paid anywhere from 20 cents to $13 a magazine.

Now to fill in the gaps, I am looking at spending between $7 and $70 a magazine, depending on what year and condition. The older you get, the more expensive they become. Some of them are very expensive because of the cover. Resident Evil 1 for PS1 Game Informer cover, Final Fantasy 7 PS1 Game Informer cover. Those are a solid $30 a piece

any other collectors running into a similar roadblock with prices? I have doubles if anyone is interesting in trading

[ncman071]

i pick up vintage gaming mags fairly frequently...have a decent gamepro, EGM, gameinformer, gamefan, etc...

i would love to get more GameFann magazines but they are too expensive on ebay...i have some holes in my gamepro collection among others

[gbpxl]

i pick up vintage gaming mags fairly frequently...have a decent gamepro, EGM, gameinformer, gamefan, etc...

i would love to get more GameFann magazines but they are too expensive on ebay...i have some holes in my gamepro collection among others
I have all of 1995 and 1996 Game Fan. I have to say it is by far my least favorite one to read. There are numerous times where they reviewed a game and then reviewed the same game 7 months later with different reviews and different scores. So they are either reviewing the Japanese version or an incomplete version and then when the game hits shelves, they are either reviewing the same copy or the off-the-shelf one.

They are ridiculously high on their scores, as well. I think one of the Earthworm Jim games received something like a 98, 100, and 98. Most of their games average in the high 80s.

I'm not big on import games but DHGF was basically the only way to know about them back then, and I guess EGM2 to an extent.

still a better read than Video Games: The Ultimate Magazine or GamePro, in my opinion though!

[ncman071]

lol yea i'm sure they did some of that...gamepro also seemed to give really high scores all the time...but many were well deserving and many were not...EWJ was awesome back then and I still love it today...i think all those magazines were guilty of that with the big titles of the 90s...street fighter, mortal kombat, etc..

i get these magazines for more of nostalgia than anything else...the ads..the silliness of it...its great!!!

[gbpxl]

lol yea i'm sure they did some of that...gamepro also seemed to give really high scores all the time...but many were well deserving and many were not...EWJ was awesome back then and I still love it today...i think all those magazines were guilty of that with the big titles of the 90s...street fighter, mortal kombat, etc..

i get these magazines for more of nostalgia than anything else...the ads..the silliness of it...its great!!!

yeah thats the main reason i got into collecting them. Really takes me back. We had a nintendo power sub in the 90s and early 2000s. It feels like just yesterday getting the newest one in the mailbox. Also had game informer and psm. I read psm the most.

[YoshiM]

Since about the early 2000's early game mag prices have been a bit high. You had a better chance then of getting a good deal on eBay as they didn't implement the "Buy it Now" feature, so you had to do the auction thing. But that didn't mean they didn't start at crazy prices or go up to crazy prices. Case in point: I got the first and third issue combined for less than the second issue (I think I paid $15 for 1 & 3 and maybe $20 for issue 2-at the time the best deals for those issues I saw). EGM's early issues always commanded higher prices. Same with Nintendo Power or the early issues of NFCN.

Me I'm pretty much done collecting mags. I have my entire run of the "original" VG&CE (before their format change), the first year and a half of EGM (the time frame I cared about), first year of Nintendo Power, first issue of Gamepro, some Game Players I used to have including the first two issues, an Atari Age, an issue of Electronic Games, almost all issues of Blip! by Marvel, the first two issues (new!) of Joystik, and a smattering of indie mags like Digital Press, Video Game Collector (just the issues I wrote articles for and was editor for), Video Game Collector, Manci Games, Retro Gamer and a few I can't think of.

[Aussie2B]

I would never buy old game magazines by the issue. Lots are the way to go. But magazines are so damn heavy and space-consuming that I'm trying to refrain from adding many more to my collection. All I really care about, besides mags I've written for myself, is my Nintendo Power collection. I have from around issue 8 or 9 to 130-some. The later ones are from my own subscription back in the day, and the earlier ones I got in a big lot in the mid 00s. I think it was around 50-60 bucks shipped for around 100 issues. I'd like to maybe expand that collection someday, but I imagine that first year of issues is expensive now.

[Cornelius]

I'm paring down my collection of guides and some magazines are going, too (don't have many mags). The problem with the magazines is that they don't qualify for Media Mail. So even for just like 3 of them, Priority FRE is the best option and that's 6.95 or something just for the shipping. I've got some I'd give away, but understandably there isn't much interest in paying the $7 for shipping.

I never particularly collected or subscribed to game mags, but did pick up Nintendo Power when I came across them, as well as random others if they featured a game I liked. So I have some of the first NPs (4 or 5 were in the first year?) and then another 50 after that, though not complete/in order or anything. I also am glad to have all (I think) of the NP 'game guides'. Even though I was just looking at them, I can't tell you what they all are, just not a big deal to me. There's SMB 3, 4-player, Final Fantasy(?), and ??? They do take space and are heave, so once my initial purge is done, I may expand it to those... minus zelda and some others, which probably means the rest are pretty worthless ones. ;)

[Aussie2B]

The remaining Nintendo Power guide is Ninja Gaiden II. There were only those four. It was kind of an experimental thing that I'm guessing didn't go over that well (probably because every Nintendo Power subscriber was receiving them, and three of the four only covered a single game each, when many readers surely didn't own the games being covered). But that was the start of Nintendo Power sending out something every month (the regular issues every other month, and the guides on the months when the regular issues weren't coming out), so it acted as the transition to the magazine going monthly.

[gbpxl]

The remaining Nintendo Power guide is Ninja Gaiden II. There were only those four. It was kind of an experimental thing that I'm guessing didn't go over that well (probably because every Nintendo Power subscriber was receiving them, and three of the four only covered a single game each, when many readers surely didn't own the games being covered). But that was the start of Nintendo Power sending out something every month (the regular issues every other month, and the guides on the months when the regular issues weren't coming out), so it acted as the transition to the magazine going monthly.
I'm pretty sure you are correct about that.

I'm inching closer and closer to having a full set of EGM. I don't know what suddenly spurred people to take an interest in these things but the prices are hurting gbpxl's emergency fund. come on people. what if I need a new radiator?

[Gameguy]

I'm trying to sell off a bunch of old GMR magazines and people don't seem to want them. Strategy guides aren't selling well either.