Ideas for a new pricing guide

[Anthony1]

I was thinking about price guides for old games. The Digital Press guide is a good guide, but like I mentioned in another topic, the prices seem to be very off, in comparison to Ebay and Retail.

Of course, very quickly I was corrected, and made to understand that the DP Prices have nothing to do with Ebay or Retail.

I was made to understand that the DP Prices were more for a "general" guide to trading between educated collectors.

Now, I do understand this, and that is cool, but I was thinking that some huge improvements could be made to the guide.

The downside of the new improvements, is the fact that it would take a tremendous amount of work, in terms of research.

But basically, I was thinking that the guide should list THREE, DIFFERENT, prices. The first price would be retail. The kind of price that you would find at GameStop, GameCrazy and places of that nature. The second price would be Ebay. This would be an average of a good number of final bids on that particular game at Ebay. The third would be the normal DP guide type price, for experienced traders.

Gotta go, but just a thought.

[Sph1nx]

. The kind of price that you would find at GameStop, GameCrazy and places of that nature.

Im my humble opion that would be totally useless to 98% of the populartion and impossible to track.

O_O

[AB Positive]

I think the idea would work better if tweaked down to two prices, like cards comics and the Neo MVS price guide uses: high/low. A mint cart/complete game is worth more than a beat up one. But a beat up yet working Stadium Events is better than a mint Tetris.

I wouldn't mind a high/low, but 3 prices seems a bit off.

-AG

[punkoffgirl]

eBay is way too unreliable to use for any kind of pricing guideline, IMO.

[Chunky]

Isn't that what the gamestop website is for?

[portnoyd]

eBay is way too unreliable to use for any kind of pricing guideline, IMO.

For the most part, DING!

[LazingBlazers]

IMO, that's way too much. Take the book for what it is... a guide. Not the set in stone, "11th Commandment". It a very good work. I like it a lot... but with any work of this type, some things will have to be taken with a certain grain of salt.

The only way you could honestly have a 100% completely accurate rarity/price guide is if you could average all of the prices for every game sold anywhere in the recent timeframe of the publication... and if you could obtain exact production numbers of every game listed and make a corresponding scale based strictly on numbers with possibly some adjustments for outside factors. It would be almost impossible.

I'm happy with the book how it is now, and I'll continue to buy it every time a new revision comes out.

If anything is going to be added, I say more content... tips, pictures, lore, etc.

[sisko]

eBay is way too unreliable to use for any kind of pricing guideline, IMO.

Agreed....extremely volitile.


I think the idea would work better if tweaked down to two prices, like cards comics and the Neo MVS price guide uses: high/low. A mint cart/complete game is worth more than a beat up one. But a beat up yet working Stadium Events is better than a mint Tetris.

I wouldn't mind a high/low, but 3 prices seems a bit off.

-AG

Agreed

The guide says most people keep their N64 games complete, so the prices reflect that. I whole heartedly disagree with that statement as from what I've come across is that very few people have kept their games complete. A high-low would be nice, or even a complete-incomplete would work too.

[rbudrick]

Hmmm, interesting idea...

Coin collecting books come in two flavors :a dealer's book for selling and buying, and the collectors book that just has the price they can expect to get in best case scenario

Or something like that...I remember a red and a blue version of the book....I forget exactly how it worked.

Whew, what an overhaul that would require though...

-Rob

[esquire]

On a somewhat related issue, how about a pocket guide that just lists the games, rarity and possibly price. That way you can carry it with you to pawns, fleas, goodwills, gamestops, etc.

Just get rid of the decriptions, hints, historys, etc. Reduce the font point. And if space is still a factor, make separate volumes by era, or just by popularity (how often are you going to find a NEC PC-FX in the wild?) or even by region (eliminate PAL for US version, and vice versa). That would be cool.

[Griking]

While some ebay selling prices are unrealistic, everything everntually averages out in the long run. You can argue that ebay prices don't reflect real life value but in all honesty, neither does the current DP Guide. If the DP Guide is ment as a friendly, suggested value guide as I've heard many people here say that it is then I think that there's definately room for a more realistic "going rate" price guide as well.

[eolsen]

The kind of price that you would find at GameStop, GameCrazy and places of that nature.

That would only apply to what? two of the systems in the whole guide? The printed version that is.

[christianscott27]

i kinda wonder why people care so much about the price thing, its a terrible investment. over time videogames do not hold their value at all, they lose 90% of it. there exceptions with scarce games where the value goes up but anything mass marketed loses money. consider this- if you bought any game new at release over the past 20 years you probably paid $30-50 dollars for it and now its worth maybe $5. collecting is fun for collecting sakes but as a dollars and sense proposition none of us will get out what we've paid into it.

as for that whole knowing what to pay for a game, ha! what do you think theres some kinda of fulton street fishmarket for videogames where you can walk around 100's of dealers til you nail down the price you want? you're either gonna take the price your gamestore and/or flea market guy wants or you're gonna duke it out with other bidders on ebay. knowing what some guide thinks its worth counts for squat in terms of fixing a price from a buyers prespective, its only useful in the reverse where you're the seller trying to figure out what games to mark up.

[Dr. Morbis]

Christianscott just hit the hammer exactly on the head. He articulated the situation with collecting games *perfectly*. Just to add a little bit, guides only have ONE price even though there are countless variations a game can be found in (ie: loose, complete, sealed, w/box, w/manual, range of conditions, etc.) The DP guide is perfect for a ballpark figure, but hammering out an official price for any game is IMPOSSIBLE. When I want to buy a game I consider 3 things only: how badly I want to play it, cosmetic condition of everything included, and rarity relative to other games on the same system. It is TOTALLY a judgement call. The DP guide can GUIDE you, but the final determination has to be made by you.

99% of videogames are ***NOT*** an appreciating asset, especially if bought new.

[omnedon]

Use the guide, and DON'T buy new. That way you might break even overall, and have some fun in the process.

This coming from a guy who just bought Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia new.....

LOL