How Much Have You Spent on Video Games [Archive]

GameSlaveGaz

08-19-2005, 09:18 PM

Now, my collection is still very modest compared to the majority of people on DP. I'm only up to 14 systems (9 consoles, 5 handhelds) and about 350 games, and that's counting e-Reader cards, TV Games joysticks, Game&Watches and demo discs. Still, my parents are complaining that I have WAAAY TOO MANY video games and that I spent too much on video games. I've decided to go back and find out, roughly, how much I've actually spent on systems and games and compare it to what I COULD'VE spent on them if I'd bought them at full price.
Now, this is pretty hard, cuz I can't remember exactly how much I spent on each game, so I have to round. Some of them I remember the exact price w/my discount plus tax. It's interesting to see how many games I bought w/my employee discount or with my GameStop discount, or that were clearanced for outrageous prices, and of course the ever-popular FREE games that were gifts and whatnot. (My N64, PS2 and GameCube were all gifts and my Genesis was salvaged from the trash...so that's already 4 free systems)
The funny thing is, a LOT of my PS2 games were roughly $15 apiece b/c my store had a lot of 2 for $30 sales on $20 PS2/XB/GC games and I stocked up.

So my question to the rest of my DP colleagues is if you know, or have a rough estimate of how much you've spent on your collections? I'm sure some people here have spent obscene amounts, especially the ones w/arcade cabinets in their possession.

And when I'm done calculating the value of my teeny collection, I shalt post it.

I'm just out to prove to my parents that I haven't WASTED money on video games, they were all great investments and deals I couldn't pass up

Gamereviewgod

08-19-2005, 09:38 PM

I never, ever want to know the answer to this question. Ever.

Jumpman Jr.

08-19-2005, 09:44 PM

I think I'm in the area of $10,000 - $15,000 now. I've only been collecting for 1 year, so thats alot.
I'm sure this is a topic that would have been talked about previously though.

Nesmaster

08-19-2005, 09:48 PM

900 games x even $4 each = $3600

so im going to guess $5k - $10k

Kejoriv

08-19-2005, 09:49 PM

I never, ever want to know the answer to this question. Ever.

LOL I definitely agree with that.

Haoie

08-19-2005, 09:50 PM

Without knowing for sure, it'd be likely around $1000 NZ [give or take a few 100] over 2 and a half years.

When I started collecting, I should've written down records on what I bought for how much, and when. Darn.

QBert

08-19-2005, 10:27 PM

From time to time I want to figure out how much I've spend on games. I'm not really sure I want to know, ya know?
I've only been "collecting" for close to 2 years I think now, but I've always had systems and games since way back.
I buy all my games cheaper or used now, but when I was younger, living at home I would buy most games brand new. (and then damn well trade them off when newer systems came out, :angry: but that's another story)
So the fact that you are buying them on sale should make your parents happy.
How long have you been collecting for, and are you living at home still?
With the amount of games and systems you have (yes I read you got many for free) if I was living at home, I'm damn sure my parents would be beefing. GAA-ron-TEED! @_@

But don't let them bother you....they'll see it makes you happy and there could be worse things you could be doing/. :)

@-Jumpman jr....10000 -15000 in a year......HOTT DAMN! :eek 2: :eek 2:

ozyr

08-19-2005, 10:39 PM

I never, ever want to know the answer to this question. Ever.

LOL I definitely agree with that.

Man! Same thing here. If I ever looked into it, I think I would fall over dead! @_@

Yago

08-19-2005, 11:09 PM

Enough to know that if I sold it all I could get a nice new motorcycle and put a down payment on a decent car.

mizarkgram

08-19-2005, 11:18 PM

The GF figured this out for me one day... I cannot remember the figure, but she just figured it was what I had made since i started working (whch was about the time I started collecting) minus estimates of the other major expenses I have had (I went to Egypt, am in University, etc.)

All in all, I believe it is safe to say I have spent too much on games.... and I dont even have that large of a collection

8bitnes

08-19-2005, 11:36 PM

I never, ever want to know the answer to this question. Ever.

LOL I definitely agree with that.

Man! Same thing here. If I ever looked into it, I think I would fall over dead! @_@

Why not figure it out? It would really put a perspective on things. I myself have spent just under $40,000 since July of 2002. It all starting with my girlfriend wanting Mario 3 and an old-school Nintendo. Now my fiance, she accepts that she created a monster <low-budget horror film music plays>.

Putney

08-19-2005, 11:44 PM

I also really don't want to know how much I've spent :) The IGN collector's list tells me it's around $17,000, which I assume is an overestimation because of a lot of deals I've gotten. And, considering my collection dates back to 1988 when I got my NES, that's not too much per year spent.

jdc

08-20-2005, 12:04 AM

Several thousand, that's for sure. I've tamed my habits a bit though. I tend to wait out a price drop or buy very decent used items now.

It's the very reason that I stopped my N64 collection. Way too many of the crappy games to buy and it would have ended up being a fair sum even if I had of found them cheap. I'd never play most of them. At least the ones that I kept are all A-list titles and highly playable.

Meh...it's like I always say. I've yet to see a hearse with a luggage rack.

DigitalSpace

08-20-2005, 12:17 AM

Count me as another person who never wants to know.

drewbrim

08-20-2005, 12:25 AM

This is a hard question to answer for many reasons. But the one that strikes me the most is how do you count the money that was made from selling a game and then using that money to buy more games.

For example, if I find Suikoden 2 for $10 then sell it for $100, and then spend that $100 on more games, how much did I spend :? Just $10? $100|? $110? My WHOLE collection has been built this way. I pay for all video game related things from my paypal balance and if I come across something I can't pass up but don't have the funds for, I use my "regular" money and put back what I've taken after I sell some stuff. So in essence I haven't used any money on video games. But as far as money that's changed hands I'm probably in the $5K a year range.

PapaStu

08-20-2005, 12:34 AM

For a long time I averaged between 400-800 a month in game expendatures. It got me a big collection...and nothing saved up. I easily did that for 2+ years... not counting general purchases before that, and my much reduced expendatures since. Id say easily 8-10k total so far. EASY I'm sure its probably alot higher but that makes me weep just a little less at night.

namzep

08-20-2005, 12:39 AM

$191 on Gamecube stuff (just got it in June, though 8 of my 15 games have been free). $391 on Playstation stuff (though I've only purchased a few of my games I did buy the unit and two of my games brand new, back when they first came out). $95 spent on Atari 2600 stuff (and that's just in the last few weeks). $159 on GBA stuff (and that includes two units, an E-Reader, and 23 games). $554.50 on N64 stuff. $1390.50 total invested, so far (only five systems added up, too). Gonna keep working at it as I'm now very interested in how much I have spent on it. The figures go back to when I first started purchasing games/systems out of my own money (early 1996).

pragmatic insanester

08-20-2005, 12:59 AM

maybe three thousand? probably more if you considered my reckless childhood spending on non-collection games that i sold for jack shit and had to break my balls to regain.

Nez

08-20-2005, 01:00 AM

Id say 9 to 10k. I've purcased quite a few large lots that keeps prices down.

mb7241

08-20-2005, 01:30 AM

All total, counting everything since the first games I bought back in 1991 (at age 6: Zelda and Zelda II for the NES, gold carts, $5 each) and after the full payment for the Zelda collection, it looks to be circa $5100 US. Per year over the whole 14- or 15-year period, it's only about $340. However, about $3800-$4100 of the total has come since 2003, coming out to right around $1250-$1350 a year since then. Considering all the deals I've found on games (even if they weren't such good deals when I bought them), I've actually done pretty darn well (my collection's worth about $15,000-$17,000, vs. the $900 or so it was worth when I officially started collecting in July '02).

PDorr3

08-20-2005, 01:32 AM

I would say around 10k.
Including systems, and I used to but all of my N64 games brand new (50-60) and PS2/XBOX/GC games alot were bought when new, not to mention allll of my retro stuff.

TEND

08-20-2005, 02:09 AM

Probably between 8 and 10 k, canadian. That's after about a year of serious collecting, almost every penny not required to pay for food or school or whatever goes into games.... kinda depressing now that I think about it.

Poofta!

08-20-2005, 02:28 AM

i use Game COllector to catalog my games, and one of the fields is price paid, at one point i decided to start filling those in, i only got like 20-25 games in (all of which were GC games) and the total was somewhere in the 550 dollars range... now i have 253 games. most of which are expensive, and id say i got 80% of them at the 20-30 dollars range.

this scared me and i quickly stopped filling the price field. its a hobby and it makes me happy, if i keep count, itll ruin it for me, especially when i think of much more usefull stuff i couldve had for that cash, like a car etc. plus the fact that my dad and i work very hard for our money and its essential a fucking waste spending it on games i dont play.

Yamazaki

08-20-2005, 06:27 AM

I spend about 3000$ alone in Japan this year.

Counting my games, my systems and my accessories it would sum up to 16-17000$

A good friend of mine keeps an excel listof his stuff.
With almost 4000 games, and more than 100 systems hes quite near the 200k mark!

robotriot

08-20-2005, 06:56 AM

I've been keeping track on how much I spent for each game for about 1.5 to 2 years now, and I'm at ~ �5300 now. But I've bought a lot of games before that, plus this doesn't factor in the system I bought. So it's probably about 9k I guess :/
My average game cost me �16.35, that's quite a lot oO

GameSlaveGaz

08-24-2005, 03:33 PM

OK, I swore I posted this already but the post doesn't seem to be here. Maybe it was one of those moments when I post but then it tells me to enter my login again and I didn't feel like rewriting the post and I forgot, but anyway, here's the post again:

I've tallied it up and in the past 5 years I've spent under $5000. It was like $4,800 and change. I haven't counted accessories yet, but I've probably only spent a little over a hundred on those, since it's been mostly controllers and memory cards, most of which were used and in some cases came with the system (my DreamCast cost me $30 with 2 controllers, 2 VMUs and 5 games at no extra charge)

I'm trying to track down the original prices of many of the systems and a general pricing range of the games.

Since I was young back then and I actually didn't ever get brand-new NES or Genesis games and I never owned the other systems, can anyone tell me the general price for brand-new games for such systems? Were they also $50 like current gen systems or were they usually less? More?

When I get the original retail prices I can compare.
Like look again at my DC deal. The system originally retailed for $200, an extra controller was probably $20 or $25, even $30 and VMUs were probably between $15 and $25 (for Sega brand not generic) and the games brand new had to have been $40 or $50. And look at all the stuff I got for just $30.

I dunno if it will shut my parents up, but maybe it'll make them think twice before saying I spend waay too much money.

SegaAges

08-24-2005, 03:51 PM

I've easily spent around 10-15k. I am one of the people that collect on many, many systems. There are a bunch of people here that will have 5-10 games for 1 systems, and then 1000 for another. And I buy some of my games new.

Mr.Faxanadu

08-24-2005, 04:24 PM

jajaja

08-24-2005, 05:02 PM

I think I'm in the area of $10,000 - $15,000 now. I've only been collecting for 1 year, so thats alot.

Same here. Been collecting for about a year and used about 10000 to 15000 dollars. But if I want to sell all of it I guess I could get most of the money back, if not more.

The Manimal

08-24-2005, 10:55 PM

I never, ever want to know the answer to this question. Ever.

LOL I definitely agree with that.

Man! Same thing here. If I ever looked into it, I think I would fall over dead! @_@

ditto

MrSmiley381

08-25-2005, 12:04 AM

Not including gifts, we'll ignore trades and such for the most part. This is fairly accurate, I suppose. Ignoring Atari, PC games, and SMS games.

Grand total: $2055+

Not counting current preorders, either. Or any stuff that I don't own any more. I've been doing this since I was ten, I'd say. That's about $400~ a year. AVERAGE. I think I spent more as I grew older. This year I've spent the most, and this will grow each year, I assume.

donkeykong1

08-25-2005, 12:19 AM

I've probably spent between 1000 and 5000 dollars in total. I usually get great deals. Plus I do most of buying at the swapmeet and at the flea market. I do buy some stuff on ebay though. I don't really buy new games or systems that much. Also this money includes any doubles or extras.

gepeto

08-25-2005, 09:32 PM

I say between $15,000 to $20,000 probably more collector for years o oops gotta go here comes my wife:)

RetroYoungen

08-25-2005, 10:11 PM

How much have I spent total... 19 consoles, probably 700 games (more or less)...

I dunno. I don't want to know. But probably enough that if I'd saved that money I probably could've paid my way through college.

Falcon

08-25-2005, 10:26 PM

30 PS2 games (At least $1000 spent in total)
30 SNES games (Maybe, around $500)
6 Game Gear games (Over $150 total)
6 Master System games (Too young to remember, but 4 were free)
4 Dreamcast games ($6 total)
3 Game Boy games (All 3 were free)
2 N64 games ($3 total)

Anthony1

08-26-2005, 11:10 AM

I've been in this hobby since 1977.

I'm pretty sure it was Xmas of 1977 when my parents got us an Atari 2600.

I didn't actually start buying my own games till the Nintendo NES days in the mid to late eighties, when I was a teenager. My real video game spending didn't start until I got a TurboGrafx-16 in 1989.

So basically, I've been buying games, systems, magazines, accessories, etc, etc for about 15 to 16 years or so.

On average I've probably spent about $3,000 per year on games, systems, magazines, accessories, etc, etc.

16 x $3,000.00 = $48,000.00

I'm going to have to guess that I've probably spent about 45 grand over my 16 year run. Give or take 5 grand.

orrimarrko

08-26-2005, 11:22 AM

LOL

followed by...

:(

That's the only way I can answer.

carlcarlson

02-07-2009, 11:54 PM

Super bump!

If you've ever wondered how a frugal/anal collector collects, here is a little insight.

I've been keeping track of my buying/selling the entire time I've collected. That means that pretty much every game I own is accounted for in my records. I got curious tonight and decided to add everything up. Here's what I got.

Bought-----------Sold
$5,984------------$7,961 nes
$703--------------$740 gamecube
$151--------------$242 n64
$2,072------------$2,250 DS
$5,902------------$6797 playstation (1 and 2)
$786--------------$993 genesis
$1,443------------$1,668 snes
$980--------------$762 wii
$625------------- $560 xbox
$5,120------------$5401 xbox 360
$111--------------$375 misc

$23,877-----------$27749

So basically the NES is a piece of cake to make money on. I've still got about 400 dupes to sell too, so that total will hopefully eventually be ~$9000. I never settled the Xbox totals because I just didn't care, it's not a huge gap. I'm still not sure whether or not to keep my Wii, but I could sell it tomorrow and even that record up.

You wouldn't think it to look at the numbers, but my SNES collection is probably the closest to being complete. That doesn't mean I've almost got every game, that just means I've almost got every game I want. As far as total number of games the NES is in the lead with ~500. The 360 numbers are a bit misleading because the average cost per lot is about $250, whereas the NES lot average is probably more like $60. I definitely spent more time on the NES stuff than any other.

The 1 2 P

02-08-2009, 07:04 AM

Back during the PS1 days I actually added up the total cost of all my games, strategy guides, magazine subscriptions, demo disc and accessories. This was the year 2000 and my total PS1 budget spent was $1,175.53 by the time I had 42 PS1 games. Today I have nearly 300 PS1 games, a super dedicated Xbox collection and several hundred more games and systems added. For the last three years I was spending atleast $50-150a month on ebay and other places. So, I think it's safe to say that I've spent somewhere between $10-20,000 on my collection...atleast. Damn, thats a down payment on a house:o

Game Freak

02-08-2009, 07:57 AM

well im not sure exactly, but probably a little under $10,000. I have a lot of games bought new for the SNES back in the day, as well as my parents when they had Atari. I myself probably only spent around $1,500 on games by myself though. I'm unemployed :P

Breetai

02-08-2009, 08:10 AM

I'm just out to prove to my parents that I haven't WASTED money on video games, they were all great investments and deals I couldn't pass upProtip: DO NOT try to prove your parents wrong on this issue. You will loose.

Food, clothing, a modest vehicle for transportation and housing are good uses of money.

Fast cars, girls that aren't your wife and never will be, and video games are a waste of money... a very fun waste of money!

I'm scared to calculate how much I've spend on games, let alone what the cost would've been had I bought them all new!!!

Xander

02-08-2009, 08:59 AM

I prefer not to know, I'm broke right now..

Hwj_Chim

02-08-2009, 09:52 AM

Don't know. Don't really care to be honest. I would think it would be in the tens of thousands by now. Don't try to argue with your parents about this, you will loose. Just explain to them that this is your hobby and is what you enjoy doing.

incubus421

02-08-2009, 10:24 AM

I've been keeping track of all my video game purchases since day one (of being a collector anyway). My spread sheet says the following:

Spent $1,481.27
Sold $1,097.70
TOTAL $383.57

Est Worth $2,327.00

THis is what I have to show for about $400 spent in total:

http://img305.imageshack.us/img305/658/unitafter1bh.th.jpg (http://img305.imageshack.us/my.php?image=unitafter1bh.jpg)

Not bad eh ?

Mine finances spent are calculated much the same way. Though these numbers don't include actual retail game purchases just what I've made through online buying and selling; I include shipping in what I have spent as well.

Buying = $1566.85
Selling = $984.70
TOTAL = $582.15

I started with about 20-30 games and around 3 systems. And in my soon to be 3 years of collecting I now have around 300 games and 11 systems.

$600 profit + 10x the games + 4x the systems!

cyberfluxor

02-08-2009, 10:45 AM

I've purchased a good number of video games in the past several years. I speculate about $6,000 as I own about 1,200 games and most were purchased for a few bucks or less at thrifts and pawn shops. There are a few premium items I've bought on console and arcade, not many though so it doesn't affect the average by much. Most of my game systems were bought used and at good deals when I saw them. If it were a sellers market I may get $8-10,000 back, but doubt I'll sell off everything as it's not worth the time and return to worry about it. I do plan on selling small chunks off in another year or two to cut less desirable games from the collection. The systems I don�t plan on cutting are the SAT, SMS, and PAM (5200), but for the NES, SNES, N64, and GEN there are plenty to axe. I went ramped on purchases for those systems since they were so common, which ultimately gave me plenty of loose carts. It�s a good thing I didn�t lose my sanity and buy so many sports titles. Outside of bowling, tennis, golf, and racing there are few sports games in my whole collection.