Have older games gone down in price?

[orrimarrko]

I no longer collect, but I still like to look.

Maybe someday I can get back into it, but not now.

I know it will be MUCH harder to do later, mostly because it's so hard to find anything older than an N64 game - at least around here.

That's another topic, by the way - where in the hell can you find stuff nowadays (other than eBay...)

Back to my original question. I was poking around on eBay, and it seems that the prices for pretty much everything have dropped rather noticeably.

Has anyone else noticed this, or have I simply been out too long?

Thanks,
Steve

[VG_Maniac]

Common games will almost always go down in price...even the high indemand common games will once people realize that there are plenty of copies to go around. Problem is...some people never realize it.

Rare games, however, will always go up in price as more and more people discover how rare the game is, and as less and less copies of the game appear.

[Malon_Forever]

Some games. Others have raised, and some have stayed the same price. Other than ebay......good luck :P Only 1 of my local game stores have NES, SNES, Genesis games. I don't get much there though since they don't get any new ones much. Anyways, if your completely excluding online stores, go drive around, and look for garage sale signs. I was able to get a SNES with all hookups, 3 controllers, and 12 games with boxes and intructions all for 20 bucks at garage sale. Its a gold mine :D

[mcarocks2003]

Sega Saturn are the most fought over games on Ebay since most are in limited supply. Sega Saturn games will continue to get more and more expensive over time.

[boatofcar]

Ianoid sometimes goes off on rants about how ebay is destroying the collector's market, making games go down in price. I disagree, though. This is an EXCELLENT time to buy anything on ebay. Back to school time leaves people with less money, and it is still to early for the Christmas shopping season to start.

[goatdan]

Game prices have not dropped. I can confirm that from having a huge amount of video game inventory for the GOAT Store, and prices have remained the same on nearly everything, with the rarer / more sought after games steadily climbing. Earthbound is the perfect example. In 1999, I sold five of them nearly new in box with the book / manual, and they sold through us on eBay and through the site for $50-$60 apiece. Now, you look up the same game on eBay, and it is selling for well over $100.00 on a regular basis.

There seems to be a trend with video games that goes something like this:

System is supported. Games that are unique hold their value, while games that there are new updates too decline, some more rapidly than others. An example of this would be RPG games tend to hold their values much longer than sports titles.

System support is ended. Gamers sell their consoles en masse. Most games -- even the unique ones that had held their value -- drop. The drops are less noticable to the unique ones than the more common ones. Around this time, stores also clearance out any old stock from the system. This causes certain game prices to plummet, as the market is flooded with new copies at an extremely low price.

There is about a two year period of adjustment. During this time, more of the above happens -- clearances blow thousands of copies of certain titles into the market. Other games get noticably harder to find as people scoop them up for themselves, regardless of how rare they really are.

After the adjustments all end, there is about a two year period where prices remain pretty steady. During this time, there aren't too many newcomers to the system, and there aren't too many people who are looking to sell. Games that are going to remain higher priced become very hard to find.

Now, a period where players who had sold their systems start wanting to play games from it again. They'll say things like, "Man, I used to really love that Soul Calibur game! I should see if I can pick up a Dreamcast again." During this time, the price of the console as well as the still-really-fun-to-play games rises, although it remains slightly based on quantity. A perfect example is both Combat and Super Mario Brothers remain low cost even though everyone wants one because there are so many of them. On the other hand though, games like Super Mario Brothers 3 -- which is I believe still the best selling non-pack-in game ever -- rise. SMB3 regularly sells for $5-10 still. Games that suck or that people didn't hear about the first go around are generally relegated to the "crap" bin, no matter how rare they are, at least temporarily.

The final stage is the collectors stage. Collectors seem to come into a system big time about 5-10 years after the system is done. When they come in, the regular game prices (like Super Mario Brothers 3) don't climb much, but the rarities start to climb, and so do the prices for complete games. Suddenly, instead of the game being worth a dollar or two more for having the box, it becomes worth two to three times the value.

While I by no means am trying to say that I'm completely right with this, I've seen it play out to the letter for the Jaguar (which I got into when the games were all cheap, and suddenly games I was getting new for $10 are selling for $30 loose), the Saturn, Dreamcast and N64. That's my assumption, at least.

And again -- about prices raising, my Jaguar collection, which was every game ever made including the Songbird releases, three copies of Battlesphere, three Catboxes and three systems cost me about $1500 to put together. If I sold it all now in peices, just the copies of Battlesphere and the Catboxes alone would probably get me back the entire price of my collection. I sure think prices have raised nicely over the last few years :)

[goatdan]

Ianoid sometimes goes off on rants about how ebay is destroying the collector's market, making games go down in price. I disagree, though. This is an EXCELLENT time to buy anything on ebay. Back to school time leaves people with less money, and it is still to early for the Christmas shopping season to start.

This also reminds me...

I agree with this -- there is a definite cycle to sales, but we've hit an additional low right now because of the Hurricanes (people, especially after Katrina seem to have realized that there are things more important to spend some money on, which is good) and the insanely quickly rising price of gas. Suddenly, the amount of disposable income that people have to use on games is lower, and it is translating to lower sales / prices.