Are Classic games decreasing in value?

[m117]

I know that there may be certain ongoing arguments as to how rare games are valued, but today, I wondered about something. While browsing eBay I came across an auction for the Player's Choice edition of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past which was new and sealed with 14 hours left in the auction, the highest bid being at $26.01. I distinctly remember, about two years ago while researching my own copy of the same, that this title in the same condition, would fetch bids upwards of $60. Is this an indication of a trend of a decline in the rarity, or appeal, or simply the perceived value of vintage, not-so-common video games? My basis for this line of thinking is quite unsound, however, it seems to motivate me to check up on any other differences in eBay video game prices now, in comparison to what I remember them being just a few years ago. My question then is this: Is my reasoning unfounded, or is there some gradual decrease occuring in the value of rare games. My position as a collector is that I am an enthusiast, not an investor, and so I do not rely on high eBay bids for profit. I do however, consider the worth of my items to be important, and use eBay as a sort of "stock quote" of their monetary value every now and then. In conclusion I ask, is it so? Or is this particular auction (which interestingly was the only of its kind) an anomaly?
thanks

[lynchmcgahee]

14 hours is still a long time in these auctions. Considering that many people wait until the last minute to bid on something, I'd say there's a good chance it will go in the $45-60 range.

[carlcarlson]

about three years ago I started buying and selling NES games on ebay. my main "money" games were Bubble Bobble ($20), Tysons ($15), Contra ($20), and Tecmo Super Bowl ($20). They were all fairly easy to come by, but fetched nice prices on ebay. After a year and a half, however, the prices had fallen to maybe a little over half of that per game. That is about the time I stopped selling. Recently, however, I've needed some space and have been selling again. To my surprise I had no problems selling those same games for those prices. All but Tysons sold within a day of my listing. Of course it was the holiday season (post Christmas), but still, the prices were there. So, in this particular case the prices are holding steady. That's not to say that all prices are firm however. Uncommon NES games frequently end with no bids, whereas three years ago I could have at least gotten a few bucks out of them.

I think you'll find that popular games will hold their value reasonably well for a long time, as will the "uber rares". Anything else will probably drop.

[CartCollector]

It seems like while game prices might have gone down, the consoles have gotten more expensive. NESs and SNESs routinely sell for >$30, while they could be had pre-eBay for less than half that. But it could just be more people getting into retrogaming without caring too much about price.

[swlovinist]

I think that it is a mixed bag. I have been selling on ebay for about 8 years. Rare games and items will always do well, but as time moves on so will the trends and peoples tastes. As time moves on, so do the perception of what "classic" is. Five years ago, you could still get some great deals on PS1 RPGs. Now, you will pay top dollar. Example of games going up in value. Nes rarities have increased in value, but common and uncommon are flooded on ebay and have gone down in value. Sega Genesis is the new Intellivision for a cheap system. I predict as time moves on that the PS2 will generate a retro following.

[Greg2600]

I agree, it's all very fad. The fact that Mike Tyson's Punchout, Contra, Zelda, and SMB 3 fetch high prices is all on reputation. Everybody wants those, and I can only assume they aren't collecting many games. Because if you were, unless money is no obstacle, you don't pay $25 for a loose NES game that was in the top 10 in games sold. There's no shortage of them around. Another part of the issue is that often sellers inflate the shipping costs to recoup fees, so you wind up fighting to get a game that's under $10 or $15, because you're being charged double and triple the actual shipping costs.

Another thing I've noticed is that you can often find carts and manuals and even boxes for Atari and SMS and NES games in better condition than the later consoles. I think the reason was big chain rental like Blockbuster really got going during the 16 bit era. Before that it was mostly local rental stores, not chains. I've found that to get SNES or Genesis games in nice condition, you have to pay extra and get complete games. Even though I am a minimalist and don't want the boxes (I'll eventually peddle them all), I bite the bullet. I'd rather pay another 4 or 5 bucks for that security that the game still looks nice, than buy a "lot" of loose games. More often than not, they have been destroyed through the rental process. The Genesis games especially, I have seen some absolutely brutalized carts.

Plus with the huge excess of EA Sports games out there, any time you see a game which probably sold well, but is not a sports game, you feel like jumping on it.

[Steven]

My Player's Edition sealed LTTP sold for $50 in late 2006. As did DKC2 and SMK million sellers.

If classic games are declining in value, I think it's because many of us retro gamers have by now acquired what we wanted. How many of us got into the "retro scene" from, say, 2001-2006? By now, most of us have bought most of what we wanted, IMHO

[m117]

My Player's Edition sealed LTTP sold for $50 in late 2006. As did DKC2 and SMK million sellers.

If classic games are declining in value, I think it's because many of us retro gamers have by now acquired what we wanted. How many of us got into the "retro scene" from, say, 2001-2006? By now, most of us have bought most of what we wanted, IMHO

That's a reasonable argument. It makes sense; I started collecting my retro stuff in that time frame as well. As of today however, I have stopped collecting vintage games, and focus on current-gen gaming more than anything. That seems to be about the routine for most "average collectors" if you will. It brings up another question though - If this pattern repeats itself, where collector's saw boosted interest in a specific generation of games during the span of a few years, when will such a big movement happen again? Also, what generation of games will be the subject of such interest? Which brings up swlovinist's comment:

...Sega Genesis is the new Intellivision for a cheap system. I predict as time moves on that the PS2 will generate a retro following.

If this is true as he predicts, then can we expect to see a different generation of games being the ones widely sought after within the next few years?

[kataboom]

i always get the impression that games are way too expensive on ebay. i cant tell you how many times ill look for an R4 or R5 NES game on ebay only to find out the high bid is $60!

[kataboom]

If this is true as he predicts, then can we expect to see a different generation of games being the ones widely sought after within the next few years?

honestly i dont see new gen games ever being as popular for collectors. at least not for me because there is something cool about the guts of a cart with all the transistors & the board etc etc, whereas a cd or dvd is just info written onto a disc. yawn

[m117]

honestly i dont see new gen games ever being as popular for collectors. at least not for me because there is something cool about the guts of a cart with all the transistors & the board etc etc, whereas a cd or dvd is just info written onto a disc. yawn

What if the next step is PS1 or DC games or more from that era. Yes they are disc based but I know for a fact that they are widely collected even now. Maybe some time in the future, how far along I don't know, collectors will seek out what will then be primitive disc based games as a hobby, and amass them into towering piles of FFVII's and Marvel vs Capcoms (or Super mario 64's, who knows). They would obviously focus their gaming time on their Playstation 9's however, and completing the newly released Final Fantasy 14 ([at square enix] BURN!)

[FrakAttack]

I wonder how the ease of using Virtual Console, etc., affects the market? Most folks looking for classic games aren't collectors, you know, they just want to re-play some old favorites and don't know how to or don't want to steal, er, emulate.

[boatofcar]

Please use the search function.

[ncman071]

this may be a little off subject, but i was at a local play n trade store today and i saw a used copy of FF7 for PS1. i believe it was in greatest hits packaging. They were asking around $25. Is that considered a good deal for that particular game? i've seen much higher prices on ebay and other websites.

[boatofcar]

this may be a little off subject, but i was at a local play n trade store today and i saw a used copy of FF7 for PS1. i believe it was in greatest hits packaging. They were asking around $25. Is that considered a good deal for that particular game? i've seen much higher prices on ebay and other websites.

This is more of a question for the "What's it Worth" forum, but yeah, I think that's a good deal, if the discs are in good shape.

[ncman071]

ok cool. thanks. sorry about posting in the wrong forum.

[Greg2600]

I wonder how the ease of using Virtual Console, etc., affects the market? Most folks looking for classic games aren't collectors, you know, they just want to re-play some old favorites and don't know how to or don't want to steal, er, emulate.

VC is not easy enough for most people, in the sense that you have to pull your hair out to get a Wii. Often, people I know have bought the mini-game devices, such as the Genesis 6-gamers, Atari Flashback, etc. I guy I work with told me the other day that he bought one of those $30 dual system units (NES and Genesis I think). I guess he still had his old games. Technically, if emulation didn't kill the hobby/business, nothing will. I mean, you can get almost any game from the 1970's through the mid/late 1990's now. Once you start getting into the CD systems though, a little more difficult to get the games.

[Mark III]

Emulation works both ways. For the number of people that don't buy a game because they can emulate it you seem to get a roughly equal number of people who want to play it on the "real" hardware. In some cases emulation has actually increased demand for some games. 5 years ago Earthbound was a game pretty much known only to collectors. Now almost everyone is looking for it. Most of the casual gamers I've ran into have only ever played it on emulator and are now trying to track down a physical cart to play it as it was meant to be played.

As for new games becoming collectable I suspect values are going to increase equal to or even greater than what rare classic titles are worth now. CD and DVD mediums are a lot more delicate than the carts we are used to. Most old systems and games get passed on to friends and younger family once people get bored with them. This usually happens a few times before they get old and reach "Classic" status. Carts are pretty durable and tend to survive mostly intact. A lot of discs however aren't going to be around 10 years from now. A good chunk of them are going to get scratched, cracked and thrown out long before then. A lot of titles are getting produced in higher quantities than they were back in the 80's and 90's so maybe that will balance it out, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

[Mark2008]

I'd like to continue the thought about e-bay and auction prices.

You can only compare the final auction price. You cannot say anything about '14 hours to go'. The trend at e-bay, especially for savvy collectors, is to use Auction Sniping programs. It's an automatic bid placer, that bids in the last section of the auction.

This is to combat the impact of novice bidders, who 'bid up' an item, just trying to win a temporary position on the auction...these types of bidders raise the price of the auction, even thought they ultimately, usually don't win the auction.

With auction snipers, you just place the bid you are willing to pay, and you either are the high bidder, or not. In any event, the end result, is, you can only compare the final price of the auciton, after it ended...to get a comparison from this year to last, or to several years ago.

14 hours before auction end...is telling you nothing.

Prices on classic games are going up. As others have mentioned, there are trends.... supply and demand, of course. But while supply may open up on a particular game, for example, as certain people find a differential between e-bay and the local pawn shop...games tend to flood into e-bay, then putting downward pressure on the price...

but its temporary in all cases.... pawn shops then get depleted of supply...games only get more rare as time goes on, and, as long as retro gaming is a trend...and I don't think its going anywhere.... you find prices going up over the long haul.

I do colecovision games...just a few years ago, every pawn shop had a colecovision that had been collecting dust for years....now you cannot find a colecovision anywhere.

[m117]

In response to Mark2008, fyi the auction I mentioned in the first post ended at $39.01. Not a bad price for a sealed game of that nature (The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, SNES), off course it was a player's choice copy so that could account for a decreased value. I would still argue, however, that the leap from $26.01 to $39.01 did not seem significant enough to me.

As I stated ealier, I recount seeing the very same game with bids surpassing the $60 mark. Perhaps these cases were anomalous, and my observations were made in uncommon instances, but I cannot help but hold the notion that the average value, if at least for this game only, has decreased over the years.

The sad fact is that I have only my memory as a catalogue to these ebay bids of which I speak, and cannot solidify my claims with recorded proof. I will say though, that I agree completely with you and I definitely believe that retro gaming will be around for as long as we gamers and collectors retain the passion for the hobby/life.

In reality, I firmly believe that retro games, much like many other sought after collectibles, will increase in value with time, but I could not help but question my observations as far as the one case was concerned. Thanks for your comments, I think we can all agree on the fact that video games will always be around, and enthusiats will always be there to collect them.