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Thread: Collecting Old Games to play now, then sell later at a profit. My Argument

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    Lightbulb Collecting Old Games to play now, then sell later at a profit. My Argument

    This is an Argument that people have debated over for a while now on these forums, but I feel like collecting old games right now just might turn out to be a wise thing to do, so here goes!

    1. Collecting something you can actually play with. Old games are something that you can actually play with and enjoy. Sure you can collect toys and anime figures, but chances are, people aren't going to be letting you babysit their kids...

    2. Nostalgia. Nintendo, Sega... Everyone had one, everyone loved it. The late 80's and Early 90's in the US, combined with youth, is something that people will always remember as "Good Times". When the country gets deeper in debt, and the recession gloom continues, people like to have an escape, and they look back at the high points in their life, and enjoy re-living that.

    3. Baby Boomers/Mid-life Crisis. Here is what I believe is my most valid argument. Take a look around at "Today's" Generation in their late 40's to mid 50's. They look back, and remember what was cool and fun when they were young, and you see many of them driving New-Old style cars like the New Camaro, the New Mustang, and Harley Davidson Motorcycles. These types of vehicles' return is solely due to their mid-life crisis, then they were young, and good times were to abundant.

    So what is going to happen when folks our age reach that pinnacle in their life? What will they be looking back at, and remembering as fresh, good times? Something tells me that it wont be Skip-It or Sock`em Boppers...

    Thoughts?


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    The difference is that with most other collectibles like cars, etc... there is almost no chance of an identical version ever being made available digitally or otherwise, especially not at a reasonable price. That's just not the case with video games. Moreover, these were pressed in the millions of copies in most cases, so they will likely never be rare. Finally, people just tend to save things more nowadays than they ever did in the past, so the percentage of video games that has been thrown out or destroyed is probably fairly minimal. As such, collecting video games is a fun hobby, but it is very unlikely that anyone will ever make much money from it, at least not collecting the games that most people will be nostalgic to own later in life.

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    You missed the boat by 5 years. Things are too saturated and competitive and plateaued.

    For me, it was a very wise thing to do. Very. Very very very.

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    Bojay1997 is right, and I'd like to add a couple of things.
    The virtual console (and therefore emulation) has shown that 'casual' gamers are nostalgic about the games themselves, not the hardware and cartridges. They can have their nostalgic 'fix' without the need to hunt down original consoles and games. Then this is a generation thing, I remember the Atari 2600 being 'hot' 10/15 years ago or so - it still is, but I feel that the pool of collectors has decreased, rare games are still expensive, but the common ones have dropped in price a lot. The NES and SNES are currently hot (again this is a generation thing) but I'm sure the same thing will happen for these consoles. A friend of mine works at flea markets and such, and he told me that there's always a phase, people tend to look for objects (comics,toys and so forth )from their youth in then 20s/30s, then when they get 50 or so they change focus and sometimes resell all of this stuff, and only the hardcore collectors stay on.
    So, rare items will always be expensive, but I'm not sure if the common ones will ever be. I may be wrong though. I've always taken my collecting hobby as a fun hobby, I never thought about the profit side of it - and if I did I would have stopped ages ago

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    I still do not agree, Thats like saying that images of old baseball cards and ford mustang kit cars are good enough, its just not correct. People will always want the original, the real thing. Sure, Digital downloads might be "good enough" for some people right now, but thats going to change. You could buy a 60s Mustang or Chevy in 1985 for about 90% less than what they are going for today. People that grew up in them didnt have their mid-life crisis yet.

    Give it 15 more years, and I think you will be surprised.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FxMercenary View Post
    I still do not agree, Thats like saying that images of old baseball cards and ford mustang kit cars are good enough, its just not correct. People will always want the original, the real thing. Sure, Digital downloads might be "good enough" for some people right now, but thats going to change. You could buy a 60s Mustang or Chevy in 1985 for about 90% less than what they are going for today. People that grew up in them didnt have their mid-life crisis yet.

    Give it 15 more years, and I think you will be surprised.
    Selling collection, Atari through XBox. Send a PM with whatever games you're looking for.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FxMercenary View Post
    Sure, Digital downloads might be "good enough" for some people right now, but thats going to change.
    It's going to change?

    What exactly is going to cause this dynamic shift in the desire of casual gamers interested in playing Super Mario Bros., Ms. Pac-Man or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 to want/need original hardware vs. inexpensive digital downloads that work on their current gen systems?
    "And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"


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    Quote Originally Posted by Frankie_Says_Relax View Post
    It's going to change?

    What exactly is going to cause this dynamic shift in the desire of casual gamers interested in playing Super Mario Bros., Ms. Pac-Man or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 to want/need original hardware vs. inexpensive digital downloads that work on their current gen systems?

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    Video games are the new comic books.

    Anyone who buys games now just to resell them in the future is just wasting money. Most games have a high enough print run that they'll never be "rare".
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    Quote Originally Posted by FxMercenary View Post
    I still do not agree, Thats like saying that images of old baseball cards and ford mustang kit cars are good enough, its just not correct. People will always want the original, the real thing. Sure, Digital downloads might be "good enough" for some people right now, but thats going to change. You could buy a 60s Mustang or Chevy in 1985 for about 90% less than what they are going for today. People that grew up in them didnt have their mid-life crisis yet.

    Give it 15 more years, and I think you will be surprised.
    Look, there will always be some percentage of the population who takes their nostalgia to that next level and it is even possible that it will even increase over time. Having said that, comparing cars that were manufactured in limited quantities to begin with, were expensive to own initially and which were heavily used for many years, many ending up totaled or scrapped is not the same as video games which were manufactured in massive quantities, cheap to own and are literally all over the place because they don't lend themselves necessarily to being worn out or thrown away. That's not to say that there won't be more collectors in the future, but having followed the car market for years, the inflation in prices hasn't been necessarily because people have started having mid-life crises it's because the already small quantity of high grade collectible cars is smaller than the collector's population and their available financial resources. In some cases, there are only hundreds or a few thousand nice examples out there of a particular year, make and model. I can think of very few games where that would be the case and frankly, most of those games have little or no nostalgia value to most ordinary gamers.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FxMercenary View Post
    This is an Argument that people have debated over for a while now on these forums, but I feel like collecting old games right now just might turn out to be a wise thing to do, so here goes!

    1. Collecting something you can actually play with. Old games are something that you can actually play with and enjoy. Sure you can collect toys and anime figures, but chances are, people aren't going to be letting you babysit their kids...

    2. Nostalgia. Nintendo, Sega... Everyone had one, everyone loved it. The late 80's and Early 90's in the US, combined with youth, is something that people will always remember as "Good Times". When the country gets deeper in debt, and the recession gloom continues, people like to have an escape, and they look back at the high points in their life, and enjoy re-living that.

    3. Baby Boomers/Mid-life Crisis. Here is what I believe is my most valid argument. Take a look around at "Today's" Generation in their late 40's to mid 50's. They look back, and remember what was cool and fun when they were young, and you see many of them driving New-Old style cars like the New Camaro, the New Mustang, and Harley Davidson Motorcycles. These types of vehicles' return is solely due to their mid-life crisis, then they were young, and good times were to abundant.

    So what is going to happen when folks our age reach that pinnacle in their life? What will they be looking back at, and remembering as fresh, good times? Something tells me that it wont be Skip-It or Sock`em Boppers...

    Thoughts?

    Selling collection, Atari through XBox. Send a PM with whatever games you're looking for.

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    POTY candidate.

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    Video Games are for playing not for selling you silly man.
    Check out my oldschool game reviews!
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    Collecting video games is not an investment.

    I believe in the phase thing.

    Once our generation is done, or tired of collecting 8 bit and 16 bit systems, we will cool off. Then the people that are about 10 years younger than us will pick things up with consoles like the N64, PS1, etc. It's already started to happen. So those games will be the highly collectable games. Then when they grow old and tire of them, the next generation of gamers will be collecting in full swing.. the PS2 and XBOX, DC, and Gamecube games will be highly collectable and so forth..

    Like mentioned Atari games are not worth what they used to be.

    While people will still be collecting, it won't be at the scale it is now for consoles like the 16 bit systems.

    Although there is one thing to remember, when we were kids, we didn't think that boxes and manuals were worth so much, nor did we know that if we didn't open up that game it would be worth so much. So many boxes ended up in the trash (I was guilty of that as a child myself).

    Now that people know there is some value in those sorts of things people are holding onto the manuals, boxes, inserts, reg cards, etc etc. What this is going to cause to happen is that the newer games won't be worth as much because EVERY one of them just about will have a case and manual and so forth. We cannot correct the damage that has been done already on the older games, so therefore they will always be collectible. I know I am contradicting myself - just some observations.

    Not to mention, they are making games in MUCH higher quantities than they used to, so therefore they won't be as rare.

    It's much like baseball cards and comic books. Back in the day no one knew they would be worth so much, so few survived. Now everyone says "save those", so since everyone is saving them, they aren't worth anything because there are so many already out there. I have baseball and football cards that are 20 years old and are not worth crap. 20 years ago, if I had 20 year old cards, they'd be worth at least a few bucks for each common. Now a common from 20 years ago is barely worth 10-20 cents.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Frankie_Says_Relax View Post
    It's going to change?

    What exactly is going to cause this dynamic shift in the desire of casual gamers interested in playing Super Mario Bros., Ms. Pac-Man or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 to want/need original hardware vs. inexpensive digital downloads that work on their current gen systems?
    Economics my friend. People get old, and their parents die, and they come into a little bit of money, and they buy a Harley, they buy a low-end porsche etc... Its actually quite simple. The real thing, in physical form, will always carry more demand than aftermarket.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FxMercenary View Post
    Economics my friend. People get old, and their parents die, and they come into a little bit of money, and they buy a Harley, they buy a low-end porsche etc... Its actually quite simple. The real thing, in physical form, will always carry more demand than aftermarket.
    Eh, I'm sorry, but in the context of casual gamers looking to quickly/easily play a specific game for the sheer instant gratification of playing that game - WHY, regardless of how old they are or how much money they have would they opt to seek out original NES hardware and software and go through the trouble of getting it set up/getting it to work Vs. spending $5 to download an HD version on their current gen console?

    I think you're confusing older, nostalgia-bound gamers who make a conscious decision to begin "collecting" as a hobby/interest with casual gamers looking to play their favorite classics. Certainly there are those who opt for the original hardware, but they are squarely in the minority and always will be.

    I don't believe that (as your scenario seems to dictate) 15 years from now that there will be a dynamic shift from the amount of adult users currently downloading "classic" virtual console releases (or "Greatest Hits" collections of emulated titles on retail media) to those going out and hobby-collecting classic hardware/software.
    "And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"


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    Quote Originally Posted by FxMercenary View Post
    Economics my friend. People get old, and their parents die, and they come into a little bit of money, and they buy a Harley, they buy a low-end porsche etc... Its actually quite simple. The real thing, in physical form, will always carry more demand than aftermarket.
    Wow, your speculation just gets more and more absurd. I know several people in their 40s, 50, and 60s who have inherited pretty decent amounts of money from their parents' estates in the last few years and not a single one went out and splurged on collectibles. One paid off much of their student and credit card debt, one put the money into a college fund for their kids and one paid off their house and did some renovations to the bathroom and kitchen. Given that people are living longer and longer and therefore depleting their savings, I find it very hard to believe that people in their 60s and 70s are going to take the money they inherit from their parents passing away in their 80s and 90s and put it into a bunch of then 50-60 year old video games. Is this some kind of argument you are making to convince yourself or maybe your spouse that filling your house up with video games is a good long-term strategy?

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    I think the only way to look at the future of the hobby, is to look back. Again, as I said, the 15 years threshold you mention already happened for the Atari 2600. And the conclusion is that ultra common games are now dirt cheap, you can easily find a complete Space Invaders going for a fiver. However, ultra rare games are still expensive, and some even more than before. Prototypes are also more expensive now than they were 10 or 15 years ago (I feel). So the morale is low quantity prints (like with any collection) will always be expensive and will raise in value, simply because they are rare and the small community of collectors is enough to keep the price up.
    You know, I sometimes compare this to movies or music - if you own a first VHS print of whatever movie from the 80s, then a casual movie fan won't care much about it, and will prefer to own a recent DVD print of it because in the end, he cares about the movie itself, not the medium on which it's printed on. I feel that the same applies to casual gamers, they want to play Super Mario Bros and I believe it's a lot easier for them to play it on the Virtual Console than to hunt down a NES and the real game...
    The morale of all of this is that rare items will always be expensive and valuable (sadly, you never know if a game is rare until it's too late, you have to gamble or do a lot of research beforehand). Really common ones won't be. And this, I think, applies to any collection, really.

    But you know what ? I hope you're right, as it'd mean that I'm sitting on a gold mine and if I give it 15 years, then it will even be before my retirement age
    Last edited by lkermel; 04-11-2011 at 04:29 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Frankie_Says_Relax View Post
    It's going to change?

    What exactly is going to cause this dynamic shift in the desire of casual gamers interested in playing Super Mario Bros., Ms. Pac-Man or Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 to want/need original hardware vs. inexpensive digital downloads that work on their current gen systems?
    Off-topic, but what exactly made you bring up Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and lump it with those games??
    Just my two coins.

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