2015 - the peak of Nintendo collecting?

[SparTonberry]

When I said Marvelous, I meant the game company. (Magical Pop'n was by Pack-in-Video and I believe Marvelous Entertainment was formed by a merger of them and Victor's game division.)

Though I do have Marvelous the game, which I had got for only like $5 CIB years ago. Which was a bit of a surprise since it was well-known but nobody was translating it which is probably why it hadn't gone up in value.
Is Accelebrid worth money now? That was also one I picked up a few years ago in the $10 CIB range.
Gun Hazard too. (from what I heard, Rudra no Hihou, their final game?, was the only Square SFC game that wasn't super-common in Japan)
(and Miracle Girls but mine is in pretty **** condition, so maybe that's why)

[Tanooki]

Interesting diversion from the peak of collecting discussion. Very nice selection of images there in that one mega post. Reminds me of some things (a few) I used to have in there with the SFC/SNES stuff.

I think it's safe to say unless it's so obscure of a dead system most people don't much care for or ever did about there's copies of games that have some to considerable value. Usually the more obscure I'd think it would have to be worth the heavy profit to do a one off, but when you get into GB anything or SNES stuff you can find copies at the $30 level or better with Gameboy. I know as I got an Alien Hominid GBA UK boot, epic amazing quality on the outside, inside too aside from the wrong parts on the board. The thing is you pegged it, it's not worth getting all crappy over, it's just a game and if you have a fake and never know, who cares... you enjoyed playing it right?


I'm really curious how many months or years until it really did hit when the problem people do push it over the top and start driving people off in mass.

[Aussie2B]

The problem with not knowing that you have a bootleg is that you may be getting an inferior experience without even realizing it. I don't just mean that the packaging (the label, plastic, etc.) may be of lower quality, but the functionality of the game may be affected. Like with the aforementioned MVS bootlegs, they are known to be more unreliable than official carts (causing issues in getting them to play at all or difficulties in getting the graphics and/or audio to output properly). People may just brush it off like "oh, it's just an old game" or "the game or system must need cleaning", but the reality may be that the grief you're getting from the game is all because it's a bootleg and wouldn't be an issue with an official cart in the same condition. Similarly, there are all the issues with saving in bootleg GBA games. Some don't save at all, some lose their files frequently. I've heard of people buying GBA games, they see that saves don't hold so they assume a dead battery, they replace the battery and do a perfect job of it, but it still won't work and then they realize it's a bootleg. It's a damn shame.

And then there's game soundtrack collecting. Bootlegs are so prevalent that you'd be hard-pressed to find a collector who didn't unintentionally buy some bootlegs at some point. Most are pretty pissed when they learn the truth, and then they start replacing them with legit copies. And then they discover that a lot of them have worse audio quality to boot, which they didn't realize until they heard the real thing. You could argue ignorance is bliss, but I personally hate the idea of wasting my time dealing with junk products that don't work quite right, even if I'm under the assumption that it's normal.

[badinsults]

Yeah, GBA is probably the worst system for bootlegs. I remember searching for Final Fantasy V on Ebay, and not bothering because half of the carts were obviously fake, and I didn't feel like taking a chance on the other half. My brother actually got one off ebay, which had a perfect scan of the label, but the game did not work because it was a bootleg. I ended up managing to find a new copy in a store, which was remarkable since it was long after the GBA was abandoned.

Obviously, there is the existential problem of "if it looks real enough and works, does it matter if you have the bootleg rather than the real thing?" I think for a lot of people, that is going to be the case.

[dgdgagdae]

Off topic, but I'm surprised there aren't more Intellivision collectors in the classic sector. It's a comparatively small library with little of major cost. NES games will likely stay higher than a lot of older consoles due to their continued cultural relevance and more modern-style gameplay.

That's my console of choice to collect for, because it has the highest nostalgic value for me. It's really easy to find Intellivision games complete in box, too. People seemed to hold onto those gatefold boxes as a place to store the cartridge, overlays, and manual.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

Without a doubt that is true, although I think you overestimate the desire of kids who grew up in the Gamecube era to want to collect games that were made before they were born. There will always be a market for Nintendo's biggest franchise games. Games like the Mario Bros games and Mega Man will always hold a premium, because everyone knows that they are good. It is like how there is always going to be a market for the music of the Beatles. The eventual downturn is going to hit games that are only expensive because of their relative rarity. Things like Panic Restaurant. Nobody who is getting their fill of classic games via the Virtual Console is hankering to get a title like that at several hundred dollars. I mean, I doubt it will ever be a $20 title again, but I doubt that it will remain a $300-$400 game. To keep with the 60s music analogies, these kind of games will be like the Yardbirds - a relatively popular band at the time with a mixed bag of a catalogue that is really only of interest to a select few people who grew up in the era and are nostalgic, or hardcore music nerds. I mean, I am a huge music nerd (I own hundreds of CDs), and I can't say I would go out of my way to get a Yardbirds album, because half the stuff they did was pretty crap. Panic Restaurant is like that.

Complete and sealed collecting is a different beast altogether. I'd say that sealed gaming is pretty niche, and I doubt that there are ever going to be a lot of people into that. The ones that are, are obviously willing to throw a lot of money. I'd say that boxes and manual collecting is far trickier, as it is much easier to make a fake box and manual than a cart. Yes, for the truly uncommon games, complete copies of the game are going to go for a lot of money. I think you will see a disconnect in the market. I'm willing to bet if you looked at Atari 2600 games, the prices for boxed games has continued to go up, while cart-only prices has stayed relatively stable during the past 10 years.

Like any bubble economy, there are lots of people who will deny that the Nintendo classic collectors market will stagnate. There are people who thought the dot-com bubble would never burst, or that housing prices would continue going up at double digit per annum growth rates before the 2008 crash happened. When people are all-in on an investment, it is a psychological defence to justify your choice. I personally think that treating video games as an investment is foolish. Once prices stop going up, and I guarantee that is inevitable, these people are going to get hit hard. This is capitalism 101, prices only increase when there is sustained growth. There is a finite amount of people who are nostalgic for these systems.

Well, ur talking about booms and busts and not to get too off topic but the bubbles on things like housing are caused by inflation rates being manipulated by the central bank. U could go as far as to say it's because of inflation but I don't believe that much. It's just popular right now, and like comic books and baseball cards in the 90s it could wind up just going away.

But that interest for some people will always be there. Collecting old video games is not a new thing, it's been a thing since the mid-90s, actually it just wasn't big like today. People notice collectibility and value to them today. I meet people with no knowledge or interest in the retro video game world who just think it's awesome if they find a Sega Genesis, or always talk about how great that old console they had was. Video games became bigger in the 90s, and so more people have nostalgia for it, then say the Colecovision crowd. I even kept my old Genesis and NES from when I was a kid, and had a feeling they'd be collectable, and just felt nostalgia for them and whatever, and once I got more interested in picking up more old games and finding out what's out there I had a base collection and my larger collection started with that.

[Mattiekrome]

Wow, reading this thread makes me hurt inside All this talk of repros taking over and fake labels popping up makes me wonder where this hobby will end up in the next few years.

I've been out of the scene since around 2008 when the birth of my second daughter caused me to give up my gaming room. Since that time, I've sold off a majority of my collection, only keeping a few Tupperware bins full of my most prized stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'd pick up a game here or there, but my big scale collecting ended back in 2008. Over the last few years I've seen these fake labels for high $ games popping up on eBay. At that point I started questioning what direction things were going in. As technology gets better, there may come a point in time where a real game cannot be determined from a reproduction. Makes me wonder if I should part out the remainder of my collection fearing that down the road the market will be saturated with bootleg fake stuff. Sad really.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

I have Marvelous complete in box. I bought it a long time ago, though, for, like, $20. I don't blame you for using a flash cart, though. It's not like the original companies are making any money off of it, so as long as people support legitimate reźreleases, there's no harm.

I do think, like all things, there will be a leveling off of sorts, but not a crash down to earth. Collecting hobbies always tend to maintain a level of competition to keep prices higher than they would be for a practical use market. There's also a large new base of young people who identify with this hobby that they've grown up with, which will likely prevent any massive crash when the trendy collectors get bored and move on.

Off topic, but I'm surprised there aren't more Intellivision collectors in the classic sector. It's a comparatively small library with little of major cost. NES games will likely stay higher than a lot of older consoles due to their continued cultural relevance and more modern-style gameplay.

I love collecting Atari games, I have an Intellivision but I don't play it often enough that I've wanted to collect much for it. I'm more interested in Colecovision and Vectrex collecting, to be honest. There's not very many Vectrex games, and although some can get expensive and hard to find they're generally really great games. I love the Vectrex.

[jonebone]

Sorry, but I have to entirely disagree. If you think we are at the peak then you just aren't plugged in enough to know better. I buy and sell stuff every single day, eBay, forums, etc. And demand is just as high as ever. Demand will have to start dropping before any type of bubble bursting scenario can plan out.

There is also an "emerging market" in terms of social media. There is a whole untapped market of casuals who don't even realize they care about video games. I see a NES System + Games lot posted on Facebook for $100 or so, and you instantly get 5-10 people commenting how they'll take it, with a matter of minutes. And you look through the games lot and think, man, there is no profit room for that in terms of reselling energy (cleaning, testing, listing, etc.) People are just buying it on an impulse buy.

It also makes selling really easy for me. I have a network of repeat buyers through email / forums / FB that I message before eBay. And I generally find it every easy to sell things that way. Then I do let stuff hit eBay and it still sells there too! Selling is soooo easy right now, we are nowhere near the peak. When selling is actually hard and items just sit and sit, that's when you would begin to worry. And now is not that time, especially as we turn into tax season when it will be even EASIER to sell!

[Aussie2B]

Uh, that's kind of the definition of "at the peak". If we could see a visible drop in demand and things would get harder to sell, then we'd already be past the peak. And there's also no reason to necessarily believe that prices are going to get notably higher on the whole than they already are. I mean, the kids of the NES and SNES eras are already adults, there's no untapped group of people who have yet to grow old enough to get disposable income and develop nostalgia. For all we know, we could be at the peak and stay at this peak for some time longer until we finally clear it. It's all a guessing game at the end of the day.

[Tanooki]

I think you're both kind of right. Perhaps there are still some people out there social media will snap up and they'll just gobble up stuff at the inflated rates as they look like good prices despite being piece by piece not really a deal as jonebone noted as there's no room for a flip. But depending how you define peak it's either there or isn't. If peak is where you have these high prices that may or may not go up exceedingly higher anymore, yet you're having few problems offloading games and hardware you have a peak. The other would be the peak when it finally cracks and you see the apex of the expensive pricing falling off and values drop and things get trickier to roll out into other peoples hands, then you saw and defined a peak date and it's in a fall. It's just word play.

One thing though, ebay is a fickle prick. I think it's a blanket statement saying it's easy to sell stuff. I think it kind of depends on many things. People with ebay shops can notably get away with charging more for a game, system or accessory than someone doesn't and people will pay it like some false sense of confidence is instilled in them. I've been on there since the site opened and sold things in smaller but steady numbers for years, always been 100%, but I'd be a liar if I said selling was easy. Sure I could just crap shoot it out there for a dollar and take whatever happens, and odds are it would be a loss versus what it could sell for (or what I have in it.) But, if I try and sell it within the averages, usually the lower end of the paid averages, I see maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of it gone on the first time, sometimes one or none, but the second tier stuff that's more obscure or overly common can sit for weeks or months and if it wasn't for their 50 free/mo I'd probably either keep it or trade it to a store once the fees racked up enough it wouldn't be worth the bother. It's not that easy if you don't have a fake front and just do it on your own, even with a solid larger record on an established account without a ding on it.

Trust me I've been annoyed plenty of times watching something up there for weeks or months where I'm pricing it under average, the 30% higher BIN is average, and some tool with a shop gets like $15 for a $10 item I had up in better shape. It's stupid, and it happens, a lot. I had Sword of Mana up there with manual and official nintendo guide for a price that was like $5-10 under what they'd sell for split, never sold, plenty of looks, and no one pulled the trigger so I delisted and kept it.

[jonebone]

Uh, that's kind of the definition of "at the peak". If we could see a visible drop in demand and things would get harder to sell, then we'd already be past the peak. And there's also no reason to necessarily believe that prices are going to get notably higher on the whole than they already are. I mean, the kids of the NES and SNES eras are already adults, there's no untapped group of people who have yet to grow old enough to get disposable income and develop nostalgia. For all we know, we could be at the peak and stay at this peak for some time longer until we finally clear it. It's all a guessing game at the end of the day.

Well for starters, the topic of the thread is entirely too general to even call a peak. "Nintendo" collecting can mean NES / GB / SNES / N64 / Disc stuff in terms of systems, and cart / CIB / Sealed in terms of mediums. In regards to any "peaking" arguments, each system would peak at different times anyway.

There is a natural ebb and flow of prices within a system, or within a library of titles. Lots of times prices may "peak" in the winter / tax season and then cool in the summer. And then repeat that cycle again as Xmas season approaches.

I welcome prices in either direction because I will benefit somehow. If they stay high I keep selling and rake in the money. If they go low then I can buy more of my wants for much cheaper than today.

While you say there may not be a new market for nostalgia, there is always a demand for hobbies. I have found that most collectors will be lifelong collectors in some capacity. It is a mentality and character trait. A lot of people do sell for good reasons... buying a house, raising kids, funding a wedding, etc... but it does not remove their desire to collect. A lot of those people would revert to collecting if the opportunity presented itself... either more money, more time, or prices that are more affordable. And once the affordable prices get here, demand ticks up from people previously priced out, and the cycle begins again.