Tanooki generally has it right. Interest in retro gaming increased just as the peer group started entering their 30s, similar to comics and baseball cards, and attracted the same resellers. This has been further exacerbated by ebay changing its listing policies to too heavily favor BIN. You should notice that there are very few actual auctions for retro stuff anymore, everything is BIN high price. There are pages and pages of the same stuff BIN for the same price because ebay doesn't charge for unsold BIN listings anymore, so there's no incentive to actually get the item to sell for a lower price. Sellers just keep it up hoping someone is impatient. Of course, even when there is an auction, they don't start at 99 cents anymore, usually at just under a BIN price, and then you have to worry about shill bidding. It's a big mess. The only real hope is a crash, which can be expected with any collectible community.
I bought Metroid with manual and box (the box had been cut up and pasted in a rental box since the owner's father ran a rental business in the 90s) for $45, auction one year ago. This was after it had already gone up about 100% from a about 6 months prior, when it was around $20-30. I guess it went up another 100% in a year's time. None of these prices are sustainable.
Another game: Golden Axe Warrior for Sega Master System. I bought it BIN for $20 in 2006. I didn't get around to playing it until I actually bought a SMS this past October (I just had a Power Base Converter until then). I posted about it at videogamecritic.com, and many replies remarked about how it was so rare and expensive... I checked, it was around $150! This is madness!
Reply With Quote