Retro game prices on Ebay

[Gameguy]

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!

Holy shit, it was just $50 two years ago!

Wow Golden Axe for that much? I sold it off for around $40-50 a year ago now. It was flat for a very long time, guess the SMS in select rarer cases is starting to get screwed too, but most Sega systems have a few that do that but a great majority are ignored playing back to Sega's treatment of their base and running them off.

There is something else affecting the value of SMS games, sort of. It used to be that nobody cared about the system except for serious collectors, only US games were selling for real value for completionists who needed US copies for a complete collection, European copies or Canadian copies of most games were near worthless or worth around $5 complete. Now most people buying SMS games don't seem to notice a difference or care about having Euro copies, they're selling for a decent amount as well. Now that Euro copies aren't dirt cheap, nothing is holding back prices on US copies, everything is rising in price.

It's basically down to demand like everything else, it's just that with SMS games it really used to matter which versions of the games you had. Euro games were more common in Canada and those were always dirt cheap, now they're selling like US copies. People aren't noticing a difference between them anymore. It probably helps that there's no difference with the names of the console(unlike the Genesis and Mega Drive), the carts all look physically the same, and they're all just as compatible with either region as a whole.

I'm not exactly sure why people are looking more favourably towards the SMS now, the games were cheap because few people cared about the system. It used to feel like a crappy loser next to the NES. Now it's feeling more "nostalgic" than it used to. Even for me, and I used to hate it except for a select few games. It's sort of like how people are warming up to the Gamecube when it was the third place loser when it was current.

[Gentlegamer]

Are there different versions of Golden Axe Warrior? When I added it to my collection at RFgeneration, someone messaged me about buying it, asking if it had the UPC sticker on back. It doesn't, and I noticed it doesn't have any SEGA of America copyright on it, just SEGA Enterprises LTD.

[Manhattan Sports Club]

Are there different versions of Golden Axe Warrior? When I added it to my collection at RFgeneration, someone messaged me about buying it, asking if it had the UPC sticker on back. It doesn't, and I noticed it doesn't have any SEGA of America copyright on it, just SEGA Enterprises LTD.

For the most part, the majority of Genesis and Master System stuff is still cheap, as SEGA has become historically viewed as "second-rate", though I already prefer Genesis over SNES in the long run and am as much of a Master System fan as an NES fan.

[bigbacon]

Are there different versions of Golden Axe Warrior? When I added it to my collection at RFgeneration, someone messaged me about buying it, asking if it had the UPC sticker on back. It doesn't, and I noticed it doesn't have any SEGA of America copyright on it, just SEGA Enterprises LTD.

there were like 4 or 5 SMS games that were taken from the eurozone and brought over to usa for sale where they put a UPC sticker on the case over the label are sticker

there is debate about these all time but the game having it ups the price, sometimes quite a bit.

There was golden axe warrior, Spider man, strider, sonic 1, and I forget what else. (may have only been those 4)

Sonic is the biggie if it has the UPC.

other than that sticker, there is no difference between the USA release and the Euro release of these games. they even have the horizontal manuals.


As for prices.....

Anything Nintendo is astronomical, for the most part. Sega stuff, while going up, is still very cheap in my eyes.

Most US SMS games can be found complete for less than 10 or 15 bucks, hell, out of my complete USA SMS game collection there is only one game I paid more than 75 bucks for. Try that on any other system.

[Tanooki]

Bacon it's just those and you're right. Sonic is the nastiest. Funny story I bought Sonic 1 from the UK, ended up of all things getting the US UPC version for like $10. When I got that around 2 years back the two most recent ebay paid sales, one from within the US in fantastic shape was barely shy of $1K, and one as nice but going to the US from the UK was a little over $500. ALL FOR THE STICKER. The others don't come near (GAW, Spiderman and Strider) but there is a premium.

I sold mine when I got rid of the SMS and I worked a deal with a guy through hours of chitchat over ebay internal mail as I had it OBO. My sticker was missing like 15% of it and it had (dead) mold and water damage. I still got $300 for it and other than the jacked sticker mine was very nice too, so even hosed up it was worth a lot.

Also you're a little off, not everything Nintendo is bad. Most of the N64 stuff is lower priced still, few of them are in that original $50 retail and higher club for loose carts. The DSI mini set (has like 4 games only for it) is stupid cheap even sealed, and if you ignore Jack Bros almost all the Virtual Boy US releases are cheap too. What is bad is the popular stuff -- NES, SNES, and even the Gamecube where a good bit is rising in value sadly. Everytime some fools get into wanting to monetizing something the cancer spreads.

[SparTonberry]

DSi set is probably cheap because it's only four games (3 NA, 1 EU) and I don't think any of them are highly desirable games either.

[calgon]

I'll echo what everyone has already said. Case in point: I remember feeling I paid too much for my copy Dragon warrior 3 for NES at 15 dollars in the early aughts. Can remember late nights on irc with members of the NES scene complaining that Little Samson was getting outrageously overvalued at upwards of $40 in price. Game regularly goes for $500 now on ebay.

[chriswy27]

Now that I have a real job I have been buying all the older games I wanted as a kid. Probably many others doing the same.

[RetroCynical]

Definitely supply and demand just as stated by others before. I've noticed some games that got jacked up in price gradually decrease a little. A great example would be Chiller for NES. At first it was somewhere between 30-50 on ebay then jumped between 60-100 and has gone back down again because though it was a rare find before, ebay all of a sudden became flooded with people selling copies of the game.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

I no longer collect very much for this very reason. I collect from retro game stores more than eBay but still, what a game goes for on eBay is going to likely be the range that it will be selling for at a retro store. That and my favorite retro game store closed in July 2009, so probably 80+% of my retro collection was bought before July 2009. There is another retro game store where I live, but it is overpriced. Probably because it's the only retro game store in town now. At least the selection is awesome though. But in the 2006-2009 period when I got most of my games, it seems like a lot of them were half the price they go for now. We probably paid around $5,000 in total for my whole retro collection. It's about 600 retro games and about 39 retro systems. I wouldn't be surprised if it's worth over 8 grand now. But I love my collection too much to sell it.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

I don't know, but it's a bunch of rancid bullshit. It seems like every time an original SG-1000 is on eBay it's more and more expensive. I've seen them for over $1,000 recently. I remember not getting one in the mid-late 2000s because they were $200 or so back then if you could find one. Now their prices are out of control. The SG-1000 II models are still available under $300, they seem to be slightly more expensive usually than the one I got at $233 in November 2011 but nothing ludicrous. An SG-1000 shouldn't cost as much as a working 15 year old car. I'm glad I collected a lot in the mid-late 2000s. Fuck this price bubble. Wasn't the 2000s the best time to collect.

[bb_hood]

Most of the N64 stuff is lower priced still, few of them are in that original $50 retail and higher club for loose carts.

Well, in terms of rarity N64 games have been overpriced for a long time. Game like Mario64, Mario Kart 64, Donkey Kong64, and Zelda ocarnia are some of the most common games on the planet. There are very few N64 games that are actually rare and hard to find, especially compared to nintendo nes which has tons of rares.

Can remember late nights on irc with members of the NES scene complaining that Little Samson was getting outrageously overvalued at upwards of $40 in price. Game regularly goes for $500 now on ebay.

Well, Little Samson at 40$, that would have been a long time ago. While it is not the rarest of nes games, it is hard to find. Mainly because of word of mouth, everybody wants a copy. For many people ebay is the only place to really snatch up a copy. The same goes for alot of the rarer games, people trying to complete collections are forced to pay ebay prices.
I think ALOT of it is speculation also, I think people buy carts like samson, flintstones 2 and other pricey rares because they think they will become astronomically valuable in the future, but that is very unlikely. People see the price jump and think it will continue but most likely it wont. Not many people are willing to pay even close to 500$ for samson despite what completed listings show.

[PizzaKat]

Sellers fees are miniscule. They don't gouge like Ebay. Seeing their site from awhile it was no difference in price from Ebay. Looking now the same bullshit again.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

Bacon it's just those and you're right. Sonic is the nastiest. Funny story I bought Sonic 1 from the UK, ended up of all things getting the US UPC version for like $10. When I got that around 2 years back the two most recent ebay paid sales, one from within the US in fantastic shape was barely shy of $1K, and one as nice but going to the US from the UK was a little over $500. ALL FOR THE STICKER. The others don't come near (GAW, Spiderman and Strider) but there is a premium.

I sold mine when I got rid of the SMS and I worked a deal with a guy through hours of chitchat over ebay internal mail as I had it OBO. My sticker was missing like 15% of it and it had (dead) mold and water damage. I still got $300 for it and other than the jacked sticker mine was very nice too, so even hosed up it was worth a lot.

Also you're a little off, not everything Nintendo is bad. Most of the N64 stuff is lower priced still, few of them are in that original $50 retail and higher club for loose carts. The DSI mini set (has like 4 games only for it) is stupid cheap even sealed, and if you ignore Jack Bros almost all the Virtual Boy US releases are cheap too. What is bad is the popular stuff -- NES, SNES, and even the Gamecube where a good bit is rising in value sadly. Everytime some fools get into wanting to monetizing something the cancer spreads.

I don't think NES is that bad, right now. Sure, theres enough games on the system that are ridiculous now, but u can still collect the bottom 3 or 400 games on the system without spending that much money. Most still sell for less than $20, and a lot of the real "essentials" like Mario, Mega Man, Metriod, Zelda, Contra, etc. are still selling for around this price, like the N64. I buy 90% of my games at flea markets and stores cuz then u can actually deal with people, and most retro game stores have somewhat fair prices. Somewhat. SNES and Gamecube seem to be getting out of hand right now, where any game thats had even the smallest attention is selling for around $30-$50. Ridiculous.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

Ultimately, I don't think game collecting is thaaat expensive a hobby, if u know where to shop, most of ur games can be picked up for less than $10, so who can really complain with that? It's only a small fraction of games that have made those monetary leaps on Ebay.

[DigitalKarma]

wow $300 for a copy of Daytona usa for the Sega Saturn when it only cost less than $3..lmao

Is someone actually stupid enough to buy it?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Video-Games-...nesales&_sac=1

[Tanooki]

I don't think NES is that bad, right now. Sure, theres enough games on the system that are ridiculous now, but u can still collect the bottom 3 or 400 games on the system without spending that much money. Most still sell for less than $20, and a lot of the real "essentials" like Mario, Mega Man, Metriod, Zelda, Contra, etc. are still selling for around this price, like the N64. I buy 90% of my games at flea markets and stores cuz then u can actually deal with people, and most retro game stores have somewhat fair prices. Somewhat. SNES and Gamecube seem to be getting out of hand right now, where any game thats had even the smallest attention is selling for around $30-$50. Ridiculous.

I get what you're saying, but when you consider the bottom 3-400 of them are range from so completely awful to just downright mediocre(if that) it's just pissing money into the wind unless you're some pokemon gotta catch em all system collector. The gamecube is hardly out of hand, though there are a few annoying games, little is over the original retail value, but I totally agree the SNES has become just downright disgusting in how the stuff is priced, even a good bit of the junk is on an up swing which is amazing.

I've quit actively buying NES and SNES games, same with the N64 and Cube too. I've got more or less anything I'd want thankfully barely beating out the curve in trying to restore my desired games of my old collection that went to bad times. The last physical game I'd grab back is Aerofighters and the price loses me somewhere between infuriating and nauseating. I'll grab a game I want if I can find it cheap, but I don't go in with any hope or expectation anymore as it's better to get a random happy albeit rare surprise. I've converted over to buying Famicom games. Most of them are super cheap since most Americans don't care or don't want to deal with Japanese menus and converters, and a few gems that are spendy you can get famiclones for a 1/3 or less of the price of a real cart which I've done in a few cases.



It's a bit of a stretch to say that depending where you shop game buying hasn't become a problem. Prices are regional if you take the internet out of the equation of just you clicking ebay/amazon and being done with it. Some areas are flush with games, others are not. Some are loaded with predatory reseller scum who swoop up everything and use sleazy tactics and others have few to none. And then places that have stores many or few, some still price by the local market within reason not to be pillaged for online, and others will ask over ebay because it's a local sucker trap. Since I started buying back stuff I've split my time between CA and KY and CA has more reseller trash, but the flea markets are consistent weekly in getting a least and item or two where I lived, but in KY here fleas have more or less nothing and are only parts of the year due to weather and the local shops which used to be cheap and plenty are not getting dusty with no turn over due to dickery on pricing that only keeps them afloat moving the Marios Zeldas and other big name stuff thats easy turn over.

[Gameguy]

Are there different versions of Golden Axe Warrior? When I added it to my collection at RFgeneration, someone messaged me about buying it, asking if it had the UPC sticker on back. It doesn't, and I noticed it doesn't have any SEGA of America copyright on it, just SEGA Enterprises LTD.

there were like 4 or 5 SMS games that were taken from the eurozone and brought over to usa for sale where they put a UPC sticker on the case over the label are sticker

there is debate about these all time but the game having it ups the price, sometimes quite a bit.

There was golden axe warrior, Spider man, strider, sonic 1, and I forget what else. (may have only been those 4)

Sonic is the biggie if it has the UPC.

other than that sticker, there is no difference between the USA release and the Euro release of these games. they even have the horizontal manuals.

This is the difference. The only difference is the sticker on the back with Golden Axe Warrior, other games can have a difference with the box art and manual but not this one. The European version is more common than the US, but now both are really valuable. Most people just want to play it as it's one of the best games on the system.

There are Canadian releases that have a sticker, just like US versions do. I haven't heard of anyone specifically collecting these versions yet. I took a picture of one I have. For the longest time even with the rarity guide here, there's no separate section for Canadian releases. There's just a note on the European games that they've also been sold in Canada. I kind of wonder why it's not the same with those US releases with just a sticker, it's the same thing with Canadian games.

[Melf]

I'm not exactly sure why people are looking more favourably towards the SMS now, the games were cheap because few people cared about the system. It used to feel like a crappy loser next to the NES. Now it's feeling more "nostalgic" than it used to. Even for me, and I used to hate it except for a select few games. It's sort of like how people are warming up to the Gamecube when it was the third place loser when it was current.

I think it's because people are finally discovering what a wonderful little system it is. Back in the 8-bit era, most people missed out because of Nintendo's bullying of retailers and publishers. When you corner 90% of the market with a monopoly, it's hard for other machines to get an audience.

The GameCube wasn't the same situation because Nintendo's hold on the market was long gone by then. I guess most people didn't have room for a third machine, and now that it's cheap, they're finding out that the GC was a great console.

[Gameguy]

I think it's because people are finally discovering what a wonderful little system it is. Back in the 8-bit era, most people missed out because of Nintendo's bullying of retailers and publishers. When you corner 90% of the market with a monopoly, it's hard for other machines to get an audience.

I can't fully blame Nintendo for Sega's failure. It wasn't Nintendo's fault that Sega decided to make most games use the most boring cover art possible, and use no cartridge art at all by using plain text labels(with plenty of spelling mistakes). Just going by the marketing of the system for store shelves, it looked stupid and boring. I originally thought Sega's original controllers were horrible because the cables were stuck out the right side of them, but since the Famicom had the cables the same way I won't blame Sega for that stupid decision, though it was still stupid to just copy Nintendo. Putting the pause button on the console instead of the controller was also a dumb move. North America did miss out on a bunch of good games, but we would have got most of them if the system sold better here.

The GameCube wasn't the same situation because Nintendo's hold on the market was long gone by then. I guess most people didn't have room for a third machine, and now that it's cheap, they're finding out that the GC was a great console.

At the time having a system that was capable of playing DVDs was a big deal, Nintendo's system couldn't do that back then. The PS2 also had backwards compatibility with PS1 games which made it the best system to get at the time, that and the games had a more adult appeal compared to the kiddie image of the Gamecube. Now it doesn't matter if systems can play DVDs, players are pretty cheap. Playing PS1 games isn't that big a deal anymore either, people can use a PS3 to play them now. A few reasons why the Gamecube is more popular these days. Just a feeling of mine anyway.