Peak? Doubt it, but you never know. By the way nice find on aliexpress.com I've known about the newish 64 bit game card (N64 boots) on there which are more than your under $30 SNES copies, but given 3 of the 4 are for games over $100 I can see the temptation value growing as they come farther down off the $60-70 range they're at now against a game upwards of $300+ (Sculptors Cut, Bomberman 2nd Attack and Worms -- the pointless one being Harvest Moon.) I get why you say it's tempting seeing the $400 Aerofighters for $25 and change. I owned that one back when I got it for $10 complete other than the box and lost it to unemployment a decade ago. The random enemy placement each time makes it fun, not $200 nor $400+ fun at all. It's tempting almost to buy it just to see the quality of the board and workmanship if anything. I see Contra 3 up there too, falls into the Harvest Moon realm I spoke of, stupid boot for $30 or legit game for $30-40...not with the sliver of maybe savings.
JSoup, not me. I bought a convincing GBA game in the middle of 2015 from the UK and it ended up being a masterfully high quality bootleg (Alien Hominid.) The sticker other than 2 bits of small print being a little thinner (you couldn't tell from a picture) you'd swear it was real. Only opening up to clean it you discover the wrong stuff as it even had the right (c) nintendo bit visible above the pins code and all which was freaky. If someone can pop off a GBA game that well, NES and SNES should be a snap. People using faux clamshells with no-screws and snaps are just lazy corner cutters.
Right now the reality of it is, any game over $30 for a handheld, and probably $50 for an 8/16bit console game branded for Nintendo as Aussie put it, is now on MVS territory -- anything and everything is suspect. We all know which parties are to blame for it from both the supplier and consumer end of it and the mentalities behind both parties doing so. They both circle jerked things high enough now that even for those decently well off or so will find the prices become unpalatable. Perhaps not as a one off or so unless we're talking $500+ carts, but when you start adding things up and you want like 10-20 games, some honest rares, and other bogus hype fake rares like your SNES turtles in time and so on and you look at your running tab it starts to look insane doing it when there are cheaper evenly viable substitutions to play (everdrive like stuff, emulator boxes, or even PCs/Android with emulators and ROMs.)
I've seen this topic come up more and more and the collector herd seems to be thinning a bit towards the niche die hards, and the player types are asking more about other options. It always circles back to why should I pay 3 figures for that stupid game when I could pay the same or less for a flash cart and put a crap load of 2-3-4 price figure carts on it and get the same effect on original hardware. It's a fair question too. These questions weren't really raised more than a year or two ago because it wasn't so off the handle. Those who did question were already likely pirates or leaning that way from other interests so ROMS were always more attractive on their computers/tablets. Now you see more cart buyers (non-CIB, and especially not sealed) going screw this, keeping their favorites (or those with special chips that won't work like SNES stuff), and offloading the others and getting a kit. It's sad (and not) that it's driving more people away from legitimate old game ownership into other options as I think anyone should be able to get a pre-2010 price on something to experiment and enjoy but that's done, at least until the camels back is truly broken. But by then it will fall back to those who cared all along or braved through it, and the rest will move onto the next public driven hype interest to bury it too. Pick a decade there's always a few things that go up and then back down again.
Fact is I don't even much care anymore and I'm over getting hot about it like I'd do a year plus ago. It's just not worth it and I stopped even online buying the NES/SNES stuff 2 1/2 years ago now, and I've had a rare few pick ups locally in all that time. It's better not to get sick over this garbage or even speculate about it anymore as speculation fed the problem and the seller picked up on and that rolled with it. Find something else in gaming to enjoy that's not being exploited or find another interest yet that isn't old games (or even games.) If things fall back to reality and you still care, come back, if not, you broke free. That's pretty much how I sit on it.
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