Something fishy is going on with Retro Game Sales...

So a friend of mine pointed out how some common games are suddenly spiking on ebay and you can see it on Price Tracking sites. I figured "eh people are probably just buying stuff during Quarantine." but when I looked into it I noticed some things seem really fishy. For example looking at a game like Sonic R:

https://gamevaluenow.com/sega-saturn/sonic-r?gameid=199

Apparently now it's worth over $100, which no matter how look at it doesn't seem right (it was a $20-$40 game just a few months ago). Looking at the sales history things get weirder. First we have this listing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sega-Saturn...-/202964637231

Listed with an opening bid of $175 with no takers than right at the last second gets a best offer of $175 and it sells.

Then this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254579829278

Listed and sold for $200, then relisted and resold the next week for $400:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254583012948

These are being factored into these price charting sites and it's raising the "value" of these games artificially. I looked at other games and there's some similar fishiness going on. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy or something, but it just seems that sellers are starting to game the system. Probably due to being stuck home wanting to get more money for their more common games during this situation.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Yeah I've started to see this shit also. Atari complete 2600 games have started doing this as well.

I think it has been going on for quite some time, just more aggressively now.

I used to import a lot of games from Japanese ebay sellers back in 2010-2012 and while you can "understand" games such as MUSHA getting overpriced after the CGR review, several other games never sold well and had lots of copies available and yet their prices were constantly elevated to the point they are today.

Aside from the mechanism you cited, there's also big sellers inflating their whole listing of unwanted games so they can justify the absurd prices of the good ones.

If it was really just supply and demand you should still have some CIB games such as Fastest 1 on the MD going for $1 (like they were for years) because nobody ever wanted those copies.

I haven't imported or bought any used games in several years 'cause it just became a market driven by thieves, inflated prices, fake copies, etc.

For you guys who can trade locally in forums like this it maybe possible to find some decent deals here and there, but the auction sites are just terrible for retro games these days.

By the way, do you fancy some Twinkle Tale?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sega-Mega-D...QAAOSw5nBeF2ex

It's a bubble. This isn't going to last.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

So a friend of mine pointed out how some common games are suddenly spiking on ebay and you can see it on Price Tracking sites. I figured "eh people are probably just buying stuff during Quarantine." but when I looked into it I noticed some things seem really fishy. For example looking at a game like Sonic R:

https://gamevaluenow.com/sega-saturn/sonic-r?gameid=199

Apparently now it's worth over $100, which no matter how look at it doesn't seem right (it was a $20-$40 game just a few months ago). Looking at the sales history things get weirder. First we have this listing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sega-Saturn...-/202964637231

Listed with an opening bid of $175 with no takers than right at the last second gets a best offer of $175 and it sells.

Then this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254579829278

Listed and sold for $200, then relisted and resold the next week for $400:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254583012948

These are being factored into these price charting sites and it's raising the "value" of these games artificially. I looked at other games and there's some similar fishiness going on. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy or something, but it just seems that sellers are starting to game the system. Probably due to being stuck home wanting to get more money for their more common games during this situation.

Has anyone else noticed this?

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You're missing the obvious here: The Sonic the Hedgehog movie came out Feb 14, which precisely coincides with the rise in price. It's standard increase in demand.

Those two cases you posted are just exceptions and not really affecting the average.

You can see the increase for Sonic games with other titles.

3D Blast:

https://gamevaluenow.com/sega-genesi...ast?gameid=586

Sonic 3:

https://gamevaluenow.com/sega-genesi...g-3?gameid=590

etc etc

They all went up.

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Originally Posted by Gryson

You're missing the obvious here: The Sonic the Hedgehog movie came out Feb 14, which precisely coincides with the rise in price. It's standard increase in demand.

Those two cases you posted are just exceptions and not really affecting the average.

You can see the increase for Sonic games with other titles.

3D Blast:

https://gamevaluenow.com/sega-genesi...ast?gameid=586

Sonic 3:

https://gamevaluenow.com/sega-genesi...g-3?gameid=590

etc etc

They all went up.

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But it's not just Sonic games and it's not just Saturn games. For example this Gamecube game goes from a $50 game to a $200 game in under a month:
https://gamevaluenow.com/gamecube/sp...lls?gameid=435

Skies of Arcadia Legends practically doubles in a few months:
https://gamevaluenow.com/gamecube/sk...nds?gameid=418

Yet the Dreamcast version doesn't:
https://gamevaluenow.com/sega-dreamc...dia?gameid=177

This really just sticks out as odd to me.

Of course a lot of factors could be involved there, some hard to figure out. But in the case of Sonic, the connection is pretty clear. All Sonic games shot up in price in Feb.

There's also just random market fluctuation, and of course there could be people manipulating prices, although I'm not convinced that's actually profitable in many cases.

This was rampant 10 - 15 years ago. ebay went and made is harder to discern with changes like hiding bidders names. But misc "retro" gaming forums have always had people who brag about returns on their investments.

The "market" has been articially inflated and manipulated as long as a majority have prioritized collecting over playing games. Too many people consider their sales inventory/store stock their and game collection to be the same thing.

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Originally Posted by axel

It's a bubble. This isn't going to last.

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It's not a bubble, it has been going on for years. These games are old enough that they're attracting collectors who aren't interested in playing games but in taking up "museum" artefacts, especially if they can go around bragging about how much "value" their collection has. It doesn't help that grading companies are encouraging collectors to bump up the prices as much as possible.

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Originally Posted by Sik

It's not a bubble, it has been going on for years. These games are old enough that they're attracting collectors who aren't interested in playing games but in taking up "museum" artefacts, especially if they can go around bragging about how much "value" their collection has. It doesn't help that grading companies are encouraging collectors to bump up the prices as much as possible.

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I get that I just don't see collectors doing this long term, video games are not like stocks or real estate, sooner or later they will lose value relative to other investments.

But that's just my view, I could be wrong...

There's nothing new going on here, we're just noticing more of the same scummy tactics that have always been used. The sellers with insane BIN prices are just chancers, they're fully aware they've overpriced their games. This happens with everything that has a collector's market, since dealers obviously have an interest in seeing values climb.

As for the bubble bursting, I doubt that will happen. The only examples of bubbles bursting that I can think of are when a temporary shortage has occurred and then supply has increased to meet demand (early 90's comics, Viceroy tulips, Beanie Babies). So unless you can find a way to get old games back into mass production, values will only climb further. Or, if you're willing to wait that long then you might see values decline in about 50-60 years when the current generation of collectors starts to die off and there's fewer people with any nostalgia for 1980's gaming.

People are bored being isolated at home and buying stuff that they find interesting.

Do we even know of a single instance where a retro games price decreased after being inflated?

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Originally Posted by axel

I get that I just don't see collectors doing this long term, video games are not like stocks or real estate, sooner or later they will lose value relative to other investments.

But that's just my view, I could be wrong...

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Have you seen the comic book market? Old comic books just keep going up in price non-stop.

Old things eventually decay or outright get lost or destroyed, so anything in even remotely good shape suddenly starts becoming more valuable due to becoming rarer over time. Add to this that most people don't have a suitable setup to play those games (and it's only going to get worse over time), making their status as "artefact" even bigger. And the interest on gaming increasing means that there will be more people interested on old games more as a history piece than for what they were…

Yeah, if anything I'm surprised that the Sonic games aren't going for four digits by now.

Everyone got stimulus checks recently.

I know that after that stimulus check came out, my local MicroCenter got overloaded with customers. Now, if you want to my a Ryzen system, your stuck with a really cheap B450 motherboard, or going with Thread-Ripper, because all of the motherboards are sold out.

I was wanting to get an RTX 2080 Super card for my PC, but shortly after the check came out, prices jumped up about $100, even for the crappy blower style cards. I was lucky that the $620 open box card at my local MicroCenter never got snatched up, because it kept getting held in reserve limbo.

I get the angle with supply and demand and the things are getting old, but no, this has been going on for a long time now. It's systematic. People are deliberately raising the prices up, and sadly, I seriously doubt they will ever go down.

It’s always been going on, but the past month isn’t a good indicator, because everyone started price gouging right around the time of the stimulus check.

I don’t know where TrekkiesUnite was seeing Sonic R for @$45 several months ago, because the last time I checked (several months ago) most people were asking for more than $60. The Japanese import can still be had for under $40.

People seem to always think that the value of their favourite stuff (not just video games) will be returning to its 'normal' value in the near future. I can almost guarantee that there will be no return to late 90's values for your favourite Sega and Nintendo games. You might as well be waiting for a Stradivarius to return to its $100 value, you'll never see it happen in your lifetime so don't even bother.

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Originally Posted by Mad Moham

People seem to always think that the value of their favourite stuff (not just video games) will be returning to its 'normal' value in the near future. I can almost guarantee that there will be no return to late 90's values for your favourite Sega and Nintendo games. You might as well be waiting for a Stradivarius to return to its $100 value, you'll never see it happen in your lifetime so don't even bother.

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It may not return to the original value, no. With inflation alone a game from 1990 should be worth about double what it cost back then. But when I see any commodity surging in value like this, it suggests to me people are buying only because they think the value will continue to go up even more. That usually doesn't go on forever and when the nostalgia wanes (or if prices really get high, game companies might start making new copies to increase the supply) it will eventually crash.

But hey if I'm wrong then you guys with the big collections can retire to your own private islands while I'm still working :)

Game companies are starting to make new copies. As downloadable games wrapped in emulators running on modern systems, which are much cheaper and easier to acquire and requires a lot less fiddling with modern TVs (and less risk of your partner throwing it away because it looks ugly and takes up space). Don't forget that for the vast majority of people interested on playing these old games, this approach actually sounds better.

Just because they aren't making new copies the way the most diehard fans want doesn't mean they aren't doing it. And those most diehard fans are precisely the ones that are helping drive up the prices of those old copies. Especially with the obsession of getting only mint cartridge in box copies instead of just something that works, which implies they're in for the collecting, not just to play games (a loose cartridge with trashed label will still do if you just want to play, after all).

The only reasonably priced old games are bootleg reproductions.

Prices are insane right now. I've also been noticing an increase in the stupid wata graded sealed up games with the astronomical prices turning up. Which probably means that there are now lots of rich idiots purchasing rare games as an investment. I saw a wata graded zombies ate my neighbors going for an insane amount of money the other day. There's such a ridiculous amount of money in retro games that I'm sure there is a lot of funny business going on to drive up prices. Anything to maximize profit.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

I don’t know where TrekkiesUnite was seeing Sonic R for @$45 several months ago, because the last time I checked (several months ago) most people were asking for more than $60. The Japanese import can still be had for under $40.

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Ebay back around January. Even at $60 though I wouldn't be talking about this. But what I'm noticing is extremely questionable sales. I highly doubt any sane person truly paid $200 or $175 for Sonic R. Especially when some of them are the same stock images from new sellers.

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Originally Posted by Dirt Ball Gamer

Prices are insane right now. I've also been noticing an increase in the stupid wata graded sealed up games with the astronomical prices turning up. Which probably means that there are now lots of rich idiots purchasing rare games as an investment. I saw a wata graded zombies ate my neighbors going for an insane amount of money the other day. There's such a ridiculous amount of money in retro games that I'm sure there is a lot of funny business going on to drive up prices. Anything to maximize profit.

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Hint: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/...ld-for-100000/

Heritage Auctions is actively encouraging collectors to ramp up the prices as much as possible because that means more money for their business, and (quoting from the article):

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Jim Halperin, owner of Heritage Auctions

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(While Halperin sits on the advisory board for Wata Games, Kahn stressed that he had no knowledge or involvement about the grading process before it was completed.)

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It's all related :​O)

god, musha, popful mail & space adventure cobra really got out from under me with this shit - my fault, years back i only needed any of those loose and thought $100 was too high :p

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Originally Posted by Knuckle Duster

The only reasonably priced old games are bootleg reproductions.

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100%

Market manipulation, as always. It's been going on for years. Wouldn't doubt these bastards gather together on some obscure internet forum and talk about which games they the want to manipulate based on what kind of buzz is circling around the Internet. Lots of times they keep up with big retro gaming channels and base their spikes on whatever games are talked about in the latest episodes. You'll see a dramatic price change substantiated by just a handful of random BINs. Last month the game sold for $40. This month, three people smashed a BIN for $250!!! Suuure they did. There's one asshat on eBay who is the same owner of most of the listings for Powerslave Saturn, and he makes sure that each listing looks like it's from a different seller. But ya know, he's just a regular dude, happens to have a bunch of copies of a hard to find game is all.

I'm sure the Sonic thing was probably decided in response to the movie, maybe some phony sales thrown in to stir the pot. People will scheme anything you can possibly imagine to make a buck. I think right now it's partially the stimulus money people have to burn, and manipulators scheming on how best to get that money. Sad thing is, some of us will pay them.

I will say though, Sonic R has never been particularly cheap. I've always seen it go anywhere from $70 to about $100 or so.

Are they forced to pay taxes on that? I’ve noticed a trend where used PC parts are now including taxes, over the stated BIN price on EBay.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Ebay back around January. Even at $60 though I wouldn't be talking about this. But what I'm noticing is extremely questionable sales. I highly doubt any sane person truly paid $200 or $175 for Sonic R. Especially when some of them are the same stock images from new sellers.

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Yeah, I‘ve noticed that a lot lately. I was looking at prices for an RTX 2080 and I swear the same guy posted a BIN about a half dozen times, or at least it was the same picture.

If you buy it from yourself, taxes and ebay's cut are relatively miniscule if you plan on offloading the three or four you purchased for a fraction of the "new cost." Shit's a scam but people who keep buying that garbage are to blame.

Sonic R shouldn't even be worth $40. It ought to be a $5-15 binner.

Tell that to the people paying over $30 for All-Star Baseball 97, featuring Frank Thomas for the Saturn.

Remember the tale of the fool and his money
For this would be sad, were it not so funny
Resellers are price gougers, and villains at heart
So forget all this nonsense and get a flash cart

I still want to re-buy the Megadrive games I used to have as a kid, but some of them like X-men and Spiderman are ridiculously expensive now.

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Originally Posted by o.pwuaioc

If you buy it from yourself, taxes and ebay's cut are relatively miniscule if you plan on offloading the three or four you purchased for a fraction of the "new cost." Shit's a scam but people who keep buying that garbage are to blame.

Sonic R shouldn't even be worth $40. It ought to be a $5-15 binner.

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People paying hundreds of dollars for an English region of a cheap Japanese game with no gaijin protection in this day and age aren't paying for a game. It's strictly a collectible and/or investment.

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Originally Posted by Raijin Z

Remember the tale of the fool and his money
For this would be sad, were it not so funny
Resellers are price gougers, and villains at heart
So forget all this nonsense and get a flash cart

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:rock:

I don't think there's a Saturn game that isn't just a collectible at this point. PDS maybe, but who wants to play one game THAT bad? I've thought about pulling the trigger on it for years, and never do. The price goes up about $50 per year.

I used to think it was a bubble too, but there has been just a continual, gradual spike in prices over the last 10 years that has made buying and playing actual retro games on original hardware near impossible. Really, the only thing worth getting now are the mini consoles or the original consoles and flash carts, or modded systems to play the games at. Because the original games are going for mad money for no reason. I sold all of my stuff between 2013-2016 thinking that was the peak of pricing, but boy was I wrong. It just continues to rise. It's the fact that every Youtuber is interested in retro games, and people aren't getting rid of them. Classic video gaming isn't a niche hobby anymore like when we were all in it pre-2009.

What is still highly undervalued surprisingly for the most part are the PC ports of a lot of these games from the same time. Sonic R for the PC is a superior game, and far easier to play on any Windows 10 or Linux system running WINE. You can get it for $10, or if you hunt at Goodwill long enough you'll find a copy very easily because it was a shovelware title.

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Originally Posted by WarmSignal

I don't think there's a Saturn game that isn't just a collectible at this point. PDS maybe, but who wants to play one game THAT bad? I've thought about pulling the trigger on it for years, and never do. The price goes up about $50 per year.

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Many of the Japanese first party games are still pretty cheap and don't require knowledge of the language.

Unless things changed drastically in the past few years since I stopped paying attention.

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Originally Posted by The Jackal

I get the angle with supply and demand and the things are getting old, but no, this has been going on for a long time now. It's systematic. People are deliberately raising the prices up, and sadly, I seriously doubt they will ever go down.

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I always feel like supply and demand is a cop out excuse on why some games are expensive.

Either way, we're in the middle of this pandemic. People are going extreme lengths to pay for games. Since the OP was talking Saturn stuff, Saturn isn't easy to get into. Sonic R is a really late release, though the idea of manipulation wouldn't surprise me. No different than a Turbografx or Sega CD or any hard to find system and their library.

If we're talking the last ten years, it's harder to get into buying older games. I get hesitant on buying anything Nintendo related because of the prices unless it's yard sales or thrift sales. Even if a number of their games are very good, they are not worth the prices on eBay or any local used game store.

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Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010

I get hesitant on buying anything Nintendo related because of the prices unless it's yard sales or thrift sales. Even if a number of their games are very good, they are not worth the prices on eBay or any local used game store.

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Too true. Always wanted to get into SNES collecting but restrain myself because it would cost a fortune to get all the games I want.

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Originally Posted by Baloo

What is still highly undervalued surprisingly for the most part are the PC ports of a lot of these games from the same time.

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Yeah I've been getting into PC games lately, mostly big box releases, but even those are starting to climb in prices.

Yeah it's not supply and demand when the prices are rising this quickly on Saturn titles in the year 2020.

But here's why I don't think games will have the same longevity as comic books or other products, games are way more fragile than paper or other non-electronic items. The cartridge or disc will rot with time, the consoles will fail (especially those with optical drives) and finally the CRT televisions they were made to be played on haven't been produced in over a decade. So you have three potential points of failure, all of which are going to get worse in the next 10-20 years. It will be like on South Park when Cartman goes to the future and finds out he can't connect his Nintendo Wii to the TV.

I get that most collectors aren't even playing the games, but are they willing to spend money on games that can't be played at all, at least not without a significant cost to restore old hardware? There's always going to be some listings that go for a high price if that copy is rare or has some historical significance but for games that were mass produced I think they will level off and decline.

And yes I'm aware you can buy an FPGA based system or replace the optical drive with an SD card on some consoles, but once people accept using non-original hardware I can't see them paying a premium for the original game.

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Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010

I always feel like supply and demand is a cop out excuse on why some games are expensive.

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The North American Sega Saturn is a prime example of supply and demand. The North American release of Panzer Dragoon Saga is uber expensive, because there were only about 45,000 copies released, while the Japanese version can be had for a very reasonable price. The same for titles like Dragon Force and Magic Knigh Rayearth.