eBay Prices 2006 vs 2021 - Had a laugh at this!

Tanegashima worded it beautifully. I can't even add to it any further.

It's true...the minute nerd culture became cool and video games became mainstream, it became a lifestyle thing to make youtube videos with a literal wall of retro video games behind you. Now guys have podcasts bragging about how rare some game they own is. Its like the Honus Wagner card effect but for the millennials.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tanegashima

I'm gonna re-post my thoughts from the 32X forum:
I just seem to remember well that when AVGN and Screw-Attack were gaining traction, the whole used game market changed. Suddenly YouTube was infested with retro-game reviewers and the prices started exploding. Just about everything out there could be found "in the wild" at thrift stores, flea-markets etc. for next to nothing. There was still definitely rare and expensive stuff: Saturn, Turbografx CD, Neo Geo AES were very expensive and hard to find and expensive but nothing like today. Everything was very accessible back then and the really failed systems were very cheap. You could get FZ-1 Panasonic 3DO systems in the box, unopened NOS for $99 from game stores that specialized in "retro" games (like Game Dude which was a huge retailer out here in North Hollywood) and they always had a healthy selection of CIB games from 3DO/Jaguar/Sega CD/32X for under $25 for most of the libraries. Game Dude is still around but they are cleaned out of retro games, completely.

I mean they sold CIB Vectorman for $1.99 back then-not joking. I think because "Nerd Culture" has been normalized and is a "thing" and the uninitiated have been exposed to all of this stuff it has become a life-style for a lot of people. I would never consider myself a member of the "nerd" community despite the fact that I am undoubtedly one I never collected games just to "collect." I wanted to play and own all the stuff I could never afford when I was growing up-having done that I realized why most of these systems failed and just was very content to keep my Sega Genesis/Sega CD and 32X and I sold everything else. I made some decent money, but for me it was never about the money I was just being nostalgic.

I have a great, tidy and modest collection I'm super happy with and I do not collect at all anymore. I bought he Neo Geo Mini and the Sega Genesis Mini just to have them, but I'm mostly done. I play video games a few times a year at best anymore and I'll still fire up something and play through it and enjoy it. I'm rambling, but I truly think that all of this has become a "culture" in and of itself, a full life-style and pricing will never go back to what it was-its not about nostalgia its a culture now and that will keep prices high. Who knows, that's my 2 cents having experienced such a great time to collect for systems I had no access to growing up-but I don't think those days will ever ever return. I could be dead wrong--but the internet seems to lend life-support to things that would be better off dead (like this forum apparently).

---

QFT.
I'd just add that collecting seems to have become synonymy with "going for a full set" which is another idiotic thing of the current times and with dire consequences for those who were just trying to curate/build a collection made by games that really fit their preferences.
This mentality of colleting everything / accumulating as many physical releases as possible is also what allows terrible homebrew games to be sold for $70+.
It's all very nonsensical, idiotic and expensive IMO; but a lot of people seem to be enjoying to burn money this way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Barone

QFT.
I'd just add that collecting seems to have become synonymy with "going for a full set" which is another idiotic thing of the current times and with dire consequences for those who were just trying to curate/build a collection made by games that really fit their preferences.
This mentality of colleting everything / accumulating as many physical releases as possible is also what allows terrible homebrew games to be sold for $70+.
It's all very nonsensical, idiotic and expensive IMO; but a lot of people seem to be enjoying to burn money this way.

---

Collecting for collecting's sake. I've never understood not playing the games and just having them sitting on a shelf. Had I ever been that way inclined or considered rarity, I would have had a complete PAL set 15+ years ago but instead I bought to play and so the frequency of purchases fluctuated.

Tanegashima is correct that the advent of streaming/YouTube channels/'influencers' has turned this once niche area into something 'cool'. The more people that get caught up in the collecting scene, the less there is available to purchase and ultimately the more the price increases. I sit firmly in the camp that we will never see the prices decrease, certainly not significantly.

Anyhoo - I'd be shocked if that eBay seller actually shifts their stuff at the ridiculous asking prices, but it's highlighting the mindset of those that are seeing the 16-bit era as a lucrative area and trying to manipulate market prices.

EDIT - fat finger typos