Originally posted by: Ozzy_98
    I think you may be placing blame on the wrong factors, and comparing the wrong games from then and now.  In the mid-1990s you say you were buying games for $.50-5, but think about that.  The snes libary was still pretty new then; playstation came out at the end of 1995, so satur was middle\begining of 1995.  Frogger was at the end of the 1990s, in 1998. So what games were you getting for $5?  Nes, and maybe a few early\budget SNES?  The fad still holds true today:


Games from 1-2 generations ago hit rock botto, that's generally the sweetspot.  After that, historically, is when they start going up.  In 1998-200? I was hitting up Game Express here, it's been gone 15ish years.  I think 2000 was the last time I was there (Since that's when I started dating my now wife, and she was never in there). COMMON nes games were $2, $1.50 if you buy 10+, and $1 if you buy 50+.  I remember going in there once with $200, that was a good day.   Still have a few items with stickers on them:


This was in July, 2000 from my notes.  It's not complete, it was JUST the box + game. It was a 3 year old game at the time, got it for $15.  Current asking price for the cart is pretty close to that, but sometimes cheaper (I just saw one for a fiver 30 seconds ago online) 

Here's some more from 1999, same store (Diffrent stickers though)

Shining the holy arc, $30, now it's up to $65. During the recession time I see it was still around $30, dropping a bit in '09 to mid 20s average, then $40s for a bit. If you factor in inflation, that $30 game should be $41 if it stayed the same price.  So about 40% raise in price from then to now.  Heavy nova?  Well it seems to have had a spike and shows as $6 but it's also on amazon now for $1.50, so I'll say it's stayed about the same price, OR IS CHEAPER than in 1998.  STIISE? Same boat, shows as $6, but amazon shows on for about $3, so I'll count that as the same price.

To me, the BULK of games have not really changed in price, just a few very rare items have. Like this Beyond Shadowgate, I remember buying Dracula X on PC-Engine, didnt like it all that well, and sold it to GameDude for credit on Dungeon Explorer II.  I didn't like THAT one, and traded it in for Beyond Shadowgate (And forgot about that step for 10+ years, so I was freaking trying to find my damned DEII game I no longer owned).  So no clue how much I actually spent on the game, but it was listed as $60, now for it complete, it shows as $500 (But was *only* $350 a few months ago)

 Now, are BIN lickers the reason this went up?  Hell no.  And yes, I forgot a C in clickers, but it's staying as-is.  The price of this game was sky rocketing long before there was a BIN; once it got to $100+ in 1999ish->2000 it never dropped. 

I also never said the recession is to blame, the recession kept the prices from raising, just like it did on all sorts of other items.  That's kind of the whole point of a recession. But you never, ever, could have bought Beyond Shadowgate for $5, and Haggane ?  If you were lucky and got it used from a blockbuster, sure, but it and most of the expensive games now adays were never really all that cheap.  Back in the 1990s game store owners didn't know rarity, and collectors sure didn't agree on it; everyone thought tengen tetris was the rarest game ever it seemed. Rare games were priced on demand, and there was no demand for rare games till people knew they were rare.  I overpaid for color a dino in 2003, by a lot.  I paid $40 for it, because I didn;t know better.  Ebay wasn't exactly user friendly for price searches. But I did not over pay by $30, that's for damned sure.  If you look at price charting, it starts in 08 showing it at $8, but I remember talking on yahoo about it being rare in 2001-2002 and how much more it cost than Zelda, a game that I saw selling for $10-20 at most stores at the time.  If you look at this you'd notice this means the price DROPPED between 2002 and 2008.  Most games did, with a few exceptions that everyone looks at.

My long and rambling point is, I think you're comparing common, 2-generation old games back then to prices for some in-demand games now, and blaming resellers.  How do you ever know they're resellers?  They tell you that they just buy them to sell and own no games themselves?  Are you including store owners in as resellers?  And if the recession didn't have a major effect, then how come 75%+ of all games spike at the end of it? 

Also keep in mind, you say you bought games in the paper.  I've bought games 3 times from the paper, that's exactly how many times the Marion Star in Marion, Ohio had them listed from 1992-2002.  Three.  I've not seen games at a yard sale for 15+ years, EXCEPT for my neighbor the reseller.  And when i say RESELLER, I mean it.  His house has a built in full sized gym he fills ever year with stuff his cosignment can't push. Mostly dolls and crap but sometimes games.  Not cheap, but they've been damned minty.  Not all of us could buy cheap games at yard sales, that also throws a wrench in you comparing your old prices to modern day prices; now yard sales are global.

And honestly, there's something people don't talk about.  When I was collecting in 1996, I made $5/hr.  In 2002, I made $6/hr.  In 2003 I made $0/hr cause I was unemployed and stopped collecting.  Now i make a bit more than $6/hour, and I bet most people here have made jumps in income from 2000 to now.  Taking inflation into account, I still have way over 3x the buying power that I had back then; I used to earn 3 nes games per hour, now i get closer to 10.  And no I won't show off my math on that one

So when & how exactly did BIN lickers make this hobby WORSE?

Originally posted by: Sinnbox
When and how? Simply: They made the hobby worse because they dont take time to shop smart and wait for auctions to end, they simply jump online and buy a game at BIN price. I'm not saying this is everyone that shops on ebays fault, It's the people that that click the BIN on Games marked 10%+ over what it is going for. Believe me, I was layed off work in 2007 for about 5 months, I turned my hobby into a job. There were no resellers or major collectors in my town at that point and local game stores were just getting up to speed on ebay pricing. I added more to my collection at that point than I have at anyother point in my life. Am I proud that I was a reseller? No, but it was nessasary for me to get through life at the time.  I found that with a 100% feedback level and the Powerseller logo(I forget if there was top rated back then or not) I could activly price games well over what auctions ended at and people would buy them. People go stupid for the powerseller logo and are willing to pay more. This in turn shows other sellers that they can price at that price. Prices go up, and the powersellers bump their prices above the little guys again.

I had alot more typed out, but lets just look at facts. You can pull up FuncoLand's old prices online pretty easily. Lets see how prices have gone up.

June 1998
Hagane: 6.99
Final Fight Guy: 14.99
Peacekeepers: 12.99
Run Sabre: 6.99
TMNT 4: 6.99
Wild Guns: 9.99
Metal Warriors 29.99

I'll throw in some NES games since you brought up Color a Dinosaur.

Color a Dinosaur: 1.99
Stadium Events: 0.29
Bucky O'Hare: 2.99
Bubble Bobble 2: 29.99
Swamp Thing: 3.99
Flintstones 2: 9.99
DK Jr. Math: 6.99
Zombie Nation: 3.99

RPG's were about the only games that were expensive, but most of them were under $40

Most of these games were probably not available at every store, but I saw plenty of them.
 

Originally posted by: Ozzy_98

  I think you may be placing blame on the wrong factors, and comparing the wrong games from then and now.  In the mid-1990s you say you were buying games for $.50-5, but think about that.  The snes libary was still pretty new then; playstation came out at the end of 1995, so satur was middle\begining of 1995.  Frogger was at the end of the 1990s, in 1998. So what games were you getting for $5?  Nes, and maybe a few early\budget SNES?  The fad still holds true today:


Games from 1-2 generations ago hit rock botto, that's generally the sweetspot.  After that, historically, is when they start going up.  In 1998-200? I was hitting up Game Express here, it's been gone 15ish years.  I think 2000 was the last time I was there (Since that's when I started dating my now wife, and she was never in there). COMMON nes games were $2, $1.50 if you buy 10+, and $1 if you buy 50+.  I remember going in there once with $200, that was a good day.   Still have a few items with stickers on them:


This was in July, 2000 from my notes.  It's not complete, it was JUST the box + game. It was a 3 year old game at the time, got it for $15.  Current asking price for the cart is pretty close to that, but sometimes cheaper (I just saw one for a fiver 30 seconds ago online) 

Here's some more from 1999, same store (Diffrent stickers though)

Shining the holy arc, $30, now it's up to $65. During the recession time I see it was still around $30, dropping a bit in '09 to mid 20s average, then $40s for a bit. If you factor in inflation, that $30 game should be $41 if it stayed the same price.  So about 40% raise in price from then to now.  Heavy nova?  Well it seems to have had a spike and shows as $6 but it's also on amazon now for $1.50, so I'll say it's stayed about the same price, OR IS CHEAPER than in 1998.  STIISE? Same boat, shows as $6, but amazon shows on for about $3, so I'll count that as the same price.

To me, the BULK of games have not really changed in price, just a few very rare items have. Like this Beyond Shadowgate, I remember buying Dracula X on PC-Engine, didnt like it all that well, and sold it to GameDude for credit on Dungeon Explorer II.  I didn't like THAT one, and traded it in for Beyond Shadowgate (And forgot about that step for 10+ years, so I was freaking trying to find my damned DEII game I no longer owned).  So no clue how much I actually spent on the game, but it was listed as $60, now for it complete, it shows as $500 (But was *only* $350 a few months ago)

 Now, are BIN lickers the reason this went up?  Hell no.  And yes, I forgot a C in clickers, but it's staying as-is.  The price of this game was sky rocketing long before there was a BIN; once it got to $100+ in 1999ish->2000 it never dropped. 

I also never said the recession is to blame, the recession kept the prices from raising, just like it did on all sorts of other items.  That's kind of the whole point of a recession. But you never, ever, could have bought Beyond Shadowgate for $5, and Haggane ?  If you were lucky and got it used from a blockbuster, sure, but it and most of the expensive games now adays were never really all that cheap.  Back in the 1990s game store owners didn't know rarity, and collectors sure didn't agree on it; everyone thought tengen tetris was the rarest game ever it seemed. Rare games were priced on demand, and there was no demand for rare games till people knew they were rare.  I overpaid for color a dino in 2003, by a lot.  I paid $40 for it, because I didn;t know better.  Ebay wasn't exactly user friendly for price searches. But I did not over pay by $30, that's for damned sure.  If you look at price charting, it starts in 08 showing it at $8, but I remember talking on yahoo about it being rare in 2001-2002 and how much more it cost than Zelda, a game that I saw selling for $10-20 at most stores at the time.  If you look at this you'd notice this means the price DROPPED between 2002 and 2008.  Most games did, with a few exceptions that everyone looks at.

My long and rambling point is, I think you're comparing common, 2-generation old games back then to prices for some in-demand games now, and blaming resellers.  How do you ever know they're resellers?  They tell you that they just buy them to sell and own no games themselves?  Are you including store owners in as resellers?  And if the recession didn't have a major effect, then how come 75%+ of all games spike at the end of it? 

Also keep in mind, you say you bought games in the paper.  I've bought games 3 times from the paper, that's exactly how many times the Marion Star in Marion, Ohio had them listed from 1992-2002.  Three.  I've not seen games at a yard sale for 15+ years, EXCEPT for my neighbor the reseller.  And when i say RESELLER, I mean it.  His house has a built in full sized gym he fills ever year with stuff his cosignment can't push. Mostly dolls and crap but sometimes games.  Not cheap, but they've been damned minty.  Not all of us could buy cheap games at yard sales, that also throws a wrench in you comparing your old prices to modern day prices; now yard sales are global.

And honestly, there's something people don't talk about.  When I was collecting in 1996, I made $5/hr.  In 2002, I made $6/hr.  In 2003 I made $0/hr cause I was unemployed and stopped collecting.  Now i make a bit more than $6/hour, and I bet most people here have made jumps in income from 2000 to now.  Taking inflation into account, I still have way over 3x the buying power that I had back then; I used to earn 3 nes games per hour, now i get closer to 10.  And no I won't show off my math on that one

So when & how exactly did BIN lickers make this hobby WORSE?

Originally posted by: cirellio

I don't buy games at retail prices 99% of the time, but it's easy to trivialize someone's finds with a snide remark like, "Congratulations. You had 300 dollars."

For instance one could also say, "Congratulations. You ripped someone off. Hope you can still sleep at night." Or "Congratulations. You found Hagane 10 years ago, when they were still everywhere."

So in a way finding these games at all in 2015 is a feat in and of itself. It's no wonder some people pull the BIN trigger.

Originally posted by: Silent Hill

Not that I don't agree with your full point, but I know that Hagane was selling SEALED for $30 or less back in the early 00's. There is a member here who bought a few copies from eBay then and still has the log of it. 

 

Originally posted by: Ozzy_98

But was that a regular experience, or pure luck?  It's expensive because it's rare, meaning this couldn't have happened often.  The most common way to get it would have been blockbusters selling it off, and most likely they did that for $5-$10ish.  I didn't mean hagane was never $5, beyond shadowgate was never $5.  Hagane, the bulk of them were at blockbusters (Or so they say), so I know it was sold off cheap.

I do find it very odd how few hagane's have blockbuster stickers, but I know they had the game so that's the largest source of this rare game.

 

Originally posted by: cirellio

I don't buy games at retail prices 99% of the time, but it's easy to trivialize someone's finds with a snide remark like, "Congratulations. You had 300 dollars."

For instance one could also say, "Congratulations. You ripped someone off. Hope you can still sleep at night." Or "Congratulations. You found Hagane 10 years ago, when they were still everywhere."

So in a way finding these games at all in 2015 is a feat in and of itself. It's no wonder some people pull the BIN trigger.

Originally posted by: Ozzy_98
 

Before we go to far, just remember in 1998 there were no funcolands in my area, the closest one was a good hour drive. So their prices wern't my area's prices. But looking at Nov 1999:


Yes, of course the prices are cheaper, that agrees with what I was saying.  In 1999 NES would have been 2 gens old going on 3, and at rock bottom, it can't get any lower than this.  And even then, the bulk of titles are not all that cheap.  The first 12 together average $4, go to the 13th, that's $5.28 a cart.  With inflation, that would be $6.78 and $8.95, that's actually above current market value for most games. I'm not saying prices didn't go up from this level, and even said the rare games would go up more, that agrees with the items you cherry picked.  We'll look at megaman(s), 17.99 for many of them.  With inflation, that' $30.51, PC is saying it's around $70 for 1 and $90 for 5.  Here's the chart for 5:


We have that dang gap though, from 1999-08, but in this time, megaman 5's not changed in price till the end point of the recession.  Meaning it's cost, with inflation, has gone down until the recession was over.

So you're saying this spike at the end of the recession wasn't cause of the recession keeping prices down, but because for some reaspon people started clicking BINs?  Ebay bought half.com in 2000, and had BIN back before 2002, so why did it take people that long to start licking BINs?

And of course peope will click a bin that's SLIGHTLY higher than market, depending on total value.  Same reason I select express shipping, it can save 3-6 days on getting the item.  Are you claiming people are clicking BINs that are, say, a few bucks more ($10 or less, depending on value of the item), or that there's people who are spending $50+ extra on a BIN when there's an active auction going on right now?  Say I want mega man 5, right now there's two active aucions, $89 with 3 days, 9 hours left, meaning it will be over $90 for sure. The other one is $36, 4 days left. The only other active auctions are for combos of more than one megaman.  For BINs, there $150 one, $115.  Are you blaming people clicking the $115 one for causing the raise of prices?

And even if they did, how is that really a bad thing?  The hobby has went to hell because people think the game is worth more than you do?

Originally posted by: Sinnbox
I agree with you about inflation, and that commons have stayed at relitively the same price.

My point was that Ebay buyers that would rather click a BIN than wait for a deal are what is causing prices to go up so much. The games I listed are some of the ones that have shot sky high. I stick to my guns that the reason they have gone up to where some of them are now is due to ebay buyers. I know you are trying to prove a point, but saying that you had no local Funco's really makes your point seem invalid. It was a nation-wide chain. So prices there were pretty much national standards. Just because you didnt have one locally and your experience was different does not mean that just because your local stores at the time had higher prices means that you are correct. I could point to a local shop where I was buying NES/SNES/PS1/360(And Panser Dragoon: Saga) games for $2 apiece in 2010, but that is not a national chain, it was a home town store. You can't relate home town store prices to national chains and think that your prices were closer to market.
 

Originally posted by: Silent Hill
  That is a great point. With how popular the hobby is now, you'd have to be lucky as shit to land a uncommon/rare in-demand game for a steal "in the wild". It's so much easier to find one online if you really want it. There are some games on eBay right now that I haven't seen in person in years. Sometimes the frustration and want takes control and you click BIN.

 

Originally posted by: Sinnbox

My point was that Ebay buyers that would rather click a BIN than wait for a deal are what is causing prices to go up so much.