Originally posted by: thegnome
What's up with all the hate for "new collectors" on this thread?
The "hate" stems from the attitude of younger collectors and what most of us older collectors see as misguided reasons for collecting. To most young collectors, the emotional connection to these hunks of plastic and silicon aren't there, they only see the dollar signs. To them, it's not about feeling, it's about braggadocio (as evidenced by the desire to immediately make a "finds" video).
To most of us "old" guys, there's an emotional connection to these things, and it's not so much about the money (though not over-spending is nice) as it is about reliving childhood dreams and memories. You may see something as a shitty game that's only valuable because it's rare but some of us remember them as a shitty game we rented or saw in an advertisement, but could never get...
When we were kids, Nintendo was everything, you talked about it at lunch time, your friends made up stories about games, and at times the characters from the games were as close as friends themselves. We made promises to ourselves to eventually play every "Nintendo game" and we're making good on those promises now.
To many of us older collectors, Mario isn't a $0.50 pack-in cartridge, he's our friend...
^ This.
The new collectors are crowding the market to increase demand with the idea that they will make money from buying and then reselling later. Because of the increase in temporary demand, this drives the prices up because the supply will always stay constant. Thus the entire community as a whole must pay higher prices for their games. This works and makes sense if your in a market for collectibles such as coins or stamps, but video games are playable and have more value than simply scarcity. Thus you see the clash of one group seeing them as games to be played for fun and another group who sees it as a collectible that will increase in value. So you basically have two groups of people, investors and gamers. Both dislike the other becuase their fortunes cause pain to the other. If the investor gets his way, the gamer will be forced to pay more, and if the gamer gets his way, the investor will lose his invesments value.
Now this is different from reselling in the sense that there are game stores online that have been in business forever and have not changed the prices for retro video games. Reselling is when you buy something or a lot of it below the market value, so that you could then sell it at market value and make a profit. This can happen in any market that someone pays for something and not have a negative output. It is simply the idea that you view it as an investment that shifts what you are doing.
You have to realize that if your investing in something it is no longer a hobby. A hobby is something you do for fun with no intention of making money from it. Now this doesn't mean that you want to loose money. The best hobbies are the ones that don't cost you any money. That would be the goal for most of NintendoAge, I believe. Most of NintendoAge does this for fun and treat it as a hobby because they love video games. They also have a ton of real life costs that make it hard to have money to spend. This is why they have the intention to make it a hobby that costs them no money at all, come on who doesn't love a free game?
So from earlier posts, no this doesn't happen to hobbies. This happens to collectibles, which although we are collectors, video games should'nt be in the collectible market. Thus they shouldn't be investments, which is what most new collectors are looking for. They have no other connection to these video games other than the dollar and cents. Someone said that eventually the bubble will pop and all the investors will leave. The dillema that is there is the fact that this then creates unfavorable conditions for the collector who makes this his hobby that doesn't cost him money. Because he was forced to pay a higher than actually worth price, when he goes to resell it after the bubble pops he will lose money. This then means that his hobby cost him money which he may or may not be able to or want to afford. This or he will be forced to sell it at the same price thus keeping the price of games at the artificially high price.
The investors are threatning to the hobbiests who just want to do this for fun. And to me I think they have ruined something that was once special. Although most investors can't see it becuase their blinded by the cash, the ones who see it as a hobby can see both the present and future damages that making this a collectible market will have. Yes fun wise, some of the expensive games should'nt be that price, but thats what a collectible market does. It focuses too much on scarcity (I think that scarcity should always play a role as their is a demand/supply dynamic, but not to the degree a collectible market would call for).
So to sum it up, the retro video game market is making a shift from a hobby market to a collectible market. This I find atrocious as it really ruins the fun for the people who have it as a hobby, not to mention it pushes a lot of people out becuase they can no longer afford it. I mean I remember the fun of going out and hunting for old games and seeing what I could find. Now everywhere I go, people are asking ridiculous prices for retro games because they think they are all rare. I think this stems from how popular ebay is and with so many people basing their prices on ebay. I mean have you seen ebay lately? Is a NES with a couple games really worth what their charging?
So yes I believe that the older members who knew what it used to be, have a right to resent new members. I am no exception, I believe I have contributed to this with being blinded by the cash. Sure some games I have bought with the pure idea of investment, and I understand if the older members look down on my decisions. We have moved the community and market in a bad way, and should start working on reversing the trends.
Sorry for the long post, this is just my opinion. If you think I'm totally wrong than to you, I'm totally wrong.
-A little side note on the "finds" videos. I believe that youtube "finds" and nintendoage "finds" are completely different. It would be like getting on stage and showing the whole audience what you found (which is somewhat motivated by your desire to brag) versus running to your small group of friends and showing them what you got (there is a level of appreciation that is felt by those who didn't even get the deal; like a good for you moment). Youtube is a world stage with a posting meant to be shown to the masses (everybody wants to get more views), while NintendoAge is a small niche group that appreciates games more than the average person.
Originally posted by: DarkTone
