Originally posted by: Sinnbox
People buying on ebay have definately hurt the hobby. Sure, I bought games at market prices back in the day, I bought Mega Man brand new when it came out. NEW retail may have been $60-$100 on old cart games based on where you bought them. However you can't blame the low prices on the recession, I was buying games for $.50 - $5 apiece in the mid 90's. Most people thought that they were kids toys and basically gave them away. Sure there were some game stores that gouged prices, but even as a 16 year old with limited time/cash to look for games I had no problem finding dirt cheap games.
"BIN Clickers" coupled with people looking for extra cash during the recession has lead to the current crop of ebay sellers. Pre recession I bought several lots on ebay and got games at much less than I could have if I bought them all seperate at auction. Now resellers will bid lots up to insane amounts, just to make a buck per game.
Local buying/selling have really been hurt by it also. When I was in High School you could buy great NES/SNES/Genesis lots in the local paper, and on craigslist when I was in college for less than I could buy a new PS1 game for.
I know that collecting popularity has gone up since that time, but for every local collector I know I know several resellers. In the 90's you had people that played games, and stores that sold them. Now you have the extra addition of people that simply buy to sell. Where you had a used game store or two in a 50 mile radius, you now have 10+ resellers. Resellers really hurt the hobby because they hold onto games wanting to get the most bang for their buck. I know of several local resellers that have multiple copies of earthbound in their hands(one with over 10 copies) just waiting for it to go up. I have no problem with people making a buck, but they really have hurt the hobby by adding a third variant to the mix. 15 years ago all games were in gamers hands, or at the store waiting to be purchased. Now I would guess that 1/4-1/3 of the games in the US are in resellers hands.
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?
