At the beginning of 2012 we had one vintage store in town and now we have 3 in addition to Gamestop joining the market which I should post some insider information in the gamestop thread.

The 50 free ebay listings is probably another factor. All of a sudden 30-50 dollar games are listed at 75 and more. Then those 50 dollar games quickly get bought up and new price is 75.

We also are seeing some dry up factor too, I've heard the dealers here say that their biggest problem is getting in inventory, so many people are buying and no one is selling.

What I've noticed over years is that some carts are truly, sincerely much rarer than the various 'lists' gave them credit for. eBay can be erratic on any given day but over time, it's incredibly consistent. Anyone who was actively collecting rare carts back before "Collector Mania" set in knew that some carts listed as 'rare' were significantly more common than other carts listed as 'rare', even though their respective prices didn't reflect this back then.

For example, Cart Y might be listed as a R4, yet there would always be 10 running auctions for one at any given time.
Cart Z might be likewise listed as R4, yet we might only see one auction a week. What I'm noticing today is that credible crarity is starting to manifest itself in terms of the most severe price spikes.

Sometimes things bubble up and overprice themselves but other times, underpriced suff realizes actual, credible value. A few people knew there was a big, big wave heading towards vintage NES carts.

The other thing that amuses me is how trivially simple it would be to manipulate this market. For example, if I decide that henceforth, I want perception of Fire N Ice to be that people are paying $600, it wouldn't take much to make that appear to be so, which would be quite tempting to a person who's laid in a stock of them.

While I agree with your point, it should be put into perspective. $50 in 1986 is like $105 today. Odd to think NES games cost almost double than PS3/360/Wii games today. And we still complain about $60 price points.

And to add to the topic, i really think it has to do with a) the demographic that is no collecting and b) the economy.

For the demographic, a lot more people are becoming collectors. A lot of people looking for these games are now entering there 30s, or are already in their early 30s. They now have disposable income (see b). The want to begin to rebuy their childhood. Demand goes up, supply goes down and everyone knows how that turns out.

As for the economy, I think it is two fold. 1) The economy, while still poor, seems to slowly be getting better. People (see a) are coming into more disposable income. One the flip, the economy, as I stated is still poor, so the sellers want to get as much money as possible and drive up prices.

Of course I have no evidence, empirical or otherwise, to back this up. Just my quick thoughts.

Yeah well I don't believe in playing the inflation game. I get dollar values fluctuate over time, but while values of the dollar doubled over the last nearly 20 years doesn't mean I'm going to pay up for it either. I look to original retail and keep the value the same as if it were '86 or '91 which is $30 or $50 or whatever it sold for. I think it's a good benchmark to not get baked on something. I get why people make the argument, I just don't agree with eating it because of inflation. Up until the last couple years or so, most of this stuff was dumpster diving priced except for a select few titles that maintained a value say like Chrono Trigger which flatly has stayed in the $40-50 range as far back as I can remember into the last century but even now that's kissing $70 on ebay or so and just this year and more specifically the last few months as I bought mine back in Dec/Jan for 40+shipping.