Video game collecting has thankfully gotten to a place where prices are well documented and consistent....mostly.

But what about the accoutrement? All those kickass signs and standees and banners and kiosks and...

Are the prices for these items increasing along with games? Are they outpacing games? Do you guys expect these items to continue to go up in value? Will they go down in value?

Whenever I see sales for this stuff prices seem kinda high. Why though? Is there too much demand? Too little supply? I feel like space concerns would keep most people out of this market. Seems like adding a shelf full of games would make more sense than adding a standee, space-wise. 

Are we looking at a pricing bubble (gasp!) with stuff? Or do prices more or less line up with demand?

What are your opinions on collecting this stuff?



 

Probably need to clarify a little further on this one.

Kiosks I would assume are going up.

Displays, banners, and stuff would likely depend on the game series and what the display/banner/etc is made of.

Standees no idea. I did snag a kickass GTA one from one of the PSP games.

A lot of that stuff is so niche it's harder to pin down prices.

 

The whole talk of bubbles will never go away.... Anything to do with collecting for the future is speculation and most all things collectible will come in and out of trends. The biggest issue I see is we live in a throwaway society. Current generations aren't as likely to get into collecting older video games mostly because there's less appeal. You tend to hear a lot of people collecting now had some sort of childhood tie to what they collect. Then their interest can spawn into other areas related. I have been collecting well over 10 years and seen a ton of change in just that short time. The next 10 years will likely be a better indication on the future of these types of collectibles as we approach these later generations coming into the range most tend to collect.

Kiosks and displays I'd say are becoming a lot less niche with people dropping 3k for a fiber. I swear the kiosk group is filled with moths how much they talk about lighted signs 

But seriously price wise the jump already happened around when Wii U kiosk started flooding the streets! 2015 all these fiber optic signs lined eBay at 500-1000. I had most Nintendo kiosks( missing virtual boy, ds, Wii) the prices really have stayed the same on certain kiosks. The super star sign which became a hot item back on Nintendoage long ago was a 500 dollar sign. Now people think over thousand is a steal.

Also as you remember finding your pika statue these kiosks and signs are still in the wild. I'd think the statues in the end should be the rarest since the number 250 gets thrown around a lot. I'm sure most signs were produced way more then 250 so the odds of them surviving should be much higher. My second best find this year was the very rare thin dmg cabinet for free.

TLDR kiosks stayed the same for the most part in value. Signs attract the dollars doubt those bump in price already very high. All this displays are still in the wild if your lucky even free!

It's a weird combination of not a lot of availability but also limited demand MOST of the time. There is some display/marketing that's highly collectible. But most of this stuff stores just throw out. When our local Kmart finally closed years back they'd been using a Sega cabinet for random storage in the backroom ever since Sega went out of business. They gave it to me. I gave it to my friend who's a diehard Sega collector. Now is a huge Sega cabinet worth something to someone, probably. But it's big, it was hard to move, and finding a true "buyer" would have taken me forever. But compare that to the cool tapestry looking symphony of the night displays. They sell for really good money because they display easy, look great, and you can easily ship them.

If you ever go to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo auction, any sort of retro promotional stuff goes for obscene amounts of money, more than actual video game stuff. I think its the combination of the auction being attended mostly by vendors who are flush with cash since selling their games all day, and the fact that stuff appeals to the higher end collector - who is most likely going to also be a vendor. It's rare while still being video-game-related. I think most vendors see every single game 10 times over, so when something really rare, without an established value, show up at an auction, they start to salivate.