You always hear about "summer sell off" but I got to say, NES prices are skyrocketing AGAIN. I just did some eBay completed item searches along with reviewing Price Charting's NES charts and I am in shock.

A few of the ones that jumped out at me:

Caltron 6 in 1 - none listed anymore on eBay, every completed one sold for 500 or more. The Price Charting on that one is unbelievable. It went back up as I predicted. I bought a sealed for 330 in March, just as it was beginning its trend back up. I knew the Mexican stock would run out. Several recently sold for over 600.

Bubble Bobble 2 - someone sold a CIB for 1000$ on Saturday. I just paid $565 for my copy a week ago, which I considered to be quite high. I know Wrdlstman's sold for 770-ish a few weeks ago. I remember passing a local copy for 400 because I thought that was too high.

Sealed NES black boxes - I am still seeing several VGA black boxes sell for over 10k

Best of the Best VGA from Mr. Mark sold for 25k!!!!!!!!!!!!

VGA 95 Spanish Copy of Wild Gunman sold for 50k!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last but not least --- the NES Price Charting chart is wild! It shows a trend upwards non-stop beginning in May 2011 with only 1 slide until December 2011 where it reached an all time high. At the beginning of 2012, the prices dipped slightly. In May 2012 prices not only returned to the previous high but continued to set yet another all time high!!!

I will be the first to admit, some of the sales are bogus and errors, but overall, things across the board are jumping yet again.

Yes tell me about it. This is getting crazy!! My new motto is Go Big or Go Home! I'm getting burnt out maybe or I'm just getting tired of scouring CL every chance I get. My saved search has more than tripled in the last three months just because I don't want to miss out on good deals for some of these games.

I stopped collecting, at this point I'm just pointing and laughing. That might sound dickish but I got a ton of games and I'm just not willing to pay out the ass for nes games anymore. I'm just buying saturn imports that I plan on playing and getting things little by little if I find a deal. I just can't justify doing this shit to myself anymore. The prices have gotten ridiculous at this point and collecting nes simply isn't fun for me anymore.

And people wonder why counterfeiting is becoming popular. It was a pandora's box, bro!

Yup. I'm getting pushed out of collecting. I never thought it would get like this, though maybe nobody did? Guess it's a good time to sit back and play for a while.

I don't think that bubble bobble 2 was legit, it was listed like 4 times at different prices. The last reference I have says sold at $500 (after that $1k listing).

I would hold judgement on those vga sales until someone verifies them. As I understand it someone was going around for a while hitting the buy button and negotiating afterwards.

I did see a gemfire cart end at $71 today. I thought that was bananas.

edit: here are the completed listings for that seller with the bubble bobble 2. they already picked up 2 negative feedback for the $75 and $250 listings

I saw a chubby cherub auction tonight for over $50. Huh? That was just at the 10-15 mark. Glad I've got most of the htf games knocked off my list.

How does this demoralize people? you know how much a game is worth to you. saying your stopping collecting because of some high prices is ridiculous. Makes it that much more gratifying when you find it. prices of nes games besides the mega rares are still very attainable. Good deals pop up everyday. I love this stuff going high. Just makes it that much more fun when you finally get a copy. If it was all worthless what would be the fun of finding a rare game?

especially if you have a good amount of games under your belt. I smile everytime the market for games goes up, because that means my stockpile is worth more and more, I just keep looking out for deals.

This. It's just a gut feeling really,but I find it hard to believe that many of those vga sales are legitimate. I feel like it's some sort of price manipulation to intentionally drive up prices. And about the Spanish Wild Gunman.....I just have to go back to this thread and laugh at my post on there.

http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=5&...



 

I'm with you guys on this, i've slowed down tremendously on collecting due to the insane prices people are paying and asking lately for games that don't warrant the price. I have alot of games under my belt and while it is nice to know they are valuable thats not why I started the hobby, I simply just love to play them wether they are worth a bunch or not, it's not like i'm selling them anytime soon. So I guess now is the time to enjoy what I have and play my games while putting collecting on the backburner for a bit until the market isn't insane anymore.

Because they are pricing some people out of their comfort zone on a lot of these games. Some people can't justify paying "X amount" for a certain game,rare or not,so I can see how it would be demoralizing. It's not so much what they think it's worth as it is how affordable it is.

The chase is cool and all....but it reminds me of a conversation Shane7951 and I had a while back about the rising prices. We were joking about how we could see a scenario where someone blew a lot of money on a game they really wanted was like ....oh awesome I just got a sealed SMB for $1000,yay me lots of fun that chase was cool....but hey wife and kids,we'll just have to enjoy it in the dark now because we can't pay the electric bill this month,or buy food,etc.
Of course,you have to have lots of expendable income for this hobby,but I'm betting a lot of people don't but spend it anyway. =/ 

Also some people probably feel like there's price gouging going on as well.Or at least an unnecessary inflation of prices.Even a lot of the really common stuff has been going for uncommon prices as of late. Ah,whatever....I'm just going to keep picking up things on my want lists,and try to find deal when I can and not worry about it.

time to sell my King Neptune CIB

I see a lot of people treat this game collecting and reselling as a career. I see a lot of craigslist ads offering to buy up any type of game for a fair prioe (a few pennies) and I see the people at the swap meets spooked. Now every game to no matter how common is worth at least 5-10 bucks minimum.

I think the market is not over saturated with collectors. I think it is over saturated with people trying to buy and resell games for profit.

As weird as it is, I kind of hope that is the case.  

I can't believe how fast some of these prices have shot up.  But can we be so sure that those insane VGA sales are legit?  

buyers and sellers need each other.    The large amount of resellers is a reflection of the fact that there are a lot of buyers.

Any dead hobby with no buyers also has no resellers.     Any thriving hobby with lots of collectors has lots of money changing hands and therefore also has lots of resellers.

Resellers are just the yin to the buyer's yang, and aren't "evil" per se, as some people seem to think.

I think we should all be proud to be a part of this unique and awesome era in collecting. We are the forefathers to where video game collecting is headed. I'd say we definitely need each other (buyers and sellers). I've collected other things and NES collecting takes the cake not only as the most fun but also as the one with the most active community. Conversations, debates, and statistics that could keep any nerd busy year round.

And this is the point where the decline begins ... when speculation collecting exceeds nostalgic collecting.

Quoted for truth and that's that, though I'm not laughing at people at least, just the stupid prices people are being suckered into with the feeding frenzy causing more fools to do it too making it the standard of the week/month before it's up again.  I've been more or less pushed out of NES collecting and it pisses me off, happened to me 20 years ago with cards and comics as a kid for the same ridiculous ass behaviors going on now.  I figure at this rate since the NES isn't everything, I'll just grab other items and keep ahead of the curve, that and maybe get a Sega system again since no one seems to care about them much.  That said if I see a deal though, like old school before it got retarded type deal on an NES game I'll grab it, but actively looking anymore is just like a cancer to my wallet eating it alive.

Like Bronty said though, you can't exactly blame the seller or a reseller, well you can, and justifiably so, but it's the dumbass buyers who equally share the blame.  If you have more and more entering seeing X game go for some insane amount they'll think they can get that too, and on other titles too, so stuff inches higher, and some new person or someone desperate will pay up for it ever causing a cycle of escalation.  Eventually it like any boom will bust, so just ride it out and find the cheapie when you can.  I'm sure more of us here with our big boy pants on probably have a shit ton of games they've only fired up to test or messed with a bit and never completed -- now's the time.

Lots of titles have shot up over the last 2 years. I remember when Earthbound was $60 all day, and now it's on the higher end close to $200 in many cases. I remember seeing FF3 SNES go for $50 CIB and now sells for anywhere between $120 to $185. Prices go up each year while there is a demand. Not sure why this is puzzling to some. Sure, we may not all like the prices now (especially if the prices drop on more pricey titles, then you'd be complaining about the opposite), but if you search and hunt, and put some effort in, you can find them for a more reasonable price.

I've only been doing this for a couple years now and only very very casually for the first year, but I'm definitely sticking to finding games in the wild due to prices. It's more fun that way anyway.

I did make an interesting discovery recently which most/some of you might already know. A lot of the weekend warrior Storage Wars/Pawn Stars types are getting frustrated and will most likely give up soon. I noticed the number of people at garage sales increasing at an insane rate, and recently I've even started seeing people from my own work (around 300 employees) at them. After speaking to a bunch, I've found that while they have the ability to go to a yard sale or flea market and buy something for a good price, they lack the knowledge/patience/whatever to actually sell the stuff. So now there's a bunch of people with basements full of stuff and they're realizing that it's not as easy as "Hey, I know a guy who has a store for stuff like this and knows the price of everything and will buy it on the spot".

So they're starting to give up.

You'll still have more people than usual as knowledge of these things spreads, but I think you'll see a lot of these types in the next couple years.

It becomes a problem when resellers outnumber collectors, however, with the ease of forums / eBay, many collectors are really a hybrid of both.  So the line is blurred.

Values are already skewed at this point.  You no longer pay what you think it's worth, you often have to pay higher than a reseller.  Easiest to illustrate with an example:

Your willing to spend $100 on a game.  There's one listed at $500.  There's a reseller on the sideline willing to pay $200 and try to flip for $400.  So you're forced to go $200+ if you want it.

Or, even worse, there's a reseller willing to buy it at even a higher price ($300 or $400) but will take the approach of marking it up to say $800 or $1000.  Then they are willing to sit on it forever until it sells.  That's happening too.

So yes, buyers and sellers need each other to a certain extent, but no one needs price gouging.  Which is happening all across the map right now.

price gouging is the entire foundation of the economy jone.    People will charge what the market can bear.    Which is another way of saying as much as they fucking can.

Sure, speculators are a bad thing, but I really don't see pure speculators out there right now.     They are collectors for the most part.    There is some "flipping" but its hardly prevalent IMO, especially as those funds are sometimes reinvested into items the collector wants simply to collect.

On a side note, anyone notice that Virtual Boy has done the opposite? There's a sealed Wario Land sitting on eBay at Buy It Now for $50! Even at good prices, they just aren't moving. It took me forever to sell my spare Virtual Boy games, and I have a few on my Watch List that I've had on there for months. Maybe all that interest moved to NES

I have had about 95% of my personal must-have NES/SNES games I wanted sitting safely in my collection now for about six months so I'm not stressing the prices too much. When the bubble bursts, I'll pick up the other 5%.