UK 2nd hand prices were probably at their lowest around the late 90s/turn of the millennium. I seem to recall Computer Exchange at Tottenham Court Road dumping much of their stock for near peanuts as the Saturn /PS1 conversions came in around 97/98 (Is there anyone else on the forum who frequented that establishment back then?) I think the majority of people thought that was it for the SNK machine, and we’d never need to ever go back to expensive, space consuming carts - A CD and a 1 Meg ram expansion gave exactly the same experience. Obviously.
I bought my 2nd AES in Feb 2000 – boxed with 20 games for £150 (That slightly made up for me selling my 1st one to CEX in 1994 for £100 and a couple of Amiga games
), and you could get the “common” titles quite easily for minimal effort in the early 2000s from Ebay, Loot, small ads, etc. Most of my collection is from then – the prices to replace now are simply untenable for me to pay.
From memory, prices seemed to spike for all things SNK when the Pocket was recalled in summer 2000 (there was a big scramble at the time for stock clearance on that console, and many of the titles entered the rarity folklore) and this had a knock on for the related series’ AES games. I certainly remember the £350 days for Slug 1 and thinking that was a “no go”, and I can’t recall that ever dropping in the 16 years since.
“Retro”’s also entered the mainstream gaming conscience since then, which has seen knock on price rises for almost everything a couple of generations or so behind the current systems (Try rebuilding a NES or original Gameboy boxed/complete cart collection, for example, and check out some of the prices being asked for what were once common titles.)
Last year’s 25th anniversary’s put the spotlight on Neo again, so there’s another bump for the prices as people enter the scene to find out more about the original hardware. I’d expect this year’s focus on 20th anni’ for MSlug will also see prices rise again for those games as more people are introduced to the series.
I haven’t kept track of MVS prices. I wish I’d been looking out for those from day 1, but I believed (foolishly) for a long while that I’d have a chance one day with getting the games I wanted on AES. I cracked last year and got a converter for CSword2, and it’s one of the best purchases made - there are still a few bargains to be had (relatively speaking in comparison to AES) with some of the common titles if you’re not too precious on box, instructions, etc but do want original carts. AES just looks out of sight for me now and that includes conversions.
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