Collecting Video Games for Investment / Collectards / Who will care when we are all 80?

[ChuChu Flamingo]

Glad to see this thread was thinking this was a discussion that needed to be had.

Games are entertainment. I am a collector and have been since my first NES which I still have. I never sold any games really and just slowly collected.

Now my buddy got into this a couple years back started snatching every craigslist deal, going to every thrift store EVERYDAY, and considers this an investment.

Back when we played magic a decade ago he started snatching up rare lands and old cards. His binder or "portfolio" is worth 10gs now. Good call on his part. But sitting on this stuff in hopes that your investment will continue to grow is a gamble.

Video games are a very unstable market and do have the potential to drop. Which I do hope happens.

Ill have my games til I die and my family can deceide what to do with them because I wont mind.

On top of that after so many years dont silicone based cartridges and boards rot away? I am sure they have a shelf life.

Edit: the reason my buddy sours me is he doesnt play these games, and talks about selling them one day... Shelf queen describes him very well.

MTG has the same problem as video games, so much in so that there is a MTG Finance group lol. Like gaming, people hoard cards and like to flaunt their pieces of papers. Lots of speculation as well, which is exactly what has been happening to video games in the past five years. It doesn't help Wizards of the coast are greedy as fuck and don't even do reprints right, let alone shit on the reserved list (which is automatically bullshit. The reprints would only affect people who want to play but now they have let it go too far).

Pretty much what FAT$TACKS said is probably what will happen. I mean if you have been watching prices for any length of time is that they are erratic and reek of panic buying.Then add hoarders into the mix, speculators and hype threads(thanks Nintendoage and facebook groups),e-celeb shit like youtube, and johnny come lately who wants everything afap.Time and time again i've seen these johnny come latelys come in, buy stuff asap for retarded prices and get burned out fucking it up for the rest.

It also doesn't help that ebay completed history only shows ~3 months, buy it nows are rampant waiting for a big ol fish to bite, and "trending price". Whenever a open bid auction shows up it usually goes above BINs because the buyers can only count to potato and must win at all cost.

 

[terry.330]

Just kill yourself now and let your wife or parents throw all your shit in the garbage before you trick your kids into thinking all of it is worth big money 20 years form now and they hire auction houses or estate sellers and end up eating money on top your funeral costs and the inheritance tax they'll already owe.

Or conversely start selling it now yourself and putting the money in savings or actually investing it. You know in something actually worthwhile.

Your NES collection isn't going to put your kid through college especially if you can't bare to part with it because of "sentimental" value. Dumbfuck.

Also there will only be better and better ways to play all this stuff in the future so no need to worry if you get the itch to fire up Super Metroid for a couple days. It ain't going anywhere.

 

[DevilRedeemed]

I might be a bit delusional, in fact I'm sure I am. The thing is collecting as an abstract enterprise whereby I am trying to acquire all games for a set platform irrespective of their quality, has always been alien to me. Having a small choice collection on the other hand, is strongly appealing to me. Though I sold it off I had such a collection of SFC games. That made me a collector in some regard but I was motivated by an interest in the games themselves.
Now of course I bought them to be played, and maybe to an extent it was nostalgia but playing them on original hardware had a kick to it, though it was also a wonder to see old hardware operating and this was attractive to me. But I also bought these games to sit on a shelf as ornamental objects. Maybe because they where not so many and the box art is so nice.
What may be considered deluded is that if I where to want to acquire certain games once more and spared the cash, I wouldn't really care what they are going for, I wouldn't care if the prices fell weeks later. I would be motivated purely by the wish to own these and not as any sort of investment, though I am not opposed to anyone doing this (I just find it to be a little sad. It's like kiddie stocks. In the same way as obsessive compulsive completist collectors).
I think a case may be made for these objects as art, if the 'curator' knows how to resignifiy their purpose as decorative and knows how to properly display them (not my case)

 

[snes_collector]

When other forums have topics like "What is the next big spike" you know there is a problem. I say just buy what you want and not worry too much about the rest. I was into this before it was popular, and I'll still be into it after the hype dies down. I don't think we will ever see games like Little Samson under a couple hundred dollars.

I was into this before everyone got crazy, so most of this stuff didn't cost near what it brings now. I do wish I could have gotten into the Saturn earlier, but what can ya do.

 

[DangerousK]

People have been predicting the collector game market bubble would pop for at least a decade now. I don't see it popping any time soon. That's not to say it won't pop, but there's far too much demand for it now.

The only older games I have been buying are assorted PS1, Dreamcast, Saturn, and PS2 games that I am interested in playing, or those that I completely was unaware of coming out. I just picked up Sled Storm for the PS1, I vaguely remember it coming out in 1999, but never played it. I looked a YouTube video and thought it looked interesting, so I grabbed a copy on eBay. Then I saw it had a PS2 sequel which I never even knew. When I checked the release date, it said it was released in 2002 under the EA Big label, but I have zero recollection of the game period. So I will be picking it up. I'm mostly sticking to the cheaper games. I will not purchase any of the RPG's that have gotten idiotic in price.

When I get around to it, the SNES/Genesis Everdrives will be my only purchases. I don't have a large interest in trying to collect SNES/Genesis games since the prices have all gotten stupid on a lot of the games I'd like to play for those consoles. I'm waiting for the Saturn Everdrive/SD card loader to come out so I can get all of the games that have become ridiculous in price.

At the end of the day, I purchase the games not to have completionist tendencies, but because I want to play these titles. The collectors who are buying as an investment are free to do so, but I also hope they die in a fire. I see little point in buying games that you have no intention of ever playing. I can understand having a backlog of stuff that is yet to be played, but not a collection that's meant to be unplayed.

 

[Dominance9]

It also doesn't help that ebay completed history only shows ~3 months, buy it nows are rampant waiting for a big ol fish to bite, and "trending price". Whenever a open bid auction shows up it usually goes above BINs because the buyers can only count to potato and must win at all cost.

Good point. Ive been watching certain TG16 games go from fairly expensive to holy fuck expensive. Some games have doubled, some tripled, in literally months. And you'd think a auction would settle prices down as it would show true market value. But like you mentioned, half the time they go for more then the overpriced buy it now...WTF? Price Amnesia maybe? Or like you mentioned is it the Come late people who want it at any and all costs? Looks like I will just everdrive some of the ones I need and hope sanity returns at some point.

Just kill yourself now and let your wife or parents throw all your shit in the garbage before you trick your kids into thinking all of it is worth big money 20 years form now and they hire auction houses or estate sellers and end up eating money on top your funeral costs and the inheritance tax they'll already owe.

You bring up a very valid point weather you meant to or not: I go to alot of estate auctions, sales, etc. its part of what I do to pay the bills. And you start seeing the same shit, over and over and over. And for 90% of it no one gives a shit. As one generation dies out there is a flood of the stuff they owned and it saturates the market destroying the value. Not only that but the new generation just doesnt care about most of it. I cant help but think of video games in a similar way since Im surrounded by this senario more often then not. Since most of the games were made in such high quantity will it be like grandmas glassware or thimble or spoon collection? You didnt care as a kid and as a adult you still dont care. So it goes off to auction, sells for $5 even though at time of purchase it was hundreds. But on the flipside, there is a possibility video games could be like stereo equipment or records from the 60-70's. The new generation does give a shit and is carrying along the market just fine. I could see it going either way. No matter what even out of the glassware, thimbles, records etc. there is always the gems still worth money. But like any collectors market its volatile. Just watch a Vintage antiques roadshow where they revisit a episode from 15 years ago and reprice things in current day. Some items have plummeted, some stayed the same, some skyrocketed. In 30 years will there be a CIB Little Samson on Antiques roadshow, or will it be at your estate auction selling for $20? And will this happen before we all kick the can, as we age and say wait Im too old for this, WTF do I have all this for? So for some of us that may come sooner than you'd think. Some say who cares, who thinks about this stuff. I obviously do a bit but I have a skewed view from my so called profession. As most of us have some sort of game collection I think its worth thinking about the future at least a little. Just rambling food for thought.

 

[lithy]

I like to hope that anyone collecting video games as an investment doesn't have any actual money saved and invested because otherwise they should see that the marginal amount of money that stands to be gained is likely being lost to inflation, shipping costs, and eBay/Paypal fees.

Just like cars, despite many selling for millions of dollars, are not investments because there are a lot of carrying costs and very few if any appreciate beyond typical inflation rates.

Gasoline used to be 10 cents a gallon, just because it is $2.50 now doesn't make it an investment.

That same $60 that was used to buy an SNES game in 1994 is equivalent to about $100 after 20 years of inflation. Sure there could be a buck to be made here and there, but that assumes you're picking all winners.

 

[Tanooki]

You seem to forget that console games were $50-60 a piece when they came out, and Neo games were $300-$400 each. Even ignoring inflation, the majority of games can still be bought now at a significant discount to what they cost brand new. The situation you described is the trough on games pricing - it's easy to look back with rose colored glasses, but this was only a point in time.

Yes, we've all passed up many deals in the past, but hindsight is always 20/20 - you should've been out there buying Apple and Google stock if you really wanted to make money anyhow.

I haven't forgotten that. I remember once paying over $50 retail as I just had to have the $60 Street Fighter II for SNES which pissed me off, but what were you to do with it so huge in the arcade? Your argument though makes no sense, at least from the Nintendo angle of it, you can't buy a significant amount of those games (the quality ones at least) at a sub-original retail price and I'm not playing some lame ass inflation game some do that would tell me that FF2 should cost $110 today. Great, but that's now with 25 year old tech, it was $50-60 then. Few of any of these games naturally evolved due to honest rarity to where they were notably more than original retail. Take Little Samson, a decade ago that was a good $100 complete in box game. In just the last 5 years alone it went from normal inflation into abuse where it's 10x that. And had it not been for abusers and the dumbass coat tail hangers following suit it still would be even where it was 5 years ago (around $300-400 complete and not triple that.)

Either way personally I'm waiting to have a huge anticipated laugh over when the bottom drops out except on the true honest to god rares. When this shit goes south as it inevitably always does just like with sports cards, comics, beanie babies and the rest there will be a bunch of well deserved assholes who paid 100s or 1000s for old Nintendo games, TG16 games, etc lording over others to make mad profit and investment eggs losing their shit when they can barely give it away. I'll be happy to come out of old game retirement with Nintendo and pick their corpses while laughing at their misfortune.

 

[oliverclaude]

I'm waiting for the Saturn Everdrive/SD card loader to come out so I can get all of the games that have become ridiculous in price.

Rhea is great and this will also come in handy: http://ps-io.com

 

[norton9478]

Nothing is more depressing than going to an estate sale and seeing a guy's life collection of matchbooks with a price tag of $3 per 2 gallon zip lock bag.

 

[tacoguy]

MTG has the same problem as video games, so much in so that there is a MTG Finance group lol. Like gaming, people hoard cards and like to flaunt their pieces of papers. Lots of speculation as well, which is exactly what has been happening to video games in the past five years. It doesn't help Wizards of the coast are greedy as fuck and don't even do reprints right, let alone shit on the reserved list (which is automatically bullshit. The reprints would only affect people who want to play but now they have let it go too far).

Pretty much what FAT$TACKS said is probably what will happen. I mean if you have been watching prices for any length of time is that they are erratic and reek of panic buying.Then add hoarders into the mix, speculators and hype threads(thanks Nintendoage and facebook groups),e-celeb shit like youtube, and johnny come lately who wants everything afap.Time and time again i've seen these johnny come latelys come in, buy stuff asap for retarded prices and get burned out fucking it up for the rest.

It also doesn't help that ebay completed history only shows ~3 months, buy it nows are rampant waiting for a big ol fish to bite, and "trending price". Whenever a open bid auction shows up it usually goes above BINs because the buyers can only count to potato and must win at all cost.

Video games as an investment is a joke.
The real money to be made is in MTG cards. That game is seriously an investor paradise. Cards can sky rocket in price and they do all the time. Remember flip Jace? that card was $5 dollars when it came out then it shot itself all the way to $100 dollars! The stock market doesn't give you that kind of RoI. Though it did fall back down to $30 dollars which is still above its starting point. Still that card is just one example of the many and many other cards that will start off cheap and then get super expensive. The people that horde are fools.

As far as retro video games will remain as popular as they are today? Probably not but I don't think they will die off. Anyone getting into retro gaming to make a some kind of financial capital or investment for the future should really get out. More than likely most these games wont hold their value and should be back to their pre-2008 values.

Hard to predict anything 80 years into the future, hell video games as a medium might die off. Either way I will just be enjoying my hobby. I could care less if my games aren't worth as much when im dead.

 

[norton9478]

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