Is ebay in part to blame for higher retro game values?

[zakthedodo]

The buyers drive the price.

Ebay fees once a sale goes over 25 dollars isn't that much of an issue.
What kills me on Ebay is shipping to other countries. I used to flat fee but after getting burned on shipping a couple of times I ask international buyers to contact me.


Eventually an obviously over priced item will sell but collectors and even casual hobbyist know if they're getting gouged or not.

I've found games going for over 80 dollars for half as much just by trying different search terms.
Lots of sellers have no idea what they have.

Sentimental value will have people overpay probably more than anything else.

[sloan]

There is really no "in part" to this discussion. BIN auctions have driven everything upward in retro gaming prices.

[bugrouleau]

Old games are only expensive cause there little to non of lit left. Like Diamonds and other items, the more rare it is the higher it's price value.

[j_factor]

Old games are only expensive cause there little to non of lit left. Like Diamonds and other items, the more rare it is the higher it's price value.

I know this is way off topic, but diamonds aren't that rare at all. They're pricey because De Beers has monopolized the diamond mines.

[theclaw]

Both ways to varying degrees. Ebay helps grant quick access to uncommon games, which is more exposure for potential buyers. Yet they also take little stand against price gouging.

[Atarileaf]

There is really no "in part" to this discussion. BIN auctions have driven everything upward in retro gaming prices.

Our local game stores price their retro games almost completely on the highest BIN they can find. They won't even listen to a logical argument about actual completed auction prices.

[furcointalk]

Atari carts on average are cheaper than NES carts, yet they are older.

As an Ebay seller and buyer, i can tell you from first hand experience, i have to charge more for crap because the fees eat you alive.

BIN has become popular because its cheaper to sell with BIN than with an auction. Ebay has made it impossible to start the bidding at one penny for a common cart because of the fees. Also shipping on one cart has become very expensive. Media mail shipping on one cart will cost about 3 bucks or more. Ebay thinks including free shipping on all items is the way to go- so that is what i do. I start the bidding on mario duck / hunt for 7 bucks (free shipping), because it isn't worth selling for any less. If the cart sells for 7 ebay / paypal takes over 16% in fees. then i have to pay for shipping. when its all said and done, i am lucky to make two dollars- was it all worth it? hell no!

so if i am a seller, i will charge ten bucks for that cart. but, if i were to sell it a garage sale, i would look at the recent sales on ebay and see that the very same cart sells for 7 or more. most people who don't sell on ebay have zero concept of the fees, so they think that cart is now worth 7 or more and that it must be rare....

but if SMB duck hunt is worth 7- metroid must be worth 20 right???

before ebay fees became 16% and shipping tripled, i was able to sell carts for 7 or less and make a few bucks profit- those days are gone. it doesn't make sense to sell anything for less than 15 bucks on ebay.
don't forget that buyers have all the power on ebay, returns for no reason, buyers steal, and ask for refunds at alarming rates, professional sellers need to bake those prices in as well.

i am not a professional seller, i just sell extra items, or i sell to clean out the closet, but ebay has made it impossible to sell items at resonable prices.

[JSoup]

A few members here and in other retrogaming communities seem to stick to the opinion that prices are high due to the brute force collecting methods introduced by NintendoAge, but I honestly don't know how much truth there is to that.

[furcointalk]

A few members here and in other retrogaming communities seem to stick to the opinion that prices are high due to the brute force collecting methods introduced by NintendoAge, but I honestly don't know how much truth there is to that.

i've never heard of the "brute force" collecting method. what is it exactly?

[JSoup]

i've never heard of the "brute force" collecting method. what is it exactly?

As I understand it, instead of hunting down deals on games, you just up and buy most/half/all of your collection from a different collector for a price that far exceeds what the total should be. This in turn drives up the price for each individual item for the next guy. Rinse, repeat.

[jperryss]

What about a game that doesn't show up on eBay too often, but rarely sells for over $40 when it does. You'll see a couple sellers list that title with a BIN of like $200, which will sit for months.

Then, someone lists a BIN for $120 and a buyer snaps it up because it looks like a good deal "compared to the $200 everyone else is asking".

According to eBay the going price of that game has just tripled.

[PapaStu]

i've never heard of the "brute force" collecting method. what is it exactly?

You collect by force. Buying items without shopping or dealing. Basically you're tossing money at a collection just to 'get' the stuff.

Many collectors tend to brute the last few items missing from their sets because they want the hunt over, but when you start throwing all the monies around and you're in some cases hundreds of games off, you're just collecting by force at that point.

[Robocop2]

Our local game stores price their retro games almost completely on the highest BIN they can find. They won't even listen to a logical argument about actual completed auction prices.

I just had that happen yesterday. Found a smaller mom and pop that I thought I'd try out. Guy at the main location tells me they have a Jaguar with a cd attachment at his other store he'd sell for 200 as a set. I'm thinking I already have a jaguar and the CD attachment would be nice to have just since a lot of the homebrew is cd only and that I could sell the jag and make some of that back. I get over there and the jackass at the counter plays on the computer and says "300 for the set" because prices change all the time and he doesn't always keep track of that stuff...... I was reall too pissed off to fight it yesterday but I'm thinking about calling the owner tomorrow since he's the o e who told me they would sel it for that. Of course it's probably broken since so many of those are. It still the principle of the matter is what pisses me off.

[DeseoParadise]

The problem isn't Ebay, the problem is that there is a lot of people who collect games and every day there is less games.

[JSoup]

The problem isn't Ebay, the problem is that there is a lot of people who collect games and every day there is less games.

That's not implicitly a problem, though. Generally speaking, most hardcore collectors all have a price or are otherwise willing to sell/trade. The surplus may have a semi-solid number of every little thing, but there will always been a percentage of that surplus either in circulation or ready for circulation. Which is why we have the concept of brute force collecting, it keeps things eternally in some form of circulation, but jacks the prices up quickly.

[Tanooki]

There are a few on NA that do that 'brute force' purchasing, but it's a small minority. At least in respect to nabbing up a crap load of games at once with no regard to price. Usually on there you'll get people get a brute force pick up but where they've usually cut the seller fairly deep either with good negotiating tactics or luckily enough the other guy had no idea what they had(but anyone can do either.) There are a few annoying types I have seen, but it has been on solitary games, wanting to condition upgrade or get the best right out of the gate and damn the price, usually then in some cases to VGA the stuff to exponentially increase the value. Me I play stuff, affordable for me or not (off and on over the years) I refuse to go sealed. If I buy one I'll damn well open it and play it if it's something I want if the price is cheap, or if I'm tight I'll sell it and get a loose one and more with the funds.

ebay is in part to blame on topic though, but same can be said for craigslist too, kijiji and the rest. Enough thanks to amazon/ebay have been tipped off finding some games are worth a fortune, and they're too stupid/lazy to actually look deeper and think ALL games are worth their weight in gold and that makes it a problem for sure. I for one am patient. It could take me a week, month ,year...10years and I'll wait to get what I want as I'm not going to fall into the trap.

[Zing]

Ebay greatly increases supply, which inevitably lowers prices. However, the increased visibility and access to the global market allows greater demand, which raises prices.

The end result is probably relatively equal pricing, with or without Ebay.

It's difficult for me to say whether I would have a collection without Ebay. I certainly did not have what I would consider a "collection" before I started using Ebay. All of my games at that time were bought new at retail. I started buying games on Ebay in 2003. The last time I bought any used games from anywhere prior to that was a small, local video game shop, back when the PlayStation first hit. I can confidently say that without using Ebay, it would be virtually impossible for me to own many of the games I now own, although this is with the existence of Ebay. Maybe if online auction sites did not exist, there would be more abundance "in the wild", but I have a strong feeling that an Ebay-less world would simply have more games in the garbage, since people would not have an easy outlet for them!

[mailman187666]

I don't think ebay is really to blame or the cause of the high prices. Usually a re-seller will use ebay to determine what people are willing to pay across the country using the completed listings (or at least the more knowledgable sellers). Most of the sellers that use that method of pricing I would say are fair with pricing.

My opinion is that its these news articles about people selling thier collections for 1.2 mil or the stadium events news story from a year or two back. Those stories reach a wide variety of people who wouldn't normally have games on thier radar and would just think of them as obsolete electronics. Then you have all these auction shows like Storage Wars and such where video games are valued on national TV. Next thing you know the people who would normally sell thier collections for a steal of a price are looking up thier values and try to sell them for top dollar.

A year or two ago I could walk out of a flea market with boxes and bags full of games. Now I can't even get close to a table with games without hearing the seller going "this is the price because its extremely rare" or "on ebay blah blah blah". More people are collecting now than they were a year or two ago. I used to get a minimum of 1 good find a year, this year everything I've found has been ebay prices or higher with maybe a few exceptions.

[Griking]

i think they are- and a part of it has to do with expensive shipping costs, and the ebay / paypal monster with their blood sucking fees.

When guides value games by last known sales price- there is one thing we need to consider- Ebay encourages sellers to offer free shipping. Sellers don't eat the shipping costs, All they do is increase the asking price of the widget.
If the price of shipping is rolled into the SMB /Duck hunt cart plus the paypal and ebay fees - the final sales price become an abomination of epic proportions.


check out my video blog on the topic and let me know what you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85iGJN2qhoY

I think that its most definitely responsible for high gaming prices.

Every time you see a game up for sale on eBay for a large amount of money (like that Final Fantasy game in the past few weeks) there's going to be a hundred people who won't know why the asking price was so high and will therefore think that all Final Fantasy games are worth a ton. For most pawn and consignment shop owners and flea market vendors a games value is the highest price they've ever seen asked for it.

The way i look at it is ebay is doing nothing different then what physical auctions (estate, collector, or whatever).

Except that on eBay whenever there's a bidding war and someone grossly over pays for a game a million people probably hear of it rather than a room for of people. The craziness with the NES black box games a few months back for example.

[Double Ugly]

The internet in general is the cause of the increased value of video games with eBay being a large factor in it. Without the internet most collectors wouldn't know that Stadium Events is rare & without eBay most merchants wouldn't know it is rare. Wide spread information on video games is what has caused the prices to go up.

[Atarileaf]

It's difficult for me to say whether I would have a collection without Ebay.

Depends on how long ago you started collecting. My Atari collection in 1992 was easily much larger than it is now since EVERYONE was dumping Atari systems and carts for pennies. This isn't hyperbole, I've actually bought Atari games by the garbage bag full, just from yardsales. I'd start the morning with an empty bag and have it pretty much full at the end of the day and the nice thing it wasn't just common games, but some rarities. Of course rarity and its subsequent value didn't mean anything back then.

Man, those were the days, you'll NEVER see that again.

[Press_Start]

The internet in general is the cause of the increased value of video games with eBay being a large factor in it. Without the internet most collectors wouldn't know that Stadium Events is rare & without eBay most merchants wouldn't know it is rare. Wide spread information on video games is what has caused the prices to go up.

Don't forget celebrity appeal. Retro games wouldn't me what they are today without the AVGN and other online reviewers bringing a second spotlight in the age of YT. Heck, Guardian Legend ran BINs no hire than $3 until Mike Matei called the #1 forgotten NES title in his video (which I wholeheartedly agree and eerily similar to my own) and now we got Ebay listing asking for $15+.

[wingzrow]

This is filtering down to garage sales too. I was at one yesterday and a lady was asking $80.00 for 10 junky launch titles + mario 3. We're talking jeorardy and anticipation grade games here.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I don't have any strong opinion on console/portable game software, but I can say for certain that outrageously priced (Buy It Now) listings for Nintendo Game & Watch units have had an affect on the perceived value of those games by the collecting community.

What's unfortunate is that as those BIN listings sit there $100-$200 above what reasonable asking prices SHOULD be, unsold for YEARS in "eBay stores" they unwittingly become "reference" prices for new BINs and auction starting values/reserves for people not willing or smart enough to check history on completed auction values.

[Nature Boy]

eBay is just that guy at the mall (or flea market) who charges way more than what we consider true value to be.

The fact that some people buy from those guys doesn't drive prices up any more than someone buying a hammer from Home Depot (which I find to be expensive) instead of Canadian Tire (just a random example of somewhere I know I can get a better price) drives up the prices of hammers.

Some people are willing to pay more for their hammer at Home Depot, and some people are willing to pay more on eBay. The reasons for that are another story!