But how many gamers really care about the history of games enough to go through the work of tracking down the original console and games? How willing are they going to be to do the work and spend the money to do so if the games are easily downloaded for low cost in near perfect versions? I'm sorry, but I know a lot of video game collectors nowadays who are open to buying digital copies because of money and more importantly space. Not everyone cares about physically inserting a cartridge or looking at a box or label.Originally Posted by Buyatari
My nephew actually watches more TV than anything else and he plays a lot of sports and builds legos and plays with lots of different action figures and other toys, just like a lot of kids. Video games are important and lots of kids play them, but it's not even close to the level it was when I was a kid when there was no such thing as hundreds of channels, DVDs, streaming media, the Internet and dozens of other things for even very young kids to do. Heck, most parents I know are steering their kids into other activities nowadays and frankly I know more parents that regularly play video games than their kids.
On the Beatles stuff, I'm not seeing the relevance. The Butcher Cover was not a mass produced item that was widely available. It's value is derived almost exclusively from its rarity and how out of character it seemed with the previous images of the band and what mainstream artists were putting on picture covers in that era. Similarly, the vast majority of even first pressing Beatles albums are not crazy valuable simply because so many were pressed and the music can still be purchased in a form identical to or in some cases better than it's original release format for a fraction of what it cost new. It doesn't change the fact that people aren't exactly flocking to the vinyl collecting hobby nor are masses of new Beatles collectors coming on the scene. I would also note that when I was collecting Beatles stuff and vinyl, the Butcher Cover was always in the thousands of dollars for a nice copy. It's not like these values suddenly exploded and they have certainly seen ups and downs in the past 20 years. I also have significant doubts that shrink wrap is going to last for decades, especially since most collectors don't have anything nearing a stable climate controlled environment in which to store their sealed items.
Like I said, I have no doubt that over time there will be some truly rare and valuable video games, but if you're considering this momentary spike in the value of a very small set of NES games mostly resulting from a handful of collectors with more money than sense to be the start of continuing growth in pricing, I am positive you are going to be very disappointed in a few years.
Reply With Quote