It is indeed a pocket size book, which I wasn’t expecting either lol.
That said, it kind of fits the content - as much stuff as possible packed into a tiny space!
I’m glad I’ve got most of the retro games I’ve been after. Some of these prices are nuts. Koi delta which I bought last year for 60 is seeking between 100-200
There are games I regret selling a few years ago due to a lack of funds which have practically doubled in price, crazy.
Skies of Arcadia Legends on GameCube is one of them.
Luckily I can buy back Shenmue 1 and 2 on Dreamcast pretty cheap though, after the rereleases they dropped in value. Basically halved in price based on when I picked them up in 2012 (I was late to both), and that’s not accounting for inflation since then.
Wait since when was this…maybe this is why a bunch of super Famicom games I ordered didn’t come. 
When all the passenger flights got cancelled back in April, SAL stopped existing and EMS had a massive backlog to the point that they stopped accepting packages to many countries. Cause airmail rides on passenger flights.
Even shipping via boat is slow now because there is less capacity to ship things in a time of increased demand.
Yeah the wide restriction happened April 2
My copy of shining force CD jumped up to like 250 USD, my cib of ff2 ntsc went from 80 to over 100.
Here in the states a lot of people received and are still receiving quite a bit of money on unemployment due to corona, so my guess is an influx of disposable income coupled by not having anything to spend it on after Bill’s, besides online shopping greatly contributed to the spike in prices.
Is it just me or is the Mega Drive one of the few reasonably priced consoles on eBay nowadays? Why is it that console in particular?
Wow - y’all are right. The overall average item cost charts at Price Charting show sharp upticks on most classic platforms. My collection tracker (Game Value Now) shows a 25 percent increase in my collection value since I last check it around March or early April. Holy smokes.
me everytime I look at a saturn game on eBay.
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Shit is painful. Like as is I’m normally mad at myself for passing up on getting things I could have when I didn’t want to “overpay” years ago but now it’s on a whole new level. Turns out all the games I have left that I want are now several hundred more than last time I looked.
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Eh… my philosophy is to never regret the things you didn’t buy. As limited as these items may seem, your money is always more limited in relation to its potential, no matter how much you have.
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If it was an active choice that I no longer wanted then I have no regrets about that. I’m not mad at not getting something that turned out to be worth more now. It’s stuff that I still want that I put off so the regret comes from indecision/lack of follow through. As in I regret my lack of commitment, not the current lack of whatever item it is I want.
Very tiny problems either way.
Depending on the game, I’ve seen some prices start to revert back to a couple months ago. Turbografx-16 console prices started to revert and was able to get one at a reasonable price. Shining Force II I was watching started to dip back to where it was and a couple others.
Not sure if it’s driven by the stimulus checks, people working from home or a combination of multiple things but I would be cautious paying much more than what items were in February/March.
Maybe some of the increase will stick but I would think it has to revert longer term, too much stuff went up like 30%+ in a month or two which can’t be sustainable.
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Definitely agree with the sentiment but still is a weird feeling purposefully holding off on games thinking they can’t go much higher or they’ll hover and then check the prices now and it’s a $300 game or something.
I wind up holding off anyhow since I can’t justify paying that much for one game but yeah.
Not COVID related but I have noticed a lot of late PAL/EUR third party 3DS games have risen massively in value over the last three years now that stock has generally dried up.
To cite one example, I bought Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker for £30 new in 2017, and it now regularly goes for almost three times that. The same goes for many other titles, even games like 7th Dragon III and Hatsune Miku Project Mirai DX now go for around £50 when they were regularly on sale for £20 four to five years ago.
The Atlus titles that Deep Silver published here in Europe seem to have received single print runs - stuff like Etrian Odyssey V, Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse, Radiant Historia and SMT: Strange Journey Redux all consistently go for crazy money now.
3DS may well be an interesting system to watch, the game cards have real value (very, very few games had any patches at all or online features) and the scarcity of the rarer games themselves was often down to true market condition over Whale-hunting Limited Run manufacturing.
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Good observations. I’m not into 3DS collecting (only have like three games for the thing) but my recent acquisition of two DSi XLs has me finally doing some research and planning for collecting DS games. Been wanting to start it for a while.
And… yikes. Some high prices already. You’re right about these systems. Unique hardware, durable media, not many (if any) patches. And deep libraries. I’ve noticed that what might be considered “hidden gems” are not really hidden, though. Anything that might have been slightly overlooked a few years ago now appears to be pretty “visible” to the collector market. At least, judging by eBay sales. I’m not looking to buy loose carts, btw, only complete.
I think the fact of unique hardware is obviously such a big thing for these two platforms - while emulation on a Switch (or successor) could be a great solution, there isn’t a really (personally, I suppose) satisfactory way to play close to the entire libraries w/o a vertical screen + bottom touch.
Probably a good idea to grab DS/DSi/DSi XLs and New 3DS/2DS consoles now?? Got my eyes on those refurb New 2DS systems in (GameCube??) Purple…
Agreed, for sure. I have three DS’s now … and I’m not really one of those types of people that have multiple of hardware. I do have one of each type of Game Boy, but the DS’s are pretty much identical in function. I have a N3DS. I’m thinking a N2DSXL is going to be in my possession before too long. Those will be a great machine for playing both generations of libraries.
Just a side note about DS games - I’ve noticed the selection at my local retro store is very small. Akin to NES and SNES games. What’s there is all the kid and casual junk (akin to the sports games in the small stacks of SNES and Genesis carts). Very anecdotal of course, but it tells me that this market has likely largely moved online and to eBay, just like NES, SNES and other older consoles. Meanwhile PS2 and Xbox games (similar time period) are abundant. And the DS was a monster seller. So the online seller factor looms large here, I think.
PAL Raw Danger on PS2 is an interesting case. It never got a UK release but there used to be tons of copies available from Italy/France/Spain where the game is in English. It used to go for about £15-30 even sealed but I never found one where the price and shipping matched few years ago. Was reminded about the game when Disaster Report 4 got released (like many others I guess) and was shocked to see how the prices had gone up and the supply had dried. Right now there’s not a single copy available on Ebay and one copy that wasn’t even sealed sold for £112 on an auction.
I managed to snag a new listing with £55 BIN and hated myself, loved the first game and I’m looking forward to playing the sequel soon despite the price.