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An offshoot of @-4ZURE- ‘s Nintendo Fandom thread. One topic that comes up occasionally in that thread is the collectors market. That thread is limited to Nintendo, this one will be about video game collectors more broadly.
On the surface, video game collectors are harmless and perfectly understandable, but when you scratch the surface it can get frustrating, or funny, as collectors and scalpers cause a feedback loop that drives the price of games through the roof and into space.
Retro collectors
Guys in their mid thirties to late forties who use their money to re-buy their childhood game collections and a few games they remember reading about in magazines or playing at a friends house.
Before games came on CDs, it was common to throw away the box (it was just packaging after all) and the manual would usually get lost or damaged, it being a cheap paper booklet in the hands of a child that had no interest in preservation. Over time, inflation, dying hardware, and no new supply meant that steady price rises were to be expected. Especially for mint condition, complete in box games.
Even after CDs, finding games in good condition can be tricky. Boxes that seem to have been used as dart boards, manuals that have been hotboxed and used as a dog's chew toy, and discs so scratched I have to believe they were used as sandpaper. Dreamcast cases were notoriously flimsy and would break in the hands of careful owners. This means that, whether you want a display item or something you can actually play, you’re not likely to find it at the local cash converters.
Where it becomes a problem is when a combination of YouTube hype and scalpers get involved, promoting bad games as classics simply because they’re rare and expensive, making them status symbols, must have products demanding outrageous prices on ebay. I remember the Sega Mega Drive. I don’t think MUSHA was ever mentioned back then.
I suspect it’s not worth the hype, because the “rare classic games” I do own aren’t up to the hype. I own Gotcha Force, I bought it back in the day. I remember it as a middling Pokemon clone where you circle strafe each other to death. Certainly not the crown jewel of the GameCube by any stretch, but it’s rare, so it fetches triple digit prices on ebay, so collectors on YouTube claim it’s one of the best games on the system.
This likely contributes to the strange feeling I see echoed across the internet that these retro collectors don’t play games. They treat them as investments or as displays of wealth, as if they enjoy finding these games rather than actually playing or appreciating them.
Modern Collectors
Digital distribution is a great idea in theory. All the problems that come with physical distribution are gone, while being more convenient for the end user. In practice physical media has a place, especially for those serious about the hobby. Digital services can censor games or pull them from the store completely, that’s assuming the service doesn’t shut down entirely. This is rarely a problem on PC since they’re open and thus games can be archived. This is much harder with consoles.
So physical versions are here to stay. Assuming you buy them within weeks or months of launch day.
“Limited print run” is one way to describe it. “Artificial scarcity” is another. I held off buying Senran Kagura 2 at the time of release, weeks later it had gone from budget price to full price. These days, the price is outrageous.
Iirc the game's RRP was £19.99
In this age of “print on demand” products, where smaller and smaller print runs can be cost effective, why not do a second print run and cash in on the demand? I don’t know. I assume they make more money from scalpers somehow, but I struggle to think of a plausible way of doing that. Perhaps the goal is to create a day one rush and thus give the impression the product is popular, or they want to drive physical copy hold outs to digital where devs get a larger percentage.
The question I have is, who’s buying these? The motive for the scalpers is obvious. Retro collectors don’t want to go down the road of emulation for one reason or another. But weebs or those into niche oddities are tech savvy enough to pirate, buy digital, or even import.
Hardware
I can’t really say much about hardware since covid and me living in the UK might contribute to this more than the collectors or manufacturers. From flash drive carts to high end third party controllers for retro consoles, it seems hardware is announced, official pages will list it as “in stock”, but UK vendors go out of stock indefinitely shortly after release.
On the surface, video game collectors are harmless and perfectly understandable, but when you scratch the surface it can get frustrating, or funny, as collectors and scalpers cause a feedback loop that drives the price of games through the roof and into space.
Retro collectors
Guys in their mid thirties to late forties who use their money to re-buy their childhood game collections and a few games they remember reading about in magazines or playing at a friends house.
Before games came on CDs, it was common to throw away the box (it was just packaging after all) and the manual would usually get lost or damaged, it being a cheap paper booklet in the hands of a child that had no interest in preservation. Over time, inflation, dying hardware, and no new supply meant that steady price rises were to be expected. Especially for mint condition, complete in box games.
Even after CDs, finding games in good condition can be tricky. Boxes that seem to have been used as dart boards, manuals that have been hotboxed and used as a dog's chew toy, and discs so scratched I have to believe they were used as sandpaper. Dreamcast cases were notoriously flimsy and would break in the hands of careful owners. This means that, whether you want a display item or something you can actually play, you’re not likely to find it at the local cash converters.
Where it becomes a problem is when a combination of YouTube hype and scalpers get involved, promoting bad games as classics simply because they’re rare and expensive, making them status symbols, must have products demanding outrageous prices on ebay. I remember the Sega Mega Drive. I don’t think MUSHA was ever mentioned back then.
I suspect it’s not worth the hype, because the “rare classic games” I do own aren’t up to the hype. I own Gotcha Force, I bought it back in the day. I remember it as a middling Pokemon clone where you circle strafe each other to death. Certainly not the crown jewel of the GameCube by any stretch, but it’s rare, so it fetches triple digit prices on ebay, so collectors on YouTube claim it’s one of the best games on the system.
This likely contributes to the strange feeling I see echoed across the internet that these retro collectors don’t play games. They treat them as investments or as displays of wealth, as if they enjoy finding these games rather than actually playing or appreciating them.
Modern Collectors
Digital distribution is a great idea in theory. All the problems that come with physical distribution are gone, while being more convenient for the end user. In practice physical media has a place, especially for those serious about the hobby. Digital services can censor games or pull them from the store completely, that’s assuming the service doesn’t shut down entirely. This is rarely a problem on PC since they’re open and thus games can be archived. This is much harder with consoles.
So physical versions are here to stay. Assuming you buy them within weeks or months of launch day.
“Limited print run” is one way to describe it. “Artificial scarcity” is another. I held off buying Senran Kagura 2 at the time of release, weeks later it had gone from budget price to full price. These days, the price is outrageous.
Iirc the game's RRP was £19.99
In this age of “print on demand” products, where smaller and smaller print runs can be cost effective, why not do a second print run and cash in on the demand? I don’t know. I assume they make more money from scalpers somehow, but I struggle to think of a plausible way of doing that. Perhaps the goal is to create a day one rush and thus give the impression the product is popular, or they want to drive physical copy hold outs to digital where devs get a larger percentage.
The question I have is, who’s buying these? The motive for the scalpers is obvious. Retro collectors don’t want to go down the road of emulation for one reason or another. But weebs or those into niche oddities are tech savvy enough to pirate, buy digital, or even import.
Hardware
I can’t really say much about hardware since covid and me living in the UK might contribute to this more than the collectors or manufacturers. From flash drive carts to high end third party controllers for retro consoles, it seems hardware is announced, official pages will list it as “in stock”, but UK vendors go out of stock indefinitely shortly after release.
