The Retro Video Game Market Has Officially CRASHED 

Statistically improbable

Kool thanks buddy

How much is an original Version 1 Nintendo entertainment system worth ? 🤔 Box is a bit shabby tho but it's all there.. with Mario Bros

The whole thing has been a circus. I started noticing a crash in the stuff I wanted over the last few of months and started buying the stuff I wanted to complete my collection and to store for preservation purposes.

Ok

Isn't this just sealed games though? So it had no effect on actual gamers anyway. The only people it ever concerned were the ones who wanted to buy and sell games cocooned in plastic, as statements of wealth and nothing else. Sealed Mario 64 selling for millions didn't raise the price of unsealed/loose copies for normal people who just wanted to collect N64 games to play.

​@@rootySome people just like collecting

​@@rootynah he's talking about the collectors of these sealed games that never plan to sell not the average gamer

⁠​⁠@@rootyThere are countless people who collect sealed games because they love them as a hobby. The problem is outside investors, who often never even played games, artificially inflate the hobby to ludicrous prices and hurt those who actually love the product. Nowadays it’s probably harder to find a collectors market that hasn’t been damaged by unrelated prospective investors.

It did raise the price of games! Majoras mask was and is being sold for absurd prices were before it was maybe a 10$ game!

Insert: Shocked Pikachu

I feel like the real reason is how easy it is to play retro games. Yeah, I know, emulators and ROMs have always made it easy to play retro games if you really wanted to, but using emulators always required a certain amount of specialized knowledge and with ROMs you had to worry about not getting the version of the game you wanted. With GOG and the retro library offered by Nintendo, as well as services like Gamepass offering retro titles, it's now easier than ever for the average person who just wants to play Ninja Gaiden to just play it at a small cost. Plus, we've seen people like Pat The NES Punk who basically have every retro game that they want. So, like, the hardcore collectors already have all the retro games they actually want, and new collectors either can't get those games or don't even want those games. So, there's a bunch of factors involved, but I think the biggest is that retro games were cool for quite a while, and now they're just not as cool anymore. The retro game scene is kinda dead, and with it went the market for those games.

​@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917This isn't about playing retro games though, it's about collecting

@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917 I wouldn't say that retro games are dead, not in the slightest. It's that the games are expensive to purchase due to not being in production anymore, and that it's easier to just emulate the games compared to forking over hundreds of dollars for the console and games you want.

​@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917 I'm sure there are a lot of factors that go into standard retail pricing, but we're specifically talking about the manufactures speculator bubble that peeked in 2021 and crashed due to successful cash outs. 2023 was not the first year that retro games were available via emulator to the consumer market, nor are they the focus of this piece or my comment.

Comics too

Always that same, small group of highly protected people above criticism, who ruin things, print money, start wars, destroy markets like this for profit.

They TRY to. I doubt they make enough actual money to justify the effort. Maybe a few rich idiots get scammed for plenty of money.. if so, who cares? That's what rich idiots are FOR.

I tell my friends everyday that keep buying sports and Pokémon cards daily that the more you buy the more the cards become less and less rare the value of the cards go down. Unless you’ve got first edition Pokémon cards or a one of one “Patrick Mahomes” rookie card you’re just making the card companies rich. Your cards are worthless if everyone has it who’s gonna buy it?

Even if you were collecting for the purpose of simply collecting, if a bubble pops up, sell your stock. Wait a year or 2 then you can buy 10x as much to collect once the price goes back to normal. Since your doing it for the purpose of more collecting, not cashing out. it's still genuine.

Which was doubly hilarious because all those comic book speculators just came over after the baseball card speculator market collapsed. But no, it's gonna be VHS now! It'll work out THIS time!

Pepperidge Farm remembers. I knew a family that were both comic collectors and flippers during this, and they lost their shirts. I remember stuff like Death of Superman being overproduced as "collectors editions" that are now worthless because that's how pricing and rarity work.

Yes but the difference being no more retro games are being produced. There are TONS of counterfeit games messing with numbers. And nobody was buying video games for investment 30+ years ago. Funny times changed

​@roughcutretrospect7235 uhh...there are no more comics being reproduced with a 1990s date. Or whenever. Todd McFarlane will never produce another Spider-Man #1 circa 1990. Nor will he produce another Spawn #1 after having just left Marvel. Sure, new comics are being produced, in ridiculous numbers. However, as the years go by,, there are less and less mint copies of any given comic book. There was definitely a bubble, but there are still a ton of comics from that time frame that worth a decent amount of money. I paid a couple months of rent after selling my collection of Spawn.

@@taoofjester4113 spawn is awesome. I have. Massive spawn comic collection. Wait until the movie. The later issues are hard to find. I am trying to get 303-309 variants they are tough. These are barely 4 years old.

Thanks for having integrity!!!

heyyyyy do you happen to have a copy of einhander for the ps1

I wonder if anyone has lost money for real on those 100K+ sells... From what I understand, it is the same group of people who grade, auction and sell those. In the end, I don't think they exchanged money at all. The only person who made money was the salary of the accountant who put the "loss" in a tax write-off when they sold it to a real "prey" 2 years later.

I never bought the graded games because I actually want to play my games and look at the manuals, posters, etc.

What das graded/ grading mean im this context?

based

quite a small loan, indeed!

Don’t forget tax

W

I like the use of the word burrowed. Makes the story extra sinister :D

You don't seem to understand how much disposable income the wealthy have. Like they spend that much on a weekend trip, it's not that unbelievable honestly

If that's the case then this is a very serious case of fraud. I don't think it is personally a case of insiders moving stuff around. A lot of rich people are actually quit dumb and tend to jump into these sorts of markets without really knowing what they are getting themselves into.

There could be insiders, however a lot of investors in stuff like high end art, will have the auction house store their investments until they want to sell. I haven’t seen anyone talk about this. People could simply be buying a video game and having the auction house store them for future sale. It happens all the time. Hell, if I were buying strictly to make money, I wouldn’t care if I had the videogame in my physical possession. As long as I knew where it was, and the money/security was good, I’d say keep it in one of their vaults. It’s sort of the same idea with putting money in a bank or investing in bonds. Do I need/want all my money physically in my house? Do I need the bond certificate papers in my house? No, I put them all safely in a vault like a bank.

@@midniteee it is that though... i'm pretty convinced too... in fact, back when the huge sales were happening i didn't think almost any REAL people were involved i any of those purchases... it's the auction houses inventing a market... the prices were way too outrageous for actual people to be involved, no matter how rich... no one could convince you that a loaf of bread is worth 300k, no matter how sentimental or nostalgic or whatever traits it may possess

@@notimportant3686 Fair enough. Outside of this video and my own personal N64 and Gameboy collection, I have very little knowledge of the market in all fairness. I expect some people could be in some serious trouble though. I understand your analogy with the bread but I don't feel it's a great one tbh, bread is a consumable product and is widely manufactured and available for public consumption worldwide and thus it's value is driven by the cost of ingredients and the demand for it. Physical video games and physical media in general which are no longer produced, are generally only manufactured for a select period of time and thus the price is driven by the condition of the product, it's availability and resale value. In simple terms the price of collectable video game is driven purely by the number of people actively trading the item, unlike a video game in active production which has a consistent price driven by manufacturing cost and retail expectation. With all that in mind it's perfectly believable and very likely that there are numerous legitimate buyers who have lost money, and if what you say is correct, then it a case of fraud by market manipulation.

Yes, they're still crazy. They're just not a quarter to half a million crazy.

I was actually thinking they felt somewhat reasonable if one trusts the wata grading? At this point plenty of kids who grew up playing these games have become successful adults and a low to kid 5-figure price tag doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable for a collector wanting the ideal copy of their childhood favorite game, especially when you compare it with other collecting hobbies. It would be interesting to see an analysis of what’s gone on with pricing at the other end of the market with games that are opened and in halfway decent shape since that’s what most retro game fans are more reasonably going to be buying so they can play a classic game on original hw.

i suspect money laundering@@MikeGaruccio

@@MikeGaruccio i don't know. i think realistically the only items that will have value are those that are one of a kind or almost one of a kind. the first editions that weren't widely available yet are in perfect condition. i can see those always having some value. but when you're talking about a widely sold video game that just happens to be unopened and in perfect condition maybe you're only talking about several thousand at the most and not something that is actually going to hold the value of a house.

@@tomwest5107 exactly. If it's a rare misprint or a limited edition or something like that, I could see the value. But a normal mass-produced copy should _not_ be going for thousands of dollars, even if it's sealed and in good condition.

I saw the prices a long time ago and just decided to emulate

We've become a society of "pickers". Everybody hustling to get every last cent out of everything. I think it's because of the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots. People feel like they can't afford to let go of ANYTHING, and society treats them like they are stupid if they do.

I live near a local big game swapmeet type place, a collectors paradise basically. A few years ago I was DETERMINED to get Cubivore for the Game Cube it was a childhood want and I finally had a real job. Went with $200 expecting to get it as i'd seen it a year before for like $180. I find the booth selling it and It's marked up to $260... I tried haggling to buy the copy , I was even willing to go to $220 but no dice. I went on Amazin that night and bought a complete copy for $180. All I could think though was how many people enter that store with $200 +ready to get that specific game and because the internet said they could get $40 more they just let me walk?

The game resale shop in my city typically wants about US$20-$40 for loose carts, depending on the rarity/popularity of the game. Something like the Zelda golden cart might go for a hundo or more though. They even have consoles on standby, so you can test the carts out before you buy them. Prices are a little up there, but nothing like the ridiculousness you find on Ebay etc.

​@@bpdmf2798Can't blame you!

I can believe that. I think it's not even too uncommon for anyone selling a console on a smaller auction site to be a bit deluded about how much a poor condition sold-as-seen console with a couple of games is valued at. For second hand shops and charity shops pricing can be all over the place with whoever has the final say on setting a price having no interest in videogames but Total Confidence they know what they're doing.

common Karl Jobst W

It must be sooo satisfying for Karl to post this. I'm still looking for the guy commenting that mario 64 is totally worth $1.5 million. Can't find one yet lol

Love it

Seems more 12 minutes of Karl reading a very big number than a second number that is still big, but not as big. Followed by I told you so, :p

​@@magicball3201"still big but not as big" my boy, a loss of $300,000 is a fucking significant loss. The bubble has popped and it's a good thing for everyone who likes collecting for the sake of collecting instead of profit.

Guess I missed the boat for selling my sealed Conkers Bad Fur Day

Somewhere I have a graded box of a common CCG card that I found at a thrift store. I think it was from Yugi-Oh, but it doesn't matter. The grading process probably cost ten times what the card is worth.

Right? Literally the dumbest speculative bubble I've ever seen. I have most of these sitting on my shelf, and not because I'm some collector; I just never got rid of them. Super Mario 64 and Sonic the Hedgehog are my favorite examples... literally came with the console! 😂

@@gordon7478 these are unopened games though. a popular unopened game is worth more than a game no one cares about and is unopened

@@gordon7478 loose copies and graded sealed copies are entirely different products on the market. your copies are worth between 7-35$ a piece, most typically around $12-15, depending on the specific title.

Same. I just recently sold a majority of my childhood games and systems (SNES and GameBoy stuff mostly) and made out with a cool $300. I think that was pretty ridiculous. Because I sold that stuff online, I even let people barter. AND I still made out with an insane profit. Pretty good considering most of it was hand me downs and old garage sale finds. I just don't have the space anymore to have old stuff laying around :P

I also sold my entire retro collection as i saw a collapse coming and i can easily emulate all the games.

You dont collect anymore? You must have reached a point in your life where you feel you have a bit more control over life stuff

Aren't all predatory markets like this are a huge scam anyway? There's huge red flags based on the grading system alone.

​@@GaiaX5amazing indeed.

@@GaiaX5 yeah. Karl is a legend but it was hardly prediction of the century. It was a bubble and often happens even if a system isn't rigged. A lot of the people who bought in were fully aware it was a bubble that could collapse.

Trust me this won’t age well. Also this is a very biest video. The market is not down 97%. It’s down the same way every collectible market is down.

​copium

The crazy part is, he's saying it's crashed, but these games are still worth thousands.. I suddenly have $ in my eyes bevause I have loads of games like this in my cupboard that I've held onto since the 90s

They haven’t fully corrected until these games that sold in the millions are rightfully back at a 2nd hand shop for dollars. Maybe the decent condition ones as much as they sold in the 90s. It’s got more crashing to go yet.

@@TaystesouthAre they in 9.6 A++ Super Giga Mega Mint Condition, vacuum-sealed and never seen by human eyes?

That's typically how these bubbles pop. Comics, AAA gaming & hollywood are all lined up for possible crashes of their own.

​@@Taystesouth but it's not the value he previously showed. Imagine you bought one of these at $150,000 and now you can only sell it for $5,000. You wouldn't see this as a win.

I think jury is out on who profited. Need more info to make that determination for sure. Also maybe money was made on numerous smaller trades due to the bubble created.

I believe the fraudsters were successful, it was the buyers that got rugged.

@@HelloYersoGae And they bought the games at these ridiculously inflated prices because....?

@@FTreba they very likely wanted to sell them for an even higher price to profit off of the purchase.

@@ErikLosLobos The Jury isn't out, they retired laughing and are living on a beach in Fiji. It's just like casinos... the House ALWAYS wins i.e. WATA benefitted from their vastly inflated 2% 'Liability' fee (for the cost of 'grading' the game based on it's 'value') and the Auction House from their cut of every game sold 'over-value'.

Even 3 figures is hard to accept

I'm a hardcore gamer. Both old school and modern. But I ain't spending no 2 figure on a game that I already got. An even if I didn't get could get it good condition one for under $50 dollars.

​@@videostash413I mean with inflation 100$ isn't off the table.

People that just want to play the game are switching to emulation due to the prices. Collectors are waiting it out because they're aware of the bubble. So the only people buying those overpriced games are rich people trying to make a profit. I just hope that supply and demand takes care of the situation and stabilises the prices once all the rich people leave.

We're not talking about playing games. You would be insane to open and play a collector game. Emulators and flashcart have been around for decades, you never need to buy a retro game to play it. Not to mention 99.999% of retro game aged very badly but we are nostalgic of them.

wdym at least? this is 100% fully a good thing

⁠@@yoshikiddoodoofartbecause it doesn’t necessarily mean that open used game prices are going to drop

I can guarantee you if you walk into any video game store in Akihabara you will likely find any retro game in any language your heart desires. It might be a little expensive but it's nowhere as ridiculous as the prices in the western world.

Ive got tons of old games. NES PS1 etc. I will never sell them. Unless you're willing to give me your soul. 😅

@@JEWCIFERSHEKELSTEALER I'm more of a trades person. I got Jet Force Gemini, or Parasite Eve; cash I can get anywhere but good SNES games I can't always. I do tradesies and get what I want, works out well most of the time.

They’re still just as common, that was the thing, which is why this was such a scam

I have all the genesis Sonic games

While I agree at the premise, very few were untouched and unopened like most games that are highly collectible. A lot of the sealed stuff you can easily get is often games that didn't become popular.

​@64jcl Exactly. Every kid had sonic, but how many kids kept a sealed mint copy of sonic for the last 30 years? Not many.

@@BigPeter93 Imagine going back in time and telling yourself don't go to college. Just don't open your games. Would probably still be a tough sell for kid self.

PS2 and Dreamcasts are over 100 bucks now .. consoles are as high as they ever been

@LOSSmanJack I'm not sure where you are looking but my local shop has PS2 Consoles for $60 and its still cheaper then when they originally came out. The PS2 was $300 when it launched and the Dreamcast was $200. Yes there will be a rare game because of low print like cannon spike but even Bangai-o is now a $150 when it was $300 2 years ago and $200 back in January. It's getting better, just gotta be patient I suppose

Emulation

And now if you're back in a good spot, it'll be easier to get it back. Hooray!

@@Walkeranz That's been mine, but they only work well for older systems. Say a PS2, the emulator is hit or miss (or for Gamecube, Dolphin couldn't run Cel Damage, thankfully I found another work around)

@@Ange1ofD4rkness In case you haven't tried it; The nightly PCSX2 is significantly improved in compatibility, accuracy, artifacting, and performance. You may still have to use a few manual fixes found on the PCSX2 wiki, but we're at the point now that a majority of the problem titles (i.e. Samurai Legend Musashi, R&C, Valkyrie Profile 2) are fully playable.

Sea Shanty 2 (: @@Walkeranz

@@LeonSKennedy7777 yes

​@@LeonSKennedy7777hell yeah, I don't care about people trying to make money. I want to PLAY these games. I'm definitely getting games while they're low.

The Ebay market for regular games, not WATA graded, is pretty much the same price as always. Lowered a bit this year but not much. I'd anticipate it will rise with new analogue consoles coming to market like Duo and 3D.

@@bustywaifus dude you do not realise just how much you ruined my day by telling us Analogue are coming out with new pieces of FPGAss.

I wouldn’t say games are low price right now. If anything they’re just lower than they were a year or two ago… I would wait longer

I still remember getting an SNES console with about 8 games, plus two Lethal Enforcer zappers for $5

​@@dasmop5058 A little over a decade ago, I could walk into my local flea market with a $50 bill and walk out with like four or five NES games. I'd give both of my legs and a kidney for it to be like that again.

Can still happen if you get lucky. Not all owners of retro consoles and games realizes they can make more money online.

I know, kupo! Now it's less of a hit to our wallets, kupo!

Not really. Gamers didn't care about this made-up grading of sealed games, they simply put the value on the game itself, and whether it was open or not. As a result, anyone simply wanting to complete a normal collection of open games could still do so for much less, but it still inflated some of the prices double or so. This new market was manufactured by places like Heritage to sell the old, new overstock they obtained for ten to hundred times the value. As a free market person, I'm fine with any transactions, as long as there's completely informed consent with no deception or fraud involved. This however screams of fraud and deceit, and sadly any punishment that comes along will likely be painless fines or settlements for them.

Not really. Gamers play pirated roms.

@@3rdHalf1 I mean that's true, kupo. And I'm guilty of that too, kupo.

another generalized assumption @@3rdHalf1

Totally possible. We already know the investors, the graders, and the auction house were all in bed with each other colluding for high prices. Whether any money exchanged hands at all.. that really would be interesting.

I thought the same thing. People probably didn't lose nearly as much money as Karl calculated, if at all.

I mean it's also very possible a lot of these were listed at an absurd price and never sold and just sat there as a listing inspiring others to match the price and it kept going for years

@@Cheezus The video states that those were the sale prices. Not the listing prices.

That's almost the entire art market in a nutshell.

shit like this should be forbidden.

@@daben7145it is

They made a fortune though, from greedy people paying the grading service hoping their games hit that million $ price.

@@daben7145 Or you could just do your own due diligence as an investor. Suckers will find a way to lose their money no matter what silly regulations you try to put in place.

They still lose money cuz they now need to adjust the price on their books.

Yeah, fuck ‘em, market speculators ruin everything.

​@@yellowblanka6058well actually dude market speculators are already trying to come up with new ways to make money off of anything especially our favorite nostalgic Hobby's. 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅 especially scalpers and scammer's.

Agreed

Yeah F em leave them with their overpriced mint copy and either refurbish for collection or get some emulation in your life to play the rarer games, collecting mint retro games should be way cheaper, only the rich can afford these prices, 6 figures or even 4 figures for a mass produced n64 game that was worth £23.93 now worth £45.90 in materials (the most expensive) when adjusted for inflation is still insane and seems like an unfair false rarity monopoly 💯

The speculative investors are mostly victims too. The entire bubble was questionable, unethical, and likely illegal. The scammers who built the bubble are the ones who should suffer. Unfortunately they will mostly getaway rich and untouched. Gamers got screwed. Investors got screwed. The game graders and auction houses made a fortune.

Based. We need to drive those assholes off our hobbies.

Karl is speedrunning justice

Speedruns, problematic organizations AND Silly Bitchell! 😁

"problematic". Way to out yourself leftists.

He already is... He is a legend.

Wish he'd do more ridiculous PUA videos

That's just life nobody cares until money is on the table even when it directly isn't 💯

At least cards were intended to be collected and speculative. By their very nature, scarcity was introduced into the supply which in turn created value. Games were never really made with scarcity in mind. If a game is scarce these days it means it was either a massive failure or a random marketing ploy (clay fighters). Games were also meant to be played an enjoyed. This can be accomplished with console mods or emulation with no need for discs or cartridges at all.

@@ChaChaGames19 nicely put 👌🏾 I agree with those exact sentiments, emulation and console mods are the way forward plus it gives more opportunity for homebrews and interesting game hacks 🤔

When you said card collecting, I thought you meant hockey, baseball, and Marvel cards from the late 80s and early 90s. *cries and turns to dust*

Tell them to kiss your ass!

Might be something 10-30 years from now. But the storage space and patience 😮

I'll be happy when it ripples down to the casual market. Unfortunately most retro games went from like $4-$5 average to like $14-15 now. Which is kinda prohibitive to ppl trying to collect on a budget.

I love retro games and I don't care, why? Because ROMs baby ROMs

My dad will be

​@@YoBGSi want to ask something to you, it's about a friend with a family that is a family of gamers but they also sell retro consoles in another country, nothing bad, just making a living at a swap meet, is there anyway I can contact you personally about something, like if what he is doing is wrong

ROMs are awesome for experiencing games on consoles you either can’t afford or don’t own , but if possible physically playing on like a Nintendo DS is incomparable compared to emulation on PC

The latter. Most of it was people selling to themselves, or to very closely linked parties.

Absolute fakes and now selling at a loss to avoid paying taxes is also 100% true.

Gotta open a sealed packaging factory. Then, ship those sealed packages using sealed packaging packaging. Infinite money.

​@@bruhbruh-us6glWe need to make sure the sealed packaging is authentic, so we need to start grading it.

If you use vacuum storage bags you can get more money into each sealed package

@@bruhbruh-us6gl How will we ever deliver a single of those sealed packages if those sealed packaging packaging also need to be shipped using sealed packaging packaging packaging? The price of a single sealed package would skyrocket!

​@@blowing_up are you talking about resealing a package and illegally selling it as new in box or vacuum sealing an already new box for longevity

It's funnier when before baseball cards, it was buying and selling tulips. (yes, the flowers. somehow there was a tulip bubble and a tulip crash.)

I'm glad it did, though it's been a long time coming.

A fairly large part of the baseball card collapse was also on the production companies- Topps and such- getting greedy. They saw the value going up, wanted a cut, and over just a couple years absolutely FLOODED the market with just far too many different sets... Instead of 1-3 sets per sport from each manufacturer, suddenly there were a dozen or more. The market for the hobby became completely diluted. It was great for the casual collector, though... I was about 14 or 15 years old when it happened and big into baseball, and it made filling gaps in my sets very much more affordable. I've still got all of my completed sets neatly packed away, too, lol... Wonder what they're worth these days? 😆

@@Nathan_Talisien True that this has happened more recently, but there was also an earlier boom an crash waaayyyy back in the 90s. It is the same thing over and over again, and the worst part about it, is that many baseball card collectors are younger. So, they don't know what is happening because they haven't ever seen it before. The same thing will happen over and over again in the future, for certain. And each time the biggest victims will be a fresh new generation of young collectors.

I remember the comic books bubble in the 90s (as a bystander). After it was over, used book stores had piles of junk titles that nobody wanted to read, that had been all bagged and boarded the moment they left the original shipping box. The bag and board were often worth more than the comic book inside them, because you could at least re-use them for a good title. Um yeah, guys, the reason Superman #1 was worth so much was because all the other copies got thrown out over the years. If there were 1000 perfect copies, they wouldn't be worth so much.

u plan to play sealed game?

​@@games4us132No. that's why i open mine.

​@@games4us132idk about the person you replied to but I personally do.

even games that are not sealed will drop in prices

@@arksin11 i sure hope so. These things are way above the original market value these days. That being said, I found a really good "new" 2ds at a pawnshop for 75 dollars. Gamestop had me paying 300 for an original 3ds that was in worst condition XD.

practically an early Christmas present ☺️☺️☺️

The scammers made their money, this is the people dumb enough to buy from scammers losing their money.

Exactly, but there are probably still scammers trying to flip it and lost money buying the high price and selling it for a loss now. @@lucrative6477

It wasn't the scammers that lost money. They made money on each transaction, and unloaded a lot of their own games before the market fell. That's the point.

The scammers are called scammers for a reason…They didn’t lose.

That's what I thought when Karl spoke about the games that never left the auction house. If it was a person from the company they could just have declared they sold it for crazy money when none of was actually exchanged begore being sold at a "lost".

This is common in classic cars. You make people feel like the are getting an amazing deal. Also I am curious if the games actually sold. Someone could have ran the bids up and then didn’t actually pay. The auction house sits on them for a while and then relists them

The unfortunate nature of these situations makes it so the intended scam can be at every level. They can just keep sliding the pricing however they want to try making as much money as they like.

All scams and I'm sure they are like "no IRS, I don't have millions of dollars, I bought this collector items and then I sold them at a loss"

Like wash trading NFTs... "Sell" your NFT to your other wallet for an inflated price and now that's the value of the NFT. After that, sell it to a greater fool for the inflated price that you created.

you miss-spelled "investor"

I’ve noticed prices dropping on most collectibles, people have less disposable income with this economy. Having to choose between food/bills and a sealed game you will never play

@gardian06_85 Thanks for catching that.

@GuessTheSongMS I agree. It's dropping slower than the sealed game market, but it's still really high.

Little Sampson is a bad example. The game us rare to begin with, had a low print run and was already was pricey before the bubble. A sealed copy of Little Sampson should be rare and therefore have at least some value.

Selling fake cards? Is that similar?

The cards weren’t fake the signatures would be. And being that WATA is being sued yes they are similar. Smart ass

@@bw7754autos! Autographs! Duh, thanks

​@@bw7754 Hey cool, it's the guy who gets offended over basic questions.

Just wondering, but what’s the difference? If people believe it’s a real card/signature and it makes them happy, isn’t that the most important thing?

I just have a problem choosing games with emulation, much like my Steam library.

They wont go triple digits tho... 4 digits correction mostly.

$1 a game max! 😂

Consumers set the market price through what they are willing to purchase. The market price for the individual is simply the point at which the product or service is deemed more valuable than the money needed to buy it.

@@jshowao-rw1dh Sure at a surface level producers/sellers "set" the price, however if they set their prices too high they don't sell their products and go out of business. Prices have to make sense for customers to part with their cash, thus purchasing provides the signal that drives the market. Mainstream economics has it backward, as you've shown in your previous post. Over-inflated prices weren't being set until sellers thought the market was hungry for it, this was a false signal as it was being driven through sensationalist reporting so when appetite was shown to be absent the prices declined accordingly. We are in agreement here.

If the market is made up of silly people, you get silly prices. People who collect antique plastic for media that is far better to consume in a modern digital format are silly.

This is only affecting rated games. The second hand market remains fairly expensive for what its worth.

@TheHollowBlade sealed collections do have an impact on the regular market. People who are selling just to sell will look at it and see they aren't worth as much. Prices will drop because of this and its only good news. As Karl said, we aren't going back to how it was, sadly, but this is at least a step back towards sanity

If you didn't give a single solitary strawberry scented shit what your collection is worth, it wouldn't be on your mind to comment in the first place, regardless of how often you actually comment on here.

Interesting, my shit is usually strawberry scented too 🤔

@@X22GJPWhat? It's literally the topic of the video lol

I went to my local collectibles market for the first time in a while and the video game shops were slam packed full of people buying loose games at double retail price, which made me laugh in their faces before walking out I just wanted some saturn games One shop wanted $300+ for a boxed copy of Xenosaga Part 3

I love looking for games, but don't care about grading. I thought it was strange that certain games exploded in price and am now attempting to wait for the fallout.

@@Vanity0666what’s “double the retail price” ? You mean double the price YOU think it should be? If lots of people are buying/selling by coming to an agreement on a price - THATS the ‘retail price’

@codycast I took it to mean double the original MSRP.

@@sorenpx correct

Guess he wanted in.

A bullshitter can detect bullshit from 5000 miles away

Yuji Naka: Why didn't I think of this myself. ​@@atarijaguarfan7893

Well said

They did You can't sell to yourself without paying taxes Also its illegal yo sell to yourself

CIB? Is that Closed In Box?

​@@AquaLucarioComplete in box

Tragic too cause some of those games are crazy in value but it’s taking down the value of some CIB Cardboard games

Came here to say same thing

but CIB is actually rare in some cases especially for old stuff, the games graded by wata were not rare at all : 10.000+ known to exist but still they get graded and sold for like 300.000 dollar lolllll < thankfully that is likely over now

I wish someone would make an expose on fake autographs : Piece of the Past has since 90s sold fake autographs and has minimum 9 dealers aid him. Ive studied POTP and Hollywood Show for 10 yrs , POTP sell very valuable sigs at ridiculous prices : Monroe sgd photo for 1k , thats a 8-10k+ item if real. And there are many such examples.......these sob's dont honor money back either , nothing but bs excuses. HS also allow POTP to sell fakes at their cons.

Yeah it's nice to have some preservation going on and just having a beautiful collection of historic games. But these are all commodities and mass produced copies, which is something that people seem to forget. The markup on the sealed copies is incomprehensible to me. This bubble was set to burst at some point. Trading of these items has to remain reasonable. In my opinion, when a copy or even a console sells for more than half the retail amount at the time (including inflation), that's where we go in crazy territory. There was a time where most of these old games were still affordable and it was no big deal. Nowadays even CRTs have become crazy expensive, where there is no point in having one except to hook up a console with composite output to it.

​@@HyperMario64 true, it might be a different story if it was actually a limited run.

I have a question. Did you accumulate so much stuff over 20 years of collecting that you just decided to open up a store and sell it all?

@@zydio1103 The store was always separate from the collection. That said, there was the occasional thing that would come into the store that I would end up keeping, but those things were generally few and far between (perhaps 1 item out of every 1000-1500 that came in). Funny thing is, though, now that I've been downsizing my collection, the store has been a pretty decent outlet for it :P .

anything over 40 dollars for any game is over priced

Any game over $300 is insane...

@@grilleFiresome removed steam games go for rediculous prices. Removed Steam version of rocket league goes for 500

Any non physical game over free is too much because it lacks the requisite for it to having a price, that if i sell you that good i will not have it anymore. With non physical copies we still both have the good

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@stefanogandino9192I mean as a concept, games need to be made by someone and thereby need money in order to be supported and for them to continue making games, therefore not paying ruins that trust, because the person making the game shouldnt have to pay for your copy. Not to say you shouldnt pirate, just that not all can have that opinion. And even when you sell a physical copy, the only thing you are getting sold is a disk, you arent being given the rights to the game, so even then with that logic there really isnt a reason to pay money for it

The only thing that this doesnt apply to is guns T.T I JUST WANTED A FLINTLOCK MUSKET

@@CantoniaCustoms Just get a Glock

losing*

That’s why sports cards from the 80s on up are especially worthless nowadays. They over printed the crap out of them. Although I totally disagree with you on “something has to be rare to be collectible”. You can collect literally anything you want. I used to collect beer bottle caps (each one was different) they were worthless but still fun to collect. I also know someone who is actively collecting TY Beanie Babies. The one thing that always boggles my mind is the amount of non rare Nintendo games that are stupid expensive like Mario Kart Double Dash or F-Zero GX for the GameCube. I was never into the GameCube that much as I didn’t grow up with it. I thrifted one and only kept it to play Ikaruga. But I’ve always wanted those two racers and refuse to pay over a hundred for common games….

I used to work at a discount store with a toy section. Almost every day, middle aged guys would tear through our Hot Wheels displays, looking for certain cars that are "going to be worth something in a few years." I could never figure out how a new, made-in-China mass-produced toy car in the 2000s was destined to become a collectors item, but whatever. A sale is a sale to me.

​@@fossil-bit8439The problem with GameCube games is that the demand far outweighs the supply, even for supposed commons. Nintendo fanboys ruin the average person's ability to enjoy collecting.

​@Felamine Haha I got into that for a very short time. I worked at a department store in my teens so I had first dibs on hot wheels. I soon realized that the "rare" cars kept coming in and they were worthless. Same with baseball cards. I collect stuff for me and not to make a profit now.

I'm thinking that in 40 years the pricing of today is more right. And only for the best condition and such for the snes or n64 games. It's like how the first issue in prime condition of action comics managed to sell for as much

For comparison on the FFVII copy, I picked up a used copy of the Playstation version in playable condition but missing its case for $5 in 2020.

​@@youmukonpaku3168all 3 discs?

And you will not even play the game, since it's more of a collector's item

The only people making the insane bids were likely wata themselves.

you should watch the other videos karl made on this if you haven't. Its way worse than that; wata bought, graded, and then sold some of the first few games to themselves at the high prices just to be able to say a copy sold for over $1mil. And some of the people involved are the exact same people who were responsible for the coin bubble in the 80s where they basically did the exact same thing they did with the video games.

what kind of things do you auction off if you dont mind me asking? Is it a certain area of interest?

If something sells for $100, but you charge the buyer $120 and only give $80 of it to the seller...that means you ended up taking 33% of the total sale, not 20%. That sounds like some mafia sh*t right there: "Everybody pays me *my* cut or nobody makes a deal" 😂...auction houses are a freakin racket huh?

@@zeked4200 The counterargument would be, you probably wouldn't be able to sell it for $80 without the help of the third party, no?

*collusion not collision; on my phone and it won’t let me edit

Why would Yuji Naka, three-time arrestee for insider-trading, care for speculative bubbles and manufactured inflation of the values of assets? _:thonking:_

@@Noxedwin Idk. It was mentioned in that vid lol

I actually have one of those (at least the box) from when I was trying to collect Sonic 1 variants. Being used I have no idea if the other stuff included is original or just filled in with loose copies. I do have an extra Sega Classic version with an instruction manual that has a black and white cover. I have no idea if that manual is real or bootleg. There's a lot of weird minor printing variations on Sonic 1 stuff. Even the TM being located in different places on the labels/covers.

@@RickyRockstarTNS That B&W manual was probably from a later batch manufactured by Majesco. They made manuals for snes & genesis games back then for a bunch of games I believe. Is it in one of those cardboard boxes instead of a plastic clamshell case?

@@maxrichards5925 What is strange is that the game had a clamshell case when Majesco typically used cardboard. So unless it was transplanted into an older case, Majesco used some leftover stock of plastic cases from Sega.