Collectors Are Spending Thousands on Video Games They Will Never Play

After I read this article, I went on eBay and games are going for a pittance, certainly not the money described in the article.

Another scheme where the sheep jump on board with dollar signs in their eyes.

I collect games but I go for the crappiest looking version I can find because I actually play them and want the cheapest price. I have no intention of reselling ever.

This article provides a good justification for why the wealthy should be taxed. All those hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by so-called “collectors” could have been better spent on job-retraining for rural workers, educating our children, advocating for stewardship of our natural resources, research & development into cures for cancer and other illnesses, etc. We humans freely spread the wealth for stuff but begrudge spending even a single dollar to help a fellow human being. We Americans have eschewed civic virtue in favor of greed and selfishness as the highest virtues. Anything else is condemned as “socialism.”

This makes perfect sense to me (although the prices are inflated). What typically becomes collectible are the things that no-one paid attention to, and that kids and mothers threw out. My family of four boys spent thousands of hours on our systems: Atari 2600, NES, PlayStation, Xbox. We still have none of them, none of the cartridges, none of the games. I bet we just dumped them at some point, as we didn't recycle or donate as much back then, and we always ended up trashing the joysticks by throwing them when losing high-intensity matches. I'm not saying it's sensible that people are collecting these—but it makes sense and I understand.

Ah, yet another capitalist pyramid scheme. People sometimes ask me why I have such long odds on humanity's survival from the current bottleneck (aka the Great Filter) and this is why: greed, shortsightedness, and selfishness.

My husband and I went on a collecting spree of NES and SNES games in 2003. We both had younger siblings who trashed or claimed ownership of games, and we wanted to dip into some nostalgia. GameStop used to sell the games for really cheap (less than $5 used, around $20 for sealed). They couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. Now that they are on the brink of bankruptcy, I wonder if they regret selling them so quickly. I also found a PowerPad that year for $5 at a rummage sale. Last year I saw one on display at the Museum of Moving Images. It boggles my mind these are antiques. I wonder how much my collection is valued now. (We still have all the games we collected along with the original systems as well as use emulators and bought the classic releases to play in HD. We are still gamers and enjoy the old games in whatever form).

Beanie Babies, Dutch Tulip bulbs. Lest we never forget.

Wow, here I am wondering if I can afford to spend $500 to upgrade my computer's graphics card from the GTX 970 to the RTX 2070 Super, while people with too much money in their hands are willing to splurge $7,000 for a Contra cartridge. You can play all of these classic games on your computer easily using emulators, and the experience of playing them on an emulator is in fact superior. With a challenging game like Contra, playing on emulators help as you can create an emulated save point anywhere in the game, and so get to retry as many times as you'd like. I often get into the habit of saving the game using the emulator every 5 seconds while playing difficult classics. I never bought into the sadistic concept that I should be punished for losing a fight by being kicked back to the beginning of the level, if not the beginning of the game. Besides simulated save points, emulators can also artificially enhance the graphics of these classic games, making them look more superb.

Everyone is already spending thousands on games they won't play (see : Steam Summer Sale for context), so I'm not really surprised with this.

You just know there is rampant fraud in this.

The comparisons to Beanie Babies aren't really apt. There has been a pretty large game collecting scene for at least a few decades - much longer than the interest in Beanie Babies lasted. That said, game prices have gone pretty bananas over the past decade, and I expect the bottom will fall out eventually. The real shame of this sort of hoarding is when collectors get their hands on something that is truly one of a kind (think a prototype of a never released game) and they sit on it rather than making the game available to the interested public. There are people out there doing great work, such as the Video Game History Foundation, to recover such "lost" games.

How do they know if there is anything in the boxes? Since opening one of them would immediately destroy its collector's value, these people are paying thousands of dollars for a sealed cardboard box and then taking it on faith that there is actually a game inside, let alone one that can be played. For all we know, there is some hidden factory churning these dubious collectibles out.

People are curious creatures in the things they obsess over but this is honestly no more absurd than someone paying millions of dollars for a square of canvas that has paint all over it. I call it that and you'd call it garbage. I call it an original Jackson Pollock and now it's worth $140 million dollars.

How does one stop forgeries? Especially after it is "graded" and then safely encased in a plastic case, presumably forever?

$7k for Contra.... Oh man I need to clean out my storage closet. Old those Konami favorites are still is superb shape.

Trade you a Hummel and a Cabbage Patch Kid for a sealed PacMan.

If most people are purchasing these games because they expect the value to rise, instead of purchasing them because they like the games, then this bubble will burst. I collect old 78 rpm records, especially jazz and blues from the 1920's and 1930's, because I like the records. Others purchase them for the same reason. People also purchase collectible cars. Those types of collectibles are safer because they have an intrinsic use value.

Proof that some people have either too much money or not enough common sense. We've seen this before with Dutch Tulips up to Comics, Baseball Cards and Beanie Babies.... If you're going to 'collect' something at least go for something with inherent value - like gold coins.

Taxes for the public good? No, tax cuts for those who want to accumulate these outrageously-valued items.

"You almost can’t pay too much because stuff is going up so fast." Anyone uttering those words should take a step back and realize there's a good chance they're going to be caught holding the bag when the bottom drops out.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of the Crowds. Tulips anyone?

Collectors? More like scalpers. Hope it works out for them - like Beanie Babies.

Sneakers and sealed vintage video games seem to be the male equivalent of Beanie Babies.

Enthusiasts of collecting things in physical format are true hoarders in their essence while such "hobby" merits "collectors" labels to designate stashes of sentimental junk that is "objectively" only valuable to buyers of miscellaneous items that share an enthusiasm for niche and obsolete media storage. The article illustrates to remind that markets and notion of valuation aren't rational because humans are hardly such animals. That isn't criticism of anyone at all. I hoard games digitally whenever Playstation or Steam discount titles to purchase license rights and expand the library of games collected inventory, accumulated to the point that need several reincarnations to complete it. Do understand that it is a glaring manipulation when 75% off "market price" entices to click buy button.

money truly ruins everything