Collecting new/sealed video games is almost certainly not the best investment for those looking for a short term return. But how about in 10-20 years time? Take my interest, the PC Engine as an example - it will be 20 years old this October! Will the first generation of arcade game players not want to come back to revisit classics they played in their childhood? In 10-20 years time, if a new sealed system came along together with a bunch of the most popular games (also new sealed), I'm sure someone out there will be willing to pay a large preminum to obtain such a collection. It's all speculation of course but who knows? For me it's more about the feeling of being able to obtain a seemingly unobtainable game first, with investment secondary. This 1978 Atari VCS for example sold for over $5000. Popular Sealed NES and SNES games like Mario and Zelda command triple figure sums today. The same I believe will apply for the PC Engine in the future (and other popular systems too). Note: I am only applying this analysis for NEW/SEALED games and systems - not MINT/OPENED/USED!! Thoughts?
There is no gaurantee that in 20 years time the market will still be here. As in investment it's pretty much a dead end, yes the Atari VCS did sell for $5000 but it's an historical machine that will be collectable a new Fairchild Channel F probably wouldn't sell for nearly as much despite being older same with the Magnavox Odyssey, even new they would struggle to fetch more then $2000 despite being much older. PC Engine is probably a dead end when it comes to games to hold value, most collectors probably have most of the games they want and then you have to hope that future collectors would want to spend more then what you paid for it. Overall I probably would have done better putting my money into 10 year bonds rather then buy games in the last ten years to make money, I probably lost money as games during the late 90s and early 2000s went up in value and have since fallen sharply. Hello to all the people who spent more then $500 on Circus Lido on the PC Engine. You should take long term savings and inflation to see if you would make any money... For example if you bought a game in 2000 for $200, you would need to sell it for more then $240 to counter inflation and more then $300 for it to be worth more then putting the $200 in a 5 year bond. Ditto $200 in 1996, you would need $250 to counter inflation and $410 if invested in a long term 10 year bond.
The best thing to look for is game consoles with differences (Such as limited edition consoles with little circulation). There is no guarantee that it will fetch a high price, but it is worth a gamble. With games, most collectors or limited edition ones are duds and do not sell for much, but there are a couple that do fetch a high amount: I bought MGS3: Subsistence Limited Edition for $40.00, and sold it for $80.00. Look for huge collections of games, like that one Biohazard collection from Capcom that came in a suitcase and had all of the games up to Code Veronica. One dud I had was Sonic Adventure: Limited Edition complete with case and instructions. I paid $100 for it, but only got about $30 for it when I sold it. Keep a eye out for rare game deals, such as ones you can only get at a certain store or through a online service. While it is rare in this day and age, you can find a couple every so often. LoZ: Master Quest and Zelda: Collectors Edition are prime examples of what I am talking about. If you must, try to get sealed first copies before they turn into Greatest Hits or other budget packaging deals. FF7 and SoTN sealed, first edition can net you about $50 more then what you paid for it new back years ago, sometimes much more. Atlus games are also a gold mind: Shin Megami Tensei Games in english are a bitch to find, and cost a arm and a leg sealed and new due to their low production amount Atlus likes to do. Game deals in bundles can either be worth more, or a curse. Say you have a sealed SNES with 5 sealed rare SNES games (Say, rare RPGs that can fetch up to $100 sealed each). Bundled together, you would be lucky to get $500. Seperate, and you can make $600-$700, depending on the flux market. Best thing to do is invest in a variety of things. It will always be a gamble and you do need patience, but there are some people who have made a killing reselling collections for much more then they paid for.
I disagree. I think there is a market both now and definitely in the future for a new system + games. For one, not many will have collected new systems and games. Most collections are those that are used. I really do believe that a new system, being extremely had to find in BRAND NEW condition with a selection of the most popular game (also in NEW SEALED condition) will command a high premium. I completely agree with you on the above. It's a very bad short-term investment, however it has the potential of making you a decent wedge if there is an explosion in the retro market and at worst, staying level with inflation. People will always be curious to see what systems were like in "those days" - I do think it will become reminiscent of the comic book market that took about 30 years to develop after the emergence of the silver age superheroes. Variety is good but so is collecting a popluar system + it's most popular games IMO. If you could sell say a Brand New Boxed Famicom with 10 Brand New Games (i'm talking rare, hard to find but very popular games), I'm sure someone will pay a high premium for that - simply because it would be impossible to find that sort of thing, say 10 or years from now. This is the type of collecting and investment potential I am talking about.
True, although it depends on the games. F-Zero and Super Mario World, for example, are somewhat common and do not go for much. Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, SNES Final Fantasies besides Mystic Quest, Earthbound, and perhaps A Link to the Past are examples of popular, high fetching games. Hell, bundle it with one of the newer SNES models that were small and released near the end of the SNES's lifespan, and you could make a killing. Rare, but unpopular games include Captain Novalin, and going back to the Atari: Chase the Chuckwagon. Granted, that is just a example. Older games are going to run you quite a bit unless you get a good deal. Personally, I would look out for the Persona 3 game that is coming out soon: A atlus game with a preorder bonus, AND it has the Shin Megami Tensei title as well.
Yeah definitely, it depends on games. The retro market right is flat right now - well from a PC Engine market anyway - compared to say 4 years ago. The release of the PSP, PS3, Wii and XBox360 has had a big impact. Give it another 2-3 years, it will pick up again. I'm sure there will be a "craze" period in the future when retro systems will be all the fad - that'll be the time to cash in!!
First of all, we cant compare games to comics... Comics in their "bronze" age (say, the 50s and 60s) were way more popular worldwide than games today (and VGs popularity may have already peaked some say) and ergo you'll never fetch the high prices some comics do from middle-age crisis guys who would pay as much as 50k for a first edition of spider-man. Plus theres the fact that in the "good days" comics were cheaper than books and even newspapers, which made them more widespread than other similar media. Games were never cheap, and (with inflation) we could say nowadays we got the cheaper consoles and games in history, something that actually sounds weird with the PS3 at $600. A good example of how popularity affects these things, let me give the trnsformaer example: the other day I was reading about some widow who just sold her husband's Transformer collection, which was made of every single transformer toy released during the heyday. Now, before the big-budget movie from micheal bay she would be lucky if somebody payed her almost $10k for the entire collection, but thanks to the transformer mania from the movie she got 1 million!h: Say, you get a lot of mint sonic games from practically nothing sine the character's value and popularity and pretty low right now, but in 10 years someone decides to bring new life to the franchise and makes a big budget movie, new games and even a Tv series, and everybody goes crazy for sonic like they did 20 years before. Thanks to that you may get a lot of money from that collection, but the odds of all that happening? pretty low my friend. Hell, if 2 years somebody asked me if there was any possibilities of a transformers comeback after the not-so-good beastwars series, I would've said "no way in hell", so you never know... Anyway, is very important that you dont take a few examples like the "sure thing". Say, some wealthy idiot pay $1000 for a mint SMB3, that doesnt means everybody is going to pay that much for the game. I remember when DC announced superman was going to die back in 1993, and everybody went to the nearest comic shop to get one of the limited "black bag" edition, hoping that in the near future they would be able to sell it for as much as the original issue costs. Now this LE editions are almost worthless, since the dead of superman was nothing but a publicity stunt and not even the new movie has helped the franchise from coming back from the black hole it is today. Comic shops were another mistake, with people thinking those were a gold mine. Today the ones that still remain are hardly making any money, and the rest have gone bankrupt not so long ago. I agree with jamtex: if you want to play the waiting game instead of working, you'll be better with bonds and more traditional investments than with games and such. Hell, I would take advantage of the real state bubble burst, wait until house prices go down, buy a few, wait for the next real state bubble and then sell them for 2 or 3 times what I paid for them. Some people did that during the reagan years and they became millonaires during the 90s.
Well a collection is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If a system was popular in the past, you will almost certainly get someone to pay a premium for a new/sealed system+games it in the future. I'm not saying that you're going to be become rich - it's just a fun way of investment that at worst, you're likely to get your money back! I keep stressing the fact that i'm talking about rare, hard to find games and very popular that are sealed. Plus a new/sealed system to play it on. Not just videogames in general. BTW, the transformers auction did not go for $1m - apparently a 5-year old kid bid on it "accidentally" http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230154823371
Theres some games that may raise some money in the future, but most of them are actually popular ones, not the ones we consider "rare". Like, I can see the first madden in mint conditions going for a lot in some years since people stupid enough to be fans of that crappy ass game are the only ones dumb enough to spend a lot of dought on the first game of the series if they ever become rich... Then theres GTASA: I bet a sealed mint copy from before the hot coffee patch will be worth some good money in the future, basically becos it will be the #1 buy for guys going thru a middle age crisis and trying to bring back fond memories of the past...........when they were dumb 12-years olds killing people in GTA while their parents went to aruba... Its the same with comics: the first issue of superman is worth thousands yet who cares about the first issue of the Phantom? I say the phantom was a better character but sadly he wasnt part of the pop-culture, or at least not as important as superman was/is.
