What Caused the 2020 Video Game Price Boom? [Retronomics]

[@SuperNicktendo]

Thanks for watching! What stood out to you? Which console do you want me to deep dive into first?

[@xman777b]

thanks. Viewing now. Also: Xbox 360. IMO, overall the best console of all-time. Take care.

[@emprex122]

PS3, OG XBOX & 3DS

[@leeokami1021]

WATA and that damn Mario 64 scam, people being home and getting nostalgia after seeing DKOldies on tiktok, and Phoenix Resale abusing the retro market for profit.

[@SuperNicktendo]

If I find correlation that Phoenix Resale is up to no good I'll mention it. But for now it doesn't appear that any sole KZbinr is responsible for the market boom as a whole

[@leeokami1021]

@SuperNicktendo I'd suggest checking his discord, his app, follower count, and his bulk buying for his Amazon store then. I know its not just him but there's a reason he's a parody in the meat canyon episode on retro games

[@SuperNicktendo]

@@leeokami1021 yeah I'm sure he has about the same impact as Metal Jesus Rocks which is to say he has an impact but not as much as people think he does. But if it might grow my channel, I'll talk about him. People seem to take notice when they think someone is getting cancelled.

[@leeokami1021]

@SuperNicktendo well I'm not even thinking about the sense of channel growth but he's definitely built a community through his discord, and now his app. For some time he had a list of games he would pay a set price to viewers so he could make a profit once it's on Amazon. The difference with MJR and Phoenix is metal Jesus doesn't get a cut recommending a game. When Phoenix says "this games delisted go get it" then both eBay and in stores People bulk buy. Both reasons are why his amazo. Store has so many copies of games all at high prices. Heckin Steve did a whole video on it already

[@sailent4825]

What I got from this video: Forget about buying NES, SNES and Game Boy.

[@SuperNicktendo]

Heh. Well this is overall so when we dig into individual consoles maybe we'll still find some deals

[@arlwiss5110]

honestly just get an emulation handheld. they're pretty affordable and tend to be able to emulate all those systems from the generally pre-3D era

[@warehousedave7937]

WATA's marketing (/propaganda) at a time when a lot of cash was created in the united states (caused inflation, but gave disposable income to middle and lower class) is what caused video games to blow up 3-4 years ago. One thing to consider is how over time the spending power of a dollar decreases, so an increasing asset can often be offset by inflation. Another large factor, I dont know how to phrase it but its the psychology behind herd mentality. Or how schools of fish swim together. ---- once people saw so many others getting interested in buying rare and expensive video games, it inspired others to buy more, buy more exotic pieces, spend more, pay more... All normalized. It was trendy, it became cool. Simply put, collecting video games became fashionable.

[@SuperNicktendo]

People can get swept up in it for sure. As I start releasing more console specific videos it can show that along with individual influences. I was going to do individual consoles first but even after the virtual boy it was clear that this wasn't organic.

[@warehousedave7937]

Can't wait for the virtual boy retronomics. Great idea to do that library. I'm sure it will be interesting!

[@docicusalignjon]

I love how, after dreaming for my entire life of having a big gaming collection, just when I finished colleague and found a job in 2020 the prices of videogames skyrocketed. Never to be affordable again. Life can be so cruel man lol.

[@SuperNicktendo]

Well the good news is that the increases have slowed down so you can save up for the games that you really want. I have stopped collecting for the most part and now I'm curating my collection. The high prices made me think about which games are actually important. Plus these are just overall trends. When you look at individual consoles it's possible that only a couple games are driving those huge numbers.

[@Lost_Kappa]

Governments printing money was the trigger for all of this.. Collectables much like assets are all inflated and may never return to previous prices.

[@warehousedave7937]

It's too bad that price charting will say that certain totally worthless games are worth $5-6 purely because sellers will sell it for the price of postage. All data under $10 is irrelevant to video game collecting price trends. An increase in USPS shipping rates would correlate 1:1 with the charted value increase games under $10. Haha, its almost like low end PC is charting the average rate of USPS first class mail service (now called ground advantage 😔) I think the site would be inproved if their data was 100% shipped prices across the board. I hope you agree that there's no reason why the site should average the sales of: ($80+20s&h) + ($100 free ship) = $90 charted average. They record the $80 and the $100 sales as different values when in fact the game sold for the exact same amount both times.

[@SuperNicktendo]

Well hopefully you at least enjoyed the video.

[@SuperNicktendo]

But more to your point - I don't really think that's Pricecharting's fault and more eBay's fault for allowing ridiculous shipping practices back on to the platform. Seeing some Xbox 360 Game undervalued but offset by $20 shipping is ridiculous because you know these people are paying 5 bucks tops and shipping it in a padded envelope. I did make sure to exclude any of those low price games that managed to jump $100 bucks and then right back down to $6 because of some weird shenanigans. But most of them remained under 10 dollars for 4 years which I think is a notable trend to pay attention to.

[@warehousedave7937]

My suggestion to the price charting algebra would be to calculate shipped price average and then subtract $5. I think that would do a surprisingly good job at smoothing out the low end (sports titles and the kind of games that you can't get rid of for $2 would now more accurately reflect this instead of showing "$5" on price charting. It does add up and make a big difference when someone is appraising hundreds of cheap games) and also improve accuracy on everything else. Though this would throw off heavier, big box / collector's editions. But to eliminate the "$20 shipping" shenanigans would be nice. I do appreciate that the site does rule out outlier high and low, so a suspiciously high sale from someone manipulating the value of the game will not be calculated, and also the really cheap sales that were mispriced or very poor condition do not negatively impact the average. All that being said, it's a very useful source for pricing if you take the average with a grain of salt. I really appreciate that they have auction links to every sale so that you can read between the lines.

[@warehousedave7937]

And price trends are going to be pretty accurate. I can complain about the accuracy of each title, but as long as their formula remains consistent, then a trend (i.e. 10% increase) will be accurate. If they give you data/statistic tools to be able to isolate certain price ranges, it might be really interesting to analyze price trends on high end, mid tier, and low end games within a library. For example, how interesting would it be to hear that high end (say $100+) GameCube dipped by 5%, mid tier ($25-100) increased by 3%, and low end increased by 8% ...overall there might be no change in GameCube average trend, but broken down into value tiers you'd notice a much more dynamic trend.

[@warehousedave7937]

And yes I did enjoy the video. I am a Super Nickfriendo!

[@ahmedkhan5107]

this might be my new favorite channel.

[@ReinMixTape]

Great work; I was really surprised to see the Sega 32x and Sega Game Gear (GG) prices being some of the highest climbing in parts. Both being consoles which had major draw backs.

[@SuperNicktendo]

yeah showing percent changes really highlighted some weird changes. I know that Lynx went haywire for a bit. I had been trying to track down some of the games for a complete set and a complete in box copy of Lemmings jumped from $100 to $400 -.- people are wild.

[@solarsl7942]

This was a very well researched and produced video. Thank you for all of your hard work. I think this topic is fascinating.

[@SuperNicktendo]

Glad you enjoyed it. I enjoy this topic so it feels good to finally realize my vision for the series and share it with others!

[@albertocamacho2261]

Great video! i think the wii would be a very interesting console to look into. prices have started to rise in the last couple years

[@warehousedave7937]

Yeah I'm noticing the "top tier" titles in the $30-100 range are starting to get scarce on eBay. Wii is going to get hot next I think. Right now it is Xbox 360 that's red hot.

[@SuperNicktendo]

I haven't done a Wii video so that might be fun to tackle

[@Vexidus]

I think the Wii will go on a tear someday. Should really collect for it more… Even titles like Mario Kart and Wii Sports, very common titles are commanding a surprisingly high price. Then you get the lesser known gems such as Fragile Dreams and you really see the potential.

[@es7990]

Thanks for the hard work Nick! Interesting stuff

[@chrisbayer7294]

fantastic job on the video!!!

[@SuperNicktendo]

Thank you very much!

[@scottlinux]

Ha I loved the GetTheGregGames wardrobe change at 21:32 😂

[@SuperNicktendo]

Lol I thought people would get a kick out of it. I had been working on the video for so long at that point that I needed to put some humor in the video

[@deathmetalmaniac9647]

I began noticing retro video game prices going up in price around 2013ish

[@sayian1_998]

You have the best videos, you explain the why and the how. All the data you provide and the way you provide it is amazing. I would like to see a video of where you think the hobby is going in the next 3 years, as of now I do see a decline in some of the 8bit systems. Please keep up the amazing work.

[@SuperNicktendo]

I really appreciate that! I have considered making predictions. Maybe I'll make one a year and see where it goes. I don't want to make a speculation type video and potentially Bork the market.

[@Greazvstheworld]

A lot of people complaining about the prices and rightfully so. But the world has finally realized just how incredible of an art form video games truly are. It's practically taken over entertainment almost entirely. And retro games are rare and delicate items that must be preserved in good hands. If you're cheap you're out and good riddance. We need more people in the community that understand just how precious these older games are. Not people who lose the cases manuals and stack the discs in piles to be scratch and damaged. Take your cheap ass somewhere else like fishing or rock collecting. Only bosses belong in this hobby!

[@ParadoxicGer]

Great video. I'd really like another look at the Vita btw. It's such an interesting system with a fanbase that's probably almost equally as hardcore as the Neo Geo fans, so it would be super interesting how prices developed.

[@Parisiancollector]

Great job, very interesting!

[@joeyisabsb1]

This deserves way more views

[@SuperNicktendo]

It's been 3 months since my last real video so it might take some time for KZbin to put me back in their recommendations. I have relevant videos that will link back to this one so I can build a library of videos for people to find

[@Vexidus]

Awesome video as always! Interesting to see all of your data laid out with good explanations about what we saw. As for which systems I’d like to see focused on, I would say the ones in the 20-25 year mark such as PS2, Xbox, GameCube, Dreamcast. This seems to be the time when we see a “nostalgia” bump as the kids who grew up with those systems come into more income as adults and buy back their memories. Though the state of the economy may be hindering this bump? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what to expect. Thanks for the great videos!

[@SuperNicktendo]

Gamecube for sure hit its stride during the boom. I think people are still buying nostalgia and avoiding modern stuff given how much it's sold as a fee for service nowadays.

[@Vexidus]

@@SuperNicktendo I think you’re right. Also thinking about modern games and the future, there will be a time someday when games are entirely digital or streamed through the cloud. Perhaps we’ll see another bump at that time, for pretty much all older systems with physical games?

[@primal44]

I became an adult during this time so I had just started actually making my own money and was in a huge frenzy to buy stuff I loved or wanted/lost as a poor kid.

[@909crime]

does price charting take into account sites like yahoo auctions and rakuten? for JP only systems i think it makes sense to consider jp only stores as well. there is a cost to importing games from japan that changes the conversation a bit

[@SuperNicktendo]

That's something I want to look into. Price charting only does ebay and their own site so I'm missing a lot of foreign sales. Would be cool to get a hold of that data and make a video on it to see if it's only US or if it was worldwide

[@TalesBarros]

Great analysis, thanks for you hard work. I'd appreciate if in the future it wasn't so USA-centric, but I don't know if that's viable.

[@SuperNicktendo]

yeah I included famicom disc system but now that I do have the ability to put more data in these videos, I can look into non US consoles. The only issue is that pricecharting gets all their data from eBay which might be US centric. So I'll have to account for that.

[@y2kcollector932]

Great work on this video.

[@SuperNicktendo]

Thanks!

[@JTSuter]

Besides the Pandemic, I think the r/gamecollecting subreddit probably did the most damage to increase the demand for retro games. Everyone wants to post photos of their game rooms, and all that does is incite fomo.

[@SuperNicktendo]

Yeah they did influence some of my collecting habits. There are so many groups out there that are even more influential than reddit. Atari age for example has a huge community that's been around for ages

[@SomeRetroGuy]

Buying a retrotink, and over time will accumulate everdrive carts for my main consoles. Or I could just mod my mini consoles. Either way I no longer want any part of this ridiculous market. The only older console I collect for now is ps3 since its still affordable for now. Im 40 and have been hit with the nostalgia wave previously but lately Ive realized how unbelievably ridiculous it is to pay astronomical prices for these old games. And now people want 300 dollars for a 300 pound CRT tv to play them on? Lol...

[@Greazvstheworld]

Hey you're right! this hobby is not for you and that's OK!.

[@rayminishi689]

-KZbinrs talking about rare/poor sold games -Covid/Unemployment money -Quarantine made for homestuck people to find something or remember childhood -Wata games and grading scams I remember when people on Facebook market sold Nintendo switch games for cheap. Now it doesnt drop more than $50/$45 Like bro, Mario Kart 8 deluxe is like 5 years old.

[@SkateZombie]

It's not crypto that's causing the price rises it's from the Federal Reserve balance sheet expanding, you should compare the rises in game prices with the Federal Reserves M2 money supply chart.

[@SuperNicktendo]

That's a good idea. On the surface level it doesn't look like much of a direct correlation. If anything the increase in money is an overall issue and game prices rising is just a downward effect from it.

[@GetTheGreg]

Liked, Shared, and commented. I'm being a good KZbin viewer :)

[@SuperNicktendo]

Much appreciated! Maybe we can join forces for a graded game video. My data and your expertise would be an unbeatable duo.

[@PKInTheUniverse]

You excluded Evercade , unsub ! Haha just kidding . There is a lot to absorb here . This is a lot of games and consoles to cover. it’s pretty interesting the way things have shook out over the last few years.

[@Jackpkmn]

Long story short: investholes ruin my hobby.

[@piratestation69]

Take donkey kong jr. Math... there is no reason that crappy cart costs $150+... i made my own. Very simple to make.

[@SuperNicktendo]

That game has been saught after for a while now. That's when I had to reevaluate why I was collecting in the first place. Who is going to care about that outside of other collectors? Every time I show people my room they are always interested in what they remember and that's usually the stuff that's fun to play.

[@piratestation69]

@@SuperNicktendo I've always been facinated with the obscure... ie vetrex, neo geo aes, or things considered video game failures. Take another game alien resurection for ps1. MVG made a video about its super secret code, price sky rocked to over $120+ or so. Found it at a local store for $20. Its now more of a collectors item. Greedbay gotta love it. Btw excellent video. With all this $$$ being exchanged the original game manufacturers are not making a single dime off of this. That's the beauty of owning physical media.

[@SuperNicktendo]

@@piratestation69 I have been focusing on getting a complete Lynx set. I think I have 20-30 games left and they're all inexpensive since I made sure to snag the rare ones first. I also have a Jaguar. Love that thing. I definitely want to revisit the KZbinr price influence topic. I did one on Metal Jesus eons ago. Now that I have more data might be fun to cover a ton more like MVG, Pheonix Resale Scott the Woz and others.

[@piratestation69]

@@SuperNicktendo i bought my jag/lynx years ago. Then the flashbcarts came out. Lynx screen died McWilled it good as new. The jag has RGB looks amazing with a retrotink/hdretrovision cables. Tempest 2000 so much fun.

[@SuperNicktendo]

@@piratestation69nice! I have three Lynx systems. A model 1 a Modded 2 and a stock 2. Also got the Jag2Gen adapter so I could use the HD retrovision cables along with the flashcarts for both. Also got a 6 button controller with a modded D-pad

[@thedude6405]

虽然小时候没什么钱，但是攒几个星期的钱还是能买一个key，打折也就几十块。而且那时候的游戏，出售的就是整个游戏。 现在的开发商和背后的资本投资人太贪婪了，base game，游戏本体？就卖一个demo，所有的游戏内容都得靠DLC添加，DLC价格甚至和游戏持平。CA的Total War系列很明显。早在中世纪2，可以解包文件方便制作mod，third age这些质量很高。这么做触动了CA的利益，有些IP他们来做甚至不如mod组。后来直接锁文件，再也不能解包做mod。战锤的吃相及其难看，战锤2一套打折都要六百多，点击mortal empire必须购买战锤1及其DLC又是四百多，战锤三亦然。blood effect，红色贴图，卖12元，可以买一斤腿肉做烧烤了，绝大部分国人连食品自由都远远没有达到。果断退款，等半年出破解版。战锤三没破解？不玩就是了。 随便一个游戏都要几百几千，大半个月不吃不喝“租”一款数字版游戏，不可能。 公司和资本孜孜不倦教诲玩家盗版是不道德的“犯罪”却不看看自己的贪婪程度。中国这些年各种官商二代在海外挥金如土，外国公司怕是真的以为中国人有钱，数字版游戏卖得比过去实体盘还贵。开发人员要年薪三十万美元的高薪，高管要千万美刀的年薪，投资人要千万亿万的分红，要我共情他们，不可能。

[@thedude6405]

还有依靠社区制作mod来填补开发公司的贪婪与懒惰，B的Starfield打的就是这种盘算，上古卷轴十年多不更新，一个大更新就为MOD收费作废了成千上万的mod。paradox更无耻，直接抄袭玩家的mod然后拿出来当DLC卖20美元。