Will there ever be a TG16 price crash?

[esteban]

I'll be fifty 11 years. I will be playing all my video games. Still. I don't want to think about how f*cking old I am. But I'll still be playing the damn things. 

[bob]

I'll be fifty 11 years. I will be playing all my video games. Still. I don't want to think about how f*cking old I am. But I'll still be playing the damn things. 

You are an old rover. I am a fresh 37 years old, so I have way longer than you before I hit 50.

[Mathius]

I'll be fifty 11 years. I will be playing all my video games. Still. I don't want to think about how f*cking old I am. But I'll still be playing the damn things. 

Seconded

[jeffhlewis]

You're not circle jerking around a Nintendo cart because it has 3 screws in it instead of 5. 

<zips pants in shame>

[cr8zykuban0]

i guess we will just have to wait and see. Yes, there are still deals to be found but are just getting harder to find.

[technozombie]

I'm a gamer first and foremost. I've been buying games for a long time, but honestly, I don't have very many. Perhaps one day emulation will be so good that people will care less about having the original. IMO we're not at the top of the peak because so many people don't know about game collecting. In my mind its still not very mainstream.

[kenomac78]

To think before eBay , the value was haut based on it's playability versus a friends other game for trade value! Or old ads like video game network or game dude that sold every game available back then. I think eBay has really wrecked everything , yea you can have access to almost any game but at a super high price and you have to compete with people who may just resell it or let it sit on a shelf.

Back in the day only one kid in the whole town ( not just neighborhood) had mega man 1. And it's trade value was crazy! You had to have 5 games if interest to him or no deal. I had the first copy of super Mario 2 in the neighborhood and it would regularly get traded with the kid who had the only copy of Zelda 2 ! But almost any other game would never cut it but lesser games would trade off easily.

I was the only one with a turbo and so there was no way to judge a value on it

Who says wii1 vc is getting shut off in May? I've yet to see that news please link if you can. I'm shocked!

[vestcoat]

This subject comes up once in a while. It's wishful thinking, it's stupid, and it ignores the lessons of history.

Better emulation and reproductions take a few sane people and gamers out of the rat race, but the increased exposure more than compensates with a new swarm of collectors and self-titled "Video Game Historians" who suddenly want what they didn't know existed a week before. The Virtual Console titles didn't make a dent in the secondary market. In fact, the VC's release coincided with what was arguably the first major TG16 inflation boom.

The 16-bit wars will be remembered as the "Golden Age" of video game history. The technology finally advanced enough for the games to become immersive, but it was limited enough to demand innovation.
The old games are collectable because they were largely ignored by adults and collectors.
The old games are collectable because kids threw away their boxes and beat the hell out of their carts.
The old games are collectable because they were weird and creative and we had a competitive market not yet dominated by Sony, Microsoft, Gamestop, Madden, and military recruitment propaganda.

Comparing similar eras from other "kids" collectables like comic books, baseball cards, and action figures gives us absolutely no reason to be optimistic. Men don't grow out of this stuff; they build man caves! The early stuff that was taken for granted by kids and ignored by adults is ALWAYS valuable, especially the smaller print runs/pressings, i.e. the TurboGrafx. Prices might come back down on semi-uncommon NES games selling for $50, the rare stuff will always get rarer. For every collector that sells his Magical Chase or boxed Turbochips to buy a house, there are ten more that just got their tax returns.

[HailingTheThings]

For every collector that sells his Magical Chase or boxed Turbochips to buy a house, there are ten more that just got their tax returns.

Scares the shite outta me.

[gamerslife]

honestly i don't think it will take as long as most here, just a couple yrs tops. reason being i believe its hot cause the low number to complete the US set makes it attractive, but then as the prices go up the people that bought 30-40 of the games at high prices will make them say F it and sell then more sell and the market "floods"....but the games will never be crazy low again because too many people know of its greatness so prices will drop but the good ole days of $10 TG games is prob gone....and this all comes from my experience in the NES the library is so much bigger it took longer but The Punisher and other mid level games are great examples of this...that came was close to the 100 mark CIB but now is 30ish CIB. why cause the people my age that nes was their first console are not the new collectors and the snes kids are finally not the newbies its on to the n64 ps1 people and saturn so the nes seems tired to them i know more than a few collectors that don't touch nes unless they can flip it. but it could all be in my head as i have hit it more than a few times, lol

[IrishNinja]

This subject comes up once in a while. It's wishful thinking, it's stupid, and it ignores the lessons of history.

damn, i was a lot more optimistic before reading this post.

[mrhaboobi]

having been collecting TG stuff for 12 - 15 years i seriously doubt the price will go down.  Prices have increased stupidly ( but really only recently ).  just a a short 5 years ago MC was still only getting a couple of hundred, boxed complete games for 600 ish or less, i remember thinking who the hell justifies 600 for a game!! ... the 8500 or so they get now has really only been recently, the CD games always were more expensive, but you could always find a deal, my sealed daynastic hero was 50 bucks, i bought two at the time, one to trade one to keep, the trade got me bonk 3 cd.. i was happy.. but now days 1400 for dynastic hero, 8500 for MC, 800 for Terraforming, 400 for bonk 3.. 600 for a sealed LOHT.. WTF crazy crazy crazy.. i wouldn't be able to even consider a common tg collection let alone the rare games in todays market.   I questioned the $60 i paid for a MC manual, and the trade i made for a cardboard box.  but i wouldnt even fathom trying to get MC now days if i didnt already have it. 

my signature has the items id like to get in mint condition ( because i do collect and i do like mint items ), but those items have been on the list for YEARS... im not going to pay a small fortune.. i'll get lucky one day.. i think the time factor has caused the pricing to sky rocket, instacollectors, must have it all today and dont care what it costs..

But its the same for all systems i guess. what i find frustrating is im a Dragon Warrior fan, love that game, and i try and buy dragon warrior stuff, unfortunately it was a nintendo game aswell, so you end up trying to battle with nintendo collectors, of which there are a million and of that million it seems 50% are insanely rich!.  makes it hard to get some of the stuff for a game series i like. i figure the ones who cant complete a nintendo collection are not starting to eye the turbo grafx.. much easier to find if you have the money, where as the Nintendo stuff seems to be hard to find.

[synbiosfan]

No.

Everyone here has or soon will have their systems recapped. Many more people are just going to throw their systems out when the caps go, unaware it can be fixed.

The price of systems will be much worse in 3-5 years.

[Lochlan]

Many more people are just going to throw their systems out when the caps go, unaware it can be fixed.

lol what?  Where are you getting that from?

[Mathius]

Many more people are just going to throw their systems out when the caps go, unaware it can be fixed.

lol what?  Where are you getting that from?

He probably means kids who had a Turbo/Duo growing up but didn't stick with it to become the fans that we are. I could see some of them dig a system out to relive some memories and when the caps go they'll just toss it aside and forget about it again. It'll probably never see the light of day again keeping it out of circulation.