Growlanser: Heritage of War

[Port]

Yeah, they had a fuckton of unsold copies at this one TRU near us. Only had to sell 20 to make our money back so it seemed like a good move.

[kingoffighters]

Do you still have one? Would like to get one for my nephew!

[Dippity-Do]

Collecting as an investment is long term and most importantly, secondary.

On the nose.

[Port]

Do you still have one? Would like to get one for my nephew!

We sold them all, sorry.

[Pineapple]

Wow, this is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my life.

If you want to speculate, play the stock market. Calling video games an "investment" is ridiculous. "Investment" implies some sort of planning and opportunity cost assessment, while the ultimate goal is profit.

Think about that.

You're saying that, as consumers, we could buy games for profit . . . what the fuck?!

I understand that eBay has outrageous prices on games such as Chrono Trigger, or Suikoden, or Valkyrie Profile, but what you're suggesting is that any given game player speculated enough to independently identify these titles as worthwhile futures investments, and then tailored their purchases accordingly, all the while planning to turn a profit in, what, ten or so years?

Ten . . . years?!

Isn't that an awful long time to wait to turn a profit? Yeah, I thought so.

The fact that you can accidentally make money on something doesn't make it an investment.

I'm not saying that you really have to know what games are going to be worth money down the road, and I'm not saying anyone should ever try to make a living selling off video games they buy at bargain basement prices (I deal with those people every time I work, and not only do I hate them, but they're barely making it by with their expensive coke habits.

I was basically saying that some games you know are going to be worth something someday, either because of limited production runs or the fact that you know people won't be looking for it until 6 years after it's out. So that game that you spent $30 on might end up going for $300 unopened some half a decade down the road. It also might go the opposite way and end up selling for $3.75 on buy it now. It fluxuates all the time. If it ends up being expensive later, and you bought it just to sell it at a later date, wouldn't you call that a good investment? It's not something you can really plan, but if you're into collecting and just grab as much as you can, chances are some of it will be worth money someday. If you're in it for the long haul, who cares if that's not for 10 years?

I wanna relate a story about FFVII, but this is getting long winded.

As one of the more insane collectors on this board, I can comment on this.

Collecting as an investment is long term and most importantly, secondary. It's extremely long term. It took 15 years before the 2600 starting having big ticket items, and even then, there are few titles which qualify. The 25 copies of Video Life for the 2600 go for 4 figures for a reason and it took quite a while. And with that, no one really had the foresight to predict that it would go for a ton of money, mostly due to the lack of information and background on it, which is the case with a lot of rarer titles.

Big ticket items are hard to call for a reason and now with the increased awareness of what can or could be rare and minimum production runs required by hardware manufacturers, those super rare big ticket items will be very few and far between. The days have past where you could spin massive profit off older games in the short term. I wish I could have told my parents to pick up a couple cases of clearanced Stadium Events at Woolworth's.

And that's one big ticket item that has skyrocketed in value, as DNG and I can attest to. I picked up a complete copy by parts for $600 in 2003. Now a complete copy would go for at least $3000. The manual went this year for $875. However, would I sell it? No! Not much of an investment if I won't sell it but others would, I'm sure. The only thing is how many Stadium Event type surges have happened in the past 4 years? You can count them on one hand (and one of them was my fault, lol).

Our collection, as big it is, isn't going anywhere... but if someone offered us a $300k house for EVERYTHING, then we'd sell. Would that ever happen? Not likely which is why it is the only condition we would sell at this point in time. Down the road 20 years? College tuition comes a knocking and we will answer and see who it is. Is it possible game collecting will explode like comic collecting did? Maybe, but it's not something we are banking on. If our kids inherit our collection, we won't mind.

Most collectors go in with getting the games they like and collecting for the systems they like. There are some which try and play the market and they mostly fail or scrape by. However, it is possible to game hunt and turn a profit, but it's nothing extreme and most use it as an avenue to roll funds back into buying more games. And even then, opportunities have to be sought out and odds on, when one person gets the hookup, it's not available for anyone else.

What Pineapple is saying is short term, there are titles which you can find for average prices and sell for higher and turn a small profit. I mean, that's what my wife and I do. We bought 86 copies of Pokemon Fire Red with the wireless adaptor for $5 from TRU and eBayed them all for $20 each. That was $460 into $1720 (less eBay fees). It's not a plan that will make you rich or be your sole job. But it is useful to keep your eyes open, know prices and invest a little money to your advantage. It is an investment but is secondary and small scale. My wife knew how much those Fire Reds were going for and when she saw the price tag she grabbed about 10 of them. Then I asked are you sure these will sell and she said definitely. So I grabbed the entire bin and drug it to the checkout counter.

We collect because it's our hobby. My wife and I share it all together. My wife even brought half our collection to the table. We don't look to make money off of it and if we do, we roll it either into our savings or our collection. It's not the focus but we have our eyes open.

And games like CT, Suikoden, etc are not rare. They are in demand. There is a big difference and they are not mutually exclusive. No one said this but I am like a broken record when rarity topics come up.

Wow, this totally turned into TLDR. Sorry guys.

This statement is full of truth and knowledge. Sit back and be informed.

[Dippity-Do]

I'm not saying that you really have to know what games are going to be worth money down the road, and I'm not saying anyone should ever try to make a living selling off video games they buy at bargain basement prices (I deal with those people every time I work, and not only do I hate them, but they're barely making it by with their expensive coke habits.

I was basically saying that some games you know are going to be worth something someday, either because of limited production runs or the fact that you know people won't be looking for it until 6 years after it's out. So that game that you spent $30 on might end up going for $300 unopened some half a decade down the road. It also might go the opposite way and end up selling for $3.75 on buy it now. It fluxuates all the time. If it ends up being expensive later, and you bought it just to sell it at a later date, wouldn't you call that a good investment? It's not something you can really plan, but if you're into collecting and just grab as much as you can, chances are some of it will be worth money someday. If you're in it for the long haul, who cares if that's not for 10 years?

Well then pardon me for misunderstanding, but you've got to admit, you didn't give me much to go on.

I wanna relate a story about FFVII, but this is getting long winded.

Tell it. I like stories.

[Pineapple]

Well then pardon me for misunderstanding, but you've got to admit, you didn't give me much to go on.




Tell it. I like stories.

lol aren't you cute.

Anyways, when I started at this job, we had a copy of FFVII for sale for $12.99. I wanted it real bad but I had just started and was pretty low on funds. That day someone came in and was like "OMG FFVII NO WAYS GIMME!" I planned on buying the game to enjoy going through it again. Come to find out, literally two weeks later, I get a copy come in, give the guy $6 store cred for it (assuming it's around the same price) and call JC to find out what to price it at. He tells me the first 4 he sees on Ebay are going for $65-80, so mark it at $59.99. I was mortified. There was no way I was paying that much for it, but it shows you how quickly it all can change. Like 2 months ago it dropped down to $29.99 again. I think it's down another $10 at this point. So you can see how it fluxuates, like, a lot. And if they come out with that supposed remake, you can bet your ass it's going to sky rocket again as people are scouring for the original so they can have both. And imagine an unopened, non greatest hits version at that point. Not a great way to make money, but some games like that you can turn a profit on obviously quite quickly.