The million dollar retro game auctions help us remind ourselves of what matters most: the talking point


SNES and Super Mario World (1)
Image: Nintendo Life

As you’ve no doubt seen in recent years, there have been some high-profile and dazzling retro game sales that have reached hundreds of thousands of US dollars, and now more than $ 2 million. It has been quite disconcerting for viewers; These are extremely common game copies, after all, and the downside has been that it has also raised prices for dedicated collectors. The headline numbers are wild and independent, but they inflate the “normal” market elsewhere.

It is also increasingly clear that the bubble that has led to microinvestment schemes is becoming even less sustainable. There are now detailed and well-reasoned arguments that this hyperinflation, which defies logic for many who know the history of the game and the collector’s scene in particular, is riddled with foul play, cynicism and greed.

We shared it earlier in the article linked above, but Karl Jobst’s video The full truth about what is suspected to be happening here is worth seeing. As a one-paragraph summary, Jobst describes and connects a small number of people and businesses that have been at the heart of the ‘Mario’s game sells for megabucks’ headlines that have been in every game and in the broader media as of late. The video report presents evidence that it says points to deliberate market manipulation, acquiring and then ‘buying back’ games at heavily inflated prices to create an over-the-top market. With successful price inflation, driven by ‘rating’ systems and high-value auctions, it brings investors to market and continues to grow. You are creating an unrealistic price bubble.

Many of us settle for buying a nice art print while gawking at the auctions for the original paintings, and somehow the same thing happens in games.

It’s a fascinating subject, and in some ways we could consider it an obscene sideshow in games, a demonstration of how the popularity of the mainstream colliding with opportunists leads to these sorts of insane initiatives. It feels like a parallel universe that we gawk at, while unidentified millionaires drop money, or maybe pretend a: trade games that are only worth a fraction of the sale price. Many of us settle for buying a nice art print while staring at auctions for original paintings, and somehow the same thing happens in games. The value attributed to an original, or in the case of the game to be stamped and supposedly qualified games, however, the value we place on our own copies does not necessarily matter. After all, many of us have our own prized boxes and cartridges, because we play them and personally valued them decades ago; our slightly wrinkled copy of Super Mario Bros. is no less “authentic” than the hermetically sealed mint version.

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The problem, of course, is that the impact seeps into something more like the real world to collect. You can still find loose cartridges and game copies at affordable prices, but those prices keep rising, in some cases, a little faster than normal inflation. The craze around mint stamped copies also makes those premium collectibles harder to find at “reasonable” prices. Many of us can still collect video game memorabilia; there are millions of copies of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda in the wild, but the cost and expected quality of the copies are still inflated and artificially handicapped by obscene prices on the higher end.




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