One of my new hobbies during the last 3 years has been collecting retro-videogames. I consider videogames an important part of my life, as during my professional career I have worked with a couple of the biggest videogame companies out there in the world, EA and Ubisoft. It also brings a lot of nostalgia, as my first consoles were the Atari 2600 and the Sega Mega Drive. And Bangkok indeed is surprisingly a good place to collect, as it receives a fair amount of material from Japan with a decent price, sometimes with a really bargain price.
So during these years, I have been an avid consumer of material, specially on some specialized Youtubers collectors, as I wanted to learn more about the best games, the prices, the places to find good games, etc.
One recurring topic that comes again and again in the talks about collecting retro videogames is about the speculation. There seem to be a lot of polemic, and a fair amount of buyers, who are not happy with the current increase of prices in most of the retro platforms.
So is there really a problem? This is obviously my personal opinion, and you are welcome to disagree, so here is my take on the topic:
Videogames were never cheap. I was born in 1980, and when we had our first consoles (atari, NES, Master System, Megadrive, Super Nintendo) having own games was a treasure. You needed to save money for many months, or wait for a special occasion like a birthday or Christmas to get a new game. Nobody, except some children in families with a lot of money, had a collection bigger than what you could count with the fingers of one or two hands. What we used to do a lot was renting videogames during a weekend in the videoclubs. So taking that into account, it is still pretty incredible that a wide selection of those games can still be purchased 30 years later for 20/30/40/50 euro per unit.
Then there are a bunch of games whose price has already risen to the hundreds or even thousands of euro. Is that bad? Well I think that in the end it just applies a simple rule of offer and demand, like in any other area where people collect things, such as coins, music vinyls, stamps, etc etc. Some of those games were not produced in highly amount of units and therefore are difficult to find nowadays. You need to add that many of the original owners of those games were children that just wanted to play. Most of the original owners never cared much about the perfect conservation of their games, therefore countless boxes and manuals were thrown to the garbage. Add that to the idea that 30 years ago nobody thought that these items would be valuable, so it was very normal just to give your old console and games away to friends, relatives or they could perfectly end up in the garbage cans when the mothers were doing some spring cleaning in the house.
So why people complain about speculation? Well cause complaining is free. Of course everybody would love to have a vast collection with those amazing jewels per system per 5 euro the unit, but the reality of the market dictates that when an article is valuable and scarce, the price will increase as there will be some people always eager to pay more for an item. I do not think there is any secret conspiracy theory of collectors and companies storing secretly thousand of games for decades so just the prices increase. It is just how the market works with any other collecting item. And I think we are still very lucky to be able to buy and create great collections without spending a fortune.
Also, bear in mind that there are a lot of different ways of collecting retro games, and they are all valid. There is no particular rule, there is no official guideline. A collection is a personal choice, and the most important thing is to make you happy: some people are ok collecting only cartridges, some people want the CIB (Complete In Box) version with cartridge, manual and original box, some people pay a lot of attention to having the game in an inmaculate perfect state and some do not care, some people want to buy a game sealed and just put it on exhibition on the shelf… Remember, it is your collection, so just do what satisfies you more instead of trying to copy some famous Youtubers. You do not need to pay hundreds of euros for a perfect copy of a game to enjoy the hobby. And if you want to pay it, you are free to do it, but remember that the hobby should not create a problem in the economy of your life, as some people can go crazy and even get into money loans to buy games that cannot afford otherwise.
Also remember that at the end of the day, they are just physical items that are not needed as basics in your life. Nowadays you can play most of retro games in emulators, so you do not neccessarily need to buy the original games to enjoy the core of the hobby itself, that is no other than playing and enjoying the games. I collect games cause part of the fun is to search, compare prices, learn and the satisfaction when you find a great addition to your catalogue. But also do not get mistaken, if I would ever have the economical need, I would not hesitate to sell part or the whole of my collection if the shit hits the fan.
Meanwhile, enjoy this beautiful hobby, both if you are an old collector or you are just starting in the hobby. Be patient doing your purchases, and remember that, like in everything else in life, it is impossible to have it all. So just be happy and satisfied with what you have. When your collection grows too big, then you will probably not have even the free time to play to everything you wanted to.