Retro Game Price Gouging Thread

I think it's piracy related. I remember when fat PS2s could get mod chips, but thins couldn't. I don't know if that's changed.

I want to say there's a reliability/repair issue as well, but don't quote me on that. My dad used to buy any cheap (usually broken) fat ps2s, fix them, and flip them, since most broken fats were cheap, easy fixes like greasing the disc tray rails.
Slim's also have problems with the disc getting scratched due to the overheat causing the optic cable to loosen thus scratching the discs that and you can only use USB to play burners compared to using hdd or Ethernet
 
I think it's piracy related. I remember when fat PS2s could get mod chips, but thins couldn't. I don't know if that's changed.

I want to say there's a reliability/repair issue as well, but don't quote me on that. My dad used to buy any cheap (usually broken) fat ps2s, fix them, and flip them, since most broken fats were cheap, easy fixes like greasing the disc tray rails.
The fat PS2 was also really easy to soft-mod back in the day, just put in the special disc, done, now hook it up to the network.
 
What's the deal with fat ps2s euro models being so fucking expensive seriously being considering if possible to change the power supply to that of the euro power supply ( although something I've read is that depending on the model either the console won't start or ends up fryed because of the hardware being tailored for that specific region's electrical output like the us plugs being different that the European plugs due the European plugs consuming more electricity than us plugs
The phat PS2 has an expansion bay that you can put a hard drive into - you can fill the hard drive with PS2 roms and softmod the thing so you basically have a PS2 that can play digital games.
 
Bumping for this:

Neat analysis for this trend of overly-priced retro games
This Jim Halperin guy is really shady, aside from all the stuff in the video, I found some guy tweeting to Karl that Halperin had scammed people for 100k back when he was thirteen years old.
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Here's an archive of the article.

I have to wonder what else he's attempted this with besides games, comics, and coins. I have no doubts this guy's been involved with tons of other bubbles considering what a greed fueled scumfuck he is.
 
This Jim Halperin guy is really shady, aside from all the stuff in the video, I found some guy tweeting to Karl that Halperin had scammed people for 100k back when he was thirteen years old.
View attachment 2479030
Here's an archive of the article.

I have to wonder what else he's attempted this with besides games, comics, and coins. I have no doubts this guy's been involved with tons of other bubbles considering what a greed fueled scumfuck he is.
Might be federal money laundering, Jeffery Epstein was a literal who before he somehow got a fuckload of seed money from 3 letter organizations.
 
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The Post (Archive)
Karl revealed on his youtube community tab that he's making a new video on the Halperin scams, and that the FTC will be investigating.
I'm interested in why he's decided to make another video, the first one seemed to really sum everything up, my best guess is people contacted him with new information or he found some big thing he missed the first time around.
 
I got around to selling some old PS1 games I had and finally sold the last one, made about £800 from a dozen or so games which is honestly insane, about £450 from Tron Bonne and a couple of Mega Man X games alone.

The market is crazy and I'm glad I cashed in. I collected games a few years back and it was fun spending some spare change on old games from my childhood and replaying them. The way things are now I honestly have no idea what kind of loon is paying these kinds of prices. No way I'm paying more than £10 for a 30 year old game.
 
I have one local shop within about 2 hours of me that's selling games for around eBay prices, sometimes more. They don't even have anything preventing the games from getting sunbleached, and the front 50% are all horrible. Their "special case" has a stickerless Chrono Trigger cart only for 150 dollars. Just says "Chrono Trigger" in sharpie.
 
Video game emulation, how does that work? I'm shocked at the amount of people they still don't know how to do this.
True, but there's people who want to have a physical copy for one reason or another, such as collectors. Plus, there's consoles that don't have adequate emulators that plays the library as good as original hardware, so there's value in it there.

It also doesn't help that Nintendo went jihad on emulation sites a few years back, making getting emulated copies harder to obtain.
 
True, but there's people who want to have a physical copy for one reason or another, such as collectors. Plus, there's consoles that don't have adequate emulators that plays the library as good as original hardware, so there's value in it there.

It also doesn't help that Nintendo went jihad on emulation sites a few years back, making getting emulated copies harder to obtain.
I'm getting free ds games with magic fairies lately, also you can buy them on Amazon.
 
True, but there's people who want to have a physical copy for one reason or another, such as collectors. Plus, there's consoles that don't have adequate emulators that plays the library as good as original hardware, so there's value in it there.

It also doesn't help that Nintendo went jihad on emulation sites a few years back, making getting emulated copies harder to obtain.
Emulators have such nice quality of life features though, like save states and rewind/fast forward. It makes it easy to play through a game that isn't good but seemed slightly interesting a long time ago or just to finish a game you played a long time ago. I would never play something like Lagoon without fast forward.
 
Emulators have such nice quality of life features though, like save states and rewind/fast forward. It makes it easy to play through a game that isn't good but seemed slightly interesting a long time ago or just to finish a game you played a long time ago. I would never play something like Lagoon without fast forward.
I don't deny the convenience of an emulator. It's just that my point is that sometimes they just don't exist or aren't as convenient as you think. For instance, OG Xbox emulators still aren't a thing yet. Additionally, I only just recently discovered a Japanese-developed Saturn emulator that would run the game I wanted to play on that system as good as original hardware, and even then it required me having a disc on-hand and in my computer's disc tray. But, it's the best emulator for that system I've used so far.
 
necroing to ask: does anybody think these prices will ever go down?

It's been a little over 3 years since this utterly retarded """retro""" boom started and I'm still bitter that it perfectly coincided with the moment in time where I got my own disposable income for the first time ever. I was more than ready to blow like 150 bucks on a console and a bunch of games for it as celebration, only to go online and see that console selling for 300 bucks LOOSE, with no controllers and maybe one or two cables.

I've tried heading to the 3 retro stores within my 50 mile radius and every single one is a slovenly hole that won't price anything until they whip out their iPhone and search up the most expensive prices possible on ebay right in front of the customer, whereas the alternative is either selling my soul to the Zucc only to find the same fucking insane prices on there (I've checked; the local prices are definitely a little better than eBay's, but the vast majority are still terminally retarded schlock like 1000 dollars for a SNES with Mario World and a single controller) or hoping and praying that a flea market has not only the console that I want, but 1) the console in reasonable condition 2) at a reasonable price and 3) with guarantee of authenticity thank you, Wish-using faggots, for making this so much harder

alternatively, what's the nicest experience you've had buying this stuff recently (assuming you have)? just to inject some positivity into an otherwise ranty post
(also, here are some unrelated examples of crazy pricing. It's still relevant...)
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necroing to ask: does anybody think these prices will ever go down?
Unless you're willing to emulate you're going to have to put down some serious coin or get really lucky if you want a lot of those retro consoles in good shape and any of the well known games.

As the kids that grew up with each console generation get old enough to want to rebuy the old games of their youth they buy up everything so it hits in cycles where everything gets bought up by hoarders, speculators, or content creators of that gen cause everybody to buy up everything in decent shape.

Covid seemed to cause a big jump in price on a lot of that stuff, whether from the perceived scarcity of everything at the time or people's stimulus checks burning a hole in their wallet. It's possible some of the prices go down but maybe not by as much as we would all like just because a lot of people will just sit on them until they get junked by someone

On the unrelated examples it looks like the first one is Pokemon Limited Edition console and on the 3DS I remember it being really limited on that year's black Friday in 2016 only I think and was I want to say one of the only ways outside of a different Animal Crossing bundle to get the New 3DS in the non-XL type in the US, the kind with those little exchangeable plates. This info is also from my ass so I could be a little off but that's the 3DS I have and I grabbed a couple of plate sets as soon as they were discontinued because I didn't want to have to spend out the ass on replacements
 
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