The Video Game Critic

Good points Rookie & I tend to agree w/ you. Ebay was great when it started, but the last few years have turned me off.

I've got a nice shop by my house. They must buy some stuff offline, because id be surprised if they were getting some of those rarer games from trade-ins. I doubt they make much off of them, but they keep people like me coming in. I think the main thing that is keeping them open is all the Dungeons & Dragons card games that they host & sell.

The thing that bugs me the most is how it has affected second-hand shops like goodwill & garage sales. I like shopping & looking at merchandise. I like a good find. Those days are gone. Now the first thing everyone does is look online to see how much they can get. Sadly I see most second-hand shops & garage sales charging on the high end of online prices rather than the low end. My enthusiasm for garage sales has dwindled down to next-to-nothing. I used to always stop. Now I just keep driving.

eBay was fun when it was actually auctions that dictated value. I enjoyed some bidding. Some I lost some I won. Now almost everything is "buy it now" or has a starting bid that is too high.

Tron wrote:The thing that bugs me the most is how it has affected second-hand shops like goodwill & garage sales. I like shopping & looking at merchandise. I like a good find. Those days are gone. Now the first thing everyone does is look online to see how much they can get. Sadly I see most second-hand shops & garage sales charging on the high end of online prices rather than the low end. My enthusiasm for garage sales has dwindled down to next-to-nothing. I used to always stop. Now I just keep driving.

I have a place by my house called Savers, which is basically like the Goodwill, and they definitely price their stuff off of high-end ebay prices. They had a gameboy for $35 last week, and a bunch of junk NES and Sega games all for $10+ a pop. Anything that looks like it may be "collectible" gets a high-end price, which is stupid since everything they get is donated.

I went garage sale hunting a few years back and one person was price checking things on their phone when asked about prices. Pretty craptastic right there.

scotland wrote:

Tron wrote:
If anyone wants to paint me a picture instead of giving me links on how this is somehow horrible, please do.

So you are ok with the manipulation of a niche market for the soul purpose to artificially inflate prices?

Rookie1 wrote: So you are ok with the manipulation of a niche market for the soul purpose to artificially inflate prices?

I am okay with free market capitalism and the entertainment industry. Aren't you?

For the groups trying to buy up cheap and resell items, its just a strategy that is highly subject to risk, to supply, to demand, to competition and everything else about capitalism. Trying this strategy in a niche market is doubly risky as it may collapse or be influenced by relatively small shifts in supply or demand for instance.

There is nothing artificial here, nor is there any inflation of the mean of the prices. In fact, the mean of the prices may go down. Sure the number of big bargain hunting winners may go down, which takes away some of the fun, but on average, everyone has more access to the products at a more stable and likely reduced on aggregate price. Its fun to win something for a bargain, but its also fun that the product you want is easily available, and for a reasonable price.

There is no monopoly to break up. There is no great wrong to be righted. There is no domination of supply chains or vertical integration to be taken down. There is nothing stopping you from doing the same, or trying any strategy to counter it, or seeing an opportunity maybe as a seller instead of a buyer, or a buyer instead of a seller, or from going to other online or brick and mortar stores.

All of that sounds like healthy capitalism. If capitalism isn't your thing, then nothing is stopping you from leading the crusade to bring cheap video game merchandise to the masses to the limit of your bank account. That's okay too.

I make typos all the time, but I hope you meant 'sole' and not 'soul'. Unless you think ebay is the devil. Where is our friend Atarifever, as he is usually pretty good at scuttling my arguments. So far, I don't see any real issue.

scotland wrote:I make typos all the time, but I hope you meant 'sole' and not 'soul'. Unless you think ebay is the devil. Where is our friend Atarifever, as he is usually pretty good at scuttling my arguments. So far, I don't see any real issue.

Maybe ebay is the devil. Can you prove its not?

It was an open ended question, so your answer is as valid as anyone else's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKHk5U8tmfw

I have spent a lot of time on eBay and this video from Pat the NES Punk pretty much confirms what I've noticed on the site. eBay inflates prices and it does so with the policies that they set up. IMO, one of the biggest reasons for inflation on game prices is due to how eBay does business. By incrementally posting higher prices for a lot of games (specific games) you can pretty much get game prices where you want them. Watch the video.

I wanted to clarify how this works on eBay since the video doesn't clearly spell it out for everyone. To drive up the prices of games there are really a few things you need:

-This works best for particular types of games that don't have too many copies available on eBay at a time.
-This doesn't have to be centered around 1 person buying all the copies of the game, a few impulsive buyers can also make a difference in a short amount of time.

Basically, what happens is that eBay is has so many copies of a game available on their site at a time. Sellers will usually post their games onto the site for around the price that eBay recommends (based on the trending price). Some sellers will post the game for a little bit less than that amount to try and sell their copy quicker. Other sellers will post their game for higher than the amount boasting a better quality game or for no other reason than there aren't many copies of the games available on the site. The people who post the higher priced games can wait months before they sell their copy. What happens is that it only takes one buyer to buy the game at the higher price and the new trending price increases. Suddenly, all the copies of the games go up by a bit, with higher price jumps for the more expensive games. The easiest way to see this is to be looking for games that are already fairly expensive as one higher priced sale will jack up all the other prices. Once the game sales, if there aren't too many copies on eBay you will see more postings for the same game but now the average is at the highest sale price. Even if the games aren't selling, the new average has been set by eBay. It could take months or years for the price to now drop, assuming no one buys the game. If someone does buy the game at that newer price, the price cements itself and that newer price is now the new average for the game. Retailers follow sites like eBay and will now post their prices at their shop, using eBay as a reference. The prices increase everywhere over a given amount of time.

You can already see this happening to a lot of games. SNES games that averaged $40-50 2 years ago, suddenly being $150=200 a game. All it takes is a game that doesn't have a ton of sellers on eBay and a few dickish sellers and the price will go up overtime. Games that are really popular follow a similar model however due to the number of sellers for these games, the prices tend to go up slower than some of the more uncommon games.

Rev wrote: What happens is that it only takes one buyer to buy the game at the higher price and the new trending price increases. Suddenly, all the copies of the games go up by a bit, with higher price jumps for the more expensive games.

Thanks my friend. I appreciate you taking the time to walk me through that.

I still don't see how if all it takes is one sale to move the needle up, shouldn't one sale below the trending price also move the needle down?

If prices were always going up, the system would break down as volume fell. Ebay makes their money like a casino, where they gain not just by taking a piece of the sale price, but by volume of trades. High prices will inhibit volume, which is not in Ebay's best interest.

If prices were also always going up, the demand would no longer support them. Now Ebay has no inventory, but the sellers don't want to hold on to their copy of Chase the Chuckwagon forever. I ran a search, and sure enough, the newest listings of Chase the Chuckwagon are $60 compared to $120 or more for older listings..price seems to be heading down.

If SNES game prices have quadrupled in a few years then a) our collections are worth a lot more (yeah) and b) that sounds like a bubble about to burst (oh-uh). It may have nothing to do with Ebay or their policies, and everything to do with people buying back their childhoods in adulthood. Not every adult who had a toy as a kid can buy it back...that's why 1990s SNES games are rising in price, but 1970s pong consoles are not. They are pretty stable in price, and the price is pretty low. (The downside is that my collection of 1970s pong consoles also have little value where my SNES collection does)

As for brick and mortar checking Ebay for pricing, that's valid. Someone somewhere has to set a price for things - how much is that 1970s Spiderman MEGO doll, how much is that 1930s trumpet, how much is your house worth, your car, etc. Ebay is a crowd sourced way of setting prices, not much different from other ways like Kelly Blue Book. Pawn shops or whatnot should check in. They have the advantage of you can hold it in your hand and walk out with it that moment, so if they charge what Ebay does, sounds like a good deal.

Gentlegamer wrote:Dropping $$$ on classic games feeds the problem. Your mad money is part of the problem. Soon you'll get to enjoy buying indistinguishable counterfeits for big money... if you haven't already.

Honest question. How do you think I should go about buying let's say a rare pc engine game? It's not like i want to spend $100 on a game if there was a less expensive option. I search the selling history on a retro game and wait patiently to find a game selling on the low end of the curve. Like it or not these games are worth what the market will bear.

Gentlegamer wrote:Dropping $$$ on classic games feeds the problem. Your mad money is part of the problem. Soon you'll get to enjoy buying indistinguishable counterfeits for big money... if you haven't already.

Eh maybe if you know jack about resale then it's a problem...