As an 80s and 90s gaming enthusiast --and, to a small extent, collector-- I really want to know what the hell is going on here. It doesn't seem that long ago that Nintendo World Championship was going for $15k and I could at least understand that from the confluence of historical significance and rarity, but $1.5M for one of the most sold games in history just because of its condition!?<p>Is this just a symptom of the ludicrous increases in wealth disparity, that someone has $1.5M to throw away on something like this? Or is it some kind of money laundering? Seriously, someone please explain this to me.
A short Twitter thread from Pat Contri on this is something I found provides helpful balance: <a href="https://twitter.com/PatTheNESpunk/status/1414300310659473408" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/PatTheNESpunk/status/1414300310659473408</a><p>"Wow, those Charizard cards from your childhood are now worth lots of $" has been a common, popular headline across media in the last year, and now it looks like old video games are next. And as Pat says, I think there's reason to suspect that, in this instance, this is artificial pricing.
What I find really disheartening is that these games are attracting such huge valuations simply because of the condition of their boxes! They aren't rare editions, or exclusive, pre-release code. The money has nothing to do with the game itself.<p>These bidders aren't game collectors, they are cardboard box collectors, nothing more.
Isn't there, like hundreds of these floating around on eBay? I haven't searched eBay for them, but I would like to think that common and well circulated games are not that special or rare. It reminds me of the Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons saying: 'You opened it...it's no longer a collectible'
This is somewhat depressing because of how unusable it is. With baseball cards, you all you could ever do was look at them, so you lose nothing when they're encapsulated. With videogames, it's sealed (at least this one), and unplayable. You're not even sure if the cartridge works.
When more of these kinds of news hit the public forums like HN, maybe it's time to sell...but just my humble opinion and I don't know how to quantify these things.