Its because people these days sell them for the equivalent of a car, crazy prices. And companies like Limited Run makes it even worse.

Retro game collecting is way too expensive in 2024.

I can see Gen Z not caring for old video games but most vintage electronics never come down in price ever

Scalpers and the natural degradation of hardware overtime makes it hard to justify collecting retro games

retro gaming has lost it's charm, it IS all down to profit and the only way you are gonna play and enjoy your retro stuff is emulation now, it's a lost cause with how much greed there is currently

collecting things in general gets depressing once it becomes popular. scalpers really ruin it for people that actually just enjoy things.

I feel the next Gen consoles ps6 etc will be all digital with no physical option

Just emulate it

Declining? No, but the window is closing and the gap of game hunting / finding games in the wild for cheap is closing -- gradually it won't be easy to find games of any sort, or people will become too aware of what prices are. This might be the last year for casual game collecting, finding titles at $1, 2, 3 or even 5.

Every hobby has been hit by greedy scalpers. It is just disgusting.

I used to love collecting games back in the early 2010's but feels like it's impossible now. 100 dollars for paper mario ttyd is insane.

Today it's mostly scalpers, resellers and idiots buying from one another. No game is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and there is nothing more sad than a sealed videogame that people refuse to open and enjoy.

the early 2010s were lightning in a bottle. You had the perfect blend of

While I agree that the pandemic and competition have definitely changed things when it comes to collecting, I also believe that the biggest change is in you as the collector. As a collector has been on the hunt for several years, they will typically first seek out their most wanted titles, then branch off into other categories of their choosing. Once the collection is built up, some of the "difficulties" of collecting are basically manufactured in our own heads because we have most of what we REALLY want after years of collecting. This makes it seem like things are getting more difficult to find or that it's just "not as fun" anymore. This is when I took a step back from collecting, got rid of some games that I knew I didn't need and would never play, and did some research on certain systems I had never collected for before. I started collecting for the PSP, 3DS, and GBA and I haven't had this much fun since I first started collecting years ago. It's a refreshing look at it and there are so many games that I want and see in stores that are still very reasonably priced. Sometimes, collecting isn't the issue, but the collector is. Not everyone will agree with me, but those are just my thoughts on a very fun topic.

Retro game collecting was one of my favorite hobbies before it became no longer affordable. I would love spending a whole Saturday or weekend driving between stores that sold retro video games or at a game convention in the early-mid 2000's to see what they had and hope that I'd find a few things I wanted that I could afford. As the 2010's came, the last games I still wanted to own rose out of my price range and just sticking to modern games, both mainstream and indie, became more affordable. There are still hundreds of classics from NES through to the PS2 that I unfortunately have to accept that I will never own an original copy of.

I stopped collecting years ago I have around 30 plus consoles but the hobby died when people thought they had gold all the time. Yellowed snes with third party controllers with no games and no box's also third party power plug and they think it's 100 euros. Honestly I've moved on to emulators now.

Nice video man. Grading and WATA have helped the decline for retro game collecting for actual gamers for sure. Subbed to your channel!

As a kid I traded in my whole sega Saturn with games and my store credit wasn’t enough to buy 1 new game. Pretty sad when I think about it

I used to collect gaming hardware, but when my daughter was born we really needed the space. I looked at all that stuff and decided to part with it. Sold it all. Made a profit on basically everything, but that wasn't the intention. I feel good about the decision now. I realized that I just enjoyed having the stuff, but never really used it. Also, when thinking of the example I was setting for my children, "collector of unused hardware" wasn't something I was proud of. I didn't want a hoard of material posessions to be what defined me, and I also began playing less video games (partially due to having less time as a new parent).

I don't really care about collecting games, as long as I can emmulate