My son is a keen gamer with several Nintendo devices and PS 4/5.
He loves the Pokemon games, and I think he’s had the majority for the Switch and many for the Nintendo 3DS.
He’s interested in some of the older graphically simpler games but they seem extortionate.
He wants Pokemon White which is over 10 years old and we went to the relatively new local CEX store this afternoon - there was a copy there but it was £50 secondhand in a non-original case and reprinted case liner.
I’ve never used ebay but there are some cheaper items (and more expensive ones) there.
Online I can’t see that Game stock secondhand items from this era.
So are CEX and the like just profiteering (they’ll buy for £23 or so and sell for £50) or are these genuine collectable items these days? - I’d imagine hundreds of thousands of copies must exist worldwide (or more) unless people just binned the items they no longer wanted.
Preferably, but that’s a good idea if available (though potentially a bit iffy?) to see if the games are worth the cost fro a physical item. The problem with the Pokemon ones is that they’re about collecting all these funny creatures and presumably he can’t get them all if he never played the originals!
I’ve used emulators for ZX Spectrum, BBC Microcomputer, Acorn Archimedes and various arcade games years ago (MAME). I wasn’t aware there were emulators for the older Nintendo titles, any suggestions?
For collectors I assume the high physical game prices are realistic (perhaps similar to original vinyl releases) but I find £50 a bit steep for something fairly old and pre-used though this makes me wonder:
Buying for £23, then selling for £50 doesn’t seem like profiteering to me.
Don’t forget they need to pay rent, rates, wages and make a profit.
Check what they sell for on eBay. They are worth what people pay for them.
Be careful what you are comparing though, I’ve just listed 3 ds games for my wife and noticed price in USA are higher than UK.
Also, consider the price you will be able to sell for in the future. I expect matching case and game will be worth more than unmatched.
Also, I’ve not noticed the price of vintage games going down in price.
Buying Pokémon white might turn out to be a good investment.
Yes, you never know, I’ll probably just get it for him later in the week, but still trying to instill concepts of value for money as he’s happy to pay for it from pocket money himself.
I succumbed and picked up a hopefully nice little old style Apple wireless keyboard myself - I prefer the older versions, but my son has acquired one of mine to use with his iPad and batteries leaked in another I gave to my father years ago and I can’t get them out without some radical ‘surgery’ probably involving a corkscrew or a drill and I suspect it’ll be dead anyway!
