The Rising Cost of Collecting

One year after the shutdown of the entire freakin' planet, the cost of retro gaming has been on a meteoric rise.  Rare games that might have been occasional indulgences for some collectors may now be completely out of reach to all but a few. We've personally heard from fellow gamers that the state of collecting as a hobby seems abysmal compared to, say 2019, and while that might seem extreme, there's certainly an overwhelming malaise in the hobby.

Let's take a look at some causes and effects of retro game inflation:

1. More entertainment dollars being spent at home. With less options available to the public, focus turns to spending money on home entertainment options, like video games, music, and streaming/physical media movies.  This increases demand.
2. Stimulus payments (U.S.)  It's important to note that we've seen a jump in sales at every stimulus payment.  It's easy to draw the correlation between extra money in everyone's account and increased investment in our favorite hobby.  This feeds the willingness of some to pay exorbitant prices for certain games. 
3. Decreased supply, increased demand. Because of the pandemic, less people are out selling their used games at local brick-and-mortar stores, yet there is an increased demand for them.  As a result, hard-to-find games are showing up on outlets like OfferUp and eBay regularly instead of stores, but the increase in gamer budgets leads to bidding wars and prices increasing for retro games and systems across the board.  

And here lies the heart of the problem: prices are rising, and for retailers, both online and brick-and-mortar, getting new stock at reasonable prices is much more difficult.  The result is an jump in prices to accommodate businesses' growing costs.

It seems like a snake eating its own tail...a never-ending cycle of inflation.  But with the world opening up again, there is hope that the gaming economy will course-correct and we'll see prices come back down.  As more people venture out and sell their items in bulk, game stores and websites like ours will be able to make deals that will be beneficial to both the gamer and the business.  

As a family-owned small business, Retro Rocket has been able to sustain itself because of our size.  It seems counter-intuitive, but our lower volume and online-only presence means that we can price fairly and pick-and-choose what we decide to buy and sell easier than, say, a GameStop.

Overall, we believe the inflation will right itself over the course of the next year and hopefully collecting can remain fun for everyone...not just to those with deep, deep pockets.