I don’t want to buy games digitally anymore until I can actually own the game rather than the license. But then some freak on eBay is asking for $500 for a copy of Klonoa on the PS1. Then there are even more freaks who are willing to bid higher than that! Then the smaller retro games stores around me base their prices on these prices. There needs to be a price cap on this stuff. We can’t let all of the richest nerds control the economy.
Some of it is just them getting hard to find for things that were made in smaller numbers. As time goes on there are less of them floating around.
But also: grading and internet hype has drawn the eyes of a certain class of investor that want to sit on these “assets.” Then everyone that sees a graded copy of a game sell for a high dollar amount assumes their grungy copy with no box and their name written on the cartridge is worth the same amount. You see the same thing across a lot of collectibles hobbies, unfortunately.
Obelix@feddit.org 1 year ago
Just to give you some background information:
old.reddit.com/…/klonoa_phantasy_reverie_series_t…
This one is giving you 25851 sales in north america:
installbaseforum.com/…/ps1-and-n64-software-and-h…
So there were never that much copies out there and there can’t be that many copys left. The game was released 27 years ago - discs were thrown out, were destroyed, became scratched and unreadable, house fires, floods etc. happened, but even if every copy was still in existence: You would still only need 25852 people who are trying to collect all north american PSX releases to create a scarity.