will our collectors editions be WORTHLESS!!?? in the long run?

[AJLareneg]

I have had someone call my collection a pile of worthless junk before.

To me, it is worth whatever I value it at. I have no plans to sell it anyway, so I don't see how it matters. I do think some games will keep value, though.

[kizeal]

well..one man's treasure is another man's trash? its hard for non-collectors to see the real value..

[fattyuk]

I collect because I love my gaming.... not for any other reasons?

Anyone who collects purpoesly to make money isn't a collector.... that's a salesman/gambler.

[ChrissyCooza1]

I collect games for personal enjoyment and because if I have the option to go for a standard game or a fancy version I ask myself 'why have standard when you can go one better?' but at the end of the day they are for me to open and play.

Ive had my friends come over and I have some pretty good CEs but they dont batter an eyelid cos to them its a game in a bigger box, the rest doesnt matter, I do feel that way sometimes when I look over what I have but remember the price I paid probably has the DLC price included etc but thats why I cant understand people who collect games 'sealed' your technically loosing value because you havent redeemed a voucher that is in the box which could expire in a year for DLC which would cost £7.99+ on hte Xbox Live Market or PSN Store plus your also denying another gamer from getting that DLC which is basically free via your unused voucher and denying them the chance to own that CE if only so many are made.

When I see a game like the Dead Space Ultra Edition come up I ignore it, the price people list it for is crazy for what is basically a cardboard box with some extra content and the Dead Space game which you could pick up for £10 now a days but all that content is going to waste because it is looked at once then locked away because its rare.

If you feel like that the thing to remember is: its worth something to somebody.

[Onyxia]

Like many others, I collect because I enjoy gaming. I still buy NES games to this day. I buy for myself, not for others. Nothing beats playing the original games on the original consoles, imo. Always makes me nostalgic. I don't plan on selling any of it so I guess their value doesn't mean much to me. It could be worth nothing for all I care --- it's mostly the "sentimental" value that means a lot to me.

[Iwatasan]

If you're worried about the value of your collection depreciating, I think the solution is to become a more critical consumer. Don't go out and buy every available CE because, newsflash, some of them will depreciate. The CEs that stand the test of time, at least in my limited experience, are for games with a cult following. Sometimes these games are naturally limited because they weren't popular or marketed well at retail, but because of the cult following the units become highly prized later on and their limited nature only contributes to their value.

It seems like everybody here is rather concerned about collecting for the sake of personal satisfaction, and so to them I would say set whatever goals you want to for your collection and enjoy! You know, like, don't go off the deep end and skip paying your bills or anything. But other than that have fun with it, because at that point it's not really about the money anymore.

With the games I collect I always try to get a mint sealed copy and a copy to play with. Some of the games I collect are pretty old, and let me tell you, when they come sealed they are not cheap. So this probably pokes a hole in your argument about games necessarily losing value over time. If you're smart about what you focus your collecting on, you can have a collection which easily at least maintains its value, and keeping it sealed is probably a requirement if this is what you're after.

I also seriously disagree with your friend on the digital distribution topic. I mean yeah he's right, games, music, movies, etc are all heading that direction. I'd much rather watch a movie on Netflix than go out and buy it if I know I'll probably never watch it more than a few times in my life. But this is exactly why physical copies can be so valuable, because if it's one of my favorite movies, I'd much rather feel like I own it, not like I can just watch it on Netflix whenever I want.

Do you think that when a format becomes unpopular it also loses value? Cassette tapes are probably a good example in most cases. On the other hand, I got a MOTHER 1 original soundtrack cassette tape on Yahoo Japan once that I could probably get at least a few hundred dollars for from a crazy EarthBound collector. Still works, too. And when I collect NES games I don't care that my NES has been broken for years. Since I'll keep them sealed anyway I don't even care if the games inside don't work. For me it's more about archiving a relic or something like that, I guess.

All material things decay over time. Your collection might last until you're old and gray, but how many of the games or their hardware will still work? If you're in it for the overall item, like the sealed copies I collect, that doesn't matter. But say I hand my collection down to my hypothetical kids someday. If they don't throw them out or ruin them or sell them off, maybe they'll pass them down to their kids. Several generations later, do you think the collection will still be intact? Or will it just be a pile of dust and bits of plastic and circuit boards? If it magically holds up over time, will anyone even care about it, will it be relevant to society in hundreds of years, let alone valuable?

When you think about things in the LONG term, it starts to make you wonder. The longest lasting and most valuable physical media is going to be the sealed and preserved stuff, but you'll never know when the games inside stop working. If you don't care about the value or longevity, buy any game you want and open it and play it and have fun with it like it was meant for, but hope that you don't find out later it would have been very valuable had you kept it sealed. If playing the game is ALL you care about, digital is the way to go, and it's really the only way to preserve something indefinitely. But you can't collect it

[fattyuk]

Fingers crossed my valuable item will be my uncharted 1 press kit lol

[twistedsymphony]

The value of anything is always a direct relationship between availability and desirability (aka: supply and demand).

The reason games drop in value shortly after release is because shortly after release their desirability drops (people have completed the game/moved on to other games) and the availability increases (people are selling their copies used while there might still be new copies for sale too)

Given a long enough timeline the value of any product will INCREASE.

Eventually the game will no longer be produced, and the availability of good condition/new sealed examples will decrease, this will help drive the value back UP.

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Collector's Edition releases will almost always hold their value better than standard editions because fewer of them were produced and production stops sooner (hence the supply is shorter).


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Some games, some editions will be worth more than others and this is controlled by availability and desirability.

if you want to know if a game will increase in value or decrease in value ask yourself this
-will people still be talking about and wanting to play THIS specific game 20-30 years from now?
-will the popularity of the game increase after release or decrease after release?
-was the game hyped up a lot before release?

the answers to those 3 questions will pretty much determine the value of the game down the road.

lets look at Bioshock 2:
- in 20-30 years I doubt anyone will give a sh*t... they might care about Bioshock 1 but people have already forgotten about BS2
- the popularity took a nose dive after release when people realized it paled in comparison to the first game
- the game was hyped up a ton before release

now lets look at Dead Space:
- in 20-30 years I think people will still be talking about the first Dead Space, it was a unique game and spawned a now popular franchise
- the popularity has increased after release when people realized it was good. Also the second game was good which brought new interest and fans to the first game.
- the game was barely hyped before release which meant sales expectations were low as were initial production numbers were low.

not even looking the CE releases the regular first edition releases
Bioshock 2: gets about $16: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bioshock-2-X...item19ca9936ee
Dead Space 1: gets about $45: http://www.ebay.com/itm/XBOX-360-Dea...item4cfb509a54

[Twisted]

i agree with the majority of your statements twistedsymphony..but how many of us have the patience to wait around 20 or 30 years?.:p..plus in 20 years time majority of disc based items will be obsolete if not long gone..30 years out, our current game systems won't even be compatible with the current gen tv's at that time..so even if you found that "old relic ps3 from 25-30 years ago"...chances are it' won't work,..if you need parts, there gonna be hard to come by, and how would you ever play it?..those hdmi cables outlets will be prehistoric,.etc..disclaimer:i personally love collecting..it's fun..i'm just playing devil's advocate here..with what i am sharing is what people have said to me, or i have read in the media...so i'm not trying to belittle anybody's collection..i'm also a sealed collector,..just for purpose of debate..and just do'ing a little thinking about how much are games will truely be worth?..in an age of all digital media on the horizen, and remakes in HD being churned out left and right, imagine the state of digital downloads 10 years from now, let alone 20..and imagine HD in the next decade..our stuff will be left behind,..perhaps..we live in the moment?.lol.and it gives us joy..but some here..are buying games, and getting them graded, thinking somebody would want to play it..but are going to pay a gazillion dollars for theres, when the new hd remake, will be 10x better at that time, and cost 1/100th of what we feel our editions will be worth..so it would be very very hard to put a value on our editions and find a market for them in the future..again, i know some collect and use for personal enjoyment, besides that, there are people here collecting thinking it will make them money in the future..and others like me..who just needed a hobby and found some really neat looking editions abroad..that were missing out on here in the US

[vhal_x]

Originally Posted by Twisted

i agree with the majority of your statements twistedsymphony..but how many of us have the patience to wait around 20 or 30 years?.:p..plus in 20 years time majority of disc based items will be obsolete if not long gone..30 years out, our current game systems won't even be compatible with the current gen tv's at that time..so even if you found that "old relic ps3 from 25-30 years ago"...chances are it' won't work,..if you need parts, there gonna be hard to come by, and how would you ever play it?..those hdmi cables outlets will be prehistoric,.etc..disclaimer:i personally love collecting..it's fun..i'm just playing devil's advocate here..with what i am sharing is what people have said to me, or i have read in the media...so i'm not trying to belittle anybody's collection..i'm also a sealed collector,..just for purpose of debate..and just do'ing a little thinking about how much are games will truely be worth?..in an age of all digital media on the horizen, and remakes in HD being churned out left and right, imagine the state of digital downloads 10 years from now, let alone 20..and imagine HD in the next decade..our stuff will be left behind,..perhaps..we live in the moment?.lol.and it gives us joy..but some here..are buying games, and getting them graded, thinking somebody would want to play it..but are going to pay a gazillion dollars for theres, when the new hd remake, will be 10x better at that time, and cost 1/100th of what we feel our editions will be worth..so it would be very very hard to put a value on our editions and find a market for them in the future..again, i know some collect and use for personal enjoyment, besides that, there are people here collecting thinking it will make them money in the future..and others like me..who just needed a hobby and found some really neat looking editions abroad..that were missing out on here in the US

I understand what your are saying Twisted, but I have to agree with TwistedSymphony

Most of us collectors aren't going to just wait the 20-30 years for our items to appreciate for that fact alone, it will just happen naturally, as I'm guessing for most of us, this is a lifelong passion - so it's not like we will just keep a hold of items in the hope that they will be worth more - it's that we will still have them to look at and play with and display and basically just enjoy for the 20-30 years, and if they go up in value, then great, but if they don't then, so be it.

Who's to say that they will be obsolete? Look at the retro consoles we have now, Ataris, SNES, N64, etc, our current gen consoles are the N64's of the future - if people are interested in retro consoles now, it shows that there will no doubt be people interested in the retro consoles in the future, and will find some means of playing it, such as owning older model televisions, (if HDMI ports do become obsolete, but I don't really think they will, but I could be wrong)

And yes, HD remakes may come out in the future, but that doesn't mean that in all cases the originals lose all the value that they have gained, take Zelda for instance, remakes have been made of some Zelda games, Ocarina of Time for instance, for the 3DS, but the older-gen N64 copies still sell extremely well online, and are very sought after (especially when still in boxes, mint condition and even more so, when sealed).

I feel like I'm rambling, but I'm just trying to show that in the future, chances are, people will look for older editions/consoles, etc - just as we do now, so even though we cannot determine a future price or determine how sought after certain items will be, it is more likely than not that our items, if kept in mint condition, will appreciate in value anyway.

My editions will certainly appreciate, maybe not to others, but their value to me will keep rising - hence why I'll never sell them - as they are something I hold dear to me.

*Okay V, shut up now*

Haha, I'll leave it there!