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RetroGet Slodown 3?

CiDeRmAn

So, I wonder where others are on this continuum of rate of retro gets?

I find, myself, that where a couple of years ago the retro gets were coming thick and fast (ooh-er missus!) these days it's sloooowwed waay down.
Rather than week by week deliveries from the four corners of the globe, it's more of a month by month affair, if that.

It's not financial in nature, as I probably have more free cash to splash now that 5 years ago, but I'm buying far less.

Another factor might be the mainstreaming of retrogaming, with the release of the Mini Classic consoles and ongoing destruction of the Sega legacy with sh1t Megadrive re-releases.
This has made the marketplaces harder places to find those bargains and driven the values of retro goodness up, making for fewer attractive purchases.
I'm happy to find Ibara for the PS2 at €100, but I ain't paying the €300+ for it.

There was a time when Veccy buying, new Gamesroom builds and Candy Cab purchases were common posts here, but far less so now.

So, how do you find your retro purchasing habits?

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Comments

o1s1n

Yeah it's an interesting observation alright. It's mad how many candy cabs were being purchased in here at one point :eek:

For me I just had a bit of an epiphany one day where I pretty much realised I had everything I wanted gaming wise so decided to stop buying.

I've somewhat grown out of collecting for collecting sake with games, focusing now on enjoying what I have and trying to get my AV setup up to scratch.

Will probably end up selling off some more bits and pieces over the foreseeable future.

Retr0gamer

Real life got to me I guess. Had some trouble with the tax man as HR fecked up my taxes the last two years so I'm paying them back and I've also a car loan now to worry about. Also decided to be sensible and do some saving. So despite promotions I've actually less disposable income the last while.

The other factor is the sheer lunacy of retro game prices the last few years. There's a lot of games I put on the long finger as I thought I'd pick up some very common games later while I hunt for holy grail items. Now said common games are going for insane prices. I think it's been fueled by clueless newbies and 'cash in the attic' buzzfeed articles.

There's also the other problem of space. Most of my games are in my parents attic and it's a pain to get them out and most of the space in my sligo room is taken up with games I bought when Steve bailey was taking all my money. And you know what, everdrives are great.

CiDeRmAn

Everdrives?
I thought I was the SD Card Warrior here!

Atavan-Halen

I think I got to a point where I was picking up stuff because it was cheap not necessarily because I wanted it and ended up with a lot of stuff. Plus the prices for decent retro have gone up so much compared to say 10 years ago when it could be had for next to nothing which turned me off.

When it come to new games I really don’t fancy paying ~$100 for one ps4 game.

Also, rent is expensive

Mr.Saturn

Word got out, there's a market for your old **** and then speculation, ignorance and nostalgia turned retro-gaming into vintage gaming and it just wasn't worth it anymore. Where once there was maybe one big get and a handful of smaller bargains, now even the common stuff has a market tax on it that renders every 2nd purchase a 'big' get.

Hell, having just seen this topic, I looked up Gamecube stuff on Amazon's 2nd hand marketplace (common Gamecube stuff, at that) and I simply couldn't replicate my Gamecube collection today without setting aside a hefty sum that'd go ways to making a decent gaming PC or buying a new console with a couple of games bundled.

CathalDublin

Real life has been getting in the way the last 2 years for me although I have almost finished my garden games room and I did acquire anther cab for out there although it's a full project but I have 90% of the parts, pics will follow

smurf492

Personally im a Gameboy /megadrive buyer at the moment and am lucky that a lot of boxed megadrive games are available and reasonably priced in Ireland. Gameboy games boxed are not too bad but ebay shipping is extortionate ..

Inviere

I got out of collecting for a few reasons, some of which have been mentioned above by others.

1) The sheer lunacy of pricing took a LOT of the fun out of collecting. Supply & demand plays a natural part in it, as most of the items are long since being on retail shelves, with an ever growing and hungry audience for the. That much I can handle. There's an artificial bs side to it though, which I've trouble with. "It's old, therefore it's worth a fortune!" This can be seen directly when observing PAL pricing versus NTSC pricing (in general, not in all cases). NTSC is usually much, much cheaper than the artificially inflated PAL pricing, wven factoring in higher shipping. So yeah, the thrill of the hunt is becoming harder & harder to experience.

2) Collecting because it's cheap/for the sake of it - I was a big offender with this. It almost became compulsive, and very much everything I bought would be sent to storage, & never enjoyed. Boxes & boxes of stuff that I'd get to "some day", bargains I couldn't pass up because they were bargains, spreadsheets & spreadsheets of all the items I had in storage....nah, that's not fun, not even close. I'd a thankful epiphany one day that I'd miss none of this stuff, if it wasn't there.

3) Space - very, very little room to use what I 'd bought & collected. An evergrowing pile of retro goodies, in an ever decreasing circle of space. It's no fun when you've to take the morning off work to dig out that console you want to play that game on, and another day to put it back when you're done. It's a hard habit to enjoy when you don't have the room for it.

4) Emulation - The answer to most of the above problems for me. Yes, a compromise, but given the difficulties, and quality of the result, a damn worthy one in my case. I'm not into millions of different emulators, needing a mouse & keyboard to get going...ala the late 90's golden era of emulation. So when I discovered Launchbox, it changed everything. Couple that with Retroarch running underneath it, and it's literally select the system you want, select the game, & just play it. A bit of time invested in learning about filters, overlays, and display tweaks, has given me visuals that close enough to the real thing (I say that as an ex-purist, who had a penchant for RGB scart cables!), that it matters not anymore.

I've kept most of the juicy bits of my collection in one medium sized container, just to have because they mean something to me. Most everything else though, is gone. Ironically, I'm playing more games today that I ever did while collecting. So for me, the transition from hoarder to person who plays games (not a fan of the term gamer), has been a happy one

Steve X2

I had a financial/health blow last year that depleted a lot of funds. It's long resolved now and everything is fine, but i do find myself buying less anyway.
If there's something i really want I'll probably buy it, but the prices these days are just stupid on most stuff.

I'm also spending a lot of time on a side business that takes up time and funds, so there's that as well.

CiDeRmAn

Where are the new enthusiasts though?
I would have assumed, perhaps arrogance or hubris is in effect, that we'd see them check in here as posters when they took up the hobby, even when it's more about being "on trend" for them.
YouTube?
Reddit?

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Where are the new enthusiasts though?
I would have assumed, perhaps arrogance or hubris is in effect, that we'd see them check in here as posters when they took up the hobby, even when it's more about being "on trend" for them.
YouTube?
Reddit?

Hard to say, the entirety of the internet gives people many many choices on where to hang out with fellow enthusiasts. A&R was always dwarfed by Facebook groups & the like. Plus, I'd imagine a lot of 'overnight enthusiasts' come & go from the hobby quite regularly. Buying & selling, buying & selling, probably ads to the artificial pricing.

Steve X2

From what I can see, the new Retro peeps live on Instagram. And as Inviere says, they are in and out of the hobby quite quickly.

accensi0n

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Where are the new enthusiasts though?

*Puts hand up*

I only started about six months, just collecting NES games. Wish I started 10 years ago, the prices are mad, really don't want to have to pay ~€100 for bucky o'hare for example...

I'm probably getting stuff weekly at the moment.

eddhorse

I just purchased an Sd2iec there recently and nearly went for a broken Commodore Pet , slowing down though alright, can only fit so many candies and cabs in the house.

Prices are gone crazy too but there are other options like Yahoo Auctions etc.

Would also like a pinball table but those prices are even crazier.

#RealLifeAndRealPrices

CiDeRmAn

Inviere wrote: »

Hard to say, the entirety of the internet gives people many many choices on where to hang out with fellow enthusiasts. A&R was always dwarfed by Facebook groups & the like. Plus, I'd imagine a lot of 'overnight enthusiasts' come & go from the hobby quite regularly. Buying & selling, buying & selling, probably ads to the artificial pricing.

Ah yes, FB retro groups.

"Look at me playing NES games on a 55" LCD panel, casting from my phone and still using touch controls, and at 16:9, I'm a real retrogamer!"

"Dude, would you not just switch it to 4:3?"

"AHHH, DON'T OPPRESS ME YOU NAZI!!!!"

o1s1n

Oh man, those groups, they kill my brain.

I've joined a few after everything slowed down here and the only one I can actually stand is the CRT Collective (as you tend to get genuine enthusiasts and not just people posting inane crap.)

The rest seem to be populated by complete idiots who can't string a sentence together.

smurf492

From personal experience i think the pricing of items is a huge problem. Ive mostly stayed away from snes collecting because of this and primarily have focused on megadrive as it is way cheaper and easier to obtain. I think that alot of the hipster involvement in retro gaming now comes in the form of emulation and the all in one consoles.

Inviere

smurf492 wrote: »

I think that alot of the hipster involvement in retro gaming now comes in the form of emulation and the all in one consoles.

Ya can't win;

Emulation = Hipster
RGB Scart = Elitist

Truthfully, I don't think you can categorise it that easily. The hobby is what you make of it.

Corholio

The thing about collecting, and SNES in particular, is that it hasn't gone any different than what it usually goes. Prospectors in the late 90's and early 2000's would have got some fantastic deals, I luckily picked up a substantial amount at that time, more for my love of the system than any specific collecting purpose. That sort of came a bit later. But in even in early 2002-03 you could see prices started to rise a bit and continued from there. It's fascinating to look at price graphs on sites for sales on auction sites to see prices were ok for a while and just gradually went up, it wasn't an overnight thing really.

smurf492

Inviere wrote:

Truthfully, I don't think you can categorise it that easily. The hobby is what you make of it.

Yes reading the post it comes across like that. The intention is not to cause offence, merely try to differentiate between the purists and the ones that are retro because it is cool to do so

Inviere

smurf492 wrote: »

Yes reading the post it comes across like that. The intention is not to cause offence, merely try to differentiate between the purists and the ones that are retro because it is cool to do so

In that vein, I'd imagine hipster types into emulation are having zero affect on the market. It's the overnight collectors, who spend large sums of money buying up bits, only to tire of the hobby shortly thereafter, & sell it all (likely for more than they originally paid); those feckers do have an impact.

um7y1h83ge06nx

I just have the console and games I have from when they were the current generation (NES, SNES, Gameboy, PS1, PS2, Xbox 360). Outside of that I only bought a Dreamcast and GBA. I have a Pi and SNES Mini as well.

I love reading about retro and watching good videos online, brings back the memories. The reason I don't collect is time. I wouldn't collect for collecting sake, would want to play what I buy.

With life being busy and somehow ending up with a PS4, Xbox One and Switch I have more than enough current generation games to play.

CiDeRmAn

I am saddened when I see people getting abuse for recommending RGB.
It really is like night and day in terms of picture quality and, if you are already using original hardware and a CRT, it'd be madness not to.
But say it on a FB group and you'll get sh1t.

Emulation was a wonder all to itself back in the day.
I'm the mid 90s when I got into it, you could be waiting a long time before your console or arcade favourite made it onto your PC, so why wait when you could install Nesticle or Mame32 and play them then and there?
I suppose losing the niche nature of the scene made that sense of ownership decline amongst users and some of the magic died when it went mainstream.

Stoner

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Where are the new enthusiasts though? I would have assumed, perhaps arrogance or hubris is in effect, that we'd see them check in here as posters when they took up the hobby, even when it's more about being "on trend" for them. YouTube? Reddit?

The games are not good enough to attract new ebthusiasts IMO.

You have to be of a certain age, to have played them when they were great.

The market is limited. Mist of what I bought is to make up for not having it in the first place

CiDeRmAn

Wow, I don't think I can agree on quality at all.

There's as many terrible games now as there ever has been, but the good ones still shine.

Be it Galaga or Breath of the Wild, Chronotrigger or Rez, playing videogames has never offered such a choice of great titles.

I think expectations that a game must look like *this* has always been around, many people playing their new PS2 were looking at the content on the SNES and thinking it's library inferior, but they were wrong.

But, certainly there are those fixated on visuals or online who will gain little from playing games aside from the most current, pity for them.

o1s1n

Stoner wrote: »

The games are not good enough to attract new ebthusiasts IMO.

**** storm in 5,4,3,2... :pac:

There are more retro gaming enthusiasts now than there ever have been (hence the mad prices). The issue in this thread is less about the hobby and more about the decline of boards and forums in general IMO.

The Last Bandit

Suffering the same as most people it seems, too much stuff already and real life getting in the way.

Hopefully a house move soon will mean I can get stuff out of storage and into a usable condition again. Real life will always get in the way though.

Big fan of both emulation and RGB Scart

CiDeRmAn

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Suffering the same as most people it seems, too much stuff already and real life getting in the way.

Hopefully a house move soon will mean I can get stuff out of storage and into a usable condition again. Real life will always get in the way though.

Big fan of both emulation and RGB Scart

Being a dad will do it too!

moonlighting_1

Price of stuff is just crazy. I have a mountain of ps1 consoles. some i got for free. Others I purchased for 10 to 20 euros.
Now I see guys asking 50 - 100 for em. madness

Another hobby of mine is classic cars like mustangs etc. 15 to 20 years ago you could pick em up cheap now people are asking over 10G for rust buckets.
I learned from that and collected all my consoles about 10 years ago.

rgfuller

Slowdown for me too, I realised I had too many systems and games which I was collecting and not enough space to store/display, so made the decision to reduce the number of systems and corresponding games, and take time to manage, tidy, use what I have before expanding again with new purchases unless I see a bargain (and not many of those as others have said).