CAn't ignore the liquidity aspects though. Any stock, one call, its sold the same day. Even the games that can be sold that quick require shipping and blah blah blah. Time time time.
I'm not into stocks, but that's one thing that they do have going for them.
A ton of people under estimate the amount of effort and risk that goes into eBay selling. Listing takes hours of personal time, especially if you are trying to "maximize your return on investment," by listing individually. Buyers can successfully scam you, it happens. Even if you are the lowest price in the market, it can take weeks or months for an item to sell. The market for collectibles can quickly dry up in an economic downturn, when you might need the money the most.
I've done 3000+ transactions on eBay over the years, and its not just Game in -> Cash out. Its blood, sweat, and tears, but it helped me build a collection over the course of all these years.
Thinking back even to 2012 and 2013 when people complained about prices - if you had the time and money you could have bought 95% of the stuff on eBay and turned a profit today.
If I had to start today, anything limited and anything Nintendo, especially Zelda. I've yet to buy anything Zelda and not have it turn a profit down the road. To me it's just not worth the time or effort. It seems like there are more justice warriors out there now than resellers as well. Put anything above retail on kijiji and you just end up with a inbox full of hate mail. If people spent as much time calling other people out as they did actually paying attention to releases I doubt they'd have any issues finding stuff they wanted.
It's incredibly difficult to accurately predict which games are going to spike. PriceCharting has an article where they say RPGs and fighting games are the most common genres to increase in value longterm, but there's also plenty that are near worthless (from a financial perspective). Shmups tend to trend towards expensive as well.
Not trying to hype anything, but personally, I'm a bit surprised about some titles that haven't ever increased noticeably. Urban Reign for PS2 is a great cult classic game that never got a Greatest Hits release and it stayed cheap. Same for War of the Monsters, though I think it was at least re-released on PS3 digitally.
Zanac on NES confounds me as to why it remains so cheap, as it's a shmup developed by Compile and is tangentially related to Gun Nac, a $200+ game on the same console. Xexyz is another one that is surprisingly affordable.
Comments
CAn't ignore the liquidity aspects though. Any stock, one call, its sold the same day. Even the games that can be sold that quick require shipping and blah blah blah. Time time time.
I'm not into stocks, but that's one thing that they do have going for them.
A ton of people under estimate the amount of effort and risk that goes into eBay selling. Listing takes hours of personal time, especially if you are trying to "maximize your return on investment," by listing individually. Buyers can successfully scam you, it happens. Even if you are the lowest price in the market, it can take weeks or months for an item to sell. The market for collectibles can quickly dry up in an economic downturn, when you might need the money the most.
I've done 3000+ transactions on eBay over the years, and its not just Game in -> Cash out. Its blood, sweat, and tears, but it helped me build a collection over the course of all these years.
If I had to start today, anything limited and anything Nintendo, especially Zelda. I've yet to buy anything Zelda and not have it turn a profit down the road. To me it's just not worth the time or effort. It seems like there are more justice warriors out there now than resellers as well. Put anything above retail on kijiji and you just end up with a inbox full of hate mail. If people spent as much time calling other people out as they did actually paying attention to releases I doubt they'd have any issues finding stuff they wanted.
Not trying to hype anything, but personally, I'm a bit surprised about some titles that haven't ever increased noticeably. Urban Reign for PS2 is a great cult classic game that never got a Greatest Hits release and it stayed cheap. Same for War of the Monsters, though I think it was at least re-released on PS3 digitally.
Zanac on NES confounds me as to why it remains so cheap, as it's a shmup developed by Compile and is tangentially related to Gun Nac, a $200+ game on the same console. Xexyz is another one that is surprisingly affordable.
Unlicensed NES is grossly undervalued.
Myriad does seem like a good buy in particular.