Should you sell your video game collection?
I came to a decision recently and have decided to sell my Nintendo 64 video game collection. While its only one part of my collection, its still a hard decision to part with it. Years of hunting through garage sales, thrift shops, trade groups and online auctions helped me amass a large collection that was nearing 200 titles. You see, I was going for a full Nintendo 64 library which is only 296 titles deep. I thought it was a reasonable goal, but at some point I lost the drive to keep adding to it. What changed?
Family life
The peak of my interest in Nintendo 64 collecting was 2014, which happened to be the year my first daughter was born. Extra time and disposable income we had prior to her birth was now getting allocated to my daughter. It became much harder to justify picking up $50 games that I might never play when I have a beautiful daughter to enjoy who consequently needs diapers, clothes and toys.
Price hike
I started from the top down with this console, targeting the most expensive games first and working my way down to picking up the cheap games last. Most console libraries are increasing in value and the rare games are appreciating the fastest. Clayfighter Sculptor's Cut being the most expensive game on the system constantly evaded me and I kept losing any auction I bid on. After getting discouraged I picked up a few other games that were on my radar and by the time I came back to Sculptor's Cut, it had increased in price by over $100. It felt defeating that the most expensive game was suddenly out of range. I just wasn't willing to spend that kind of money on a game I'll likely only play once or twice.
Shelf decoration
The Nintendo 64 was popular when I was in college, so I have strong nostalgia for the system, but really only for the games we played in college, like GoldenEye, Mario Kart, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Ocarina of Time. Most of the other games have just sat on my shelf for the past few years and I've had zero desire to pop them in.
Time to let it go
So I decided that the resources I have tied up in those games would be better suited elsewhere. In reality, I plan to invest in more cryptocurrencies with the cash I get from this sale. Its going up on eBay tonight and I'm OK with it. I have a hard time letting go of stuff I collected as part of a collection, let alone an entire collection itself, but I understand I cal always track these games down again in the future. They're not doing me any good right now, but there's collectors out there who will give these games a welcome spot in their collections.
It's a hard decision but I did the same thing last year. I have 2 kids 7 & 5 and couldn't justify the games collecting dust on my shelves when I could sell them and put money towards bills/future. I sold all my gamecube games as well and started selling off other systems and games now too. I feel your pain. I wish I had held off selling until I was into cryptocurrencies because I'd do exactly what you're doing now. Sell and put it all into that. With the invention of the everdrive too it's hard to not just buy one of them and have all the games anyway...unless you're too much of a purist. I used to be against them but since I pick one up for the Turbo Grafx I can't say enough about them because I could've never afforded to have every Turbo Grafx game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not selling all of my collection, but only trimming it to let go of something I'm not as passionate about. But starting a family does shift your priorities and I want to assure that my daughters (ages 3 and 1) have secure futures.
But I do plan to pick up an Everdrive 64 to fill the hole in my collection. I straddle the line between purist and rationalist -- and the Everdrive lets you play the games on the original hardware, so its a solid compromise between between the real deal and emulation.
That's exactly how I feel. I can't stand playing the games on computer or other systems but because I get to play them on the original system and have the original controllers etc I'm a big fan.
It's hard to clean house! I'm not collecting anything right now. Actually, I just got rid of stuff. I got rid of a lot stuff I'd had since the 90's, including an old pager. lol! Good luck and enjoy your new-found fortune!
My house was full before we had kids. Now it looks like hoarders live there, so cleaning house is a necessity for us right now.
That is one mighty fine collection. Not a bad move though moving it into cryptos.
I was in this same boat about 7 years ago. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but if you piece it out you will get much, much more money. Probably double. I took my time selling my Playstation stuff and got over $20k just from that. Then I just wanted rid of it and started selling in large lots and I regret doing it that way.
You know what it's like selling 50+ boxed systems all at once? I do. It still makes me shudder when I think of how much I sold it for.
I'm treading carefully, I checked the value of every game I'm selling and I've priced my lot accordingly. I simply don't have the time to list that many games individually.
Yeah, I have 4 consoles for sale right now and that's bad enough trying to get those tested/listed/shipped/etc.
I understand completely. I was working 50+ hours a week and spending 2-3 hours a day listing stuff on ebay.
I did have pretty good success selling on nintendoage.com and gametz.com too. People generally pay a bit less on forums, but without all of the ebay fees and non paying bidders it was a bit more profitable, for both time and money.
first thing holy collection. Sucks to sell but i have started to do same to invest in other things my collection was no where neir the size of yours.
I find now was a good time to see cause retro gaming seams to be booming in prices
Sadly, that's not my collection :D That's the largest game collection ever sold, which went for $750,000.
You should never sell them. It's going be worth a lot of money in the future.
Its hard to say. We thought that about Atari, but the value of those games peaked a few years ago.
It's hard decision, I don't collect games. But unless I'm forced to, I won't part with the PS1 game disks I have (they don't work anymore). Because I feel if I disposed of them I'm disposing of part of my childhood.
I still do dispose of things I care about... I think the same of anime/manga/programs/games downloaded/installed on my PC, I need to dispose of them periodically because I can't afford to buy new HDD for all the anime/games I have downloaded. It's a hard decision to choose what to keep everytime but these days I'm more likely to do so than to keep my PC full.
Have a nice day with daughter/family, I'm sure she's cute.
When (if) I have family of my own I'll probably be willing to dispose of my past keepsakes for them!!
It's hard decision 😩
Yes I recognize it costs money, time, it takes up space ...📦
But how you will feel when you go see all these efforts go.😥
I also collect, I do my esteem that on my collection of elsewhere. 🕹
I will feel so bad without what I have😢
What a story. What a ride. Just let go, but buy an N-64 Everdrive so you have all the games on a single kart. You can show your kids what you used to play.
I faced a similar situation, minus the birth of a child (congrats by the way). I had over 3,000 gaming magazines and their weight became an issue for where we were living so I had to part with large swaths of issues (complete Gamefan, minus the E3 special release issue for instance). It hurt but the money came in handy and about six months after I sold out, the market crashed - at least for the higher value issues (Gamefan #1 dropped from $400+ to about $100 in mint condition) so I have that to console myself with. lol
Now I have an extremely large collection of mini figures (I resell on Ebay regularly) that for some reason keeps growing (though I think I have a ways to go before their total weight becomes an issue).
Honestly, I see a crash coming in the collectors market for stuff like this. Games are just getting so expensive that eventually people are not going to buy them. This happened in the lunch box collectors world in the late 1980's (may have been early 1990's). Prices got so high that collectors simply stopped buying them at a time when companies were pushing out limited editions, reprints, etc. Sound familiar?