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What's the point in collecting video games? 5 years ago

Until a few years ago, I would have answered without hesitation to this innocent question: we collect for pure nostalgia, for having or returning to play those games that we once enjoyed (or were left with the desire to have) in our favorite consoles being just about kids. Surely many will share this opinion. For a long time I have been one of those who thought that this was something of our generation, something that only those who once enjoyed the systems we call classics today would understand, but I was wrong.

Completist collectors, fullseteros, of a saga in particular, the one that collects to play ... many and very diverse ways of contemplating the love for classic videogames, all of them equally respectable.

It has been a pleasant and unexpected surprise to contemplate how the new generations were joining our hobby, see how kids who have grown under the shadow of 128-bit systems are interested in history and everything related to systems that double in years and with those who have not lived directly, and above all see how with enthusiasm and investing their weekend payments were adding titles to their incipient collections of the incunables of the history of the game. How could it be otherwise, in many of those cases the real culprits of that interest in classic video games are the parents themselves, who transfer their love and their own love for these games to their offspring, but it is not always the case.

What has all this led us to? Well, as it is not difficult to realize, and following the traditional rules of the market, the greater the demand for a product, the greater the cost. And more considering that the stock is what there is, and that (at least for now) this is invariable. Until a few years ago, it was not complicated to find in the usual second-hand channels people who got rid of their old consoles for just a handful of euros, in many cases without knowing very well what they were selling, but luckily or unfortunately, Today that is already complicated. It is already difficult to find bargains and in most cases, we have to go through the box to get that game that we have been looking for for some time, the boom times have come to an end.

To all this we must add the people who have seen in the sector a reef to fatten their bank account, known as resales or resellers who, as the name itself indicates, are dedicated to buying cheap to sell expensive. For years, the business has been round for them, as many of these people were engaged in buying at demolition prices to unsuspecting people who got rid of their childhood collections without knowing the real price of what they were selling (ethically questionable practice) to then put it up for sale at prices higher than what the market marked, with really high profit margins. "Thanks" to this, in many cases what was achieved was to fatten or adulterate the real prices of the games, in addition to generating tension in all those who love and respect our hobby.

Thanks to emagtrends.com