Amazon Lightning Deal: The Legend of Zelda Box Set: Prima Official Game Guide 7/24 3PM EST

[RADa5AURU5]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804161380/

Tomorrow (7/24) at 3PM EST Amazon will have a lightning deal for The Legend of Zelda Box Set: Prima Official Game Guide Box set. Current price is $107.99, no idea what the price will be, but just a heads up for anybody interested in it.

Edit: Thanks, oiskaio for posting the price, $79.99. And I corrected the date.

 

[Richard Kain]

I don't think you quite understand what you read. $40 for Luigi's Mansion (which I paid $50 for at launch, and I don't think ever dropped much below $20) is not comparable to Xenoblade or Metroid Prime Trilogy..... not that those were the holy grails everyone makes them out to be anyways. And like Jholden you are exaggerating.... looking on ebay RIGHT NOW I see plenty of Luigi's Mansion BiN's for $20-$30.... which seems to be more or less where the bids are ending up. Same with Amazon.

$40 is common for second-hand stores. And $20-$30 average on EBay is still $10-$15 more than you would have had to pay just two years ago. Luigi's Mansion was a launch game for the GameCube, literally one of the oldest titles available. And it's lack of popularity in its own day kept it in the bargain basement for a long time. The fact that the prices are at the levels you are quoting is confirmation that second-hand GameCube titles are on the rise.

Titles like Xenoblade Chronicles and Metroid Prime Trilogy are aberrations, far outside the normal trends of second-hand sales. And both titles are pawns of the second-hand market. Xenoblade was published in the U.S. through GameStop, and Metroid Prime Trilogy is getting re-print runs through the same.

GameCube titles are old enough that they are largely immune to this level of active second-hand manipulation. GameStop no longer carries GameCube titles in-store.

Also, it has been conclusively proven that digital distribution doesn't degrade the second-hand value of original titles. If anything it can bloat demand for older, lesser-known titles.

 

[rcerboss]

$40 is common for second-hand stores. And $20-$30 average on EBay is still $10-$15 more than you would have had to pay just two years ago. Luigi's Mansion was a launch game for the GameCube, literally one of the oldest titles available. And it's lack of popularity in its own day kept it in the bargain basement for a long time. The fact that the prices are at the levels you are quoting is confirmation that second-hand GameCube titles are on the rise.

Titles like Xenoblade Chronicles and Metroid Prime Trilogy are aberrations, far outside the normal trends of second-hand sales. And both titles are pawns of the second-hand market. Xenoblade was published in the U.S. through GameStop, and Metroid Prime Trilogy is getting re-print runs through the same.

GameCube titles are old enough that they are largely immune to this level of active second-hand manipulation. GameStop no longer carries GameCube titles in-store.

Also, it has been conclusively proven that digital distribution doesn't degrade the second-hand value of original titles. If anything it can bloat demand for older, lesser-known titles.

I edited my post a bit right before you quoted, sorry lol. Still, I don't see why you think these prices are anything special, because they sure as hell don't look great to me. I didn't bother searching for games like Fire Emblem and that Donkey Kong game with the bongos, I have no doubt that some of those are way up there. I don't have time to go down the entire list of GC games but the only one I see that is jumping is Melee. What some local 2nd hand store or pawn shop prices at is, frankly, irrelevant. There's a nutcase near me who has a whole box of used PS1/GC/PS2/Xbox games, all priced at $60 or higher apiece. Just to be clear, that's games like Frogger on PS1 for $59.99. They will sit there forever and never have an impact on the market at large.

I don't know, maybe they have went up $10 of so in the last year, that doesn't mean they are gonna rise more though. Hell, I don't know, maybe they will..... I am surprised by what Melee is going for, and am tempted to sell mine now lol. I just don't see these games rising in price though.

 

[Richard Kain]

I don't know, maybe they have went up $10 of so in the last year, that doesn't mean they are gonna rise more though. Hell, I don't know, maybe they will..... I am surprised by what Melee is going for, and am tempted to sell mine now lol. I just don't see these games rising in price though.

They aren't going to be getting more common anytime soon. And while some of them have a decent supply, such as Melee, many more got considerably more limited print runs. And this is all coming after GameCube prices had been in a steady decline for the better part of the past decade.

I'm not trying to encourage you to speculate and go around paying stupid prices for GameCube titles. That's reactionary stupidity, and anyone trying to sell GameCube titles for $60+ is kidding themselves. But the prices are going to rise. As one of Nintendo's least commercially successful system's, the supply of anything GameCube-related is going to be much lower than the second-hand market for the PS1 and PS2. And the boom in Nintendo fans created by the Wii is going to further inflate the nostalgia demand over the course of the next 20 years. Increased demand paired with a fairly constrained supply is going to inflate the second-hand prices for the GameCube going forward.

We're even seeing it happen with the hardware. The GameCube was stupid-cheap to pick up for a few years, often going for as little as $15. I would regularly see perfectly good units in used-game stores going for $25. That is insanely cheap for a system as stable and high-quality as the original GameCube. Now the prices on the hardware are inching up into the $30-$40 range. Prices on GameCube hardware and software are going to steadily increase, peak out in about seven years, and then after a bit of a dip remain relatively high in the second-hand market. You won't see the kind of crazy software prices that are often associated with Saturn titles. But don't be surprised to see some of the harder-to-find GameCube games going for $70+ in five years.