Awhile back Mr Shadow introduced me to
http://www.pricecharting.com/It is a website which automatically tracks prices of games from across the web. Seemingly it pulls most of it's info from ebay and amazon. I think it is fun to look at the range of prices for a particular console. I recently got a Sega Saturn and can now quickly find which games are normally the more spendy ones and which ones don't cost too much. If a person was into reselling games they could easily look up, say, the copy of Shinobi Legions they found for cheap. They would see that for the last couple of years it sells about 1 per week for $20 to $30ish.
I have been trying to complete an Odyssey^2 collection, so I have been using Price Charting to see about what I should expect to pay for certain games. The thing about the O^2 system is, its not a popular seller. Most of the games sell in the low single digits...per year.
When I decided to have a concerted effort to go after a complete O^2 collection I figured I needed a plan. I needed to keep track of what I had, what I needed and what the normal prices were.
With a freshly printed out checklist from RFGeneration, I highlighted all the games I had left to buy and proceeded to pricecharting.com. Most of the O^2 games sell for just a couple of bucks, even with the box. But a few are more costly. I expected Power Lords! and Atlantis to be near the top but a couple of them surprised me. Who knew that Demon Attack or Nimble Numbers Ned! were in the $20 range? I was pretty surprised to see that S.I.D. The Spellbinder! had been increasing in price over the last year. It never came up in my research as a expensive O^2 game. The last one to sell was at $56.
S.I.D. The Spellbinder! is not unavailable on ebay. I've seen several of them for auction or buy it now. There was a CIB copy with a buy it now for $20 which was a serious consideration. Boxed copies are nice but I'm okay with loose and with a little experience of watching ebay, I knew a cheaper loose copy would come up, regardless of pricechartings $56.
The other day I bought S.I.D. The Spellbinder!, loose, for $2.99 plus S&H. It didn't show up for a little while but you can see here the difference I made on the site:
[img width=700 height=302]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7135/7624081110_565a66b0cb_b.jpg[/img]So pricecharting.com isn't perfect in all situations but I still think it is pretty neat. I'm going to keep using it. I just need to keep in mind that low volume sellers may not be too accurate. Having a service like this would be of great use to a reseller, I think many of us on this site come across such great deals in our hunt we might pick up if we knew there was a good market for them at many times the price we found them for.
I'm hoping the person who paid $56 got a mint sealed copy. Unfortunately pricecharting.com doesn't keep any record of condition, which has a big affect on value. It was kinda fun to have a negative 95% affect on the value of S.I.D. The Spellbinder!
What are your thoughts of the site? Do any of you have a similar experience? Let us know!
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OMG the bottom has fallen out of the market, games are now worthless!!! Sell!! Sell!! Sell!!!
vgpc is definitely a great resource if a person knows what to look for, and it sounds like you do. I think most people forget to look for things like condition, completeness, and scarcity which it sounds like you've got a good grasp on.
I like using it to check how the value of some of my favorites have changed over the last couple years and looking over lists from libraries I'm not very familiar with to give me an idea of titles to look out for.
Glad you were able to use it to your advantage and grab something you were looking for at what sounds to be a great price.
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I do like it and use it, along with Grue's VGPC on my Android (though I use VGPC far more than the PC).
Ultimately I think it has limited use for a quick price check, but is really useful for making further research on items easier (you especially benefited from this, nupoile).
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Yea I have been using the site for about a year now and I actually know someone who runs a video game business and bases 99% of his game prices from this site. It is a great site for reselling as well, I have 2 brothers who use ebay on a regular bases and constantly go to that site for value purposes.
I like the site but it is scary at the same time. I have seen drops like that a couple times and it sucks to and extent. If you see a game on there for 50 and you buy it for 25 to throw in your collection then you check it again and it is a 2 dollar game it is ruff lol.
Another thing I like about this site is that it opened up my eyes to how much games change in price on a monthly bases. I use to think retro games once they established there value it kinda stayed there. I was so wrong and this site really did open up my eyes.
Good Blog happy you posted it.
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PriceCharting is fantastic, but only use it as a guideline - it's best used for current trends when you have a lot of data. If you have a small amount of data, your best bet is to look at recent auctions that it has listed and wait for the best time to strike, as you did. 
FWIW, I use the "used" values as a basis for sale/trade, and take a percentage off when purchasing lots.
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I use pricecharting as well and it's a good reference, but you can't always go by it. They don't differentiate between loose and CIB games, which can skew the numbers.
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I love PriceCharting.com. JJ Hendricks the owner of JJ games and PriceCharting.com is the person that referred me to RF generation back when there was a forum on his site. He asked me how I kept track of my collection. At the time he asked me I had no idea how to keep track. His site has saved me a ton of money online. He is an avid collector himself and is funny as hell. And of course, he likes to save a buck.
Good luck on your collecting goal!
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Lots of good comments and input. It seems like we are on the same page so far, PriceCharting is a nice resource to have but it's helpful to know it's limits. Still, I am quite thankful to have to site pointed out to me, I've sure liked checking out the price moves different games have.
I can't help but compare this to the stock market. I had been thinking I should have shorted SID The Spellbinder then bought it, I would have made out huge! Then again, maybe that would be insider trading?
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I like to use it as a reference when selling items, but more of just a way to look at recent auction prices quickly. I usually tend to go a little under to make my sales more attractive than eBay, plus I can pass on the savings in fees.
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