collection appraisal

[techwizard]

i felt curious to get a (very rough) idea of what my collection is worth, and wow that really puts it into perspective how much this hobby costs. it also shows just how much prices have gone up for some things. i haven't finished going through everything yet but i did go through all the N64 games which is my biggest collection, and a lot of those surprised me with how much they've gone up. i typically don't look at market prices for games once i own them, at that point i don't care too much, so i lost touch with what things were going for.

anyone else ever try doing this? i only used http://videogames.pricecharting.com/ . like i said it was a very rough estimate of prices, but most of them seemed about right.

[Zagnorch]

I usually go off of asking prices on Amazon Marketplace to estimate the value of games. I got into the habit of using Ammy Marketplace as a price chart because it's the primary venue I use to resell stuff. If the asking prices seem too ludicrous, however, it's off to find out what the game sold for for on a recently-ended eBay listing.

[monkees19]

I was always interested but it would take quite some time. Pricing out 600 games based on condition would take weeks. Plus that site only seems to show loose (which I assume means disc or cart only) or new, which wouldn't apply to most people. Plus it seems way off base. A new copy of Kirby 64 is only $80 according to them but a new copy of Kirby's Dream Course is $289? Don't seem right to me. I just know I don't have the time to do it right now using any source.

[Izret101]

Recently ended eBay auctions.

Really if you want to value a collection it is like valuing a stock. Prices fluctuate daily. Difference being with collecting price fluctuates not because of the item itself but because of who wants it at that moment and how much they want to pay for it.

Price Charting says KoA: Signature Edition is worth 860$s right now. I haven't seen a copy sell for over 700 since the first month or 2 after release. I can't remember the last time i saw one sell for over 500 if at all.


As for the cost of the hobby. Also REALLY depends on what you set your limits at. I spent more and got less in the last 2 years than i did in the first 2 years when i started collecting. When i started out i was able to pick up hundreds of games in the free-10$ range. Since i don't collect like i use to now i'm more likely to grab one 10-20$ game than i am to grab a dozen 1$ games.

With collecting quantity and quality(gameplay or value wise) don't always match either. You can spend a ton on a shitty game or be patient/lucky and grab a great one on the cheap.

If i put up a bounty of 100$s(which i will never never never do[probably]) for any Mortal Kombat game i don't own it doesn't mean they are worth 100$s to any other person who wants to buy them. And it certainly doesn't mean they are worth that much. Just means i pinned a dollar amount to my impatience and willingness to finish buying them.

[slackur]

I'm going to have to hire someone to appraise our library for insurance reasons. Still looking.

No doubt it will be a painstaking process

[techwizard]

@the questions about the accuracy of pricecharting, the numbers they give you aren't always right. i think it's supposed to take the average of all recent sales, but sometimes it only directly takes the most recent sale price for some reason. they have a "compare" option where you can look at all sales over the past year or more (depending on how many sales there were) so you can see what data they use to get the actual number. if a number seems off i check through that and it uses ebay completed listings but in a faster to read manner, so i find it generally easy. it also takes data from other places but it's mostly ebay. like i said i was just going for a very rough market value out of curiousity, and for that it works pretty well.

i also wasn't considering condition, that would be an undertaking i don't even want to think about. i just went by average market value and then assumed around 10% off the total collection value at the end for condition. a lot of my stuff is in decent shape but there's stuff in bad shape too so i think about 10% less than those numbers would be close.

@monkees, you have to click on the entry itself because they don't show it on the big list but the individual pages do have a new CIB price listed. for anything like CB, or CI i would just take a rough guess in between the loose and CIB numbers. i wasn't going by the overall list at all, only ever what was on the individual page so i could see the data they were using to double check it.

[blcklblskt]

N64 stuff has definitely skyrocketed in price over the past few years, but I think the GameCube library might have increased in price even more.

Another inaccuracy of pricecharting.com is when it actually comes time to sell those games.  It often seemed like I couldn't give away parts of my collection at times.

[BadEnoughDude]

Agree with Izret here. Recently ended eBay auctions are the best and easiest way to appraise anything. Pricecharting.com has it's uses - I mostly use it to simply identify what's expensive and what's not, instead of using it as a price guide, specifically - but isn't great for appraisals.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

I'm going to have to hire someone to appraise our library for insurance reasons. Still looking.

No doubt it will be a painstaking process

Since I've gone through this before, I can tell you that it's essentially worthless to bother with. Create a documented list of what you own, down to details like "box, manual, cartridge" (the major items), and things that would add significant value to the price (like the poster for Pitfall 32X). Then, put an arbitrary amount down for what you'd like to be covered for, and pay the premium for that.

What eventually ended up covering the damage to my collection when my apartment flooded? Renter's insurance, not actual insurance. They covered $2500 worth of damage, and we ended up around $2600 worth of damage. It's not worth covering the entire collection - just the expensive/rare items, since you'll essentially be paying to cover damage and loss to the collection every month.