eBay game prices

[dave3622]

I've just checked out eBay for the first time in over a year to see if there are any bargains or job-lots going for Oric Games so I could potentially start collecting again. I simply could not believe my eyes when I saw the prices some games were listed at. Candyfloss & Hangman and Reverse by IJK; £39.95 and £4.95 postage! I sold many copies of these games for £1.99 only a few years ago! Even the cheapest games are at least 6 quid when they would have been 99p a few years ago. How I wish I had never sold my collection when I did!

I'd love to own an Oric again but even these are selling for ludicrous prices! Thank goodness for emulation

[Symoon]

I'm not sure those games are actually selling much. Some have been there for a long time.

At such prices I have stopped buying games to transfer them. Too bad if some are lost, but I'm not feeding inflation - nor paying to get some more work .

[Dbug]

That's actually a topic I was thinking of discussing with you guys: For my videos I had to get many lots of stuff (from eBay, from leboncoin, from random places you never heard of), and I ended up with a bazillion of duplicates.

I did try to do some swaps, had limited success, hopefully Symoon, Baz and Steve are happy of the deals, but I still have many games, which I will probably have to sell.

Ideally I'd like to avoid eBay, because it's a very rigid structure, and the ebay tax on the sell is something I'd like to avoid.

Me being in Norway brings another problem: The price of the shipping is crazy (like 35 euros even for one single tape), so selling just one or two tapes makes no sense.

I refuse to enter the eBay/collector inflation game either, but I'm not going to give a way for free what I had to pay for, so it would be interested to see what people consider as fair prices.

As far as I'm concerned, "Welcome to Atmos" and "Defence Force" could almost come for free with any pack of tapes, there are so many of these around that a fair price would probably at must 1 euro.

Then we have the semi (worldwide) ubiquitous: Xenon, Zorgon, many of the early Tansoft, IJK and PSS, which I would probably prive in the 2-4 euros range.

After that we have the thing which is not rare but harder to find because it was only released in France, like the games from Loriciels, Ere Informatique, ... I guess fair prices would be around 5-10 euros range depending of the state, if the come with manuals or not, etc...

Things with heavy boxes with thick manuals, bonus materials (like the Cobra Software games that came with "physical clues", The Hobbit with the book) I'd say would be in the 10-15 range.

Some games are really hard to find, specially in complete condition, like Manic Miner (with the protection card), or the earlier adventure games (Level 9, Salamander) which I guess are acceptable in the 15 to 20 euros range.

And then there's the bazillion of limited interested, limited releases, shitty games in basic that are of only interest as a collector item for people who want full sets of something, generally they are ugly, half of them don't load properly, but they are super rare, so I guess they have a collector value of +infinite and an actual interest value of -infinite

What are you people thinking would be fair/acceptable prices for games?

[coco.oric]

I did try to do some swaps, had limited success, hopefully Symoon, Baz and Steve are happy of the deals, but I still have many games

Oops, another task i've to do ... listing my physical games directory

[ibisum]

I've been following the prices of things in Oric- (and other retro-) land for a while, and in my opinion - in the last year or so - there has been a massive rise in speculators joining the scene.

I blame social media and all the retro- youtube channels, as well as /r/retrobattlestations and /r/retrocomputing too, of course. There's just been so much more new interest generated in retro computing in general, that the punters and the scalpers have come out of the woodwork to make a bit of money.

Used to be you could get an Atmos for 50 bucks. Now they are regularly going for 8 times that amount, in certain places/configuration. On the one hand, it is amazing to see old computers be dug out of the attic and put in the hands of new users again - and indeed there are new folks coming to the scene with a lot of value to add - but I get sad when I see "perfectly wrapped C64's" being sold for bazonker dollars, or whatever.

As a user, I don't see much use in keeping the physical tape world alive except for archival/safe-keeping purposes - I'd prefer everything get converted to .TAP files and we one day be able to load them directly into Oric's off the interweb. If someone is going to do a NEW Oric release, however, I'd be quite happy to get a cassette version of it in the mail for a 50 buck price-ticket - at least, if we get enough interest in the scene that someone decides to do a new 'old-school style' release. It happens on a lot of the other platforms, anyway.

As far as the value of old cassettes, it depends. Are there going to be .TAP files produced? In which case, I'd consider the price of a beer or two, to be a fair value. Is it going into a special collectors archive, to be never seen by active Oric users, just to suit a speculation strategy? In this case, it is worthless, imho.

[Steve M]

Manic Miner wasn't that rare, but the problem is everybody seem to want it - even people that don't have an Oric.

Some of the rare games had few sold so they have become expensive, as Dbug says. They often aren't good.

It's hard to put a price on things with the crazy Ebay prices. I know some people are trying to sell things second-hand for more than they can be got brand new. So the prices often aren't realistic.
I remember buying a pile of 20 tapes for £15 via OUM. At the OUM meet Dave was giving away boxes of tapes to Frank for his Romanian school. It brought a tear to my eye even then!

I think about £5 for an ordinary tape isn't bad. Larger cases tend to mean higher prices. Then rare titles get more expensive. Very rare stuff - throw a number out.

I have these titles waiting for a home. New old stock. (Why isn't there a mad rush for Land of Illusion???)

Clam style cases:-
Oricmon
Forth – with a manual
Chess ii
Candyfloss & Hangman
3DMaze & Breakout
House of Death
Zodiac
Nowotnik Puzzle
Reverse

Ordinary case:-
Ultima Zone
Rat Splat
Loki
Land of Illusion
Oric Munch
Super Advanced Breakout
Starfighter

There's a few Gruneberg Language courses but one is gone and I forget which. I have the other 3.

[OricSociety]

I have my 1st Oric on its way to me now. Should see it before end of the month.

Once I get that and start saving again, I plan on starting to collect some tapes and games.

Having seen the silly prices on eBay, was scared off a bit, since games for the Sinclair Speccy are so cheap, I will see what I can start to collect during 2020.

I will be buying some tapes down the road.



TJ

Manic Miner wasn't that rare, but the problem is everybody seem to want it - even people that don't have an Oric.

Some of the rare games had few sold so they have become expensive, as Dbug says. They often aren't good.

It's hard to put a price on things with the crazy Ebay prices. I know some people are trying to sell things second-hand for more than they can be got brand new. So the prices often aren't realistic.
I remember buying a pile of 20 tapes for £15 via OUM. At the OUM meet Dave was giving away boxes of tapes to Frank for his Romanian school. It brought a tear to my eye even then!

I think about £5 for an ordinary tape isn't bad. Larger cases tend to mean higher prices. Then rare titles get more expensive. Very rare stuff - throw a number out.

I have these titles waiting for a home. New old stock. (Why isn't there a mad rush for Land of Illusion???)

Clam style cases:-
Oricmon
Forth – with a manual
Chess ii
Candyfloss & Hangman
3DMaze & Breakout
House of Death
Zodiac
Nowotnik Puzzle
Reverse

Ordinary case:-
Ultima Zone
Rat Splat
Loki
Land of Illusion
Oric Munch
Super Advanced Breakout
Starfighter

There's a few Gruneberg Language courses but one is gone and I forget which. I have the other 3.

[Symoon]

Lots of rare tapes were sold recently on Ebay: Bombyx, Canada, Memoric, Star Wars, Ajerdrez, ...
Hoping it's in a safe home and we can transfer / scan them some day

[dave3622]

Here's a very rare game called Bald Eagle Gold, only £140 including postage!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Very-Rare-Ga ... xyN05TlzAa