There was a point in the not too distant past where you could turn up at a car boot sale, or even a retro games fair and pick up bag fulls of games for next to nothing. Within arms reach of where I sit writing this I have a PS2 slim that I picked up with 20 games for £25 not long before Covid – you can see how much they are worth now right here. I have a Dreamcast that I bought from somebody locally on eBay that I swapped with a soldering iron. I have an original NBA Jam arcade board in a box that cost me just £50 from a show in Leeds.
Now, we are fast approaching the time where you are as likely to get bashed over the head and robbed for that Amiga you are carrying down the street as a city banker would get robbed for his Rolex.
How to start collecting retro games
Now it’s all right for people like me who got the opportunity to buy most of my collection before people realised there was cash to be made. I (and I really am not bragging) have bought Mega Drives for a fiver on eBay before now. These days you could easily pay £60 for one that is listed as “untested” – code for broken.
My biggest retro success is now one of the banes of my life. I bought a 26 inch Sony Trinitron CRT TV that once cost upwards of £1,500 for a pound – a solitary pound, after winning an auction nobody else was bidding on, on eBay. Why is it the bane of my life? Well I don’t really use it anymore and it is too heavy to get downstairs and out of the way. This is where kids really are useless.
So if you want to start collecting these days, is it even worth the hassle unless you are minted? Well, that depends on what you want to collect really, and whether you intend to be sensible about it.
Let’s have a fish around and some cheaper ways of getting into the hobby without breaking the bank.
Popular retro game collections
There are so many things to collect we shouldn’t really say something as basic as “I collect retro games.”
I got into it really as I had an Intellivision when I was a kid so I picked one up (cheap of course) from eBay for nostalgia’s sake. Then I bought the games I had when I was little – at the time they were only a pound or two per cartridge. Then I realised there was only ever just over 120 games released in its heyday, so I thought, I wonder if I could collect the lot.
My Intellivision collection of games currently stands at 89. The dream petered out as I got towards some of the rarer carts and learned that only a handful of some had ever been made and the most expensive ones were super rare and cost in excess of £1000. No thanks. Maybe if that Lottery win ever comes in.
Find a niche
So then, where should you start?
NIches are the way to go in my opinion. I know people who have set about collecting all the games from 80s budget cassette pioneer Mastertronic. Maybe you want all the games that Infocom ever released (although that’s an expensive one too)? Even obscure games that nobody would really want are expensive these days.
I have been after an Amiga big box shoot ‘em-up called Frenetic that only me on the whole planet enjoyed, for years, but I am not paying £50 for the occasional disk that crops up. Gone are the days of finding rich pickings at boot sales. Now, those who come across anything computer of gaming wise in the attic would rather list them at extortionate high prices and see if they ever sell, than move them on to somebody who really wants them for an acceptable price. Many people think there are queues of people waiting to snap up any game they try to sell. This is very much incorrect.
Maybe go for something like the Imagine 8-bit games from back in the day on one particular format – there are some great games in there such as Yie-Ar King Fu and World Series Baseball. How about trying to collect ZX Spectrum text adventures?
Whatever you choose will lead you into the hobby without just immediately going for the big ticket items.
If you are old enough to have played the games originally, go for something that resonates with your nostalgia – games you played as a kid or with your family. Your strong ties to those titles will reward you way more than just buying anything you find on the shelf because it is ‘retro’ and will be worth more in the future.
On top of that, is it games you want to collect or hardware? Maybe you want all the Sinclair computers from the 80s – that too is a reasonable target. Or maybe some more niche hardware light the Grandstand console from the 70’s that you can see above.
Sold as seen
Also remember that just because you buy something that purports to be working now, doesn’t mean it will in a few years time. Bit-rot is real, and none of this stuff wil last for ever. And most of it, not for much longer at all.
I bought my own shrink-wrapping hear to vacuum seal my favourite things to try to ward off the ravages of time – you don’t need to do that of course, but it keeps your paws from constantly handling them when you don’t need to. Oh, and while we are skirting around the subject, you still need a safe, dry place out of the sunshine to store all your old goodies.
Where to buy retro games cheap
Of course eBay is the obvious option, but this is true facts, there are zero retro gaming bargains on eBay anymore. You will have more joy at boot sales, although again, many are full of people who think they are sitting on a fortune. Loft clearances, house moves of relatives and the likes – just ask everybody you know – do you have any old crap you don’t want anymore? A guy i used to work with brought in an Amiga 500 for me he found in the garage. He gave it me for free. You need to be lucky and you never know what you will come across.
Now get hunting. This stuff is better in the hands of somebody who genuinely has an interest in keeping it safe, than scalpers or even those who through it into landfil.
