I'm thinking about investing in collector's editions, is it viable?

BobbeMalle · Feb 18, 2021

Hi everyone.
For a while now i've been thinking about investing in collector's editions of games, since a lot of them shoots up in value over time if in excellent condition/brand new.
Do you think is it viable and/or profitable over a long time? I managed to snag a Little Nightmares 2 TV Edition for 59,99$ just cause i love the franchise and it already is worth 80/90$ due to high demand.
Another recent one is the RE:Village CE, which went out of stock in an instant and is now worth +100/150$.
Are there any services or discord channels that help you keep track of new releases or offers?
Thanks.

PerrierChaud · Feb 18, 2021

Don't be that guy

Plinkerton · Feb 18, 2021

No offence, but it sounds like you're thinking of getting into scalping.

julia crawford · Feb 18, 2021

Gamespot stock not good enough?

Jawmuncher · Feb 18, 2021

If you like collecting to have stuff it can be neat. Sometimes they look nice to display and it can feel nice knowing you have something kinda rare.

If you're talking about buying CE's to just sell later on? Not really worth the effort. Reminds me of the people who get their games rated.

If you want to know when new CE's come out, it's best to just follow someone like Wario64 or CAG with notifications on. You'll see a good chunk of the major ones that way along with other deals.

Magneto · Feb 18, 2021

Plinkerton said:
No offence, but it sounds like you're thinking of getting into scalping.

Guess i've been scalping for the past 20 years then. Damn.

OP, you can do better in terms of investment.

RecRoulette · Feb 18, 2021

For the space they take up and the minimal return on investment I'd say you'd be better putting that money into something else.

Diogo Arez · Feb 18, 2021

Depends, if you get good deals yes, but I wouldn't recommend at all falling into the rabbit hole that is scalping

onlyTangerine · Feb 18, 2021

As someone who used to scalp stuff like this during hard times: it's not worth it. The market for CEs is arbitrary and difficult to predict, and the returns are usually pretty small in the grand scheme of things. You're better off throwing some money into an Acorns account lmao.

waluigi · Feb 18, 2021

I really got into buying CE in 2016 when Best Buy's GCU was a thing and continued to buy them up until last year. Then it came time to move and I had all these huge game boxes. I decided to sell most of them instead of moving them and none of them sold for more than what I bought them at. Most sold around the price i paid. They were in great condition and kept in a smoke free home. I guess what I'm saying is don't get into collectors editions as an "investment" because there's really not a lot of money in the long run. I believe it's mostly because the collectibles that come in most CE are pretty mediocre quality. You might see the price increase on the second hand market when the games are fresh but after a few years, the value isn't really there. And just for perspective, I think the only game that scored me a decent profit was Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Yahsper · Feb 18, 2021

Absolutely not worth investing time in. You have zero assurance that collector's editions of a game will go up in value, you have no idea how long it'll take before prices rise and margins are tiny.

Do you really want to buy 10 CE's (bought for what, 80 bucks? So 800 bucks investment) to maybe get 80 dollar profit in 5 years?

FooF · Feb 18, 2021

If you're buying them for something neat to have then I'd say they're worth it but if you're going into it for the resale value then it's probably not viable since it's pretty hard to predict what ones will be worth a lot in the long run. Also coming from someone who buys quite a few collectors editions they take up a lot of space

gozu · Feb 18, 2021

Terrible idea. Just terrible. Don't do it...

... but if you must, Buy CEs if YOU enjoy them. That way, if it is a poor investment, at least YOU can still enjoy it. Win/win.

UltraGashInferno · Feb 18, 2021

It's a crap investment, but you should say you're doing it anyway to annoy those who call selling anything "scalping"

bobliefeld · Feb 18, 2021

For whatever reason, my taste in games seems to align with what people will pay silly money for a few years after release. So once in a while I'll sell some old games to buy some new ones. (or in the case of my Neogeo collection, put down a deposit on a house and buy a some high end guitars(!!))

Long term, I think that the market for "collectors editions" is going to plummet. Look at "Limited Run Games" etc, there's zero rarity there. People buy them, stick them on ebay for 2x and they remain there forever. It's like comic books in the 90s. No one is opening these games so there's always going to be sealed copies available. Play your games ffs.

I'm wary of anything where the company making/selling it tells you "this is collectable!". Short term, maybe you can make some money but there's easier ways to make more money.

Soulflarz · Feb 18, 2021

Scalping is not very profitable, as someone who bought dozens of LEs over the years as a collector and checked prices on them whenever I got low on money, being curious how much those would be worth and all that.

As a result, I can tell you this safely: The majority of LEs/CEs do not go up in price really, and the ones that did were really damn obvious. We're talking anything by Yoko Taro pre Automata where everything was just more popular a few years later than it had been or danganronpa where the LEs were sold out way before release, or even the VLR watches.

But like, idk, it's not an anime game thing. Blazblue Chronophantasmas CEs went to $20/30 before they went up, for example. Right now it's barely more than I paid for it at launch.

Considering it's taking physical space too? Why would anyone sign up for that.

Stick to stalking price errors on slickdeals, that's the real place to scalp I assume.

...or...just...don't? The effort it takes to scalp is literally worse than the time it takes to earn money via any normal method if you're not a high school student. Wario64 isn't tweeting out magical links to xbox one + $400 laptop combos for $320 anymore. You probably have to do the work yourself.

Skulldead · Feb 18, 2021

You are already too late, the valuable collector are game that got popular sequel usualy or pretty rare/uncommon RPG/SMHUP. You already miss the boat for like 99% of the real valuable collector's edition.

Hasney · Feb 18, 2021

It's completely random depending on how many they make. I mean, they're discounting the FF7 Remake First Class edition just to get rid of them.

Aztorian · Feb 18, 2021

dunkzilla · Feb 18, 2021

No. Games are not an investment.

BobbeMalle · Feb 18, 2021

Thanks for the tips everyone

Skulldead · Feb 18, 2021

dunkzilla said:
No. Games are not an investment.

This is a pretty false statement, if you know what you are doing it can became a investment. Just understand the market and you could scalp some game that you know are going to became valuable. But doesn't mean that you should do it, there a always a risk.

dunkzilla · Feb 18, 2021

Skulldead said:
This is a pretty false statement, if you know what you are doing it can became a investment. Just understand the market and you could scalp some game that you know are going to became valuable. But doesn't mean that you should do it, there a always a risk.

I mean if you want to lose money, jump into it. There are better ways to invest your money than on new games.

Slacker247 · Feb 18, 2021

Collectibles are a viable investment class, doesn't really matter if it's gaming, baseball cards, Pokémon cards, toys like Lego...etc. It's not a terrible idea to have a portion of investments into it, but not a big chunk.

CE games isn't the best. I would recommend you buy what you enjoy, and if it's proving to be worth something later, sell it. Because you might find yourself buying Halo , COD or GTA CEs and sometimes those are the worst investments because they tank very quickly and never see a return.

I feel like many CEs over the late PS3/360 cycle into the next after have been produced in much higher numbers + people got the picture and sat on a bunch - they still do because they got lucky with a $20 profit on one item. There are a couple odd ones, like NieR Automata Black Box, but if you look at that carefully there is a better reason - it comes with an actual high quality figure i.e. not the cheap tat that accompany most CEs; the RRP was already high because of that fact. The TLOU one had a statue too which wasn't that amazing quality but it was immensely popular so that one is worth something for a different reason (and to be fair, the statue was still good looking for the budget). Bloodborne (Europe) is another good one of doing well. I think for a lot of CEs, you're going to have to sit on them for a long time.

It helps if you can take a good guess on print runs as well. But that also causes the reverse, like someone said, Limitedrungames are transparent, but that just means so many people sit on sealed copies, so the value increase is slowed massively. There are a couple games that have gone up a decent amount though e.g. the Shantae games - for whatever reason they always do well - chalk it up to legacy GB rarity affecting the rest.

Your best bet is just buy low print run Switch games, forget anything else.

And even better, just put your money into investment funds. If you can afford to buy CE games, you can afford to buy into funds.

Lemony1984 · Feb 18, 2021

You'd be better off putting that money into sneakers. Most CEs don't go up in value and the ones that do won't offset your losses.

Good4Squat · Feb 18, 2021

Problem is that I also see a ton of collector's editions that fall in price immensely, so it sounds like something that could backfire on you pretty hard.

Dark Ninja · Feb 18, 2021

CE's are not worth it the risk of you getting a damaged box version is pretty high some of the stores don't give a fuck especially if it's being shipped to you. If you want to scalp stuff there's probably a better option with higher returns. Your better off investing in stocks or Bitcoin.

Scottoest · Feb 18, 2021

For every CE of a game that shoots up in value over time, there's gonna be like 30 that don't. You'd be better off just putting your money in an index fund;.

Just buy games you like, and if one of them happens to become a collector's item down the road, then consider it a small victory.

CannonFodder52 · Feb 18, 2021

Just invest longterm in the stock market with that money.

Slacker247 · Feb 18, 2021

Lemony1984 said:
You'd be better off putting that money into sneakers. Most CEs don't go up in value and the ones that do won't offset your losses.

Perhaps, but it can also be quite bad. Sometimes the returns are just not worth the time/effort/gas and fees involved. £20-35 profit after all is said and done excites some, but it's really nothing to me personally and just a waste of time. £100, say like for the Jordan 1 Neutral Greys (kinda bummed, I really wanted a pair for personal use) is now worth the effort. It's better than CE games, for sure.

Scottoest said:
For every CE of a game that shoots up in value over time, there's gonna be like 30 that don't. You'd be better off just putting your money in an index fund;.

Just buy games you like, and if one of them happens to become a collector's item down the road, then consider it a small victory.

Yep!

CannonFodder52 said:
Just invest longterm in the stock market with that money.

See, OP! If have money for CEs, put it into funds. Less effort, just do monthly investments and check back in in 5-10 years. Get rich quick seems seldom work, and if it were easy...well, I know I wouldn't be posting here....or maybe I am rich and just have nothing to do, hmmm!

Oh, extra one is LEGO. Similar to sneakers in that some stuff just goes insane, but different in that most LEGO sets take a good few years to appreciate whereas sneakers tend to be inflated on the day no thanks to the weird hype culture of fashion.

Mr.Deadshot · Feb 18, 2021

Maybe if you concentrate on limited editions, Nintendo and obscure japanese stuff (NIS America CEs), but:

PerrierChaud said:
Don't be that guy

ParanormalFupa · Feb 18, 2021

I can't think of a worse investment. Literal shit maybe?

karnage10 · Feb 18, 2021

if you want to "invest" as in using money to make money ; i'd invest in index funds or something like that; depending on your tolerance risk.

Redcrayon · Feb 18, 2021

Doing it for profit is the worst reason to go for 'collectors editions', tons of them don't increase in value. If you were going to do worry about small amounts of money like games doubling in value, you'd be better off going for low print runs of carts, as it least it doesn't fill up your home with tat to the same extent. Ultimately investing in games is way less effective than investing in pretty much anything else. Pour the money into a high interest ISA or longterm in stocks or something instead, it's less effort and takes up less space for higher reward, and you aren't reliant on your investments being easily damaged cardboard posted to you.

Huntersknoll · Feb 18, 2021

I think it is luck. I bought the Destiny collectors edition back in the day. The ghost "toy" it came with sold on ebay like a year later for $200.
However I didn't buy it as an investment, I was just pumped for the game. However when that Ghost toy laying in my closet had some value I was quick to sell it. Even sent it in the collectors edition box, lol.

Trust me, after about 5 days of hearing The Dinks say, "that wizard came from the moon" every time I walked into my bedroom I was done with it. That shit would go off in my closet randomly too.. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. Pretty sure I had a haunted dinkles ghost toy.

Euler007 · Feb 18, 2021

No future cash flows, low liquidity market. It's not investing, it's collecting. It might be worth a lot, might not.

Silvergun-Blue · Feb 18, 2021

There's no real way to tell what ones will be worth anything. there's more chance of you making a loss or breaking even. Even if you do hit the jackpot with one of them, any profit would probably be cancelled by the cost of the rest of them.

tmarg · Feb 18, 2021

If you're trying to convince yourself that your game collection is an investment, you're probably too emotionally invested in it to make sound financial decisions with it, even if you could reasonably expect them to appreciate.

Deleted member 45130 · Feb 18, 2021

Not really, I bought a few that I sold years down the line and they weren't really of any value. Halo 3 with the Helmet being one of them. Paid about £80 for it and it was worth about £20 when I sold it years later.

jkh13 · Feb 18, 2021

Not worth it at all currently. This used to be a thing before publishers figured out they could charge 2x for collectors editions and people would still buy them. They also make many more of them nowadays so they aren't as "limited" as back in the old days.

You will typically see price spikes around the launch of a popular game if the collector edition "sells out", but the price typically tanks soon after. It's not worth the risk though as a) it may never go above the price you paid for it and b) the game itself might review badly or be unpopular.

That being said, there are occasionally games which still shoot up in price due to actual scarcity or popularity. Nier Automata is a good example, the collector's edition was readily available for pre-order for months because no one cared about it but Nier fans, once it got popular the price went up 5x on EBay as SQEX didn't produce very many as they didn't expect the game to sell well. I was actually tempted to sell mine but held onto it in the end.

Just buy these collector's editions if you like them, it's not worth the risk to "invest" in them.

ReginaldXIV · Feb 18, 2021

Buy the games you like, and if by chance they ate actually worth something a decade later, sell them if you want. Video Game collecting is mostly based on nostalgia and rarity. Even then, I could sell my original print SNES Chrono Trigger... But I'm only making like $200 profit off of an $80 game in 90s dollars. And that's 26 years later.

I'm thinking about investing in collector's editions, is it viable?

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