Three years ago, he says he made 50% to 60% profit on any retro games he sold. (He also sells current games.) But his profit margins have shrunk. Instead of continually searching for cheap deals, his store mostly relies on customers to sell him their old stuff. If Stapish mentions he's looking for a game on his show, he notices a chain reaction: other people start hunting and owners quickly start charging more.īryan Harwell, who owns Replay'd in Allston, Massachusetts, has had to evolve in order to survive. It has 30,000 subscribers and regularly gets 15,000 to 20,000 views per episode, each one documenting Stapish and his crew meeting sellers in parking lots or digging through swap meets for cheap finds.īut it's harder and harder to strike gold. His YouYube channel, RetroLiberty, focuses almost exclusively on the retro video game hunt. "I'm kind of creating the problem as well," says Aaron Stapish. Nostalgia isn't the only thing driving prices higher.ĮBay auctions and dedicated YouTube channels have also fed the frenzy. Related: Video game designer is one of America's best jobs They were easier to pick up and play, less violent, more universally accessible than they are now."
"I think it's just a nostalgia for when they were younger," says David Kaelin, who runs the Classic Game Fest in Austin, Texas, and owns a chain of shops, Game Over Videogames. Just as kids who grew up in the '80s and '90s are reaching their thirties, the supply of vintage games is shrinking. He ultimately made the deal - for $12,000 in cash. Hendricks once spent months negotiating with a mysterious source in Canada to buy one of only two Powerfest 94 prototypes known to exist. He estimates the market for retro games is now worth about $200 million annually. Prices skyrocketed almost overnight, says JJ Hendricks, whose site Video Games Price Charting tracks the going rate for vintage games. Related: '70s and '80s tech making a comeback
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