Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Investment Strategies, Video Games Edition


One of the many reasons I got rejected by the Ivy League


So I'm putzing around eBay while drunk (which, incidentally, is the primary reason I have so much useless shit in my apartment), looking for a decent copy of my favorite game of all-time, Final Fantasy III/VI. I don't care that it's perfect or anything, I just want a copy that doesn't look like it's been dragged around tied to the back of a car.

Much to my surprise, there are actually sellers with SEALED copies of the game, available now at the firesale price of $799. At first blush, that seems ludicrous, but let's not forget that a similarly sealed copy of Chrono Trigger sold for $1,217.

While acknowledging that nobody has yet purchased the game for 800 bucks, let's assume for a second that the real value of the game is such, especially considering the fact that it's about equally as rare (i.e., not notably rare) and equally as lauded as Chrono Trigger. I *think* the game was $70 at release, which would make the inflation-adjusted appreciation from 1994 to 2010 a tidy 697%!

By comparison, the S&P 500 has only increased by about 137% in the same period. My parents would have been better off putting their retirement savings into a stack of Super Nintendo games. Or old Transformer toys, for that matter.

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