Retro game and console prices in Japan soar with inflow of overseas collectors 

A recent survey of second-hand video game retailers in Japan by Tokyo News Room reveals that game software and consoles from the 80s and 90s are skyrocketing to several times their list prices. Retro games are increasingly being purchased as “investments,” and a rise in overseas buyers has contributed to the surge in prices in Japanese storefronts. 

Tokyo News Room visits the Retro Game Camp store in Akihabara, Tokyo, where NES games from the 80s can be seen selling for tens of thousands of yen, and the original Pokémon Red and Green are listed for upwards of 5 times their original retail price. While equal (and even higher) prices can be spotted regularly on overseas marketplaces, this seems to be an unexpected occurrence in the Japanese second-hand market. 

Retro Game Camp’s store manager comments that there is a high demand among customers from overseas for video games with well-known characters, which has sharply inflated the value of series such as Pokémon, Super Mario and Dragon Ball. The demand for retro consoles, such as Nintendo’s Game Boy Color, is also at an all-time high. According to the manager, the unprecedented inflow of overseas customers first started in October 2022, after Japan loosened its Covid 19-related travel restrictions. The number of foreign visitors rose from a few people a month to several thousand a month. Furthermore, with the historic depreciation of the yen since last year, the number of customers from overseas started exceeding that of Japanese customers on a daily level. 

Among them, many are collectors who seek out packaged products with all manuals and accessories intact. While it has been a common occurrence for game titles produced in small quantities to fetch high prices for their rarity, it seems even more common games are rising in value in Japan, as resellers find them to be an increasingly lucrative investment. As certain unsealed games are easier to come by in Japan, the trend of some collectors having their games professionally graded (and thus bumped up in value) may be another factor bringing in so many visitors to Japanese second-hand stores. 

You may also want to read about how this SNES prototype almost got auctioned for 14,668,000 yen but mysteriously disappeared or this rare unopened copy of Serial Experiments Lain.