If you’ve been keeping tabs on the retro game collecting scene lately, you’ll know that the price of older games has risen dramatically in recent years, and Pokemon fans in particular are driving some of the price increases. the most ridiculous.

As a not-quite-serious collector, I’ve been vaguely aware of this trend for a while, but a tweet from goodwill leprechaun (opens in a new tab) — an account that highlights video game items posted on auction site ShopGoodwill (opens in a new tab) — really puts the situation into perspective. Pokémon Emerald cartridges in bulk now sell for nearly $200.

Do you know how popular Pokemon is nowadays? Do you know how popular Pokemon is? time at the beginning of the 2000’s ? The top-selling games on the GBA were Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, with 16 million units sold, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen, with 12 million units sold, and Pokemon Emerald, with 7 million units sold.

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Despite this, auction tracking services like PriceCharting (opens in a new tab) show that they are also among the most expensive GBA games, rivaling even the most obscure and sought-after titles on the desktop. of pocket. Emerald has an average sale price of $178. The others regularly fetch close to $100. None of these games are hard to find, so why are they so expensive?

I can’t claim to be able to fully capture the dynamics of the retro gaming collectibles market, but I have a few theories. First, it’s worth noting that average prices for retro games have indeed doubled since the start of 2020, but that doesn’t fully explain what we’re seeing with Pokemon. Where other beloved retro games have doubled in price, many Pokemon games have tripled, or in the case of Emerald, quadrupled, over the same period.

The problem with Pokémon is that it’s never really let go of its past. With a long and convoluted chain of transfers, you can bring all the old Pokémon you’ve collected from GBA games to the current generation, store them in the cloud with Pokémon Home, and transfer them to any modern game that still has a Pokedex. who supports them.

That means all of these games are still relevant for modern Pokemon fans, and there’s a big lingering question mark over how long it will last. Pokemon Bank is a downloadable 3DS app that’s essential in the transfer process, and you may have heard that Nintendo is preparing to shut down the 3DS eShop. All official indications suggest that Bank will remain available for the foreseeable future if you’ve used it at least once before, but no one knows how long it will stay that way, and fans are getting nervous.

Nintendo has already made Virtual Console versions of the original Game Boy Pokemon games available on the 3DS, with the ability to upload creatures directly to the cloud, though those too are about to become inaccessible. With Game Boy and GBA games now available as part of the Nintendo Switch Online service, I don’t understand why classic Pokemon titles aren’t available there and directly connected to the modern Pokemon Home cloud.

Would this solve the price issues on the used market? I don’t know, but it would at least mean that retro game collectors and Pokemon fans who just want to catch ’em all wouldn’t be competing for the same cartridges anymore.

In the meantime, please take this as a public service announcement from me and Goodwill Goblin: you shouldn’t spend nearly $200 on the third most popular GBA game.

Did you know you can get Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 for seven bucks on eBay? It is still one of best gba games all time.

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