Some people just don't get it.

OregonPacman

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Anybody tell you guys after looking at your collection that its a good investment? I have had several people say something like that to me. Invariably they don't see the real reason I have the games in the first place, which would of course be to play them. They don't see the play value or nostalgia value of having them. It seems like most of the people that see my games are missing the point. Anybody else get this?
 
I dunno, i think investment wise they are pretty terrible, unless you are just flipping them. Long term, if I was looking for an investment, it's definitely not going to be in arcade games :p
 
None of my close freinds are into my games,but they will call me when they run across one for sale.
 
I hear shit from people at work all the time when I bring up my games. Stuff like "waste of money" and "low class hobby" comes to mind. Then I politely respond...."fuck off" and smile :)
 
I hear shit from people at work all the time when I bring up my games. Stuff like "waste of money" and "low class hobby" comes to mind. Then I politely respond...."fuck off" and smile :)

Someone actually said "low class hobby"? You should take a jab at his wife or mom..that's pretty low. Fight low with low!
 
Someone actually said "low class hobby"? You should take a jab at his wife or mom..that's pretty low. Fight low with low!

Yea dude I work with is a lot of talk. His hobby is politics and hates the fact that no one in the office cares about them...you know we are all screwed regardless lol. He's 23 so whatever lol
 
I've never heard it called a "low class hobby" before. Sometimes I will compare my games to somebodyelse's car in the garage that they work on from time to time. Then it dawns on them. I guess that the more people that don't get it, the more games there are for the rest of us.
 
Well, I could definitely make more money selling all my stuff off than I ever spent buying and fixing them. Most of my stuff was free or under $100, and at most $100 in parts. I don't count labor.


Usually the biggest comment is "Wow!", followed by, "So why do you have these?"...
 
around where im at an investement is dumb lol. THere is not alot of money in games around these parts. BUt i keep collecting, and when letting games go i usually get my ass handed to me, but its ok because finding,collecting, repairing these machines is whats fun for me.
 
The "low class hobby" comment struck me as odd. If anything, I get the opposite. People who don't know just assume the games are thousands of dollars a piece. I end up explaining they're nearly all under $400, and way less if you get them dead and fix 'em up.

If anyone told me it was an investment, I'd have to explain its a hobby you love with your heart and not with your head. Making any money on these would mostly be luck.

I don't think anyone in 2001 looked forward and saw a time when Medieval Madness was going to be selling for 10k... They probably bought it cheap because it was a great game and got lucky.
 
Maybe they see the games as something that will hold their value? But I see what you're saying. Most of my friends and relatives don't appreciate the games like we KLOVers do. But it seems most of my friends and relatives don't even have hobbies, or they just smoke and drink beer so I don't care who says what. Anybody can throw a party. But only KLOVers can throw arcade parties!

Anybody tell you guys after looking at your collection that its a good investment? I have had several people say something like that to me. Invariably they don't see the real reason I have the games in the first place, which would of course be to play them. They don't see the play value or nostalgia value of having them. It seems like most of the people that see my games are missing the point. Anybody else get this?
 
Tell his ass that talking politics don't mean shit if he's not going to take any action to change or fix things. People like that; all talk and no action = waste of time. And sounds like his "low class" comment was aimed at you and not your hobby. Tell him Williams S. Sessions says "Winners Don't Use Drugs".

Yea dude I work with is a lot of talk. His hobby is politics and hates the fact that no one in the office cares about them...you know we are all screwed regardless lol. He's 23 so whatever lol
 
I hear shit from people at work all the time when I bring up my games. Stuff like "waste of money" and "low class hobby" comes to mind. Then I politely respond...."fuck off" and smile :)

Yeah, there's an elitist with shit for brains for you. Some people say the "waste of money" line, but I say "Funny, I feel the same way about cable TV (and dish)".

The number 1 and number 2 questions I get consistently are "Where do you find them?" and "How much is your electric bill?" For some dumb reason people think I keep them on 24/7 and I'm like "Why would I do that? If I want to play a game I turn it on, and when I'm done I turn it off. I only have ALL of them on at the same time, maybe once a month and even then... when I'm done I turn them off."

If I were to think of this in investment terms I would consider my games like a "safe low yield long term bond". I buy them cheap, expect to sell them cheap and I get annual dividends with my useage. Even if I end up taking a financial loss on the backend that doesn't mean I didn't get more value for my money. Example:

Last year I bought an air hockey table I was disappointed with (looked a lot better on the craigslist pics) but I bought it anyway as we were having a birthday party for my 4 year old that weekend. The amount of fun EVERYONE had with it (kids, parents, grand parents) I walked away very satisfied with the deal.
 
Most of my friends love it but then I have a few who are too "grown up" and think i'm nuts lol. oh well, sip your expensive wine while the rest of us have all the fun! :D
 
Whether or not you view them as investments, I think the question of whether or not they'll make good investments is an interesting topic for discussion.

I think arcades are certainly cheap right now, but so are cars from the 80's and 90's by comparison. Once you get into the 70's (pinballs and cameros) things start to get more expensive. Cars from the 60's and earlier tend to be worth more the older they get.

In order for an arcade to retain it's value, you would need to know how to keep it in good repair and a way to keep it away from vandals. When you consider how much money the world government's are printing, I think it's likely that anything rare/hard to get will see a rise in value (anyone seen the price of gas lately?) The higher inflation runs, the more we pay for arcades and parts parts. If you were a buy and hold hobbiest, I would be willing to bet a free lunch that ten years from now you'll see a better return on a perfect condition arcade game than you will in the S&P500.

On the other hand, if 3D printing allows home hobbiests to print parts as easy as it is for the Fed to print dollars, then a home collection could make a terrible investment over the long run. I think this means that it's quite possible that you're friends are right when they tell you that our games will move from vintage to antique values, but if you don't enjoy your games, than you'd be crazy to think of it as an investment because one funny bump or spilled drink or leap forward in technology and your stock could lost 80% of it's value.
 
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I would say they are a very poor investment.

First off they take up space. Lets say 6 square feet per game (physically most take up a fraction less, but you need more like 8 square feet if you want to play). Now I live in a relatively inexpensive house in the midwest and just dividing my home's square footage into the annual mortgage cost shows that the hunk of floor a game sits on costs me $44 a year.

Now basement and garage space is generally considered to be less valuable than main living space, but regardless of where you put the machines they are going someplace that has a real cost.

Storage cost means a $400 game would have to appreciate more than 10 percent a year just to cover the cost of holding it. This is the same reason why classic cars are poor investments, they simply cost too much money to store relative to their value.

Next bullet point. Repairs. These games can and will break down and some of the parts are really starting to get scarce. Vector monitors have always been a problem in part because they stopped making them a long time ago, meaning that the old monitors had to be repaired. Guess what else is getting pretty hard to find these days? CRT monitors. This means most games always have the spectre of very expensive repairs looming over their head and in this case it can be WORSE than classic cars. Blow up the engine in that classic car? A replacement one will likely run 10-20 percent of the value of the car. Replacing a monitor can now cost well over half the value of the game. Of course some people can fix anything, but those skills aren't free. It took time to learn them and it takes time to make the repairs and time isn't free.

Moving on. Mame cabinets and X in 1 bootleg boards have forever altered the supply and demand dynamic. The supply of gameplay is now unlimited and can meet any demand. The demand for authenticity is not nearly as high as the demand for gameplay.

Continuing. The demographic interested in arcade games is beginning to age out of the hobby. Those the correct age to have truly experienced the classic era in their youth are 40-50 years old now and they will never get any younger.

Now, for the few positive factors relating to arcade values.

The number of machines does continue to shrink. People keep ripping up machines to make mame cabinets. People keep converting machines from one title to another (usually wasting at least a set of sideart and a control panel overlay in the process, often leaving a marquee and bezel cut to fit a specific cabinet and now hard to use). People continue to take machines apart, burn the cabinets and sell the parts on ebay. Machines continue to fall out of the back of trucks in Arkansas and Texas (sorry Steven) and unskilled enthusiasts continue to ruin things in their efforts to fix them.

The mame cabinet scene does continue to attract new people to the arcade collecting hobby.
 
I would say they are a very poor investment.

First off they take up space. Lets say 6 square feet per game (physically most take up a fraction less, but you need more like 8 square feet if you want to play). Now I live in a relatively inexpensive house in the midwest and just dividing my home's square footage into the annual mortgage cost shows that the hunk of floor a game sits on costs me $44 a year.

This seems like pretty fuzzy math unless they're taking up space that'd otherwise be occupied by gold ingots or something. How many square feet in your house are dedicated to making you money? At my house, that number is approximately -2000 square feet. ;)
 
I was purely examining them as an investment and the space they go in isn't free. It could be rented out, you could downsize and move someplace smaller. You could indeed stack the space full of gold ingots or simply more compact physical investments.

Space quickly becomes a problem for many people in the hobby and I have seen plenty of threads here where people mention their storage units (not free), and even some where people build storage buildings and add on gamerooms to their house.

This seems like pretty fuzzy math unless they're taking up space that'd otherwise be occupied by gold ingots or something. How many square feet in your house are dedicated to making you money? At my house, that number is approximately -2000 square feet. ;)
 
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