Market Report: Yakuza 1 and 2 Reprints
A few months back I decided I wanted to play through the Yakuza series. In doing the research I quickly learned that Yakuza 2 had become quite difficult to find. CIB copies were approaching $100 at that time. I finally eBay sniped a copy for around $80 and felt pretty good about it. Yakuza 1 was much easier to locate and much cheaper.
As the release of Yakuza 0 approached, the prices kept climbing. Sealed copies of Yakuza 2 sold for as much as $149.99 on eBay and a couple of CIB copies fetched over $100. Even sealed copies of Yakuza 1 were fetching $80-90 in late January and early February.
There are some dangers with collecting video games. One concern, especially with something released in the last 10 years, is that someone stumbles upon a few pallets of games in the corner of some warehouse and decides to sell them all at once. And that's exactly what I thought happened, when, during the second week of February, I heard about sellers on eBay selling Yakuza 1 and 2 copies for $49.99. It turns out Sega actually was actually releasing reprints of the games. And it looks like the reprints are effectively indistinguishable from the originals.
It's unclear how many reprints have been released. But even a small influx of games has understandably unsettled the market for sealed copies of Yakuza 1 and 2. You can still buy copies of Yakuza 1 on eBay for $49.99 right now. And while Yakuza 2 looks to be sold out at this time, sealed copies have not sold for much over $50 since the reprints have released.