Market Report: N64 CIB Games

Like just about everyone, I grew up with an NES system. But when the Genesis came out, I basically converted to a Sega kid. I played a bunch of Street Fighter II on SNES (there was no other option for a long time), but not much else. I owned an N64, but I mostly just played Mario Kart 64. I was never drawn in by any other game enough to take me away from my beloved Playstation and later my Dreamcast.

So the N64 just does not hold much of a place in my heart. I was recently researching some game prices for N64 and I was blown away by a a couple of different phenomena I noticed:

1. There are a ton of CIB N64 games on eBay. Just as an example, there at 23 CIB copies of Super Smash Brothers on eBay right now. Compared to the number of Saturn or Dreamcast games I find (see basicaly every past post on the blog) at any given point - this seems like a ton of copies. I always assumed that, because N64 games were packaged in cardboard, the overwhelming majority of those boxes were tossed in the trash. Maybe the huge print runs of these games (especially the Mario and Zelda games) still creates a ton of listings, even if 99.9% of the boxes were tossed. Regardless, the supply side of many N64 games seems very high.

2. Even with all of the listings, the bidding and sales activity for the games seems strong. There were 34 sales of CIB Smash 64's in the last 60 days and the market seems incredibly healthy. It is fair to say that the demand for N64 and Nintendo in general is leaps and bounds ahead of Dreamcast and Saturn.

Here are a couple of interesting completed auctions I noticed for N64 games recently:

1. Bomberman 64 (Sealed) sold for $710.01 on April 9, 2017.

2. Super Smash Brothers (Sealed) sold for $499.99 on March 12, 2017.

3. Stunt Racer 64 with manual damage sold for $511 on April 23, 2017.

4. Clay Fighter: Sculptor's Cut (game and box) sold for $800 on March 10, 2017.

5. Clay Fighter: Sculptor's Cut (box only) sold for $700 on March 8, 2017.