In retrogaming’s specific case though, it’s been completely manufactured in the last few years. A few famous or semi-famous idiots got in touch with con artists, and made some bogus transactions with massive media coverage. They engineered a speculative bubble.

And they managed to fuck up the retrogaming market for everyone, even those actually just looking for a bit of nostalgia to plug into their old consoles. Suddenly it was all assholes trying to scam each other and even common cartridges in a subpar state had their prices skyrocket.