If there’s ever been a better time to emulate games it’s now, as getting a good quality version of Pokémon Fire Red for the Game Boy Advance might cost you close to $5,000 if you haven’t already got a copy lying around.
Just joking! Tee hee! Just a little trick, don’t sue me! I don’t condone doing anything illegal, I’m just a little sweetheart. Y’know what should be illegal, though? These freakin’ prices! Posted today on the GoCollect Twitter, an account dedicated to posting all sorts of things related to the pop culture collector world, a Wata 9.6 Pokémon Fire Red sold for an eye-watering $US3,109 ($4,763).
🎮A #Wata 9.6 #Pokemon Fire Red #video game sold on 9/19 for $3,109 after 21 bids through @MComicConnect. This is the first time a #Wata 9.6 has appeared at auction!
Past sales: https://t.co/Pcwh7wb301 pic.twitter.com/PditPwxlFC— GoCollect (@gocollect) September 25, 2022
The score out of 10 and letter grade for this one comes from Wata’s score system for sealed games, where the 9.6 is related to the quality of the box while the A+ is related to the box’s seal.
So that’s good, right? The quality of the box and seal is top-tier, so why shouldn’t it be that expensive, right? Pokémon Fire Red came out in 2004, a good 18 years ago. Does it make sense for a game to skyrocket to thousands of dollars in 18 years?
That being said, we can see on the box that in 2015, this game sold at a shop for $US34.99 ($53.59). That is, of course, if we assume the numbers ‘11222015’ are in reference to the date of November 21st, 2015. So that’s seven years that a copy of Pokémon Fire Red went from being $53 to being $4761. If my calculations are correct, that’s approximately an 8883% increase in price! Normal?
This kind of thing can be good and bad for different reasons. It’s good for people who have old games lying around in good condition that would love to make a pretty penny from them. On the other hand, it means that if you have any interest in getting physical copies of older games (does 2004 count as ‘older’?), you’ll be spending a lot of money. A lot.
How do you feel about this? Does it feel weird seeing Pokémon Fire Red, a game that you probably bought for a normal amount of money 18 years ago now go for thousands of dollars? Are we out of touch? Is it the children who are wrong? Let us know!
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