What sort of impact are natural disasters having on the CCG/TCG market? Many disasters force people from their homes with little time to grab their hobbies or any other non-essential items. How many collections are lost each year between fires, hurricanes, tornados, etc.?
I was a teen in the 90’s and I’d see all those overprinted 90’s comics in quarter bins for years. When I walk into comic stores today, many of those same 90’s comics are on the top shelf of the walls with 20+ price tags on them.
What does that 30-year cycle look like for CCG/TCGs? What is the time frame there? For toys it’s generally 15-20 years, it gives an 8-year-old time to get a full-time job and have expendable income. For video games, it’s 8-20 years. That 8 to 16-year-old given that same sort of time frame. For a while, NES/SNES was incredibly hot, which eventually cooled and we are in a huge N64/Gamecube/Dreamcast/Saturn era for video game collecting with PS1 gaining steam. PS2/XBox will be next as that next generation of teenagers become adults with expendable income. Part of this is due to people making these systems compatible with HD or trying to smooth out the N64 so it doesn’t look so terrible. Good luck!
Back to CCG/TCG, I’d say it’s closer to 5-20 years. It’s a big gap. There was already a price boost with older CCGs starting as far back as October of 2019 and I continued to see a growing interest of returning collectors/players into the start of 2020. The global pandemic has only fueled that and blown the market completely up. There are a large number of people getting these older games so they can teach their kids, hoping they have an interest in it so they have someone they can enjoy their hobby with again. It’s often a group of friends getting back together or playing against each other online.
But are we seeing a boost in pricing at all related to the number of cards available? Have natural disasters, home accidents, Mom throwing it in the trash when you move to college, etc. actually decreased the amount of available product in the market and helped to increase the price?
Of course, grease from food, Cheeto fingers, playing without sleeves, rubber bands, cards bought/played with by kids, card tables that scratch the back of your card or have crap on them, etc. probably have a much great impact overall but the environment plays some factor.
It’s all paper products, keeping it in perfect condition takes some work.
Let me know what you think.
Look for exciting news in November and December, here at CategoryOneGames. Lots of new games coming to the site. Great November Thanksgiving Specials Week, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, will be announced soon and all the new games hitting the site before year-end.
Image credit to Kim Roper.
