Data study
Ten years of retro game prices: what went up, and what didn’t
We tracked month-by-month prices for 931 games across 8consoles, from 2015 to 2025. The most expensive games rose slowest. Complete copies beat loose carts. And a modern re-release didn’t hurt the original cartridge’s price.
Published October 19, 2026 · Updated October 19, 2026 · Updated after every new console we cover
The short version
- The typical game rose +6.1% a year loose and +7.7% complete, against inflation of about +3.1%.
- Atari 7800 games grew fastest (+11.6% a year loose: $10 in 2015 became about $30). ColecoVision games grew slowest (+3.7%).
- The most expensive games grew slowest on 7 of the 8 consoles with enough of them to measure.
- Complete copies grew faster than loose carts on all 8 consoles.
- Atari 50 made no difference to the price of the original cartridges, and there is no best month to buy.
1. What went up, and by how much
The typical (median) game’s yearly price growth, 2015 to 2025. The dashed line is US inflation over the same years.
| Console | Games | Loose / yr | Complete / yr | $10 loose in 2015 → 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atari 7800 | 57 | +11.6% | +12.7% | $29.89 |
| Virtual Boy | 17 | +9.9% | +10.3% | $25.60 |
| Neo Geo Pocket Color | 52 | +8.8% | +13.8% | $23.31 |
| Atari 2600 | 412 | +6.2% | +7.6% | $18.28 |
| Atari 5200 | 68 | +6.2% | +8.5% | $18.25 |
| Atari Lynx | 71 | +5.5% | +6.7% | $17.08 |
| Atari Jaguar | 61 | +5.3% | +6.6% | $16.72 |
| ColecoVision | 111 | +3.7% | +4.2% | $14.38 |
| US inflation | +3.1% | $13.58 |
“Games” counts the games with a full price record in both 2015 and 2025.
Boxes pulled ahead
Complete copies grew faster than loose carts on all 8 consoles. Across every game we track the gap is 1.5 points a year, and over a decade that compounds: $10 grows to $20.96 at the complete-copy rate against $18.15 loose.
One factor: how many were made
We can’t say for certain why one console’s games grew faster than another’s. One factor we can measure is supply. Atari’s own sales records survive for the 7800, and in our data the 7800 games that sold fewer copies in the 1980s cost more today.
2. The expensive games grew slowest
We grouped every game by what it cost in 2014, then measured its growth from 2015 to 2025:
| Price in 2014 | Complete copies | Loose carts |
|---|---|---|
| Under $10 | +8.9% (174 games) | +6.2% (445 games) |
| $10–25 | +7.2% (277 games) | +6.7% (233 games) |
| $25–75 | +9.1% (200 games) | +5.7% (119 games) |
| $75 and up | +4.1% (134 games) | +3.7% (50 games) |
Console by console, complete copies in the $75-and-up group grew slower than every cheaper group on 7 of the 8 consoles with at least 4 such games. The exception is the Virtual Boy, where the 7 expensive games kept pace (+11.8% a year).
| Complete copies | Under $10 | $10–25 | $25–75 | $75+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atari 7800 | +12.0% | +14.3% | +12.7% | +6.7% |
| Virtual Boy | too few | too few | +10.6% | +11.8% |
| Neo Geo Pocket Color | too few | +16.7% | +15.2% | +11.6% |
| Atari 2600 | +7.9% | +7.7% | +8.9% | +3.3% |
| Atari 5200 | +7.7% | +9.4% | +10.1% | +6.7% |
| Atari Lynx | +12.2% | +5.8% | +5.8% | −3.0% |
| Atari Jaguar | too few | +6.6% | +8.9% | +4.1% |
| ColecoVision | +7.3% | +4.4% | +6.0% | +2.3% |
What this means if you’re finishing a set
Add up the price of every game we track and the total rose only +3.0% a year loose, against +6.1%for the typical game. A few expensive rarities make up most of a complete set’s cost, and they barely moved. So once you allow for inflation, finishing a set costs about what it did ten years ago.The everyday games you were going to pick up “someday” are the ones that got more expensive.
Why we grouped by the 2014 price
If you group games by their 2015 price and then measure growth from 2015, you fall into a statistical trap. A game that happened to be unusually expensive that year lands in the top group, then seems to “fall” when its price returns to normal. Grouping by the year before avoids that. Both ways give the same answer, so the finding isn’t a trick of the method.
3. Does a re-release hurt the original’s price?
Collectors often worry that an official re-release will pull the original cartridge’s price down. In November 2022, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebrationput dozens of Atari games on modern consoles, which makes a good test. We compared each game in the collection with the same console’s games that weren’t in it, from the 12 months before the release to the months after.
| After the release | Atari 50 games | Other games | Beat the others |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 months | +0.5% | −1.4% | 36 of 84 |
| 24 months | +5.6% | −1.4% | 40 of 75 |
We found no effect.The Atari 50 games moved the same way as the games left out, and about half of them beat the comparison group, which is what a coin flip would give. If you own a game that’s in Atari 50, its inclusion didn’t lower its price.
The exception: new cartridges of old games
Starting in 2024, Atari sold brand-new cartridges of some 7800 games. The 6 reissued games with a year of prices since then changed by −17.9%, while the rest of the 7800 library changed by +9.8%. Over two years (3 games) it was −29% against +21%.
Read this as a warning about price guides, not proof that reissues destroy value.The sample is tiny, and the likelier explanation is that cheap new carts are selling under the same name as the 1980s originals, which drags the recorded price down. If a game has been reissued, check the label and the copyright date before you trust any price guide. And don’t assume a low listing price means you’re getting an original.
4. Is there a best month to buy?
No. We removed the long-term rise and looked at what was left from month to month. Every period has small bumps, but they don’t repeat. December was the strongest month in 2014 to 2019 (+1.32% against the average month), and in 2020 to 2025 it was −0.02%. Buy when the right copy turns up, not by the calendar.
How we did it
- Prices:PriceCharting’s monthly price history for each game, which is based on completed sales. One listing per game: the North American one when the game was sold there, otherwise its own market’s (Japanese or PAL). Variants, hardware and homebrew are left out.
- Coverage: Atari 7800 58 · Virtual Boy 21 · Neo Geo Pocket Color 64 · Atari 2600 430 · Atari 5200 69 · Atari Lynx 79 · Atari Jaguar 71 · ColecoVision 139 games matched to a price record (Jaguar CD discs included, priced from PriceCharting’s separate Jaguar CD list). Titles with no reliable match are left out rather than guessed, and a price record that two of our library entries share is counted once.
- Growth: the average price across 2015 compared with the average across 2025, as a yearly rate. A game counts only if it has at least 9 months of prices in each of those years. Price groups with fewer than 4games are shown as “too few” and never counted towards a finding.
- Re-release test:each game’s average price over the 12 months before the event, compared with the next 12 or 24 months, measured against the same console’s other games over the same months.
- Inflation: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U (via FRED series CPIAUCNS), 2015 and 2025 annual averages (237.017 and 321.943). October 2025 prices were never collected because of the federal shutdown, so the 2025 average uses the other 11 months.
- Limits: price guides smooth out real sales, and PriceCharting sometimes revises past months (we keep every revision). Sealed prices are often estimated from the complete-copy price, so we left them out.
Updates
We re-run this study every time we add a console or refresh prices, and every run’s results are kept, so any number this page has shown can still be checked. Spotted an error? Tell usand we’ll correct it here.
- October 19, 2026. First edition: 8 consoles, 931 games, including the Jaguar CD. The Virtual Boy is the one console where the most expensive games kept pace with the rest.