It’s no secret that the market for retro gaming has exploded in the past two years. From a brand new copy of the original Super Mario Bros on the NES selling for an eye-watering $2 million to previously obscure titles like FromSoftware’s Kuon on the PS2 now trending at $400 just for the disc, it’s clear that these older games are now something of a luxury item instead of something to discard at a yard sale. The recent controversy surrounding DKOldies shows that online retailers are starting to take advantage of rising retro game prices, and gamers seem pretty upset.
DKOldies is an online-only retro gaming store with one of the most extensive game collections on the market. The retailer has seen impressive social media growth lately, especially across TikTok and YouTube, due to frequent uploads of packaging and shipping videos and recurring live streams showcasing its massive collection of games that fans seem to love. However, as the company has grown, so have the eyes taking note of the prices DKOldies has decided to put up for its retro games and consoles. Across TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit, DKOldies has been the growing subject of scrutiny as gamers have seen that the retailer marks up its products to absurdly high prices that go well beyond the already inflated pricing of retro games, sometimes by over double the market price.
The DKOldies Pricing Controversary
To give a taste of where DKOldies is pricing its used hardware, at the time of this writing, a complete Wii console with a copy of Wii Sports is priced at $349.99 on the retailer's website. That same console bundle launched at $250 at retail in 2006, and similar bundles can be found on eBay right now for sub $100. However, even newer consoles like the PS4 are priced well above what even GameStop would charge. At the time of this writing, DKOldies is charging $359.99 for a used 500GB PlayStation 4 with one controller. That is $40 short of the price of a brand-new digital-only PS5. Meanwhile, GameStop only charges $249.99 for the same PS4 package, and GameStop also guarantees that the console works and has been cleaned. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher as to why DKOldies is pricing its products this high, but the company has tried to explain itself.
DKOldies states that its prices are created according to the services it provides, stock counts, and how difficult it would be to acquire another similar item. Additionally, DKOldies takes into account the current market value of the products in its store when pricing, but even then, DKOldies charges well above what websites like PriceCharting report prices are at. For example, DKOldies is charging $72.99 for a loose copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, while PriceCharting reports that a loose copy of that game should be around the $35 price point. Regardless of what goes on behind the scenes, fans might be paying more than double at DKOldies what they would pay at a physical retro gaming store or even eBay.
Moreover, it doesn’t seem like DKOldies is taking too much of a loss when buying old games and hardware to resell. The retailer’s current trade-in price list shows that it will pay gamers roughly $75 for a complete SNES console with a controller, and then it will resell that same console for approximately $200 or even close to $300 should a customer want to include a second OEM controller. The company's profit margins seem quite high, and its trade-in-to-resale price ratio is starting to look a lot like those of GameStop and other big box game retailers that notoriously get a lot of flak for this sort of thing.
None of this is to say that DKOldies doesn’t have value in the retro gaming market. The company provides services that many other online game retailers don’t offer, with its 120-day warranties, verified authenticity of all games and hardware, thorough refurbishing of used hardware, and overall provides peace of mind when purchasing hardware that can be close to forty years old. Additionally, its online catalog of games seems very well-stocked, which is valuable in and of itself. DKOldies takes a lot of the work out of locating, haggling, and purchasing old games that may not be too common across brick-and-mortar retro gaming stores, eBay, and garage sales. However, gamers will have to ask themselves if any of these pros outweigh the prices retro games retailers like DKOldies are starting to charge.
