The Price We Must (Not) Pay

It's no secret that in recent times the cost of absolutely everything to do with retrogaming has gone through the roof. It wasn't too long ago that you could pick older games up for peanuts because they were considered junk by the vast majority. This trend has, until quite recently, not really been an issue for many Jaguar owners and collectors though. Certainly in my experience, the price of Jaguar games and consoles, while not exactly 'dirt cheap,' has remained fairly constant. Some games are almost universally cheap; while others such as Towers II, Iron Soldier 2, Fight For Life, Skyhammer, Gorf, and a couple of other CD-based and unreleased titles have always commanded 'premium' prices for whatever reason; and likewise with the Jaguar CD unit itself.

The reason I've been prompted to write this post though, is that I've recently been looking to purchase another Jaguar console. I do already have two systems, but the one I had modded with a 60Hz switch has decided that it doesn't like running Doom with the Jaglink (more to come on this in a planned post) and so I've been on the hunt for a reasonably-priced console so I might enjoy some co-op and deathmatch Doom without having the game crash every 5 minutes. I have seen a few systems in the wild but they've generally been priced at around £100...which in my opinion at least is a little bit too much to pay for what is essentially going to be a console that will only get played when I can convince somebody to play multiplayer Doom with me. Fair enough I thought - maybe I'll be able to find a cheap and cheerful 'spares and repair' or 'console only - untested' deal online. Wrong. The price of Jaguar consoles appears, in my absence from searching for them, to have gone absolutely stratospheric:

Yep. £580 for a Jag and some games?! £300+ for a boxed one? Who are these people kidding? Now, I'm not one to try to detract from the price of my own collection, but from what these jokers are charging my own Jaguar hoard must be worth about £10,000! Not a chance. So, it seems that the rip-off merchants have finally discovered our little secret and this makes me both sad and angry. How long until we start seeing copies of Cybermorph changing hands for £50 a pop? Hopefully this will not happen, but it's a scary prospect.

My own Jaguar collection, as of about a month ago.