How much is Pokemon Crystal worth?

Answer 1

Video Games are worth whatever gamers are willing to pay to get them. However, they are not like real estate, they're not "long term investments," you will not become rich later in life if you hang onto video games and try to sell them 20 years later. Stop thinking about video games in that manner...you will waste a lot of time, energy, and space storing old video games for years thinking you're going to be able to send your kids through college when you "cash them in," only to find out that no one cares about a box of defunct old games on an ancient form of media. At best you'll get $1 a piece for them in a garage sale.

There are rare instances of video games being worth a lot of money, for example a game that originally sold for $30 retail being over $100 10-20 years later on eBay, but this is not the NORM. It typically happens when a good game (one that is desirable because it's FUN) has a low production run. Back when Working Designs was still in business, they ported over a lot of GREAT Japanese games to the U.S. & translated them into English, games that otherwise would have been Japan-only and then sink into obscurity. WD made the games more exciting & collectible for fans by including items in the game, like a real metal pendant that shows up in the game (Lunar Silver Star Story), cloth maps of the game world, cardboard "standees" of all the game characters, rubber character thumbpad covers (Arc The Lad), the "omake box," extra CDs including the soundtrack and "making of" type videos, and of course the special hardbound leatherette game manuals. These games, in mint condition, including all the original parts, sell for over $100, but consider, too, that they retailed for $70 to begin with, and were specifically made to be collectible, while most other games are not.

Atlus Games are another company that is similar to Working Designs, in that they port over a lot of specialty games for fans, and because the fanbase is small, their games also typically have a lower production run than bigger game companies. That means that once the games are printed (cartridge, CDs, or whatever media), they will never be manufactured again. There's a set number of games and that's it. Naturally a low production run means the games are "rarer" than normal games and can be more difficult to locate a copy and you might end up paying a bit more to get one. This is no guarantee of a game's worth, however, and one can't RELY on the idea that the game is going to be worth more than one originally paid for it retail at some point in the future.

Now to answer your question: a game like Pokemon Crystal was not rare. It had HUGE production runs (note: plural runs) and literally MILLIONS of the cartridges were manufactured. ANY Pokemon game is big business! On top of that, the game was made for the Gameboy Color (it could later be played on the GBA original & GBA SP, but NOT GBA Micro or any of the NDS systems), a defunct system, and most people tend to NOT hold onto their defunct systems just to play old games (some fans do, of course, but it's not typical). On top of that, Pokemon Crystal was re-released as Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, with lots of new enhancements, additional areas, and the ability to collect all 493 of the Pokemon even if they don't all naturally show up in the game, so that's another count against the "worth" of Pokemon Crystal. When games get re-released or remade, usually a really good game that is worthy of being released again to another generation of gamers on the latest hardware (for example, all the Final Fantasy RPGs), the cost of the OLD, original game goes way DOWN. Who wants to play Pokemon Crystal on the unlit, minimally-colored GBC when they can play the same exact gamewith about 1000 upgrades and additions on a brightly lit, brightly colored, much higher resolution NDS, including use of the stylus? Not many people!

You would be lucky if someone would give you 10 bux for an old Pokemon Crystal cartridge, even if you included the box & manual. The other issue is that the old Pokemon cartridges had save batteries, that tend to go bad after around 10 years. If the save battery dies, it CAN be replaced, but you need a tri-wing screwdriver and a soldering iron to first remove the soldered-down battery, and then again to solder the new battery back in place. Replacement batteries cost around $3.

You may have noticed that some sellers on eBay think it's OK to sell Pokemon Crystal for upwards of $180.00 for a "new" (as yet unopened) game, considered "collectible." That price is outrageous & ridiculous, and buyers should keep this in mind: the save battery in the game will go dead after around 10 years whether it was ever used or not. Even if you buy an unopened game, paying $180 for it doesn't guarantee that the save will even function. Besides, the buyer will probably tell you that the game is not guaranteed to save & work like it's supposed to in "collectible" condition, as opening it would ruin the "collectible" aspect of it. If you're going to open it, you might as well just buy a used cartridge from a seller that can guarantee that the save battery still functions.