Retro Market Report: Week of September 19, 2026
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Every week we pull the going rate for 45 consoles and handhelds, read the retro news so you don't have to, and pick out what matters if you fix, mod or flip. Prices are PriceCharting "loose" prices, meaning the console on its own with no box, as of September 19, 2026.
Prices this week
This is our first snapshot, so there are no week-over-week movers yet. Those start next week. For now, here are the numbers that surprised us.
| Console or handheld | Loose | Boxed (CIB) | Our take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nintendo Wii | $49.90 | $215.00 | Cheapest home console on our list. The box is worth more than the console. |
| PlayStation 1 | $59.99 | $133.88 | Low buy-in. Laser and spindle are the usual faults, and both are cheap fixes. |
| Sega Game Gear | $46.66 | $175.25 | Cheapest handheld we track. Almost every one needs capacitors, and that is the whole reason. |
| Nintendo DS (original) | $47.99 | $199.56 | Four times the price with a box. Do not overpay for loose units. |
| Game Boy (original) | $59.99 | $202.49 | Cheap loose, but the modded and boxed units carry the value. |
| Game Boy Micro | $216.92 | $320.00 | A 2005 handheld worth two Switch Lites ($106.63). Never pass one in a lot. |
| New Nintendo 3DS XL | $266.15 | $427.48 | The most valuable common handheld. Top screens, batteries and shells are all worth having on hand. |
| Sega Saturn | $179.50 | $323.10 | High value for a 1994 console. A Saturn that "might not work" deserves a careful look. |
| Nintendo Switch OLED | $185.00 | $200.00 | Drift units come in cheap. Hall-effect sticks are the fix. |
| PlayStation 5 (Disc) | $405.00 | $450.50 | Almost no loose-to-boxed gap. Modern consoles sell on function, not packaging. |
The pattern: the box is the asset
On older hardware the box routinely triples or quadruples the price. Wii, DS, Game Gear and the original Game Boy all show it. On anything from the PS4 era onward the gap nearly disappears. So when you sort a lot, protect the boxes and inserts before you even test the consoles. On modern hardware, ignore the box and test the ports.
Five things that happened
- A new cartridge-playing mini Game Boy is on sale. FunnyPlaying, the company behind most aftermarket Game Boy shells and screens, has put a mini Game Boy that plays real cartridges on sale (Retro Dodo, Sept 18). Every cartridge-capable clone is a substitute for an original DMG or Pocket, both sitting around $60 loose right now. We expect the cheap loose units to soften and the boxed and modded ones to hold.
- The FPGB Mini gets a restock in about three weeks. The FPGA handheld that plays GB and GBC carts is coming back, though the article says there is a catch (Retro Dodo, Sept 19). Same story as above from the other direction: demand for cartridges goes up, demand for original hardware gets a new competitor.
- A real GBA will be able to trade Pokemon with a Switch. RetroSync announced a wireless adapter that bridges the Game Boy Advance and the Switch for Pokemon trading (Time Extension, Sept 17). Anything that gives a 20-year-old handheld a job again pulls broken GBA and SP units out of drawers, and those need batteries, charging ports and screens.
- The GameCube version of Resident Evil 4 is being ported to PS Vita. The homebrew scene keeps giving the Vita reasons to exist (Retro Dodo, Sept 18). Vita is $145.00 loose this week, and Vita batteries, SD adapters and cases are some of the most repeated orders in our own history.
- The PS2's MechaCon security chip has been cracked. Researchers have opened up the chip that guards the PS2's disc drive path (Time Extension, Sept 18). Long term that can mean new repair and mod options for the number one PS2 failure, the drive. PS2 is $93.05 loose and $271.42 boxed.
Also this week: Hyperkin, one of our distributors, opened pre-orders for new colours of the SupaBoy portable SNES (Time Extension, Sept 17).
From the bench
- Someone took a New 3DS XL from total junk to perfectly working. That is a $266 handheld, loose, at the end of it.
- An "untested" Genesis from eBay. "Untested" almost always means "tested, and it didn't work". Price accordingly.
- The question of the week: would you buy this SNES for $72 to restore? Our math is below.
Fix or flip of the week: the $72 SNES
A working SNES is $100.00 loose and $318.97 boxed this week. Pay $72 for a broken loose one and you have $28 of room before you are underwater, and that has to cover parts, your time and fees. If the fault is something cheap, a controller port or a capacitor set, it works. If it is the cartridge slot or the CPU, walk away. The lesson is not "don't buy it". The lesson is: know the fault before you pay for the unit, because on a loose SNES the fix is the entire margin. If it came with the box, this would be a different conversation.
Before you order a part
Most "dead" consoles fail a free check before they need a part. Our 94MER Bench Sheets is a free checklist of the checks to run first, by symptom, for every console and handheld above. When it does turn out to be the part, the parts are here.
Next week the movers table goes live: what went up, what went down, and why it matters if you fix or flip.
