A close friend of mine makes money doing online resale of various video games and systems. He's been doing this for several years.

I asked him what his #1 best grossing sales are in, particularly during the holiday, and without missing a beat he told me the N64.

He gave an example of how he earns so much money with N64 even today. During the off-months of the year, he can buy Super Mario 64 cartridges for around $20, occasionally a little less. But demand goes up considerably in the holiday period and he can often sell those same cartridges for nearly $40 -- sometimes even more! He's able to do this with several prominent N64 titles such as Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye, Zelda, Mario Party but a few lesser known titles too like Gauntlet Legends or Mystical Ninja.

He currently is stocking up on N64s -- has about 30 total and expects to sell out in this holiday. Not that really means much though for Ninty's bottom line! ;)

Often we get into these trollish, dead end discussions about Nintendo being 'dead'. Come what may for the company, people evidently still love Nintendo. But perhaps they're just not moving on to new Nintendo platforms... just yet. In a way, Nintendo must compete with itself and it's legacy. Every single possible new thing they do is so heavily scrutinized in comparison to Nintendo's past and legacy that if falls short in any way, customers would rather comb through pawn shops and ebay for what's considered the best of the Nintendo offering rather than take a chance on anything new, perhaps even with solid or exemplary newer games.

I'm not sure if we hold those same expectations for Microsoft or Sony.  MS and Sony customers continue to move on to the next iterations of franchises or new IPs in general, be they exclusive or not. They've properly conditioned their customer base to invest in new titles and be flexible with their expectation level. Even when releases disappoint critically, customers are willing to see a silver lining and just enjoy the damn game anyway. Games like The Wonderful 101 have no such luck.

Ahh.. Loved Nintendo 64! :)

Interesting... Is he making a living out of this?
I think it's pretty cool!

Speaking of N64, I still need to buy one!
I wanted to buy one for years, but never got around it.

Grab an emulator, you'll spare money and make the world a better place.

The n64 was an amazing system! God, I remember playing SSB and OOT for sooo many months! Oh the good old days

Super Mario 64 comes up in your mind first ? Damn I would have thought about majora's mask first.

I don't get why you say that someone will make the world a better place by using an emulator. I don't get it if it is supposed to be a joke either.

played Majora's Mask forever since summer 2001. & people called me weirdo because i bought Nintendo 64 too late while there's PS2. Goddammit PS2 was too expensive for me.

Nintendo must be aggressive.

They aren't. And so the legacy is dying........and the new generations in 30 years time will praise PlayStation and Xbox as the NES/SNES of today.

The time to buy cheap N64 stuff is running out, people are starting to collect for the system and prices are going up for pretty common games. If only SNES prices would begin to drop...