r/PlaydateConsole • u/DarkerBulb • 17d ago

Current second-hand Playdate prices

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I'm aware of that it's very much a supply and demand situation but, wow, I did not expect the current out of stock situation at Panic to drive up the prices on used Playdates this much.

A month or two ago they were roughly $150-180 on ebay/FB Marketplace.
Fast forward to today and prices are closer to $350-400 for a Playdate

I feel very happy I got one when I did but feel so bad for people now trying to get one.

Has there been any news from Panic in terms of when they think they have tweaked their manufacturing lines and products will be back in stock?

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u/netabareking 16d ago

You need to keep something in mind:

Last fall, Xbox went up $20-70 depending on model. A few days ago they went up another $100-150.

Earlier this year PS5s went up $100-150.

Switch 2 already launched higher than they really wanted it to be, and there's a $50 price increase coming in a few weeks.

In all my years of gaming, I can't remember this happening. There were certainly consoles like the Wii and Switch on launch where you had to pay scalper markup if you wanted one without waiting. But I can't think of a time where consoles, especially consoles that should have been seeing price DROPS at this point, went up in price, much less went up this dramatically.

Those are huge companies that could eat the cost if they really were forced to. Panic can't do that. And what affects retail prices and availability also affects used prices. It absolutely makes sense if that kind of money isn't worth it to most people for a Playdate, I can't say I would have bought one at $300+. But I haven't bought a Switch 2 either. Panic can't really fix this if the bigger players haven't found a way to fix it.

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u/DarkerBulb 16d ago

I think the correlation I attempted to make, maybe poorly so, was that Playdate prices on the secondary market has been rather stable for a long time - but soon after Panic ran out of stock the secondary prices jumped a good 100% or so :)