Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
I like drawing metaphors from Tamiya. Tamiya is a Japanese scale modelling and remote-controlled vehicle company with a loooong history of making quality products that the industry just eats up. Like Nintendo, Tamiya has always been in the back row when it comes to technological innovation, but lead the pack when it came to functionality, reliability, and quality. Just like Nintendo, there are Tamiya fan clubs where people are enthusiastic about products from this one company. The rest of the industry doesn&#x27;t exist to them. I&#x27;m trying to illustrate how Tamiya is to the R&#x2F;C world what Nintendo is to console games.<p>That said, vintage Tamiya products new in original packaging from the 70s and 80s can sell for thousands and thousands of dollars. Simple plastic and aluminum parts that were consumable in the 80s were selling for hundreds of dollars in the late 2000s. The market was a rough place. I have about a dozen antique Tamiya models, so I was one of those people engaged in bidding wars for 1&#x2F;4&quot; long tie-rod ends. A brand new Tamiya in the 80s was probably about $100 for a rolling kit. Now people are paying that for individual parts. Nobody was having fun with their models anymore. Everyone was just dusting them off and spending money keeping them pretty.<p>Tamiya had to get the kids playing with their models again. They had to take this exclusive, elitist market they created by accident 30 years ago and start making money off of it again.<p>So Tamiya re-released nearly <i>ALL</i> of their vintage kits. Brand new, with original design, documentation, decals, and packaging. This was in addition to their new models and high-tech racing vehicles which were still being released on a regular schedule at the same time. Initially all the collectors (myself included) were livid, because for a while it meant my $1,100 Bruiser 3-speed was only worth $500. That didn&#x27;t happen either. For a time the prices dipped significantly, but collectors still demanded vintage parts to repair their vintage models. The prices soon stabilized. Now that market is healthy and stable, vintage vehicles can be repaired cheaply if desired, and collectors can still spend thousands on NIB models.<p>If Nintendo embraced their market they could possibly reap the same benefits. The enthusiasm for their products is there. Tamiya has shown it is possible to separate collector demand from commodity demand and still have those ecosystems thrive side-by-side. I think Nintendo could pull that off as well.