Blink and You’ll Miss It: The Mega Drive Mini 2 Scalper Problem
Once upon a very recent time, the Mega Drive Mini 2 quietly slipped onto shelves, and just as quietly vanished. Limited production runs, region-specific releases, and near-zero restocks turned what should’ve been a celebration of Sega’s 16-bit legacy into a full-blown scavenger hunt.
Fast-forward to today and the story gets ugly. These tiny nostalgia machines are now scarcer than rocking horse poop, with online marketplaces flooded by resellers asking eye-watering prices – often $450–$700 AUD for consoles that are already used. Boxes opened, controllers handled, yet priced like museum pieces. Classic scalper behaviour.
What makes it worse is that the hardware hasn’t changed, the games haven’t grown rarer – only availability has. Artificial scarcity has turned a sub-$200 retro console into a speculative asset, locking genuine fans out unless they’re willing to pay the nostalgia tax.
That’s why finding a new, legit unit at a sane price now feels like discovering a secret warp zone. If you’ve been hunting one down, you’ll know: when a fair deal appears, you don’t hesitate – because blink, and it’s gone.
Regardless of the version (Japanese or North American), these are expensive as heck!
image source: supplied
Before Yu Suzuki embarked on the Shenmue saga, he created some of the most technically impressive and enduring games for Sega. During that golden age of arcade machines in the 80s, you would have been hard pressed not to have played on at least one Sega arcade machine – there was the into the screen blaster, Space Harrier, the Top Gun dog-fighter After Burner II, the superb Super Hang-On, the Blue Thunder channeling Thunder Blade, the rail shooter Galaxy Force II (Deluxe Edition), and of course, the sublime driving game with that awesome radio with cool tunes, Out Run.
