I wondered if somebody has watched the rise in pricing over the years….
I thought it might be interesting to have some sort of database on that, to compare and find out what might be an “appropriate” price for a game or something else.

There´s a forum on LCD G&W series, where they implented that:
http://www.gameandwatch.ch/de/preisverlauf-jahresstatistik.html

How about something similar for the VB?

We’ve done something like this in the first two years of the site’s existance. It can still be seen here: http://www.planetvb.com/content/misc/ebay_history/index.e.htm

Eventually, it became too much work. Today, this could be automated for the most parts, but still require regular work. It could be user driven, though.

For example, the ebay API could be used by a regular process that catalogues auctions that ended since its last run. Users would then, in a separate step, have to categorize the auctions saved by the process, which means selecting the auctioned game, hardware, or other item from a dropdown for every auction and click save. All the rest could be done automatically.

That’s a very cool G&W site, by the way!

There is also a good pricing website that I use as a store owner:
http://videogames.pricecharting.com/console/virtual-boy?sort-by=name
It covers most things VB and has a graphical history or the relative prices as well so you can see the trends.