I’m thinking about investing money in a collection of retro consoles plus a current-gen one (PS1, PS2, PS3, PS5, PS Vita, Wii, DSi). Right now, I own a gaming PC, a Switch (with 20 games), and a 3DS; I also have around 259 games on Steam. I used to own a few other consoles that I sold, and I deeply regret it now.
I know I could emulate most of what I mentioned using EmuDeck, but there’s something special about owning an actual relic — like an NES, Super Nintendo, N64, etc. It’s something that requires care but truly represents a specific generation. Aside from the PS Vita and PS5, the others are relatively cheap in the local currency (Real) — not dirt cheap, but not exorbitantly expensive either.
Looking back, I was previously considering a Steam Deck, since I buy games on Steam all the time and that’s where my main library is. However, the price keeps going up; for instance, the 1TB OLED version was 5,000 last month, and now it’s over 8,000. There are used options, too — I found one for 2,990 last month (I don't know the current price), which is a bargain, though I’m unsure of the condition. I just know it’s a 1TB LCD model; I’m not sure if it was upgraded with an SSD or if it came with 1TB natively.
The total cost for the vintage consoles comes to around 5k–6k BRL (Brazilian Reais). Since they come from various places, there’s the extra cost of travel/shipping, but the same applies to the Steam Deck, so it’s negligible (I assume?).
What would you do in my situation? It’s not exactly a "buy this game" question, but rather "buy this console."