Even if NIB prices hadn't gone up, I'm not sure you could really call this hobby affordable, but it's all relative. To even start in this hobby you need the space to keep games. For the average person that would limit it to one or two at best, past that you are talking about people that can at least afford to have the space (a garage, outbuilding, large house, rent storage). Relative to other kinds of collecting this still seems affordable (but then I live in one the most expensive housing markets). The prices went up because more people got into the hobby that had more disposable income to spend on a NIB game. For those new comers this is still clearly affordable since they are still buying NIB at these prices. As others have pointed out, it is a lot cheaper to buy used.