It has become popular to say that the gaming industry has become recession-proof, simply because the overall sales for 2008 are up year over year…but those numbers only tell part of the story. Other sources are starting to report some troubling trends in gaming sales, not the least of which is the plummeting price of used games. These trends could lead to some troubling times for gaming in 2009.

Video Game Price Charts tracks the value of used games over a variety of sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY), the so-called “gray market” for games. These are people selling games directly to other people, which means no one is setting an artificial price such as used-game stores like GameStop. The data isn’t pretty: Prices of used games took a beating in the end of the year, as the chart below illustrates.

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Encamped along the aisles of the massive Zhongguancun Kemao Electronics Market in Beijing are many people like Li Zhongxin, of the Beijing Xinyu Lianhe Telecom Equipment Co. Li sits atop a plastic stool in front of his open-air stall on the third floor, scanning the throngs of shoppers for would-be customers. There’s no sign of Apple’s iPhone among the thicket of cellphones, handset covers and other accessories hung on shelves and inside the waist-high glass display case, but he’ll be glad to show you one. In exchange for an up-front payment, “you can buy as many as you’d like,” Li says. The assertion may seem misplaced in a country where Apple has yet to introduce the iPhone. The device is officially on sale only in the U.S., Britain, France and Germany, where Apple has signed exclusive contracts with cellular carriers including AT&T. Yet Li’s booming business is the very real byproduct of pent-up demand for a much-hyped device made by a company that places strict limits on where and how it’s sold.

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