Buying games just to resell them...

[GohanX]

My best example: I found a CIB Spiderman: Web of Fire for 32x at a flea market for ONE DOLLAR. Now I don't know about you guys, but frankly I think the game is quite mediocre, and I only keep the games that I play. So what did I do? I sold it for $150 to a collector friend (Which is lower than current online going value) and made a nice profit, got other stuff with it that I really wanted. Personally, I don't see the problem with that, everyone is happy.

This is not an example of a scummy reseller, this is an example of a rare game liberator! You rescued that poor Web of Fire and put it into the hands of someone who could appreciate it! I'll actually do that sometimes if I see a good game on clearance or dirt cheap in the wild I'll buy it and find good homes for them.

I want a Web of Fire!

[tz101]

I've bought things before and listed them on ebay once i'm done with them, not my fault if a bidding war just totally pushes the price up.

I have no problem with this whatsoever. I am mainly against those profiteers who buy something at a thrift or flea for ridiculously low price and turn it out for 10 times the price on ebay BIN.

Case in point: I was shopping recently for a SNES Super Scope light gun. There was one ebay seller with a CIB Super scope listed at BIN $75 (most were going in the $30-$40 range, for comparison). The thing is I magnified his picture and the box had $3 written on it in wax pencil from a yard sale. I emailed the seller, asking why they were price gouging after scoring such a good yard sale deal. The seller never responded.

[Tanegashima]

I think the only way to make any real money reselling games is to
A) completely detach yourself from your collection and personal games. You can't keep what you're trying to make a living selling.

B) You need to invest $5000-$10000 in inventory and sell with a gross potential profit of 35-40% to cover your expenses

C) Avoid any means of selling your games that cost you more money and time than it's worth: ebay...the nickel and diming and time consumed to put up an ebay listing is idiotic. The best way to go about it would be something like estarland where you can use your own website to sell your games without paying someone else.

D) Like any "business" if you really want to make money at it, which you can (good money can be made doing just about anything if you're dedicated enough) then you need to devote the time and frustration necessary.

All the while recognizing you're going to be dealing with a ton of inventory that will take forever and a day to sell with very low returns. Let's all remember that the rarest or rare games are only worth around $1000 which isn't much. Making money $5-$20 at a time is hard, and it takes a good initial investment to make such a low margin thing even begin to be profitable.

I think it might be a fun side business if I could get the inventory...if only I didn't sell off so much stuff LOL...

[Azathoth]

I started purging through a lot of my collection lately. While the financial return on most stuff isn't hardly anything but I can honestly say I don't miss having a bunch of duplicates or dozens of shit titles that I will never play.

I always hated to sell anything in my collection "just in case". When you can look at a stack of games that haven't even been touched in years you might as well put yourself back into reality and admit that they're never going to have the time devoted to them anyway.

Remember that game you bought and immediately stuck on the shelf? What purpose does it serve? Print out some labels and stick them in a UGC and it will serve the same purpose.

[TailsAlone]

I never buy games intending to sell them to someone else, but I've done it with several titles on eBay after I played them. I give people a good deal on them. But I'm definitely not a career reseller.

[Guntz]

I almost never bother to sell stuff, let alone resell. It can be hard enough to find stuff I actually want to use, let alone find extra stuff at decent prices that are worth my time reselling. I only managed that one time, with a pile of dirt cheap sealed games I scored.

[Iron Lizard]

I managed to pay my rent for a few months off of my video game collection after I lost my job. I had not payed much more than $5 for most of my games so I actually made a lot of money. That also required me to comb thrift stores almost everyday.

After that I would low ball bid on thousands of games on Ebay and literally throw them right back up on a Amazon when I won them. I made a fair amount of money but it was a pain. I lost my Amazon account eventually which turned out to be a good thing because it got me away from the games which as many have pointed out is a dead end.

These days I resell everything. I prefer to make my money off small expensive things. Sometimes a game I run across falls into that category but so much these days.

Selling things, not just games, pisses people off. Some see it as a moral issue, driving up prices etc. I don't see that as the case. At worst the reseller is the symptom not the disease. I also see anger from people who can't seem to figure out how to sell themselves. I have given up trying to convince people its not wrong.

As for my personal collection I only keep games I will play. Before I had all sorts of weird stuff but never played any of it. Now days if it sits on my shelf and can get me money its gone.

[JCU]

Case in point: I was shopping recently for a SNES Super Scope light gun. There was one ebay seller with a CIB Super scope listed at BIN $75 (most were going in the $30-$40 range, for comparison). The thing is I magnified his picture and the box had $3 written on it in wax pencil from a yard sale. I emailed the seller, asking why they were price gouging after scoring such a good yard sale deal. The seller never responded.

How is that price gouging?

Lets say the price on it said $50.00 and you somehow won it for $25.00, I doubt you'd be asking to paying the listed price on the sticker. Something is only worth what someone will pay.

[MrMatthews]

This is neither here nor there, but it's interesting how flexible video game "values" are. Not that long ago, Chilly Willy predicted that N64 games would be the next to shoot up in value. I thought, "Huh, he's probably right," and immediately went on eBay to shop around for CIB copies of the few games I already have. At the time, Body Harvest was selling with an average BIN of $20. I passed on it, not being terribly enthusiastic about the game in the first place. Now I'm seeing that the prices have doubled. In about 6 months.

[tz101]

This is neither here nor there..

Now I'm seeing that the prices have doubled. In about 6 months.

It is here and there. This stuff is ruining the hobby. Same way Wall St. brokers drove up gasoline prices. Are you saying that is neither here nor there too? Speculators buying games and systems just to pillage. Any game player or collector should care about this.

[tz101]

Something is only worth what someone will pay.

Trouble is that on many classic gaming items these days, all the BIN auctions are way above what most are willing (or able) to pay. Therefore, free market forces have been taken out of the equation. An oligopoly has decided to hold the buyers hostage and falsely raise the prices to overly inflated levels. Sometimes, that oligopoly is actually made up of only one or two hoarders simply trying to corner the market for a given game. Take a look some time at an auction for a particular game that has a bunch of BIN listings in the $40-$60 range, and one or two auction-style listings beginning at lower rates. The only items getting any attention or actually being purchased are the lower priced auction-style listings. This should tell you that price gouging is, in fact, going on.

[Hidden_Darkness]

Trouble is that on many classic gaming items these days, all the BIN auctions are way above what most are willing (or able) to pay. Therefore, free market forces have been taken out of the equation. An oligopoly has decided to hold the buyers hostage and falsely raise the prices to overly inflated levels. Sometimes, that oligopoly is actually made up of only one or two hoarders simply trying to corner the market for a given game. Take a look some time at an auction for a particular game that has a bunch of BIN listings in the $40-$60 range, and one or two auction-style listings beginning at lower rates. The only items getting any attention or actually being purchased are the lower priced auction-style listings. This should tell you that price gouging is, in fact, going on.

I completely agree with that, rising prices pretty much take the fun out of any hobby. what annoys me are the resellers that decide they need to hoard every copy of a certain game or game accessory they can get their hands on and then sell them for outrageous prices. it's not just happening in the gaming hobby either, it goes on in pretty much every hobby.

[Gogogadget]

I have no problem with this whatsoever. I am mainly against those profiteers who buy something at a thrift or flea for ridiculously low price and turn it out for 10 times the price on ebay BIN.

Case in point: I was shopping recently for a SNES Super Scope light gun. There was one ebay seller with a CIB Super scope listed at BIN $75 (most were going in the $30-$40 range, for comparison). The thing is I magnified his picture and the box had $3 written on it in wax pencil from a yard sale. I emailed the seller, asking why they were price gouging after scoring such a good yard sale deal. The seller never responded.

I'd be lying if I said I never bought anything because I could get a higher price on ebay tbh, I bought a boxed game boy once for £3, played a couple of games of Tetris and then put it up on ebay, sold for about £20 or so.

Although I start nearly all auctions at 99p, no massive BIN prices.

[Baloo]

I think you guys are turning "Supply And Demand" into a little too much of a conspiracy theory...if these games weren't in demand then they wouldn't be going for the price that they're going for. This isn't ten years ago where the internet was primitive and people didn't know very much about classic games unless they researched. Virtual Console and XBLA are opening up new markets for gamers to play the originals. Kids are growing up and have expendable income and want to buy the things they played as a kid for their kids. Hell, you guys want the games, there's bound to be others out there who also want them.

Unless there is an extremely limited quantity of a game, it is nigh impossible for any reseller to actually hoard enough copies of a single video game title in order to drive up prices. To blame resellers for rising video game prices is an extreme ignorance of Economics.

[MrMatthews]

What's really douchey is to buy something for a good price in a messageboard setting, especially where the seller is obviously giving a good deal to community members, and then turn around and try to resell it with a 200% markup. I've seen that happen once or twice, and it's one of those things that's technically "legal" but completely schmucktastic in practice.

**COUGH!!!**