Anyone familiar with Game X Change?

spmahn

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http://www.gogamexchange.com/

Anyone familiar with this chain? They're opening one more local to me, but there are two others a bit further away that are nothing to phone home about. They're crowded stores that do offer retro games for sale, but generally only have a large number of commons for too high prices. It's good if you're looking to pay $6.99 for Astyanax or 8 Eyes for NES, not so good if you want to find that copy of Megaman 3 for less than $30. Anything of higher value is in a glass case in front of the store, but we're not talking like Bubble Bobble 2 or Tengen Tetris here, we're talking like $29.99 Gold Zelda 1, and the occasional $60 Chrono Trigger or $35 Mario Party 2.

Anyways, is anyone aware of how this chain gets it's inventory? Do they rely on the hope that people just have a stash of retro games waiting to be sold for pennies on the dollar? It looks like it's a franchise, so are local franchise owners responsible for raiding Thrift Stores and Tag Sales for inventory beyond what gets traded in? The couple of times I have stopped in, they have always had a decent sized inventory, but that's likely due to the high number of games no one really wants at prices no one wants to pay.

The local store that's opening is in the same plaza as my local Savers and down the street from Goodwill. Should I expect heavy competition that will be impossible to compete with as a result? I can't really even fathom how this sort of business would even stay afloat, since their entire business model seems to be based on the assumption that people are unsavvy fools who are willing to sell valuable items for nothing, and purchase them at prices above what they are worth. This may be true for a small portion of the population, but it doesn't seem to me like it'd be a big enough market to even cover operating costs. It's like running a scalper business on eBay, but with overhead to pay.
 
I'm pretty familiar with it. They have several here in AR. In all of the stores I've ever been to, the pricing structure has been the same which makes me think it's chain wide, but the ones near you could be different of course. The pricing at my mine is like this.

For NES games, common ones (outside of the glass case) are usually $4.95. Rarer NES games in the case go up to $19.95. $19.95 is the most they'll charge for a NES game.

SNES games are similar. $6.95 for commons and up to $34.95 max for rare titles. For example, I've picked up both Earthbound and Chrono Trigger at two different locations for $34.95 each.

Finding good deals on retro stuff there is usually dependent on the knowledge of the employees. For example, a friend of mine found a copy of Stadium Events on the shelf (not even in the glass case) at the Game-X-Change in his town. They obviously had no idea what it was worth.
 
[quote name='Allwhowander']I'm pretty familiar with it. They have several here in AR. In all of the stores I've ever been to, the pricing structure has been the same which makes me think it's chain wide, but the ones near you could be different of course. The pricing at my mine is like this.

For NES games, common ones (outside of the glass case) are usually $4.95. Rarer NES games in the case go up to $19.95. $19.95 is the most they'll charge for a NES game.

SNES games are similar. $6.95 for commons and up to $34.95 max for rare titles. For example, I've picked up both Earthbound and Chrono Trigger at two different locations for $34.95 each.

Finding good deals on retro stuff there is usually dependent on the knowledge of the employees. For example, a friend of mine found a copy of Stadium Events on the shelf (not even in the glass case) at the Game-X-Change in his town. They obviously had no idea what it was worth.[/QUOTE]

There are Game X Changes in Oklahoma. Their pricing used to be decent about 8-10 years ago, but it's horrible now. We're talking $34.95 for Mario/Duck Hunt. The one in Moore, OK closed a few months ago, and the one in Norman really downsized. I used to go in there quite frequently. They're a joke now.
 
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