JJGames.com is going under - just a PSA

lildirtygamer

lildirtygamer

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Online video game retailer JJGames.com is going out of business. Prices will be lowered each day until they shut down. The last day to buy is January 22nd. I've ordered from them multiple times over the past few years and never had issues (receiving orders). Sucks to see them having to bow out due to the changing landscape of gaming (among other factors).

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Looking at some of his prices I can kinda understand... $100 for Super Mario Sunshine... $47 Eternal Darkness disc only?

Don't get me wrong, I hate losing an option to buy from and I never like seeing someone lose their job but it just seems like he priced himself out of the market.

Also, it appears the only stuff getting discounted is shovelware or incomplete or damaged items.

 
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Yikes, I'm kind of surprised he was around for 20 years with some of those prices.
 
The prices are what stopped me from buying more from them as well. The owner took the Xbox 360 BC tax to a whole new level. Some of the prices of BC 360 games were almost twice as much as Gamestop. I'm guessing the lack of quality control for the items hurt them as well. They only show pics of the case(s) or the front of the discs/cartridges. In some cases (i.e. consoles/handhelds and accessories) there's stock photos or none at all.

I ordered one game that ended up being a coaster because it wouldn't load due to damage. The last thing I ordered was a Halo Reach 360 wireless controller. It looked alright on the front side. Got it and it's beat up all to hades, I'm surprised it still works at this point.

EDIT: Other than the two mishaps above, they're okay for some things.

 
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Never had any issues with them ordered a lot from them on eBay. Some of their prices were questionable, but never on anything I was interested in. Sucks to lose another source of physical retro games.
 
JJGames used to be good before 2010. I remember getting a few Game Boy Colors that came complete for $3 each. Haven't ordered from there since maybe 2014 when they started raising their prices, though. Guess that's the problem with being an independent physical retailer in a digital world.

 
Blaming digital games and not seeing how overinflated your own pricing is may be what did the site in. Personally I still rely on 80% physical.

 
We have a local chain that began raising prices once gamestop got into the retro games business. Then they stopped doing any sales. Then they started to close all thier stores, also claiming market conditions, instead of thier own greed.
 
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His prices were usually significantly higher than ebay for games above $15. Animal Crossing for $76? Thats just ridiculous. Thats a $20-$30 game at most

He was good for buying some commons, though
 
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Never heard of jjgames until this thread.  Looks like I didn't miss much.  Pricing yourself out of the market is a good way to go out of business.

 
patcrazystar64 said:
JJGames ran PriceCharting. I wonder if they're just going to proceed with the PC Matketplace instead.
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Would be nice if they kept it going, but to be honest, it's not particularly reliable. For instance: It says the n-gage QD system, loose, is worth $283... it's worth about $60. This is just a recent example I found.

 
Degausser said:
Would be nice if they kept it going, but to be honest, it's not particularly reliable. For instance: It says the n-gage QD system, loose, is worth $283... it's worth about $60. This is just a recent example I found.
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While not $283, I did sell one on Amazon a few months ago for $150

 
Anyone who charges 3 times the value of a retro video game should go out of business. $75-80 for a nice copy of mario kart 64 lol. guy must be a crackhead.

 
I thought maybe they just priced retro games high but modern stuff was reasonable. Hell no, so much if their stock is consistently over valued I know its an echo at this point but how did they stay in business so long?
 
Losing JJGames is a big blow to variant collectors. They didn't use stock photos which made it pretty easy to hunt down different label/cover versions of games.

 
I used jjgames a few times and found the merchant to be good and reliable. I agree their prices were high on some games but they also had solid, competitive pricing on others. Always sad to see any seller go out of business. Less competition only and always benefits the retailers.
 
Yes the sought after games are priced pretty poor,

but to be fair - for collectors there are a good amount of lesser desirable games for pretty good low prices. 

I just picked up a bunch of decent N64 games for 2-4 bucks a pop. Free shipping, and no tax. Those are thrift store prices.

 
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arsenalcrazy8 said:
Yes the sought after games are priced pretty poor,

but to be fair - for collectors there are a good amount of lesser desirable games for pretty good low prices.

I just picked up a bunch of decent N64 games for 2-4 bucks a pop. Free shipping, and no tax. Those are thrift store prices.
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You must have grabbed all of the good games because every sub $5 N64 game I'm looking at is either sports or wrestling. Though, I was able to snag a Gameshark 2.2 for $7 (usually goes for $20-25 on Ebay) so there's that I guess.

 
Looked through most of the stock that's left. I only found one game I really wanted which was the last (disc-only) copy of Blur for PS3 for $14.56. Most of the other games I'm interested in are a little too rich for my blood.

 
GamerSavage said:
Looked through most of the stock that's left. I only found one game I really wanted which was the last (disc-only) copy of Blur for PS3 for $14.56. Most of the other games I'm interested in are a little too rich for my blood.
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same here some of the games are still bit to high in price for me the only game I could find that was some what of a deal was ZOOM for the genesis CIB for $6.35

 
coolduck said:
i see these guys on ebay a lot, not a fan
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Apparently they also purchased a crap ton of retro games from Gamestop too and would mark them up. As the CUPodcast topic they did got a email from the owner that mentioned that they started taking a dive when GS cut back on their retro inventory.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb7euJ6VWuE[/youtube]

 
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i remember them having a bad habit of listing a game that looked nice with a nice clean label, labeling it as either acceptable or good, and then saying in the description that the picture is only a sample, and that there's 6 available. iirc their website has more separated listings, but for some reason their website also had even HIGHER prices than their ebay page.

 
I took time to search out quite a few video games yesterday and it seems like anything that is decent is eBay price or above. Is this even a going-out-of-business sale? Has anyone seen anything that's actually worth buying on the site?
 
coolduck said:
i remember them having a bad habit of listing a game that looked nice with a nice clean label, labeling it as either acceptable or good, and then saying in the description that the picture is only a sample, and that there's 6 available. iirc their website has more separated listings, but for some reason their website also had even HIGHER prices than their ebay page.
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A lot of sellers do that. Worse are the ones that show a game in a nice box and say it's a stock picture... no it fucking isn't!

 
maverick15511 said:
I took time to search out quite a few video games yesterday and it seems like anything that is decent is eBay price or above. Is this even a going-out-of-business sale? Has anyone seen anything that's actually worth buying on the site?
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There was some deals: dragon warrior cobi was 7.80 it’s easily a $20 game. Grand theft auto gbc was 6 it’s a $15 game and harvest moon gbc was 7 again a other $15 game....gradius collection and ultimate ghouls n ghosts for psp complete with “instructions” isn’t a bad deal either

Dokapon advance is a deal too.
 
Regarding the pricing.
They really can’t blame digital. A massive company like GameStop for sure.

But on the smaller niche retro-market, as long as you’re in a city, you just need to buy in 100 percent to the culture and then also not try to rip-off your base.

Pink Gorilla Games in Seattle is an excellent example. (Formerly Pink Godzilla Games)

They have two thriving locations in the same city and they sell a lot.

They also have reasonable prices and cater to the retro game crew. The demand from that combo in a city is so high they don’t even need to sell online. But I’ll bet if someone ran an online shop with that much attention they would do ok.

It just isn’t going to work on the level of hundreds of stores like GameStop.
 
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CheapAssPizza said:
Just a heads up, the FB page says the site officially shuts down tonight at 9pm PST/12am EST
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Thanks for heads up, much appreciated. I wonder if they'll try to sell off the remaining inventory through their eBay store or if they'll shut that down also.

Edit: I got my copy of Blur for PS3 today. It's in great condition and they put in a slim CD case and packed the paper sleeve with it.

 
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I thought in the last couple of minutes they might put their items on like a 30 percent off sale or something. Their prices were still as high as ebay. 15 for a loose copy of need for speed ps4, LOL.
 
JJGames.com is closed. Thank you for 20 years of business.

JJGames.com website will sell video games again in the near future, but under different ownership.

reminds me of a furniture store around here called wickers, it has gone out of business about 4 or 5 times, they just pack up and open in some other part of town with a slightly different name.
 
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ritchardf said:
JJGames.com is closed. Thank you for 20 years of business.

JJGames.com website will sell video games again in the near future, but under different ownership.

reminds me of a furniture store around here called wickers, it has gone out of business about 4 or 5 times, they just pack up and open in some other part of town with a slightly different name.
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That sounds like what's going on here. Maybe the former owner sold it to a good friend or business group that were willing take over and they'll rebrand it. It will be interesting to see how things are run under the new ownership.

The owner of local retro gaming store where I live had opened a second location. After a couple of years splitting his time between stores he decided to sell the second location to a good friend and maintain ownership of the original store.

 
Wow, that was fast. I guess they decided to either sell it off in bulk or on ebay. No way they went through all of their inventory in matter of a week.

 
Something didn't seem right about them truly going out of business. They advertised daily price drops until everything sells, so I had saved a bunch of games in my ebay cart and was waiting to see if I could get them at a certain price point. There were no price drops. Some of the games actually went up in price. 

 
Thrillh0 said:
Something didn't seem right about them truly going out of business. They advertised daily price drops until everything sells, so I had saved a bunch of games in my ebay cart and was waiting to see if I could get them at a certain price point. There were no price drops. Some of the games actually went up in price.
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I believe the price drops only applied to the games sold through their website, not Ebay.

 
I picked up 7 N64 games for $28 that came today. Couldn't find anything for SNES that I absolutely needed at their prices.

 
JJ Games will be Rian Games for a couple years but dont worry, they'll bring JJ back and it'll have a ton of retconning and nonsense. 

 
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