New game store in town + me = disgusted

Squirms

Squirms

CAGiversary!
Feedback
3 (100%)
I feel the need to vent about the new video game store in my town. I live in a smaller town, and we just got our first game trader. The guy who owns this store also owns one in another town about 30 minutes away.

I went in there with a bag full of games, 11 to be exact. The shelves were rather bare. The only new games I saw were Tiger Woods, and Sly Cooper 2. No Burnout 3, no Star Wars Battlefront, no Fable, most new games they had have been out for at least 2 months. Their Gamecube section was an absolute joke. About 10 used games, and one new copy of Tiger Woods, not a single Mario game to be found, that was it. The guy running the place even told me that he didn't like the Gamecube. Apparently he doesn't like the GBA either since there were no new games at all, and only a handful of used games. What kind of strategy is that, alienating a whole section of your consumer base by not supporting the platform that they own, especially with the GBA, that is one of the highest selling systems of all time and the kids love those Pokemon games,

Looking through the used games, I noticed that I had seen many of the used games before. That's right, I've seen them all at the owner's other store the last ten times I've been in there. Britney's Dance Beat, Nightcaster, Kessen in essence crap. So I ask the guy behind the counter if he has gotten any new games that he hasn't put out yet. He tells me " Yeah, we've gotten alot." He pulls out a stack of games smaller than what I was bringing in. I look through them and find Chronicles of Riddick, and Deus Ex: Invisible Wars. He told me both of them would be $35 which was a pretty fair price. So I pull out my stack of games and he looks through them, I wasn't expecting a ton for them, since most were from that $5 Circuit City sale. He offered me $85 buck for 11 games. $7.72 each. Hell the other store was at least giving me $10 per game on every CC game I gave him. So I gave him 4 games, 3-$5 games and 1 game I bought online for $1.99 and got Riddick and Deus Ex for free so all in all I came out ahead on the transaction. I hope that it gets better in there or else they will not last long. Wal-Mart, hell even K-Mart has a better selection of games.

One redeeming quality is that he told me they could order games, but of course he couldn't find Katamari Damashi to order for me. I guess I'll just have to order it from ebgames.com. Sorry this is so long, but I had to vent to others that could understand how pissed I am about this. There were a bunch of people in there, and they would have had a good amount of sales dollars coming in, if they had anything in stock. I am just so disappointed, I've been waiting for years for a trader to come into town, and when one finally does, it sucks.
 
[quote name='paean']Isn't Riddick $30 new and Deus Ex IW can be had for $10 to $20 new as well???[/quote]

Yeah. Riddick was on the Universal Price drop list for $30 and Deus Ex is $9.99 at TRU green tag sale. Sorry. :oops:

This new dealer seems shady but he does have a monopoly on your town, though.
 
Well the games were still cheaper than buying used from EB so that is why I said they were fair prices, plus when you add the fact that I paid a total of $17 for my trade-in games I did alright.
 
umm... they are about the same..

chronicles is universally 30 at eb plus preowns are 24.99. Deus Ex dropped preown wise to 12.99. Both games had at 37 plus if you have discount card take an additional 3.7 off for a grand total of 33.3 dollars.

plus trade-in wise trade 3 get an extra 10, 4 an extra 15, and 5 an extra 20. Trust me... you would of made off better at EB.

also note that if you preorder either Halo2, Gran Turismo4, GTA San Andres, or picked up Fable, Battlefront, or Tiger Woods, all your games trade in for at least 10 dollars (as long as the trade-ins are non-excluded... the list can be found online mostly consists of old sports titles). But I bet you didn't know that
 
was the store MCVANS man you dont want one of these stores coming to your town

they used to be cool but since they got like 5-8 stores now they are total asses who work there,. same here when their first started out they had very few games now they got around 5,000 games per store. but the thing is they give u nothing on games.

say you had a top game and wanted another top game. you would have to give them your game + 9 bucks. ANd what is werid they got Megaman 3 blue and white at 22 bucks used . Dude youc an get these games for 15 new hell even 5 new lo

if its just a 3rd party trader then yeap they will have tons of GBA stuff since you can pick them up dirt cheap (maybe 100 games for 5oo bucks) of ebay
 
I doubt at EB my copies of I-Ninja, Sphinx, Swing Away Golf, and Extermination would have garnered $35 in trade-in credit, even with the extra $10 seeing as all the games together sell for $31.96 on their website. Add to the fact that the nearest EB is over an hour away, and trust me I did better trading these 2 minutes from my house.
 
[quote name='slidecage']was the store MCVANS man you dont want one of these stores coming to your town[/quote]

No it's not a McVans. I used to love that place a few years ago. Now I never go in to them anymore. They never have anything.
 
yea the place rocked till they got big and then the owner thought they was all that. give the place time they just opened. figure it this way give them 6 months if the rock they will last if not they wont.

(by the way what is the name of the store)


there was another one here 7 years ago dude said he was going to open some up in OHio and i was going to go into a partnership with them then never heard fromt hem again. (lost their number)

right now it takes alot of balls to open up a gamestore unless you can get games dirt cheap. with all new systems coming in 2years your going to be sitting on a lot of junk if you can toss it by then.

i used to sell games out of my house in the 90s and stop doing it , Well now i do the ebay route but its not really worth opening up a store with such low profits (I was turning around 5-15 per game profit and that was out of a house very low turnaround. I might try it again this xmas demends on what i can get my hands on.

My best haul was when the Nintendo 64 came out/ SOme dude called me up asking me if i was still buying and i said yes. Dude sold me the system 2 controllers and i think 4 games for 200. WEll i resold the system in less then a day for 200 and each game went for 35 each. it was a nice profit of over 100.

in the end give the store time
 
I was thinking of going that route myself slidecage. I saw two seperate people go into the store wanting to sell them games for cash, but they were only issuing credit. I was thinking of putting an ad in the paper saying I would buy games and systems, then resell them. Could probably make a decent profit, with little overhead.
 
whatever you do NEVER and i mean NEVER offer to buy someones game in the store. They can call the cops on you and can get you in trouble big time. we used to have a trade paper here that could run an ad for 3 weeks for free or 3 bucks in bold. Sadly the moved and neve no idea where they went.

that trade paper rocked in the 90s but now they are just lame (used to hae between 30-50 game deals a week people selling, picked up a copy last week had 8 people selling nes game for 10 each lol

Ebay killed the used mom and pop market cause who is going to sell you a game for 10 bucks when they can get 20 on ebay. I would love to run into some of the suckers who sell their games to pawn shops 2 bucks per game 20 per system WOW
 
The thing is, there are still suckers that sell these games to the pawn shops, or traders for next to nothing. True the market isn't as big as it once was, but there are still people that either 1) don't want to mess with the hassle of Ebay, or 2) people who want money right now and are willing to take a loss in order to get cash in hand immediately.

I wouldn't try to buy the games in the store. Although I was tempted by one kid who had one of those 40 gallon totes stuffed with various systems and accesories.
 
I don't understand how these stores stay in business. Awesome places like defender's store can't even survive, while some comic shop type asshole who won't even stock nintendo products because of his geeky bias thrives...

makes me sick.
 
[quote name='jer7583']I don't understand how these stores stay in business. Awesome places like defender's store can't even survive, while some comic shop type asshole who won't even stock nintendo products because of his geeky bias thrives...

makes me sick.[/quote]

Well he did just open, and he does have the monopoly around here, but I think he'll be gone in 6 months unless things change quickly.
 
I own a small dvd rental store that deals with used movies, so I can offer some insight from the other side of the counter.

I buy used games, but only to rent out, so my real expertise is in dvds. The used business is thriving, enough so to have huge chains in on it now, like Blockbuster. So, as a small business owner, I offer a little more than they are paying and sell them for a little less that they sell them, and I still average 40-50% profit off of them

The new store you walked went to is new, so it will take some time for it to build its inventory. Also anything hot is usually in and out of the store quickly. If I buy a SIMPSONS box set, it's gone within 24 hours. The same probably goes for games. If you didn't like his prices, then don't be afraid in saying so. We owners need feedback, good and esp. bad!

Some of you are probably too young to care, but PLEASE try and support your local businesses! It might cost our cheap assness a couple of extra dollars, but you're doing a good thing for the community.

marc mccloud
orbit dvd
 
I do not disagree we you at all mcmarc. The problem I have is that even though the store is new in my town, his other store has been in business for 8 years so there should be at least a halfway decent selection of used games. He tends to do the same thing with used titles, pays a little more and sells a little less. I am sure that their used library will grow, it just sucks right now.

The problem I have is that he has no new releases, and at least in the case of his other store, new games are not available for 2-4 weeks after release. Wal-Mart tends to have them on the release date.

Also the lack of GC and GBA support is ridiculous, it may not be as big of a market as Playstation or X-Box, but the fans are more rabid, and are willing to pick up any first party Nintendo game.

I will always choose to buy my games from him rather than the big corporate chains, but if he doesn't have what I want, then I will be forced to be Wal-Marts bitch over, and over again.
 
Ok, if it is his 2nd store then it should have a decent selection. I agree with you on that.

It might be that he's trying to get rid of his crap that didn't sell from the first store. Sometimes a change of scenery will help.

And thank you for supporting small business!

marc mccloud
orbit dvd
 
[quote name='Squirms'][quote name='slidecage']was the store MCVANS man you dont want one of these stores coming to your town[/quote]

No it's not a McVans. I used to love that place a few years ago. Now I never go in to them anymore. They never have anything.[/quote]

Wouldn't be game exchange (may have a z in there) would it. We had one in Bossier/Shreveport and at first it was a great place to go. Now its just a joke they sell GH in GH cases for $25 used. I swear they made the change overnight. Plus they won't give you crap for your games unless its brand new it isn't going over $5
 
Here's a solution - move to a real town that has more than one gamestore.

What kind of backwards ass Amish town do you live in anyhow?
 
Unless you're trying to get rid of all of your crap, and by crap I mean Shaq-Fu level of crap, then I would trade stuff in expectiing to get nothing in return. If you're trying to get money for your games ten eBay is the place to go. I gurantee that within the next 5 years all of these game stores (that do trade ins and such) that are opening up are going to to close down at least half of their stores. There is no longer a reason for someone to only get 50 cents for a game when they can go online and sell it for at least 3 bucks you know.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top