On Norman pawn shops, the key word in your post is *were*... I would probably shock you with all of the amazing finds I had in some of these shops in Norman for the period between 2000 to 2002...
Unfortunately, it is a bit more bleak now, but not hopeless:
1) Most shops are wise to ebay/gamestop pricing for rare stuff and even common stuff and accessories. Some actually have tried to tell me that I needed to pay them the gamestop price and that was the best they could do (as if their tiny pawn shop gets 1/1000th of the traffic.. I told them no thanks, I could do better online, to which they claimed they didn't believe me.. I did (actually got two for the same price), they still have the item in question lying around in their store because they were stubborn idiots...)...
I have even had someone LOOK UP a game on Ebay in front of me just to see if there was a reason why I wanted that specific game (this place no longer exists, thankfully... nothing like a no-tooth everything-bad-about-oklahoma stereotype pawn shop employee trying to pull this crap)... lucky for me, the game was common and I was just grabbing it for someone online, but the point is, this type of crap is B.S. on several levels... don't put it past them, especially the younger employees or owner's kids... sometimes the older ones just want the sale knowing that either way they make money...
In any event, if you happen to find stadium events or bubble bath babes or bubble bobble part 2 in a bunch of nes games, it may be better to either (a) ask them to buy every NES game they have, or (b) buy a bunch of games and put the game right on top using reverse psychology figuring they'll be pessimistic enough to assume you are hiding the game you really want (if they were gonna check them all, they'd do that just the same.. and pray no one has it listed on Ebay).
2) More competition. When I was doing this back in 2000, I was mostly looking for myself and most of the Ebay folks in the area were only searching the pawn stores for Disney VHS stuff. Pawn shop people didn't naturally assume I was looking to sell stuff on Ebay... Now, it seems anytime I walk in the door, they see 'young kid... must be trying to find stuff for Ebay'...
3) It really only takes one additional knowledgable person shopping on a somewhat regular basis to pretty much screw you out of finding something special when you go in... I'd say it's about 1 in 4 that I'll spot something even modest... it used to be, IMOP, closer to every time a few years back I'd find something unbelievable by current standards.
4) OTOH, Norman being a college town also means newer gaming stuff possibly getting pawned soon... so it works both ways... older stuff probably tapped, but plenty of solid PS2 and XB games hopefully in the future..
5) New games (PS2, XB) seem to blend together... if they don't know or they screw up, it's $10-15. That sometimes sucks, but sometimes it's great. Just remember, they don't want to be stuck with this crap, especially sports games. I think you can get a lot of leeway in some areas...
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Other stuff
1) Went to the Big Lots in Norman, nothing left in the PC games area of note.
2) Hastings in Norman has one 'special' used game for $29.99... its probably the rarest PS2 game on the market (and really, it should not be available for sale). Not Rez, nor Disgaea.
3) Well, on the plus side for game xchange, they do have a lot of stuff... if you guys find a copy of Parappa for psx, let me know. They also do get a lot of their games from pawn shops. I think in many cases, pawn shops may be selling their stuff to GX now more frequently than before... pawn shops used to sell some stuff to the Gamestop in Norman mall, too, as I recall way back in 2000 ish.. now, that GS doesn't even carry used older games...
4) Another thing you guys might consider is looking into arcade game autions in the state. Norman's CC fairgrounds sometimes has arcade auctions... usually you can get a decent working cab and board for under $200. I missed out on a 4 slot MVS last time because they were only taking cash, but they more often than not take checks and cards as well... Also, while on the subject, in case you were wondering what to do with boards (i.e., if you didn't have the space for a whole cabinent), you could try something like this:
http://www.massystems.com/SuperNova.html
basically, you get lucky, buy a jamma game cheap, use this to play the board.