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So, a couple of weeks back, I walked into the local Play n Trade - a weekly occurrence. The guys that work in there are current gamers and (to my benefit) don't know the retro stuff much. And yet I am the only truly regular RETRO customer they've come to know. It is to my benefit, of course. They already told me that a Little Samson would be shelved at $10, according to their database. As I walked in the door "Hey Jason, we've got something for you to look at." They looked excited to make the sale. It was a 3DO FZ-1 with some great games. Alright, I already have an FZ-1, but the games were awesome - Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Need for Speed, Shockwave 2, Gex, Space Hulk, etc. I added all the games to my own collection except Super Street Fighter II Turbo & Need for Speed, which I already owned. The games I kept were almost worth the total price. I decided to eBay the console and dups, so I could toss the profits at my wants. So why, with a system that normally nets about $80 with 2 great games that fetch about $60 total, did I make a final sale of $250? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eB...d=1&item=110958503201No, I am not bragging or showing off. Maybe the fact that I proved the console worked and added the pic was beneficial, but I really wanted to start the conversation about how much people seem to loathe resellers. Keep in mind that I started the bidding at only $50 - my purchase price. And this whole scenario brought on some interesting questions. I guess this could be a multi-part question. Who do you consider a gaming reseller? When you criticize a reseller, what about their practice bothers you? Is it about buying local then selling local? Is it buying cheap and them selling market? Is it that all carts/games from specific systems are tagged with the same price? Is it about the quick flip? This should be an interesting discussion.
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I do the same thing with high price items. I normally sell on craigslist but w/ high price items I go directly to Ebay to fetch top dollar. The way I see it is that I can make top dollar and turn a couple high price items into many items that I need/want for my collection.
I recently bought a 3ds w/ 5 games for 100. Then flipped the games for 80 so it was as if I only paid 20 for a 3ds CIB.
Also picked up a N64 lot w/ a bunch of mario games, zelda oot, and dk off craigslist. ( poorly listed ) for 30. Flipped the games for 99.01 on Ebay and sold the system locally on craigslist for 15.
If not for flipping/reselling, I could not have money to go to yard sales and flea markets.
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@cverz2:
The problem I have with "resellers" is that they make it impossible to experience games at decent prices. If I find something for cheap, I give it away or sell it for cheap.
However, my definition of "reseller" isn't picking something up and selling it for a higher price. We'd all do that if we had the opportunity to fund our own collections. Instead, my definition of "reseller" is the person that makes it a point to intentionally rip off the person the items are purchased from, or misinform to obtain something for a price cheaper than it should be. After that point, it's mark it up to a point where it makes no sense for a collector, just to see if someone misinformed will purchase it for a ridiculous price.
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I do my share of flipping, but I very rarely ever buy something with the intent just to resell it, and for me that's the difference between the good resellers and the bad resellers. If you're buying lots, keeping some things and selling the rest, that's fine by me, and I would imagine every other collector out there. Even people who buy top dollar games for cheap just to sell them don't bother me if they're also collectors and this just happens to be a game they already had or is one they're not interested in keeping.
Its the resellers that just buy old games to sell them and have no interest in the games themselves that annoy me. For one, they're taking games out of the wild, which means I don't have access to them anymore, and they charge a lot for them, which just drives up the prices on all games in the long run.
Since you mentioned games from a specific system all being priced the same, that's something I love and hate. On one hand, if it weren't for that pricing system, I would never have grabbed a Snatcher for $5 from a flea market reseller, but the same seller also wouldn't have stacks of Sega CD sports games for $5 that are so sun baked even the cases are no good anymore.
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One of the things that really bother the most about many online sellers, and especially eBayers, is when everything they are selling is a Buy-it-Now at a high price. No Best Offers, no negotiations, and that definitely affects the market values. One guy decides to buy at the high price and others start rethinking the value. Many sites monitor the average purchase price, like VGPC, and it can throw their graphs out of whack.
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I have no issue at all with resellers in general. In fact I like many of them. I do however have problems with specific sellers who do some of the things mentioned above. I think they tend to give the whole lot a bad rep, and unfortunately they seem to be fairly common among sellers.
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I dont see a problem with flipping items. I personally did it to expand my collection (before I owned a store)
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