Has anyone on /vr/ worked at one? Was it fun or was it disheartening? I think I'd feel bad lowballing people who wanna sell their stuff and then overpricing everything.
>>12475724every one I've been to in recent memory either overcharges for everything, or doesn't have much in terms of inventory
US Saturn stuff is a joke. You can pick up Japanese or PAL copies of those games for a quarter of the price (less in some cases).
>>12475724>I think I'd feel bad lowballing people who wanna sell their stuff and then overpricing everything.it's harder to lowball when people can instantly go to places like ebay and get the going rates or just sell privately through one the many online auction/market sites. people are better informed than they once were. how these stores are able to turn a profit and pay rent is a mystery to me.>>12475738the overcharging is insane. some places i've been to must think several million copies sold of a given title means rare or some shit
>>12475745>some places i've been to must think several million copies sold of a given title means rare or some shitmy local spot usually charges nearly 100 dollars or more for pretty much every notable gamecube game, it sucks
>>12475748>100 dollars or more for pretty much every notable gamecube gamegood luck to them. they might find the occasional sucker that'll buy it. if they're going to charge ebay prices then people might as well just to to ebay. i'd much prefer to have a hacked gamecube and run pirated disc images.
>>12475745They don't make money on games anymore - they make money on pokemon card sales and gameboy IPS screen mods and shit like that
>>12475767they mostly get money for card games and shit, so I guess that's how they stay afloat
>>12475745You probably still get some older people who "just want this junk gone" and might walk in with a box of stuff that has a gem or two in it. Or people who don't want to spend the time selling their mid- to low-tier stuff online, and are happy to get rid of it all at once, even if it means taking. 30% hit versus selling it individually over time.Also, from what I've seen, the current retrogaming shop meta is turning your shop into a social media attraction and some of the employees/owners into ecelebs, that way you can make money from social media engagement and develop the usual parasocial relationship with fans who will sell you their stuff at a loss and buy your overpriced shit just to have the thrill of interacting with their idol and a chance to be featured in a video.Seriously, just look at DKOldies and how they've made Joey, one of their employees, into an eceleb. He even had some kid asking for his autograph.
I went to one recently that charged over DOUBLE ebay prices on some titles, not even rare ones I'm talking weird common shit like Frogger PS1. Their DVDs were also atrociously priced, they had one title that was priced at $7 a couple years ago and then an identical one next to it priced at like $90 this year, again way over even the unrealistic never-sold ebay reseller prices for that title. If it won't even sell for $7 wtf are they thinking with that price hike?Got a decent music CD for $1 though, so that was nice. The Crow (1994) soundtrack. Good movie.I miss the old retro vidya chain around here. They were total bros, gave me one of those memory stick->microSD adapters for the PSP for free, and sold me Pokemon Emerald (authentic, not repro) for only $21. Maybe that's precisely why they went out of business...
>>12475784>He even had some kid asking for his autograph.it's one of those things that's incredibly sad yet also hilarious at the same time>>12475775>>12475780>cardsyea that makes sense. i forget about that shit as it's not my thing
>>12475724Yeah I work at one. I've actually worked at retro stores for over 10 years now.
>>12475738Yeah I live right next to a retro store and the prices are fucking stupid. When I first went there, I ended up spending $70 on Sonic & Knuckles (because I am fucking stupid).
>>12475724A few years ago I walked into one and they had a bunch of Model 2 Sega Genisises stacked it said $200 with 1 Controller, PSU and RF adapter... I went on eBay and bought that for $60 + free shipping, no problem. I bought a $50 aliexpress sd card thing and it just worked with standard Genesis games no problem.Last year saw a model 1 at Salvation Army with 3 coiled up controllers and the PSU, $40. Went to the register and they tried to charge me $10 per controller. I haggled and got it all for $40 because it was a discount day anyway, I started it up and it seemed to work no problem.I guess collectors will pay collector prices. But there is a huge panorama of options.
>>12475805Expand on that, answer the questions.
>>12475741Indeed, but ops pic is also waaay overpriced as well. Must be a pawn shop.
I worked at GS when they started first trying to get back into retro 10 years ago, but they only took very specific titles and pretty sure they threw out boxes. Buying prices were not good, but they actually sold them for at the time, significantly under online prices, but it was a crap shot if you got them complete or not for discs. I recall i got vanguard bandits and megaman legends 2 for like 30 dollars. Now they take way more stuff and prices are much closer to online rates. Still got some nice stuff when i worked there that customers just wanted gone even when the store wouldn't take them, so that meant for me free nes game boxes, a whole n64 because it was missing one cable, a box of ps2 games and Suikoden 2.Also every year i help out a guy i know who sells at a game convention. His prices are reasonable and he is open to haggling. Usually i just get paid in games i want from his booth. He has 2 or 3 displays of higher value stuff, but he mostly makes his money selling common, but desirable games(Marios, ps2 classics) and collectibles like plushes. Stuff the average person or starter collector would want. I recently started selling at small pop up events myself with a similar philosophy, mixed with excess stuff my collection, and i always sell 5 to 10 dollars cheaper than what someone could buy off ebay. I do the same when im buying. If i see something infront of me that i can order right now for cheaper online, thats the option im going with, especially if the in-person price is firm.
I've only been to one retro game shop before. It was somewhere on the outskirts of philly about a decade ago. The prices for everything were higher than you can get off ebay buy-it-now listings. Consoles in particular were like twice as high as they should be. So why bother driving out to this piece of shit store and wasting time sifting through everything when you can get the same thing in 5 seconds and zero effort off ebay? Even less money if you're willing to sit on it and keep an eye out for cheaper listings. Retro shops just seem like the worst of all worlds.
>>12475875It's fun and there's a variety of trade in situations, people generally understand they're getting immediate cash or credit in return for their stuff so they aren't concerned with getting "lowballed" and those that are concerned with it highly over value their stuff. "I have the first nintendo system ever" yeah so does our back room 50x over and 50 million other people. Most trade-ins are about finding the happy middle ground for you and the customer, not about maximizing return especially in a post-2020 world where the cat is out of the bag and yes, old games are worth money.
>>12476109Yeah shops should at least be matching average buy-it-now listings. That's always been the "I can't be bothered to be checking on deals everyday trying to find it cheaper" price, there's absolutely no point in ever paying more than that.
>>12476115Thanks for sharing. Sounds like your store is halfway reasonable. The only time I ever felt the pain of selling something was unloading my GB Micro with a bunch of games because I had to make rent. Now that I think about it, that was only maybe the second and last time I sold to a store. I have a fairly modest collection and don't typically get rid of stuff.Is your store a chain or a mom and pop?
>>12476081I bought a bunch of PS2 games for dirt cheap around then, but those motherfuckers straight up never sent a few of the games I ordered, and never responded to any inquiries. They straight up stole my money.Fuck gay stop
>>12476253They probably operate on the same business model as things like gift shops. ie, targeting people who show up and impulsively buy whatever just because it's right there in front of them. And also people who come in hoping to find something, and then justify to themselves paying way above market value, because "fuck it, I already came all the way over here, might as well get something and not leave empty handed" Which probably isn't a ton of people, but I assume most of these stores also sell all their stuff on ebay as well. All I know is that I will never ever bother checking out any retro game shops ever again.
>>12476390Well clearly that business model isn't working out for them because every one of those store's I've ever known went broke after a few years.
>>12476081I bought a couple games from gamestop a decade ago when they started selling retro games. It was annoying how much of a crapshoot it was. Was I going to get just a disc? Would it include the case, god forbid manual? You never know. Prices were pretty good but that part was annoying and made it not worthwhile to gamble on CD/DVD games. Was decent for picking up carts though.
I have a bunch of stuff I want to clear out, but I would rather not have to deal with shipping (and fees, though I intend to price to move, so I'd be charging under ebay). What forms of payment, outside of cash, do people tend to accept these days when selling at cons or other small events? Zelle would seem to be ideal, since at least for my bank there's no fees, but I don't know how many people use that. Of course there's PayPal, but I know that has fees and I don't get the feeling that using PP for p2p in-person payments is en vogue nowadays.
>>12476268Yeah it's an independent store, just one location.
I already got 2 times houseverbot cause I drove em nuts hehe
chat do we actually buy games?
