The Art of Purchasing Used Games

From Press The Buttons, an article entitled Acquisition: The Art Of Purchasing Used Video Games. In it, the author lays out useful tidbits for getting the most from your hard earned gold pieces. From the article: "Yes, you could go all willy-nilly and toss a handful of game paks into a shopping cart down at the local Electronics Boutique, but the most obvious way of obtaining a used video game is not always the most economical. Allow me to share with you a few rules I have learned over the years about locating and acquiring used video game entertainment."

Comments

Re:thrift stores

[thegrassyknowl]

I used to shop at Tr(C)ash Converters for stuff. It is amazing how often you'd find old units there that people just didn't want anymore. My mate got a Vectrex (yes a vectrex) and a pile of stuff for it for $40 a few years back.

I grabbed a pile of Atari 2600 games, some with boxes and original manuals for abour $2-3 each.

The newer, common stuff (mostly SNES and N64) are there, but they're still way over prices ($20 for a copy of Mario Bros on SNES... bugger that.

Occasionally that have a C64 or an Amiga come by, usually with a stack of pirated disks in a box for a good price. Shops generally know the value of those to collectors though.

If you're after not-quite "popular" stuff (Vic20, Atari PCs, Megadrive, old PC games etc) then go to a Trash Converters or equivalent store. If you want more "popular" stuff then you're going to need to shop around to get it in good condition and affordable. I put popular in quotes meaning stuff that everyone knows like the Amiga500, C64, Atari2600, Nintendo, etc, over the stuff that less people are aware of like Dreamcast, Vectrex, etc.

If you want really rare stuff, you have to shop everywhere. I have only seen one Dreamcast, also at Trashies, but I have never seen any DC games anywhere but on Ebay.