Me: So hey, do you have Super Nintendo?

Man who owns shop: Yes I do. $40, but it has no power cables.

Can you believe that?! $40 for a Super Nintendo with no power. What the point of playing Nintendo products when you have NO POWER?!!!! Not only that, he's closing the shop in three to six months and said he had a clearance on everything, up to 75% off. He had a bin of games that were $2, games for the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis.

Do you know how many copies of Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball was in the bin? How many copies of Madden games there were? I never saw so many different Tecmo Bowls in my life. But no, gets better.

I asked if he had Game Boys. He wanted $10 for Game Boy Color, which is reasonable. Then I checked out the games. Super Mario Land was $25. ANd I didn't ask him for the price, THE PRICE WAS WRITTEN OF THE BACK OF THE CARTRIDGE WITH A DAMN SHARPIE, AND HE WANTED $25!!! Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, $30 with price written on the back of the cartridge.

Maybe it's only this used game shop, but damn, the prices in there were pretty ridiculous considering the condition of most of the games in there. Anyone else got this kind of problem?

Worse than ebay.

Holy shite that's much. Seriously? Oh wow that sucks.

I don't see many used game stores around her, and I'd be glad of that fact if THAT'S what they were charging!

Best option in Scotland are places like cash generator, though there is CHiPS in Edinburgh that have a selection of old school stuff.

YEAH! IT IS!!! I just bought a SNES, with power cables, 1 controller, Super mario World, and Super Mario All Stars for $35 on eBay. That a deal compared to the shop.

I've passed ChiPS more than a few times, but I never took the time to actually take a look. That's where I'll be heading this weekend

Try bargaining with the owner. If they're closing in 6 months they'll want to get rid of stock so there's room to bargain. I do that all the time at flea markets and pawn shops. i amaze my girlfriend because I can be quite ruthless because I know how much something's worth and if I feel like I'm being ripped off by price I will let them know and how much I will pay. A lot of vendors I find are afraid to challenge a consumer that actually has knowledge on the product they're selling and how much it's worth.

Give it a try. If it doesn't work at first keep going back and pressing how much you're willing to pay for it. The closer it gets to when the store closes the more pressure they will feel to give it to you for the price you want. I got a bunch of hard to find gameboy games really cheap by bargaining with pawn shop owners:

Metroid 2: $12 (I see people trying to sell it on ebay and kijiji for $50)
Mario Land: $10
Mario Land 2: $6
Mega Man 2: $10

It's pretty good. The Staff know their shit, I'll give them that. It is mainly modern stuff but there is at least one cabinet full of old stuff. I'm sure there are 2 cash generator style shops near it as well one to the north one to the south. They usually have a stack of games, but it's always just the cartridge nothing else. I saw a Dreamcast in the one on north bridge for £10 last week.

I just picked up a gameboy color with a copy of super mario land in it for 7 bucks at a flea market the other day.

aside from that small victory we have no used game shops here where I live at all aside from gamestop ( small kentucky town ) , but when I lived back up north there was a used game store that sold everything from atari up through ps / n64 and even dreamcast stuff, he was the only place in town to find older games, and as such he charged absolutely ridiculous prices, you pretty much weren't getting anything for less then 15 - 20 bucks , and that was the bottom of the barrel crap that no one wants or is super common / easy to find dime a dozen type games, he charged 85 bucks for a copy of final fantasy VII with green label in a generic case.

there is a huge flea market with over 300 indoor booths and 150 outdoor boths about 30 miles from here, I'm gonna go check it out because you never know what kind of great deals you can find there, especially if you find a rare game at a booth that doesnt usually deal in games and has no idea what its worth.

so thats my advice, hit the flea markets if you got any in your area.

I don't know, some of ebay's prices when it comes to used games are kinda off. Like 30 dollars for contra or something. Don't believe me? Look for yourself.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/CONTRA-Classic-Konam ... 286.c0.m14

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Kid-Icarus-Bow-Arrow ... 286.c0.m14

These are also just in game images and most of these sellers dont show pictures of the actual cart itself and some don't even explain the condition it's in.

I had this one classic game ebay shop I used to visit all the time and order games from that had really good prices. I was able to pick up the original Metroid for $4, all the genesis Sonic games for $10 etc. unfortunetly the store closed down, but you can find a lot of online ebay stores that are similar to this if you look for them.

Flea Markets and Garage Sales are your bread and butter...of course there is Kijiji / craigslist..I find the best deals I will ever find are from either..

A) People who do not know what they have or what it is worth..(Garage Sales / Flea Markets)
B) Gamers who are more into circulating older games and not about the quick buck of collecting. (Kijiji)

I do horde games / consoles / accessories like crazy and will give out double to help out friends, I figure it will come back to me, why not share what I have found...more gamers should circulate don't squander and try to gouge a guy who just loves games as much as you do..

I got Mega Man for 7 bucks at a used music store by my campus:



yay? (I know that's a hell of a deal, but I never liked the first Mega Man... so I might turn around and sell this one)

From my experience there's three kinds of used game stores for old games.

1) I'm just an owner and I price match GameStop and eBay, then add 10% cause you'll buy it.
These guys will gouge anything. They also generally don't give two shits about quality. Even if they're the ones making it worse.

2) I accept everything and put it out as is with a price based on number in stock. Unless I recognize it, then it's $5 more.
These guys are usually pretty good, only issue is, they accept everything. These are also the kind of guys who don't understand the concept that adhesive is bad for paper!

3) I understand exactly what you want and the mindset of a collector ... I'm also not cheap.
You can usually find anything you could dream of at places like this ... but they know exactly what it's worth. But sometimes they're pretty fair ... other times they are not. These kinds of stores it's usually really easy to find various Saturn, Dreamcast, and Sega CD games for cheap. Not the really rare ones, though.

Oddly enough I've got all kinds around me.

Check www.usedcanada.com and search your region. I think there's a usedhamiltion in there. I use usedottawa all the time and I find it way better than kijiji and craigslist. Tuesday I was able to find a guy selling on usedottawa Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy II and III (III came with full box and manual in AMAZING condition) Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest and Secret of Mana for the SNES as a $100 package. Most of those games go for $50+ each on ebay.

I checked it, it really didn't have anything of substance, a few SNES games but I have them and they aren't really anything to write home about. I guess it hasn't caught on yet here in Hamilton, I will keep checking it..I would kill for a package like that for $100, I have been looking for a decent priced Secret of Mana and FFVI for about a year with no luck.

Dude, I lucked out large.. and the weird thing was I was at the EB by my work at lunch that day and saw Crono Trigger on DS for $25 and freaked out. I was planning on buying it to play on my girlfriend's DS but decided to wait until Uncharted 2 comes out in a couple of week to see if they had a cheaper used copy. I was talking to my work buddy and said if I ever found a copy of Crono Trigger for the SNES for $30 of less I would pick it up in a heartbeat.

Had downtime in the afternoon so I checked usedottawa and what do you know, that amazing package was for sale and I jumped on it. I'm not a big RPG guy, but those are literally all my favorite RPGs in one package. I'm still blown away by the amazing condition the FFIII box is in.

Congrats man, a Square Enix treasure chest like that is an amazing find

I loved everyone of those games (except Mystic Quest) and will one day get them back..heh enjoy

Btw, what is your address, and password to your home security system ?

I hate those bitches. I went to an anime con a few months back and there was a classic/import games merchant there. He got pissed because I was scaring off his customers by letting them know his prices were bullshit high. He was trying to pawn off a "factory sealed" Panzer Dragoon Saga for $550. All it was was a used copy that he shrink wrapped himself. I recognized the burned edges of the shrink wrap and the different quality wrap.

I used to have a shrink wrap machine...those were the days.