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The
Secondary Market for Video Games
 n the interest of
full disclosure, I have to admit that I've become a Secondary Market junkie
and must fiercely recommend that non-hard- core gamers actively seek out
and patronize Secondary Market game sources. Unless you're truly excited
about a specific release, there's little reason to rush to a retail game
store and shell out the full manufacturer's suggested retail price for a
game you'll beat in a week or less of play - it's wiser to let someone else
buy the game and get bored with it, at which point you can buy the slightly
used game at a substantial savings. Stores in the Secondary Market are the
middlemen for used games, buying games that people have used and selling
them at a profit, the second profit that a store will make on each cartridge.
(Experienced store owners cultivate customers who first buy new games at
their stores and then return soon thereafter to trade the used game in for
a smaller amount of cash or store credit.) Truly savvy buyers find ways
to buy used games directly from their first owners without ever dealing
with such stores, reducing the cost of purchase.
Unless you have some awful local vendors in your area, the worst place
to buy or sell used video games is a mall-based retail store such as Electronics
Boutique or Babbages, as their prices are continually fixed to make maximum
profits when they purchase games from you (read: low buy-back prices) and
sell games to you. Toys'R'Us is also pretty exploitative, though it only
buys used games and does not sell them: Their buy-back prices are low and
you're stuck with "Geoffrey Bucks," in-store currency that forces
you to buy more stuff at Toys'R'Us. Mail-order used game buyers are perhaps
the best option for the adventurous game seller, as it's easy enough to
read ads in magazines and find the best prices. Video rental stores are
often the best option for the used game buyer who can afford to wait, as
less popular games get dumped off at low prices after months or years; Blockbuster's
$30 Virtual Boys, $2 VB games and $4 32X games are now famous examples of
video store bargains.
Three other options exist. One is the local game store, which by definition
lacks nationwide backing and consequently is forced to either keep prices
high or make large numbers of transactions in order to stay in business. Local game stores often go out of business because their monthly rent
and utility costs outpace their sales. The second option is to use your
local newspaper or the Internet, which lets you either find people from
whom to purchase games or sell a small number of items from your home. Last (and my personal favorite) is the local flea market, which (depending on
where you live) can have a number of used game buyers and sellers competing
with one another, ranging from people with collections of over 1,000 cartridges to families looking to get rid of five used NES games.
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