Today I went to Consett. Me and Kira went around there for a few hours and we went into two stores. One was a CashConverters and the other was Games Galaxy. I go to cashies (which is what I call it from now on) all the time as they always have cool things at great prices. Honestly, you can get so much at cashies from phones, laptops and games, all the way to fucking DeWalt drills and power saws. It's amazing. I usually go to look at some old games as they usually have a bunch of PS2 and PS3 games. Occasionally they'll have a couple of PS1 games in there but it's rare. I picked up some PS3 games today from cashies. Skyrim, Dead Island, Fallout 3 and GTA IV. Some good classics. I could easily get all of these online and split the ISO files and load them to my PS3 (it has EvilNat), but I still want to build my collection physically. Anyway, let's talk about the Skyrim game I bought.
It's great honestly. Disc is in good shape, box is fine with no cracks, has a couple of scratches on the case but that's to be expected. It has a great condition manual, even comes with a textured map which I swear was paper when I had it years back, but this was a super nice textured feeling map. Everything's great and nothings wrong with it honestly. It cost me £2.49 in cashies. Wanna know how much they charge at Galaxy Games? Fucking £6.
Now, whatever right? It's only £3.51 difference right? What's the point? The point is the fucking mark up on their games is ludicrous. I'm just gonna say this firstly. I love that there is a game store like Galaxy Games that has an absolute shit tonne of retro games. Like seriously, their store is stacked with anything you could think of. NES games, NeoGeo games, even modern PS4 and PS5 titles. A whole load of non games too like collectible figures and stuff like that. The atmosphere is awesome and they have TVs around the store playing cool retro visuals. But the fucking mark up on their games is seriously ridiculous.
Now I do somewhat understand why they mark them up. Retro games are a niche at this point. Not everyone is going to want to buy "outdated games". Secondly, they have absolutely everything you need and it is extremely convenient being able to buy any game you want in a decent condition. But that really should NOT be a reason to mark up games that much. There was no reason for that Skyrim game being the price it was. It wasn't like the box or anything was in prestine mint condition, it was about the same grade as my copy I got from cashies. I also seriously doubt that cashies doesn't know how to price things because I have seen some games that are meant to be expensive and they priced them accordingly.
Skyrim isn't the only game I've seen a massive markup on. I asked about Fear Effect which they kept in a cabinet and I don't remember the exact price but I was dissapointed that they were gonna ask for about 30-40% above the regular price. A lot of their games don't even have a price on them! If you bring a game to the counter they have to figure out the price at that moment, which I somewhat understand for retro games as prices can fluctuate, but it just seems wrong and almost makes you have to guess if they will price it properly or mark it up for no reason at all.
And the last thing to top it all off was this: I brought some games to the counter and some of them weren't priced. So they went on their computer to presumably check how much they should sell it for. While I was waiting, I went on my phone and checked PriceCharting for a rough estimate, a website that lets you view the latest sales of any game from the likes of eBay. After that, he told me the prices and I was like "Oh no it's okay..." because it was a lot more than I thought and PriceCharting said otherwise too. I then told them about the website I was using and they said to me "I wouldn't use that, it's not very good.". Like what?! First of all, who are you to say what I can and can't use? Second of all, that just sounds really shady telling me NOT to look at prices of games. PriceCharting doesn't skew anything, it's literally a recent archive of actual sales of games. It just really put me off him telling me not to use a website that is, for all intensive purposes, a history of real purchases.
So, anyway, buy your games from either cashies or even CeX as they price their games properly too. Be careful with where you buy your games as some stores, like Games Galaxy, seem to like your money more than providing quality games. One more thing that pissed me off was that they had massive piles of PS2 games at the counter on the floor. Granted, these were games that had just arrived and they hadn't processed them. But they literally pilled games up to 1 meter high which is an absolute NO for games. Always stack your games vertically on shelves, never pile them up. That's how you end up with warped cases, or worse cracked cases. It just shows that they only care about your money that they don't take care of new games that came in. And if they don't have a shelf to properly stack new stock then what are you even doing? Do you not care about preserving games in good condition? I've been in that store a few times over the years and those stacks of PS2 games have NOT moved. So they either don't get new games that often (and those poor games have just been crushed for years) or they are just inexperienced in preservation. I get it, it's a "STORE" that sells games. But with something like retro games where the condition massively affects the value, that's just basic fucking knowledge.