Do you think a Gamestop bankruptcy and complete shutdown will revive yard sale pickups?

[snes_collector | 56]

1 hour ago, Teh_Lurv said:

 

The common theme I see on other forums and social media is people are under the impression that Gamestop is the main reason holding back independent video game stores from thriving. 

But what about the 1000's of towns that have no other game stores besides GameStop? There will be no where to buy games other than Walmart, and no way to buy used

[Teh_Lurv | 254]

1 hour ago, snes_collector said:

But what about the 1000's of towns that have no other game stores besides GameStop? There will be no where to buy games other than Walmart, and no way to buy used

Stop using reason to rain on internet hot takes. According to all the best YouTube comments, GameStop going out of business will magically bring back Funcoland in every small town USA.

[DefaultGen | 5,506]

If there's enough demand to offload games for peanuts at garage sales in an area and Gamestop is gone, something else would just fill that demand I think, whether Walmart or a local store. I can throw a rock and hit 4 Gamestops from my house, and there aren't 4 decent game stores in the entire state. I wouldn't mind if one local store replaced them all like one hipster record store replaced all the Sam Goodys and Tower Records as physical media for music died.

Edited January 17, 2020 by DefaultGen

[Sumez | 3,011]

15 hours ago, snes_collector said:

But what about the 1000's of towns that have no other game stores besides GameStop? There will be no where to buy games other than Walmart, and no way to buy used

Who even buys games (new or used) in physical stores anymore anyway?

I mean I'd love to personally, but I'm not prepared to pay 20-100% extra for that privilege.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

15 hours ago, snes_collector said:

But what about the 1000's of towns that have no other game stores besides GameStop? There will be no where to buy games other than Walmart, and no way to buy used

Every town on earth, practically, has Amazon and eBay, and I suspect that they would swoop in with an aggressive marketing campaign to give people amazon credit for bulk-shipped games.  Amazon offers that service already, or at least they used to, at what were better trade-in values than Gamestop was offering (though I haven't checked in years)

There is no inherent "need" for brick-and-mortar to cover this part of the market compared to other options that exist.

[Tanooki | 4,958]

Independent stores don't thrive because they price their stuff like they are ebay and have the ebay sized global audience.  That's anything but reality.  Depending where you live I suppose it could be a benefit or curse on how far your money goes and what things cost in a space.  Cost of living is what I mean, what things cost you to buy in California and New York aren't the same value as they would be say in middle America or large parts of the south.  Someone say in NYC wouldn't mind paying full internet value perhaps because local money would dictate a game locally would sell for that or 20% higher.  But where I am in KY, when they ask full value (let's say $20 on Battletoads) and you can get the game for $15 from another location, person, or patience online why give some greaseball a 25% mark up?  Gamestop has NO hand in that at all, they're not into retro really other than their minimal step back into it.  And most would say their deals on PS3 forward era stuff is cheaper in many cases with them straight ir with the buy get deals they do so there's no harm there.

 

SO yeah if they failed, it would have NO impact on yard sales.  You'd just get more yard sale people saying, well it sells on ebay for.... than you already do.  And when people do that to me and don't rapidly follow with a garage sale level price I walk off, because ebay is just another four letter word to me now in that space.

[Bonanza125 | 55]

On 1/18/2020 at 7:53 AM, Tanooki said:

But where I am in KY, when they ask full value (let's say $20 on Battletoads) and you can get the game for $15 from another location, person, or patience online why give some greaseball a 25% mark up?  

It depends on the customer. Some people just don't have time going from one store to another just to save $5. Also comes down to experience with a store. As a customer if I feel confident in that store where I know the game has been tested and working and have had no issues or at least no complaining about if I have to return a item then I would pay a tad more locally.

 

SO yeah if they failed, it would have NO impact on yard sales.  You'd just get more yard sale people saying, well it sells on ebay for.... than you already do.  And when people do that to me and don't rapidly follow with a garage sale level price I walk off, because ebay is just another four letter word to me now in that space.

Which is why I stopped going to yard sales to look for games. Anytime video games are advertised you will have people lining up 1 hour before the sale is to begin just so they can get a great deal on whatever the person has. Also you may have people contacting the sellers days before the sale starts. Majority of the time I dealt with the same issue you brought up about Ebay and to me its not worth time or gas money come away empty.  I remember one time a guy had common NES and Genesis sports games they wanted like $5 each for. That same guy had a NES Zelda game and wanted $30. He said "This is a rare game." LOL

 

[Tanooki | 4,958]

2 hours ago, Bonanza125 said:

It depends on the customer. Some people just don't have time going from one store to another just to save $5. Also comes down to experience with a store. As a customer if I feel confident in that store where I know the game has been tested and working and have had no issues or at least no complaining about if I have to return a item then I would pay a tad more locally.

Which is why I stopped going to yard sales to look for games. Anytime video games are advertised you will have people lining up 1 hour before the sale is to begin just so they can get a great deal on whatever the person has. Also you may have people contacting the sellers days before the sale starts. Majority of the time I dealt with the same issue you brought up about Ebay and to me its not worth time or gas money come away empty.  I remember one time a guy had common NES and Genesis sports games they wanted like $5 each for. That same guy had a NES Zelda game and wanted $30. He said "This is a rare game." LOL

Your quote box got messed up, had to read that for a bit to see what you were getting at.

I entirely agree with your sentiment about the store hopping, most don't, hell I don't but maybe a day or two a week.  But I'd argue most people who care have smart phones now, so they could easily see what it costs and unless they're hard up and desperate for a fix could just order one and have it in like 3-5 days for 25% or better off.  I'm fine supporting local to a point, then it's just feeding a racket.  I do agree at your basic level though with a low priced item entirely.  But when that 25% suddenly is not a $5 increase but $20, $50, $100+ I'll put up with a potential inconvenience as I hope more people would.

 

I stopped yard saling for games too for the reasons I said, it dried up.  I treat the neighborhood sized ones as a catch all now.  We're limited so if I can find some solid tools, fun stuff, music, blu rays, toys for the kid or for us grown kids someone finds in their old 80s/90s box, antiques, etc I'm game.  At the least it's outside, sun, exercise and seeing some unique stuff.  I know what you mean about games if advertised, I just won't deal with those who write that up because of the scumbags that call ahead, show up, beg to buy ahead of time, it's asinine.  One time we did one and I put games, a guy shows up an hour early and starts bugging me about his interests.  I eventually said I'll get to it when I can and he pouted back to his car to wait like a little child.  I made the dude wait until the end on putting stuff out intentionally so others elsewhere could have chances and not put up with the behavior.

[gamingsuperhero | 3]

Soon enough we wont even be getting any physical copies at all for any yard sales or gamestop (at least for disc based games). I noticed alot of these new games especially ps4 and one require online so you have no choice but to download most of the game since the disc only contains a piece of the full game thats not even playable. Now i have to check the cover and the contents for every game to see if i can play it straight from the disc. I always feel ripped off when I realize i can't even play the game straight from the disc and i have to wait for a huge dl to finish before I can play. Its almost like they are doing it on purpose just so you buy digital. Either that or they just rushed the hell out of the game for release which is most likely the case. Either way its disappointing for sure.

[MiamiSlice | 3,100]

On 1/16/2020 at 5:42 PM, Bonanza125 said:

I think people would just start selling stuff online.

No. I hang at GameStop now and then (good place to hunt for DS/Wii/Wii U titles) and I've seen so many times that people will walk in with a bag of games, get peanuts for them, and say "well great, I was just going to throw these in the trash anyway." The stuff these people are handing in is usually common / shovelware garbage, but what you aren't seeing is that these people are way too lazy to try selling their stuff on eBay. When GameStop is no longer around, they will likely just throw stuff away, or maybe send it off to Goodwill (which they are less likely to do because they don't make any money from that). They might put it in a yard sale or on Facebook Marketplace, but a lot of people are too lazy to even do that. 

(side note: I don't want to see GameStop disappear but the best thing that would happen if they do is no more throwing out the packaging for all of these older games.)

One of my best hauls was a listing on Facebook Marketplace where the "seller" was just giving away a bag of PS2 games for free because they were going to throw them out anyway. Literally drove over to the house and they said they left the bag by the garage - just picked it up and drove off. Nothing amazing in there but it was like 10 games all CIB and one of them was Ace Combat Zero which is not something you see every day. Anyway my point is there's a bunch of games practically being tossed out that is being absorbed by GameStop right now. 

Edited January 27, 2020 by MiamiSlice

[Bonanza125 | 55]

10 hours ago, MiamiSlice said:

No. I hang at GameStop now and then (good place to hunt for DS/Wii/Wii U titles) and I've seen so many times that people will walk in with a bag of games, get peanuts for them, and say "well great, I was just going to throw these in the trash anyway." The stuff these people are handing in is usually common / shovelware garbage, but what you aren't seeing is that these people are way too lazy to try selling their stuff on eBay. When GameStop is no longer around, they will likely just throw stuff away, or maybe send it off to Goodwill (which they are less likely to do because they don't make any money from that). They might put it in a yard sale or on Facebook Marketplace, but a lot of people are too lazy to even do that. 

(side note: I don't want to see GameStop disappear but the best thing that would happen if they do is no more throwing out the packaging for all of these older games.)

One of my best hauls was a listing on Facebook Marketplace where the "seller" was just giving away a bag of PS2 games for free because they were going to throw them out anyway. Literally drove over to the house and they said they left the bag by the garage - just picked it up and drove off. Nothing amazing in there but it was like 10 games all CIB and one of them was Ace Combat Zero which is not something you see every day. Anyway my point is there's a bunch of games practically being tossed out that is being absorbed by GameStop right now. 

It comes down to location. Everybody would have a different experience. I can just go by experience with yard sales and what others have said. Your experience with GameStop is different from mine. I have several locations around my house and whenever I walk into any of the GameStop locations nobody is in the store other than 1 employee. Nobody looking around at all which can be surprising or expected. Yes you will find people giving certain games away. I know PS2 games have been in decline for years at least from my end.

[Andy_Bogomil | 816]

EB Games here in Canada is at least 80% merch which seems to be growing every time I stop in the store every few months. They have a small section for Switch, PS4 (which they were already starting to ditch), and Xbox but everything else is shirts, toys, funko, etc. I don't see how them going out of business in Canada will have any affect on the used market.

I went in there last week for the first time in a while to grab that back button attachment for the Dualshock 4 and they didn't even have it. Then the guy said they had an amazing deal on used Wii U and PS4 games and it was a bunch of paper sleeves in a bin of the same 3 games for PS4 and about 300 copies of Hyrule Warriors for Wii U. Good stuff

Edited January 28, 2020 by Andy_Bogomil

[MiamiSlice | 3,100]

1 hour ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

EB Games here in Canada is at least 80% merch which seems to be growing every time I stop in the store every few months. They have a small section for Switch, PS4 (which they were already starting to ditch), and Xbox but everything else is shirts, toys, funko, etc. I don't see how them going out of business in Canada will have any affect on the used market.

I went in there last week for the first time in a while to grab that back button attachment for the Dualshock 4 and they didn't even have it. Then the guy said they had an amazing deal on used Wii U and PS4 games and it was a bunch of paper sleeves in a bin of the same 3 games for PS4 and about 300 copies of Hyrule Warriors for Wii U. Good stuff

It's getting this way in the USA too. Ever since they bought ThinkGeek which I thought was a good idea. They have a huge section for Funko Pops, lots of merch from ThinkGeek which is mostly cheap plastic junk with a vinyl decal slapped on, and maybe a rack with t-shirts. Oh, and one of the stores by me has a huge section for Hot Wheels, which I thought was dumb until I went in with my mom one time and she bought 5 of them. The stores mostly act as distros for online video game orders and pre-order distribution. Oh, and taking in trades (which include phones, tablets, w/e) which mostly get shipped to a warehouse (to be sold online, or in the case of phones, I think they just sell them to the phone carriers). What blows my mind is even when they have exclusive deals for games like Enter the Gungeon, most of the stores will only get 1 copy for the whole store... but then I've seen those games sit with no one buying them for days. The physical game market isn't what it used to be. 

[Andy_Bogomil | 816]

I also saw a post on Reddit this morning where one GS store was liquidating Xbox Ones and another GS location was giving higher trade credit than the other store was selling them for. Long story short this guy ended up getting about $900 in store credit for driving a number of Xbox consoles from one GS location to another.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Andy_Bogomil

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

2 minutes ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

I also saw a post on Reddit this morning where one GS store was liquidating Xbox Ones and another GS location was giving higher trade credit than the other store was selling them for. Long story short this guy ended up getting about $900 in store credit for driving a number of Xbox consoles from one GS location to another.

Saw that on twitter, good shit

[guitarzombie | 929]

10 minutes ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

I also saw a post on Reddit this morning where one GS store was liquidating Xbox Ones and another GS location was giving higher trade credit than the other store was selling them for. Long story short this guy ended up getting about $900 in store credit for driving a number of Xbox consoles from one GS location to another.

I always wonder if these people have jobs.

[MiamiSlice | 3,100]

13 minutes ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

I also saw a post on Reddit this morning where one GS store was liquidating Xbox Ones and another GS location was giving higher trade credit than the other store was selling them for. Long story short this guy ended up getting about $900 in store credit for driving a number of Xbox consoles from one GS location to another.

Saw that too. Did you see in the comments where people were saying something is fishy about it? There's supposed to be a limit to how many of a certain item you can trade in. Chances are an employee wasn't following procedure. 

[MiamiSlice | 3,100]

Also I love how in that picture all those Xbox Ones are NEW but some of them already have damaged boxes. Typical example of how stuff gets beat up just from sitting around at GameStop or going through their distro. I'm headed there today to return an item that I bought new (Psikyo Shooting Stars Alpha limited edition) which comes in a big box with shrinkwrap, because it was mailed to me in a bubble mailer. Basically A BAG. Of course it's banged up. And of course I ordered two because I figured I'd have to return one. 

Edited January 28, 2020 by MiamiSlice

[noiseredux | 232]

On 1/22/2020 at 1:16 AM, gamingsuperhero said:

Soon enough we wont even be getting any physical copies at all for any yard sales or gamestop (at least for disc based games). I noticed alot of these new games especially ps4 and one require online so you have no choice but to download most of the game since the disc only contains a piece of the full game thats not even playable. Now i have to check the cover and the contents for every game to see if i can play it straight from the disc. I always feel ripped off when I realize i can't even play the game straight from the disc and i have to wait for a huge dl to finish before I can play. Its almost like they are doing it on purpose just so you buy digital. Either that or they just rushed the hell out of the game for release which is most likely the case. Either way its disappointing for sure.

In fairness, I think there's times where all of the assets wouldn't fit on the disc. Maybe? I mean that's definitely the case with certain Switch games not being able to fit on a cartridge.

[Nintegageo | 582]

14 minutes ago, noiseredux said:

In fairness, I think there's times where all of the assets wouldn't fit on the disc. Maybe? I mean that's definitely the case with certain Switch games not being able to fit on a cartridge.

They can. The companies don't want to spend money on mini sd's with more memory so they screw the customer.

[gamingsuperhero | 3]

On 1/28/2020 at 11:55 AM, noiseredux said:

In fairness, I think there's times where all of the assets wouldn't fit on the disc. Maybe? I mean that's definitely the case with certain Switch games not being able to fit on a cartridge.

Not sure about that just yet. If anything nintendo got it right since the switch pretty much uses a memory stick they can increase the storage according to the size of the game unlike a disc where a dual layer bluray can hold like 50-60gigs max(something like that). I mean nintendo could if they wanted to but not sure if they will. I guess it really comes down to the developers and pressures of a release date to be able to fit a fully playable game on the disc/stick as well. I feel like they aren't using compressed files or something anymore cause it seems overkill with these 150gig games these days like call of duty. Its clear they must be rushing things more than ever to get the game out and not considering a playable game for the future without online required. Its sad how we have to fully rely for online to play these games. Even 360 has no more thumbnail pictures for games in your library unless you are connected online. Kinda shitty.

Edited January 31, 2020 by gamingsuperhero

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

In the interest of the thread, I took a look at their stock and see that it is back under $4/share.

It will be interesting to see what the eventual articles are about the dude from Big Short that went in big as a potential activist investor on these guys.

[Estil | 1,267]

On 1/16/2020 at 5:19 PM, snes_collector said:

But what about the 1000's of towns that have no other game stores besides GameStop? There will be no where to buy games other than Walmart, and no way to buy used

It's called shopping online.  I mean how else are you going to collect your SNES games?

Edited January 31, 2020 by Estil

[TDIRunner | 2,791]

12 hours ago, gamingsuperhero said:

If anything nintendo got it right since the switch pretty much uses a memory stick they can increase the storage according to the size of the game unlike a disc where a dual layer bluray can hold like 50-60gigs max(something like that).

It's pretty much the opposite.  The cost of the carts goes up as the games become bigger and require more space.  That is the main reason why some games come on the cart, but require the rest to be downloaded.  The publishers want to use the smaller and cheaper carts and just make the rest of the game a digital download.  It's also a contributing factor to why physical Switch games are more expensive most of the time.  And since Nintendo requires the digital games to be priced the same as the physical games, it also causes their digital games to be more expensive most of the time.

[fox | 1,694]

They will just dump their games at half price books or a pawn shop.

The kind of people who sell to GS want quick cash and no hassle.  They aren’t going to bother with setting up, pricing, and the haggling that hosting a garage sale would entail.

Edited February 1, 2020 by fox