Wii Warm Up: Trade-ins

by Chris Greenhough on Apr 9th 2008 9:00AM

News of GameStop's trade-in offer on Mario Kart Wii may well have had some of you sifting through your collections for those barely used copies of Cabela's Big Game Hunter and Carnival Games, but is trading in your games a regular thing for you kids? This blogger has always been something of an anti-hoarder, and consequently I've become a serial trader in the last year or two, after discovering that reasonable deals could be had on the high street, if you look in the right places.

Tags: cabelas-big-game-hunter, carnival-games, gamestop, mario-kart, special-offer, trade-in, wwu

Reader Comments (36)

I only traded one game in ever because I thought it sucked ass and anything would be better.
Generally, though, if I buy a game it's because I know I'll like it and want to come back to it years later.

Trading in games is such a waste of money.

For most newish £30 games you get £15 back in credit. That's a loss of 50%. And that's if the game was fairly recent, for older games the value for money is even less.

Instead of trading, if I do decide to get rid of a game, I'll put it on ebay or Amazon. The fees are relatively cheap and tend to get more money.

But I do hate the feeling of selling a game only to regret it a day or two later. Oh how I miss Canvas Curse.

Never traded in a game. After my friend got like $2 for a pretty decent game (at Eb games), I was turned off from the idea.

Nah, I don't trade in games. I like adding on to my collection, even if I don't play that games that much. When I do want to play it, it's there waiting for me. I am alright with buying used games, just not selling mine.

I never trade-in either, especially at Gamestop. I don't really agree with their "buy low, sell sky high" attitude toward used games.

I will NEVER trade in my games to gamestop or ebgames. just like how they have this trade in thing here --> 2 Games ON A LIST for a $10 Mario Kart Wii game. and most of the games on the list are $50!!! FUCK that!!

I miss Funcoland they where way better then Gamestop. Funcoland would let you play any game before you bought it in the store.

If you have a game crazy, they are the video game stores in hollywood video, they let you play any game before buying it too. Also, there trade in's are generally higher than game stops.

Right on Scotty. I never trade-in anymore. It's worth the patience to wait for your game to sell on ebay, than to get screwed by gamestop.

Gamestop are a bunch of f*cking vampires.

NEVER trade your games in there. Flip them on eBay. You make out better.

I keep everything I buy. I'll hold onto my copy of Red Steel until I die.

Trade is has been rather good to be, I get rid of all the games I should not have bought and get ones I should have in their place....I remember buying Zelda: PH awhile after it came out for £17 and then just last week trading it in for £12, that's £5 for a really really long rent.....Sounds good to me.
I always keep the better/rarer games anyways.

That's actually a good way to look at it - as a long-term rental. For most games, why keep them if you've beat it and there's no incentive to replay it? Just trade it in and get credit towards something you want rather than have it sit on your shelf collecting dust.

I've totally soured on the idea of trade-ins since i got for Pokemon Stadium, a game i paid $70 for, including the transfer pak, about $0.50 back, and then bought Bomberman 64 used for $12

I figured out how ridiculous the whole concept was at that point

I am forced to gamestop around here. Not much else. But I can't complain. Gamestops not all bad. I can say though, I HAVE NEVER TRADED IN A GAME AND NEVER WILL!!! I dont like the thought of it........it scares me .........

I've never traded in one of my own games. I really don't feel that it is worth it.

However, in the past when there has been a special deal to get a new game I want cheap (like with this Mario Kart deal), I have gone on Ebay to buy games on the cheap and trade them in.

I trade in, seeing as I can't sell online. Or really anywhere else.

It's proven useful for me, though. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to get Nanostray 2 or Geometry Wars: Galaxies DS.

If you do the trade-ins right, they are completely worth it. I bought NMH, beat it in a week, and traded it in for $42 store credit. So basically I owned the game for 7 days for $8. If you hold onto a game for more than six months though, there really isn't any trade value left. It'd be better to trade with friends for actual games, which I've done before too. In that way, I trade a game worth $50-$60 for another game worth the same.

I have been burnt a few times though. You should never trade-in sports titles after they've been out for more than two months and you should always ask the value before you complete the trade. I want my copy of Madden 05 (XBOX) back after they gave me $1 for it.

Also, here's a giant tip for gamers: Gamestop/EBGames allows you to return used games within 7 days of their purchase for a full refund. You usually only save $5 on the used title but if it's short or doesn't fit your style, return it for something different or your money back.

I did that with Obscure: The Aftermath. I had it for, oh I'd say, 2 days. 2 whole days, 48 hours. It's taken me much longer to really hate a game. I HATE Obscure. Everything about it is horrible. And I mean everything, No Widescreen, no 480p. I don't know why I bought it, I thought it looked good. Boy was I wrong. At least it was only $30 and I got my money back.

On that note, I wonder if Baroque is any good?

I only trade in games i know I don't like.. which is very rare. but i'm almost anti ebgames and gamestop trading. people made more money off of me selling things on ebay.. and i think that's the real way to do it.

And really.. by one game and get another free... trade in two games to get one with 10 dollars. So is you pay for 2 good games for almost 100 dollars.. you get a 50 dollar game with the discount price of 10 dollars? I don't need their credit to get games.. I just want to get rid of games and get something back.

I never trade in my games. I sold my N64 and a bunch of games when I was younger... I totally regret it now.

No matter how bad a game is, I'll never trade (or sell) it away.

GO TO goozex.com ! It is great!

I never trade in games either...unless I can get a minimum credit of double the money I spent on the game. :)

Not only are the wii game "deals" really sucky, their advertisement towards buying things cheap and getting a good price out of it isn't good. I'm a PS360wii owner and I can safely say that I have never shopped at Gamestop for their games. I prefer to give my business to the little guy, like Target.

I traded one game in, and the game was worth more to keep than to trade in. Won't be getting rid of any more of my games, even if my copy of "Bubble Bobble: Revolution" is bugged and I can't get the true ending of the classic game because I have no one to play the 2-player mode with.

I trade in games, such as old Gameboy Advance games that no one would buy no matter how long I let them sit on Ebay...

I do love how people assume they're getting all or most of their money back on a trade-in. On average, you get about half (sometimes a third) of the games re-sell value. That's just business. If you bought a game for $60, and it currently sells for $20 brand new, here's a bit of a news flash, Einstein: you aren't getting $60 for it...

There are TONS of things we can complain about when it comes to GameStop, but trade-ins? That's just plain silly.

I doubt you'd find anyone who thought they were getting all their money back on a game they payed full MSRP on. The trick is to buy games at a price much, much less than the MSRP...and also, much, much less than the credit you'd get for trading it in. My second brand-new Wii GH3 bundle cost me $30 out-of-pocket.

Another trick: arbitrage. Buy at one store for, say, $30 when Gamestop is still selling it at $50. Play it through and return to GS for $25.

Right now, Gamecrazy has a bunch of Sega games on sale at prices that are nearly equal to Gamestop's trade-in value. So if you catch it at the right time, you could potentially have a few-months of 'free rental'.

I don't have to. I work at GameStop, if I want a game that somebody is trading in, I buy it off them personally. I got CoD4 for $35, because the store offered them $30. Hell, on average, I've paid about $30 per game for my entire PS3 library.

But, as you can see from the comments, there are people who are expecting to get back close to MSRP. GameStop is a business, a pawn shop, to be precise. No pawn shop is going to give you anywhere near what you paid for an item, and they're sure as hell not going to give you more than half of what they're going to resell it for.

Back on topic: when I was younger, I sold my Colecovision (well, more accurately, my parents sold it) so I could get a Sega Genesis; then I sold my Genesis to buy a N64. Nowadays, I regret selling those two systems, and since the N64, I've become a hoarder and don't sell games. Unless I really, really don't like them.

Trading in games is pointless. You can get a lot more money for just selling them yourself.

I never trade in games. I do this partially because I like to hoard, but it is also the romantic idea that my collection helps to represent where gaming has been in the years that I have been playing. It's kinda like a time capsule I store away in my closet when I have no space.

Also, to push my gaming taste upon others with loaners. I've converted several to Katamari Damacy and the message from the Prince of the Cosmos.

no way. game stop sucks and i'd rather hate a game on my rack than give them the satisfaction of ripping off me and the person they sell it to. even further, i won't even buy used games there either, most of them look like they used to cover a hole in the bottom of a shoe for a month. and right in front of you, if you do buy one, the retard clerks drop the discs, smudge their filthy hand on them. i hate game stop. they have no "deals". they just screw you with a smile,

Still looking but you can get the cars game from amazon from amazon used for $15 (free shipping too)

Buy 2 ($30) +$10= $40 from mario kart

Wii Warm Up: Trade-ins

Reader Comments (36)

Posted: Apr 9th 2008 9:10AM samfish said

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