If Ebay is the only option, is it worth it?

[Reprise]

The bulk of my collection is from ebay. Even living in the UK in a major city, finding games on certain systems is unlikely, often borderline impossible. I have never seen a PC Engine in the wild or anything like that.

I don't know about your part of the UK, but in my part of the country literally every single video games shop not called GAME (or CEX) has died

I used to have so many video games shops in my area growing up. Loads and loads, from chains to independents, modern to retro. It's such a shame

[Sload Soap]

I live in the north west so have Manchester and Liverpool to use. There's a few in Manchester but they have limited stock, many games are cart only or in bad shape and it's generally more expensive than ebay. Liverpool has less even less choice. It's a shame because I would like to use them but it's often not worth the cost.

[Erik_Twice]

In my European experience, the age of flea markets and second hand shops is over. Stock is all gone now and the little that's left is sold at worse-than-ebay prices. So, de facto, we all rely on Ebay.

Also, being honest, you can find the vast majority of games for a fair price. Collect only what you actually play and you'll do fine

[Anayo]

I've still been finding retro gaming stuff at thrift stores, flea markets, and pawn shops, but that might just be the way things are where I live. I have noticed lately 16-bit stuff seems to have dried up somewhat, whereas XBOX and XBOX 360 gets donated a lot.

[Reprise]

The problem is Ebay now controls the market and dictates the price. Supply and demand on a bigger scale, I guess. In the 'olden' days, video games stores and retro specialists were not only representing a smaller market, but they also would price based on the area they resided. So you'd get better deals, because the store would rather continue to move stock than have games taking up shelf space. Nowadays, people and stores just won't price or sell retro games without first checking Ebay listings and seeing what the current going rate is, which is always going up.

[Segata]

I gave up on local thrift stores. They caught on and now price things to eBay prices. Not to mention at some point some cunt discovered Thrift stores and is a reseller. Camps out and buys everything to well resell it online.

[Sarge]

I bought a decent amount of my collection on eBay, but that was also a good 10-15 years ago. I went nuts when I bought my Sega Genesis/CD and completed most of my RPG collection then. Sadly, I didn't actually buy any of the Sega CD games, since I had burned copies. But I definitely jumped on all the carts. Man, that had to have been 1999... sheesh, I'm getting old.

I used to get some good deals at a local pawn shop, but they've wised up, too. I haven't seen any truly rare games go through in a while, either. I think the last big pickup from them was Bucky O'Hare some time back. It's probably worse where the OP is from, but Mississippi isn't exactly a collector's paradise, either.

[Tanooki]

Ebay and this forum and others like it (even on facebook) would be your best bet. Amazon is not ideal but you can get rarely lucky there. Amazon themselves aren't the problem, it's the marketplace sellers as they tend to try and disclose and especially show as little as possible but ask for as much as they can usually in par or well in excess of what people pay on ebay.

Ebay is a crap shoot, but depending on poorly worded or spelled listings, popping in on a lower set BIN as it arrives on there, that's where you win best. There are tools you can use that will take a search and dumb the item spelling down pretty badly so idiotic listings show up for you.

If you go into this forum or the like (plus facebook) usually you can find better deals losing that 10% ebay charge, perhaps further more depending on generosity and being pleased not having to deal with the gamble of ebay screwing a seller over any made up excuse.

I know I have stuff I'm parting with as do many here so if someone fits it couldn't hurt to look into the marketplace as someone here may have something of use.