TRU Now Accepting Trade-ins, including Atari 2600

[Shadow Kisuragi]

http://kotaku.com/5356376/toys-r-launches-game-trade+ins-nationwide


Yes, the Toys R Us trade-in program differs from many of their competition in that there is no cut-off point when a game is too old to be traded in. As long as the customer supplies the original game in the original packaging, they can exchange their games for store credit good at Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores, along with the corresponding online outlets.

"The video game trade-in program is another way we're providing customers with additional value when they visit our stores," said Bill Lee, Vice President, Divisional Merchandise Manager, Toys"R"Us, U.S. "This program is designed to make the exchange process completely hassle-free for customers by accepting games from even the oldest systems, including the original Atari 2600 and 32-bit Sega Genesis."

Outside of the odd vintage video game shop and online outlets like eBay, there really aren't many places you can take your old Intellivision, NES, or Sega Genesis games for store credit. Depending on the reaction to the program, this could make the Toys R Us used video game section a very interesting place to shop, with games we've not seen in ages popping up on store shelves.

...the original game in the original packaging. This means that ALL TRU trade-ins are going to be CIB, or at least CB. I can't wait to see what prices they set, but this sounds awesome.

EDIT: 32-bit Sega Genesis...lol.

[Dangerboy]

It'll also be interesting to see how they ruin them.

TRU tried this before a long time ago, back when the PSX and Saturn were the mainstream. You didn't need the boxes, either. I used to work for a family game store, and we took a lot of our excess SNES / Genesis stuff over there.

I watched as they placed the inventory stickers (the sticky, don't come off of anything kind) over the actual labels of the carts. It was clear the people buying back didn't care about the condition.

[portnoyd]

If they require original boxes, please god... PLEASE let them be a little tactful when stickering them.

As DB said, I won't hold my breath.

[wufners]

I saw a bin last weekend of used games at Toys R Us.

I don't remember the titles, but they appeared to be mostly, if not all, Wii games. And not the AAA titles.

The games were $17.99 and shrink wrapped, so the stickers weren't directly on the game. Unless they put the stickers on first then shrink wrapped. But I don't think they'd be that retarded. Er, right?

I was excited at first, but the crummy selection and high price lost my interest quickly.

[BetaWolf47]

The games were $17.99 and shrink wrapped, so the stickers weren't directly on the game. Unless they put the stickers on first then shrink wrapped. But I don't think they'd be that retarded. Er, right?

Sadly, I've seen it done before. Shame, because the shrinkwrap job was done well enough to look like a factory seal. The "LOLOLOL USED!" label underneath the wrap was a dead giveaway though...

[Oobgarm]

Apparently they're not selling them though, only taking in:

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/09/10/toys-r-us-rolls-out-national-game-trade-in-program-classic-game/

Titles are shipped off to a third party.

[BetaWolf47]

Apparently they're not selling them though, only taking in:

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/09/10/toys-r-us-rolls-out-national-game-trade-in-program-classic-game/

Titles are shipped off to a third party.

Oh, so it's really no different than what Best Buy is doing...

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Yeah, I figured as much...they don't have the shelf space for resale. I sincerely hope that this 3rd party company won't charge an arm and leg for everything.

[Arcade Antics]

I sincerely hope that this 3rd party company won't charge an arm and leg for everything.

Of course they will. They're trying to corner the market.

[portnoyd]

Just who the hell is getting these games? Whoever it is is going to likely target people like us and/or eBay and make a killing, especially if everything is CB/CIB.

[iycon]

oh thank god! Now I have somewhere to turn in my old CIB Colecovision, Genesis, and Dreamcast games for that copy of Call of Duty Modern Warfare:puke:

[NESGamer24]

oh thank god! Now I have somewhere to turn in my old CIB Colecovision, Genesis, and Dreamcast games for that copy of Call of Duty Modern Warfare:puke:
They never said anything about how much you would get back. So your response should be that you will get credit towards the new game. You will still prob owe atleast $20. LOL

[iycon]

They never said anything about how much you would get back. So your response should be that you will get credit towards the new game. You will still prob owe atleast $20. LOL

Dang, your right! I'll probably have to include the N64 and NeoGeo stuff...and the Saturn, TG16.....maybe they'll buy the CIB consoles to...X_x

[portnoyd]

Btw, sidebets on the first week or so, sports games giving huge trade-in prices, that we abuse the hell out of?

With any luck, it'll be as bad as FYE's $14 for a $5 TRU copy of Drake and the 99 Dragons.

[Dangerboy]

I'll trade in the 3 Burger King games and Madden 06 if they give me more than $1 each for them

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Btw, sidebets on the first week or so, sports games giving huge trade-in prices, that we abuse the hell out of?

With any luck, it'll be as bad as FYE's $14 for a $5 TRU copy of Drake and the 99 Dragons.

I used to do that all the time with GameStop and eBay. I ended up making $400/month just reselling games between GameStop and eBay during college, depending on when GameStop was running promotions and trends on eBay.

I'm waiting for Joystiq to update that article with the retailer so that we can (hopefully) pounce on the deals before they realize that their prices are off.

[Game Freak]

Does anyone else fear that this will cripple yard sale sales on games? I fear for the worst, especially here in MA where we have quite a few TRUs.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

That's a good point...unfortunately, yard sales around me have been pathetic as of late, but TRU is not a big presence here. I think this probably won't catch on in my area, but it may in others.

[8-bitNesMan]

This is quite bizarre. Are they going to take CIB dirt cheap commons and turn up their nose at cart only Earthbounds and Chrono Triggers? I am dying to know who this shadow company behind the scenes is. I bet whoever it is is connected up with the VGA morons...

*EDIT* Found this info on Wikipedia, I bet this company will have a hand in this venture:

"Toys "R" Us, after winning the right to end its contract with Amazon.com, forged a partnership with GSI Commerce, a company specializing in running e-commerce sites."

My theory is that they are panning for gold. Since TRU is not going to resell the trade-ins at the store level they will probably keep the good stuff to sell online and throw the rest away.

[otoko]

My theory is that they are panning for gold. Since TRU is not going to resell the trade-ins at the store level they will probably keep the good stuff to sell online and throw the rest away.


I don't think (or hope) they would throw away something they even gave credit for. That seems like a bad business strategy. I could see it happening where they do keep good stuff, but shuffle around everything else. Maybe sell the common not so profitable games in lots to game stores around the country in bulk. Who knows. Either way I do agree they're probably panning for gold here.

[Kitsune Sniper]

I don't suppose they'll take PC games too, huh?

Edit: That Kotaku post says they use a site called Gamers Factory for trade-in prices. They have "Generic Prices" for systems such as the PS1 (20 cents), Dreamcast (25 cents), Saturn (50 cents, wtf)... This is not going to work.

[GrandAmChandler]

I don't suppose they'll take PC games too, huh?

Edit: That Kotaku post says they use a site called Gamers Factory for trade-in prices. They have "Generic Prices" for systems such as the PS1 (20 cents), Dreamcast (25 cents), Saturn (50 cents, wtf)... This is not going to work.

Awesome! What can I get for 20 cents credit at Toys R Us? Hell the thermal paper probably costs about that to print the slip!

[BetaWolf47]

Edit: That Kotaku post says they use a site called Gamers Factory for trade-in prices. They have "Generic Prices" for systems such as the PS1 (20 cents), Dreamcast (25 cents), Saturn (50 cents, wtf)... This is not going to work.

Hahahah, I hope that's a mistake. Even Gamestop and PnT prices beat the **** out of that. What a joke.

[Greg2600]

This whole thing makes no sense.

[Dr. Dib]

I wouldn't be surprised if they do get a few people stupid enough to trade in games for that bad of prices. People trade in to Gamestop no matter how badly they are getting ripped of, so why not get ripped off at the old TRU?

[The 1 2 P]

Hahahah, I hope that's a mistake. Even Gamestop and PnT prices beat the **** out of that. What a joke.

If Gamestop gives you a better trade-in credit than you know this program will be dead on arrival.

[TonyTheTiger]

What's in it for Toys R Us? If they want to offer jack shit in credit for old games then they could stand to make a lot more money by tossing everything in a bargain bin and selling them at reasonable prices. What do they get, outside of what's probably a smaller piece of the pie, by basically being some other company's gopher?

[Melf]

They wanted to give me $3-5 for some 360 games and $.99 for PS2 games, so I can't imagine how it would be worth it to bring in anything older than that.

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't think (or hope) they would throw away something they even gave credit for.
Some stuff will be too bad / lousy to resell.

Our T "R" U closed years ago, but in any case I'm just pretending this isn't happening.

[Gameguy]

What's in it for Toys R Us? If they want to offer jack shit in credit for old games then they could stand to make a lot more money by tossing everything in a bargain bin and selling them at reasonable prices. What do they get, outside of what's probably a smaller piece of the pie, by basically being some other company's gopher?
They aren't paying cash, it's just store credit. It basically just gets more people into the store, so hopefully they'll buy stuff while they're there. If you do end up getting some trade in credit, you're forced to buy something way more expensive to use it up(get $0.50 credit off a new $30 game, etc).

Why not just go to a pawn shop? Won't they buy that stuff for the same amount? Like for next to nothing? I still don't get why people actually accept low credits like that, there are lots of people who do trade in their old games for next to nothing and are just fine with that.

[InsaneDavid]

Alright kids, this is how it works.

TRU actually started this in all stores about a month ago. Games are shipped off to be warehoused and then will be sorted and flow back to the stores once an inventory has been built up. Current internal information points to this being a 1 to 2 year cycle until you start seeing used games for sale company wide.

Trades are handled at the service desk. All games are scanned using the service client terminal, not the POS registers. There's an application that was rolled out a week before the trade in program began specifically to catalog what's coming in. Yes, your stuff needs to be complete. However there's a way around that as well (read on).

The application is launched and the game(s) being traded in are scanned via a UPC scanner. This cross references the database and returns a trade in value amount. These values are not published in advance (ie the old FuncoLand papers) so they are totally blind and are subject to change day to day (hour to hour if you want to get technical about how the system works). The service attendant will let you know what the trade value is and ask if you accept or decline the offer. If you decline the game is not retained and the next game is scanned. If you accept then the attendant will retain the game, add the value to your current running total and scan the next game if you have more to offer.

If a scanned game doesn't match anything in the database then a generic UPC is scanned out of a handbook. Each platform has a generic UPC. Of course the generic UPC means that all games that do not match a title in the database will have the same trade in value across each platform. Games that have an old UPC (such as boxed NES titles) or boxes that predate usage of UPC barcodes (such as boxed Atari 2600 titles) will be scanned in using their respective generic UPC barcode out of the handbook. The handbook also has a generic UPC for loose games across each platform, however at this time stores are being instructed to ignore that UPC and that part of the program.

After all the games you wish to trade have been scanned in, your final trade value is totaled and a pair of worksheets print. One of them is a sheet listing the trade in number, UPC of each title traded, the value of each title traded, the grand total, and the merchandise voucher number. This gets filed with the games and is sent with them when the games are shipped to the warehouse. The other worksheet is essentially a waiver / contract that you must sign and date stating that you surrender the games for the trade in value, etc. A TRU merchandise voucher card is scanned and issued with the trade in value on it. It can be used for anything either at TRU or Babies R Us, essentially it works like any merchandise voucher card / gift card.

Personally I've made out pretty good with the service and made sure to throw all the curve balls I could think of at it during the first week of implementation. Trade values are pretty spread out across the board. During the first week of the program I had the following results of note...

Boxed Atari 2600 games under the generic UPC hit at $0.50 each.
Boxed NES games under the generic UPC hit at $0.50 each.

Now where it got interesting was with the following. About three months ago all the TRU stores in the area got massive amounts of old GBA game inventory at $5.00 each. At the same time a 3 for $10.00 GBA games offer began. A week later a buy 1 game, get $5.00 off another game offer was running as well. The two offers stacked together, so essentially it became 6 GBA games for $10.00. I purchased massive quantities of GBA games during this time and stored them away. When the trade program began a few months later I checked out what the trade values were.

I had 12 copies of Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis for the GBA (awful game, slow, buggy, etc.) that amazingly hit $5.00 each trade in value. For the 12 copies I had paid $20.00 total. $5.00 x 12 = $60.00 - $20.00 = $40.00 profit for holding onto some games for a few weeks. Heck, I was able to play the games and still make money off them. It's essentially like having money roll back out of the register. A bunch more GBA games from that sale traded back at $2.60 each, a $5.60 profit for every six traded in. We're talking like Petz GBA games.

Boogie PS2 microphone bundle was clearanced down to $3.00. The games out of the bundle boxes (have their own bar code) traded back in at $2.60 each. That means I ended up with a bunch of $0.40 Rockband microphones.

On the other side of the coin a coworker brought in a bunch of PS1 games, of which none of them matched anything in the database. Instead the generic complete PS1 UPC was $0.25 per game. I ended up buying four of the games for $20 off him (FFVII, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs. Street Fighter) - yeah I'm a bastard, but he was going to trade everything in for like $30.00 store credit at a comic store if I didn't buy them.

A couple people traded in some Wii and DS value titles ($14.99 - $19.99 new) and were hitting between $7.00 and $9.00 per game, which isn't that bad. If anything it's being used as an alternative to people trying to return opened games or games without receipts.

Moral of the story is - at the present time if you have a bunch of relatively recent (back as far as PS2 / GBA) junk in a trade box somewhere, you might as well take it in and see what you can get. I haven't tried any Dreamcast stuff but I think it might fall under the same criteria of the PS1 games. I have yet to see a PS1 game match the database for an individual value. If you see a $5.00 clearance game at TRU that looks interesting, you can basically rent it for a couple bucks and trade it back in for at least half the value. When the cheap sales roll around (such as now, buy 1 get $5.00 off a second $19.99 or under) you can earn free money buy buying two of a cheap $5.00 clearance game you want, then trading the second free one back in for a couple bucks store credit. It does add up.

There's no limit to how much you trade in but the system will only allow three of the same title per trade in voucher. Of course you'll just end up with multiple merchandise vouchers if you have a lot of multiple copies of a game. At the current time no stickers are being applied to the games. They are simply being placed in boxes with the corresponding stack of worksheets and sent out like any other RTV shipment.

Also TRU ditched Amazon.com due to their recent acquisition of eToys.

[garagesaleking!!]

this is very interesting, might have to check it out, so its in store only?

[cyberfluxor]

Thanks for the extended info Dave, very helpful. I'll have to let some friends know as an FYI and maybe a few game store people so they have a heads up. Interesting stuff.

[The 1 2 P]

I don't have enough recent stuff to really use it. Plus, store credit wouldn't do me much good considering Toys R Us stores around here rarely ever have anything worth buying.

[portnoyd]

So basically the system is going to be abused like it's a science. Awesome. I will have to spy around my TRU for deals.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Thanks for the solid information. I'll check out my local TRU and see what kind of deals they have currently.

[SparTonberry]

Alright kids, this is how it works.
Also TRU ditched Amazon.com due to their recent acquisition of eToys.

Off topic. But didn't eToys go out of business YEARS ago? :P

[BetaWolf47]

Quick question: what about pre-2600 systems?

[InsaneDavid]

Off topic. But didn't eToys go out of business YEARS ago? :P

A few times actually. From what I understand KB Toys acquired their holdings and then when KB Toys filed for bankruptcy TRU acquired the eToys brand name and remaining holdings.

[Ro-J]

Btw, sidebets on the first week or so, sports games giving huge trade-in prices, that we abuse the hell out of?

With any luck, it'll be as bad as FYE's $14 for a $5 TRU copy of Drake and the 99 Dragons.

TRU's trade-in prices can all be found here (http://www.toysrustradeincenter.com/PS2/Default.aspx). Old sports games, PS2 anyway, are hovering around 5 cents.

I love how under the "Generic Game" section a picture of Earthbound is used for the SNES.

[slapdash]

I can guarantee that eToys is back, as we've put them online (I work for ShopLocal.com). And TRU just bought FAO Schwarz too. Are they the last toy store standing??

[SparTonberry]

TRU's trade-in prices can all be found
I love how under the "Generic Game" section a picture of Earthbound is used for the SNES.

And their generic PS1 game is the PAL version of Metal Gear Solid.

[mezrabad]

Weird, a copy of Fallout 3 for the 360 gets $25.00 while a copy of the Fallout 3 Collector's Edition for the 360 gets $17.50...

[Muscelli]

I acquired hundreds of sealed SS sports games just for the jewel cases, since then I sold off most of the jewel cases or used them of myself. Are they going to require jewel cases for sega saturn games? I have all the inserts, manuals, etc.

[InsaneDavid]

Weird, a copy of Fallout 3 for the 360 gets $25.00 while a copy of the Fallout 3 Collector's Edition for the 360 gets $17.50...

A lot of that has to do with how it was clearanced out company wide. It's a vague attempt at trying to prevent the trade in program from becoming a "trade up" program - having the trade value for things be more than they can be bought for on the sales floor.

But as with most things TRU (and most businesses honestly) the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing.

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

I noticed the same type strange thing with Growlanser Generations for the PS2. They were offering less for the bonus pack than for just the game. Granted they were still only offering $5.

JY