Your most embarrassing or pathetic trade-ins

[bangtango]

Hope this topic hasn't been done, I ran a search or two and came up empty.


Pretty much all of us have traded in games at some point, either to a pawn shop, a rental store or some other game store (Funco/Gamestop/etc) that takes in used games.

I'm not asking what games you regret trading in. That topic has been done a hundred times. I want to know the worst crap you have ever traded in, either for cash or credit. Stuff that a sensible person would have just taken to Goodwill or even thrown in the trash. Maybe you were desperate for store credit or cash. Maybe you just didn't have any shame or better judgment at the time. Maybe you just traded in some crap last week and knew better but were hoping you could squeeze by with a little junk.


Good candidates for this thread include:

-Games with food/drink stained labels, manuals or boxes
-Disc only copies of motocross, skateboarding or wrestling games
-Playstation 1 or 2 demos and magazine discs
-Cart games held together by tape
-Disc games covered with stickers or sharpie writing
-Heavily scratched disc games
-Loose boxes or manuals, minus the games
-Back issues of gaming magazines


I put this in Classic Gaming because you can go back to any era you want, no limits here.

Your story will be even better if a shop owner either scoffed at the stuff you were trading in or refused it and told you to take it home.


Myself, I don't have any great stories. Once I traded in a Genesis game without a label (I knew it was Sonic 3 for Genesis) and the owner said "Dammit, kid. I haven't even got a Genesis system in the shop right now to test it on."

There is actually a lady in my town who runs a second hand shop and she takes in disc only PS1 games and demos. She doesn't have any problem doing so, which means I won't count those games.

[Blitzwing256]

back when funco was selling the mario/duckhunt mario ,duck hunt, world class trackmeet and mario/duckhunt/trackmeet carts for 8 cents I bought all of them from every location in my area (a good 400 or so copies total)


ebgames at that point gave 2.00 for every nes game traded in and at the time they didn't have a limit on how many of a select game they could accept, so with a few very very dirty looks I picked up a few new games and a ton of decent used games at a couple difffernt ebs.

amusingly enough the next week they all had a new policy of only 1 of each game can be traded in at a time ;-)

[skaar]

back when funco was selling the mario/duckhunt mario ,duck hunt, world class trackmeet and mario/duckhunt/trackmeet carts for 8 cents I bought all of them from every location in my area (a good 400 or so copies total)


ebgames at that point gave 2.00 for every nes game traded in and at the time they didn't have a limit on how many of a select game they could accept, so with a few very very dirty looks I picked up a few new games and a ton of decent used games at a couple difffernt ebs.

amusingly enough the next week they all had a new policy of only 1 of each game can be traded in at a time ;-)

WINNER!

[DefaultGen]

.....

[SpasticFuctard]

Mine was to Joe (he wasn't there)

buncha stuff:
Gamecube, plus some games
Genny (with the footprint extender) and a cd, all the cables, an x32 (biggest footprint evars)
some sega cd games Ground Zero Texas and others, covered in crystallized cat pee.

crystallized.

pee.

[diskoboy]

A Virtual Boy that didn't work, at all.





But hey, I still got $60 for it, and the 2 games I had, so I'm not complaining. The guy behind the counter, where I sold it wanted it something bad....


Oh, and a Dreamcast version of Space Channel 5 where the jewel case looked like someone had shot it. But the game was in good shape.

[digitalpress]

Mine was to Joe (he wasn't there)

buncha stuff:
Gamecube, plus some games
Genny (with the footprint extender) and a cd, all the cables, an x32 (biggest footprint evars)
some sega cd games Ground Zero Texas and others, covered in crystallized cat pee.

crystallized.

pee.

You bastard! =D

I've blogged about this before and there have been dozens of unbelievably stupid trade-ins over the past year alone. And I don't mention every single one, but there's probably one really stupid one every week where I would personally be embarrassed if I were the seller/customer. Truth is, I have no problem embarrassing people right to their face in these extreme situations "just in case".

[ryborg]

back when funco was selling the mario/duckhunt mario ,duck hunt, world class trackmeet and mario/duckhunt/trackmeet carts for 8 cents I bought all of them from every location in my area (a good 400 or so copies total)


ebgames at that point gave 2.00 for every nes game traded in and at the time they didn't have a limit on how many of a select game they could accept, so with a few very very dirty looks I picked up a few new games and a ton of decent used games at a couple difffernt ebs.

amusingly enough the next week they all had a new policy of only 1 of each game can be traded in at a time ;-)

Haha, awesome. That's hilarious!

I don't have any funny store trade-in stories like these, but I have sold video game trash on ebay for a joke. A few years ago, I posted the "NES DREAM LOT!!!!" which included a NES console that looked like it had been dragged through the mud. It was missing most of its internals and obviously did not work.

I threw in a copy of SMB/DH with a torn label and corroded connectors and a non-working controller with exposed wires and marker stains everywhere. I accurately described everything and posted it for a penny. Somehow it ended up selling for ~$20 + whatever shipping was. Who would buy this?

[carlcarlson]

This isn't a trade-in in the normal sense, but it kind of fits.

A friend and I had been hitting the Blockbuster dumpster for about a month straight hoping for DVDs. In the meantime we aquired quite a collection of empty movie and game cases. I ended up selling them to someone on here (can't remember who) for around $500. $500 for garbage seems pretty good to me.

My only actual trade-in experience came when I got my first Genesis when I was probably 10 or so. I got it at a garage sale and it came with about 12 games, one of which was a Madden. I didn't partiuclary want it, so I decided to trade it in to Blockbuster. It had the case and manual and was in good shape, so I was all pumped to get ToeJam and Earl or Earthworm Jim or some such game. The guy running the counter offered me $1. I was so crushed I have never attempted to trade-in anything sense.

[CaptainFalcon13]

my sisters acquired games when they were younger, but the don't play them any more so I decided to cash in. At NextLevel Videogames I traded in...

Mary Kate and Ashley: winner's cicle
2 copies of DivaStars
Barbie Horse Racing
Elmo's ABC's
and
Barbie Secret Agent

[Push Upstairs]

I guess my most embarrassing trade-in would be X-men for NES. I bought a used NES for $20 and it came with a few games, and that was one of them.

I think I ended up getting 1 or 2 bucks in store credit for it.

My best was a for a bunch of import famicom strategy games/various other games I couldn't play. I got about $6 (store credit) a piece for cart only import games and I ended up getting close to $100 in credit. The store ended up changing their credit for import games (to like $2 a piece) because of the amount I brought in and the fact that none of them sold.

[Roufuss]

I was doing a round of Ebay, and I always double check the condition of the disc based games I sell under a bright light to detect ANY scratches at all before I ship them. I do this before I list them, but I also do it before I ship them, because I like to make doubly sure I know what I send out (and I may be one of the few sellers who does that, it seems, but that's a different thread )

Anyways, I sold Rogue Galaxy, and I don't know how it slipped by me, but the disc was a mess. Covered completely in deep scratches. I had got it awhile ago at a Gamestop b2g1 free on used game, and had a lot of stuff going on at the time and just forgot to check the disc or even try the game out.

I told the buyer about it, and told him I couldn't sell it to him in that condition, the game initially worked but who knew for how long or when it would freeze up / become unreadable.

So I figured Gamestop were the ones to sell me this horrible disc, Gamestop would get it back, so I decided to trade it in (this was a year or so after I bought it). The girl at the desk takes it, flips it over, and I'm thinking "Oh geez, here it comes, they don't want it" tells me "Hey, *looks great*" and precedes to give me my $8 in credit.

To this day I am still dumbfounded at how she could possibly take something like that in.

I also, and this one was by accident, traded in a PS3 Guitar Hero 3 guitar without the dongle attachment to Gamestop, and they took it.. not sure how they got that one to actually work.

[DigitalSpace]

There are stores that will take in boxes and manuals, if you're honest. For example, back in Kamino's collecting days, any boxes and manuals he didn't get rid of through DP got traded in at Dave2236's store in Green Bay.

I don't really have any great stories myself. When I got my N64, it came with a few wrestling games, and since I'm not into wrestling, I decided to get rid of them. However, only one of them didn't have its box (WWF War Zone) and most of the others had their manuals. I went to a CD/Game Exchange and actually got some decent credit for them.

Later on, I traded in some PSX games - Blue's Clues, Bob the Builder, and a wakeboarding game - and got decent credit for those too, probably because the discs were in nice shape.