It amazes me when I go shopping at the mall and I walk into a store like Hot Toys. The store clerks there (probably also the owners) hate me. Why? It's not because I do any damage, but I can't help it but to laugh when they have a boxed NES that comes with mario/duck hunt for $150. So the NES in there has a 150% mark up off the original price when it was brand new and around a 180-200% mark up from eBay. Wonderful.

I can make the same complaint about flea markets and the goodwill, but at least with those places, you can find deals with people selling their old collections. It's much easier to find a copy of Mario RPG or Secret of Mana for $10 at a flea market rather than $40-$50 that most mom and pop stores run. I can bet my left arm that most of these places use eBay to get their inventory, as if nobody else can.

I've seen stories on here about people beating their heads into the wall over thrift stores and not being able to find anything. Do you ever get this feeling about classic video game stores as well, or do you just go in with the expectation that they will have outrageous prices and unreasonable inventory (mind you that the games in these stores do tend to be in pretty bad shape)? I've seen stories on here about thrift store success as well. I have never seen a success story about a classic video game store.