The absolute worst pawn shop experience ever

[blissfulnoise]

I've never had anything like this happen to me.

I'm out with my wife doing some shopping this weekend, and we hit a few pawn shops. Nothing in any except some old loose Genesis sports carts and copies of Double Dribble, when I spot a stack of old game manuals.

I think about offering for the whole lot but it looks like a lot of junk and some photocopied manuals. I ask to take a look at the stack, and the owner is nice about it and makes a joke about getting me not getting them for free. That's fine, I wasn't expecting to.

I pick out about 13 manuals (nothing stellar, Mystical Ninja on SNES, Ninja Gaiden III on NES, and Rock & Roll Racking on SNES are best of the lot) and tell the owner I'd like them.

He says, well, he prices off of eBay. I say, ok, I'll give you a dollar a manual.

He proceeds to tell me he's going to have to look up each manual on eBay and get me a total price, but, ON TOP OF THAT, he's too busy to do it now and that I could call back on Monday.

I explain to the guy, who obviously has no idea of the worth of these manuals, that one dollar per manual is a fair offer and that he'd be lucky to find any bidding history for individual manuals on eBay.

Nope, he says he has "other ways" of finding out their value.

I tell him that he should probably sell his damn manuals on eBay instead of jerking around people and wasting their time.

What a tool-sac.

Anyway, thought I would share with the group. For what it's worth, the shop was located right next to a very cool comic shop in downtown Longmont, Colorado. I forget the name though.

If you live near there please go by and hit him in the face for me.

[vespertillio]

Ouch, I've never had a pawn experience like that. Most of the bad ones I have had is where there is something I want on the floor and they won't sell it because it has not been 30 days. I hate that, if you don't want to sell it, don't put it out. You need to come down to Denver more. (Like my VG night for example ) That and bring those MAME dvd's with you.

[-hellvin-]

Heh, what a moron. Oh well, at least it was nothing stellar and he screwed himself out of a fair amount for something no one else will probably want to buy. He got what he deserved ;D.

[sabre2922]

I came to the realization that the majority of Pawnshop owners or "employees" are morons when it comes to video games or just about anything else that has to do with computers or them there fancy electronic gizmos

The last time I even bothered to check out a Pawnshop in my area they had a small selection of PSX games most of wich had busted cases or none at all so I ask the simpleton "manager" if they had any PS2 games he then goes on to tell me in his own vocabulary challenged way that "We dont sell many of them Playstation games cause noone every buys em but we sure still sell them NINTENDO GAMES"
He also said that they pay more for N64 games than Playstation games and I took it that he was including PS2 wich I highly doubt he knows the difference.
also he didnt even know what a Gamecube was x_x

[Mr.Faxanadu]

Hmmm.... maybe he figured you were a collector and knew something that he didn't.

[goatdan]

[Putting on my GOAT Store Glasses...]

If I had a brick and mortar store, and you offered me $13.00 for manuals that I had that were not associated with any other games and I didn't know any of them by name, I would HAPPILY sell them to you for that price. The last thing that I would want is for you to walk out of the store after offering me money for something like that with the chance that you wouldn't come back. To tell you to come back on Monday, my options are only to:

- Raise the price if I find something I didn't know out
- Give you the same price

Both ways, you lose. If I was put into that position and I hadn't looked at the manuals and you had asked if you could buy 13 for $13, I would've asked for $20 to see what you said, hoping to settle on $15.00. That way, I get a little more, you get the goods now and everyone's happy.

Hell, if the guy pays himself $10 / hour and it takes one hour to look up each to get a price, then he would have to increase the price by at least $10.00 to pay himself for the time he spent looking them up online. That's crazy.

I have an entire, HUGE box of manuals just chilling for the GOAT Store right now because I try to team them up with loose games, but often times just leave them there. If you saw it, and picked out 13 for games that I didn't have and ones I knew weren't super-high sought after, I'd sell them to you in a heartbeat.

Ah well. It does amaze me how some places can stay in business!

[Raedon]

Man, am I glad I got into collecting before everyone thought a ET 2600 cart was gold.

Luckly, people will realize they have got crap sooner or later and with the market flooded this will go away. But I'd forget about finding rare nes games in the wild.. it seems NES is the one system people see the rares without knowing anything about the system. I mean.. Bubble Bath Babes, I'd never see that in the wild here.

[Necromutant]

Hehehe, I am pretty sure that I have been in that very pawn shop in the last few months. I'm up in Loveland and went through that area looking for anything cool, but found a whole lot of nothing. Guess it is a good thing there was nothing (that I saw), based on the reaction you got to tying to buy something at his store, what where you thinking going into his store and wasting his time trying to buy things!

[tholly]

nothing like turning away money....thats a great business ethic....tell your customers you dont want their money, but that they should come back later and maybe you would sell it to them then


oh well, they're his manuals, so what can you do

[Videogamerdaryll]

I've never had anything like this happen to me.

I'm out with my wife doing some shopping this weekend, and we hit a few pawn shops. Nothing in any except some old loose Genesis sports carts and copies of Double Dribble, when I spot a stack of old game manuals.

I think about offering for the whole lot but it looks like a lot of junk and some photocopied manuals. I ask to take a look at the stack, and the owner is nice about it and makes a joke about getting me not getting them for free. That's fine, I wasn't expecting to.

I pick out about 13 manuals (nothing stellar, Mystical Ninja on SNES, Ninja Gaiden III on NES, and Rock & Roll Racking on SNES are best of the lot) and tell the owner I'd like them.

He says, well, he prices off of eBay. I say, ok, I'll give you a dollar a manual.

He proceeds to tell me he's going to have to look up each manual on eBay and get me a total price, but, ON TOP OF THAT, he's too busy to do it now and that I could call back on Monday.

I explain to the guy, who obviously has no idea of the worth of these manuals, that one dollar per manual is a fair offer and that he'd be lucky to find any bidding history for individual manuals on eBay.

Nope, he says he has "other ways" of finding out their value.

I tell him that he should probably sell his damn manuals on eBay instead of jerking around people and wasting their time.

What a tool-sac.

Anyway, thought I would share with the group. For what it's worth, the shop was located right next to a very cool comic shop in downtown Longmont, Colorado. I forget the name though.

If you live near there please go by and hit him in the face for me.

I'd tell him to shove the manuals straight up his ASS!!!!

[Cauterize]

If you live near there please go by and hit him in the face for me.

! Sorry, but im too far away!

I hate those people who have latched onto evilbay, its spoiling our finds big time!

[Griking]

The thing that would pissed me off the most that I would have asked him would be why did he even have them out on the floor in the first place obviously for sale if he didn't know how much he wanted for them?

You don't have the time to look up a price now, well I don't have the time to come back when you eventually decide what you want for them.

[WanganRunner]

What a douchebag.

These pawn shop/thrift owners need to understand that they don't have the luxury of charging ebay prices unless they're.....*gasp*....actually SELLING on ebay.


The reason you can get so high a price on ebay is that essentially anyone in the world can bid on your item. Anyone in the world cannot go into that pawn shop and physically buy it, and the owners SHOULD know that, so they need to settle for the highest price they can realistically recieve from their limited demographic, rather than what the true world price is.

And to be honest, it's best for them just to settle for that. When you're ALSO a brick and mortar business, you can't be adding ebay listing fees and paypal fees into the mix, it gets too expensive when you're already paying rent, insurance, blah blah blah on your brick-and-mortar location. The operating margins are just totally different between those two types of businesses, and unless you've got a really extraordinary item, you need to pick one tactic or the other. They can't afford to NOT sell you those manuals, because they sure as hell can't afford to list them on ebay and have them NOT sell when they're already paying tons of rent $$$ for a place to show them off physically.

People are effin' stupid.

[Jibbajaba]

This is pretty much the same thing that happened to me with thre TurboDuo this weekend. I saw it in the store, asked how much it was, got a "come back tommorow", then when I went back, the guy STILL had to go check on the internet to see how much it was worth. Why was it in the display case with the other stuff for sale? Thanks for jerking me around....

Problem was, unlike game manuals, the TurboDuo could have been worth the trouble.

Chris

[Cmosfm]

I've been asked to "come back tommorow" before, for the same reasons you guys have been. The thing is, I'm usually out of town when that happens. I tell them, simply, "I'm 100 miles away from home, I will never be through this area again, I have money now...take it or leave it"

They take it.

[Muscelli]

darn, what an idiot...
he could have at least priced them before decideing to put them up for sale

[fishsandwich]

What an ass! "Come back later."

Price it BEFORE you put it out!

I also HATE it when you go to a game shop and the N64 boxes (or any box, for that matter) are "for display only" and you get the loose cart. I won't buy it.

I went to an independent shop in North Carolina (GSO) and the N64 game was $10 but he charged me $14 for the complete game. I would have made a stinky but I was in a good mood and in a hurry. I'll make a stinky later...

Assmunch!

[jajaja]

I dont see why this is so bad..?
The guy thinks that he might make more money on Ebay selling them, whats wrong with that?
And its also his manuals. But sure.. it might be annoying to not get the manuals if you wanted them. Looks like you wanted them really bad hehe

I tell him that he should probably sell his damn manuals on eBay instead of jerking around people and wasting their time.

Did you realy take this tone? If I were the clerk/owner of the store I would never sell it to a customer like that.

[Bluteg]

I also HATE it when you go to a game shop and the N64 boxes (or any box, for that matter) are "for display only" and you get the loose cart. I won't buy it.

I went to an independent shop in North Carolina (GSO) and the N64 game was $10 but he charged me $14 for the complete game. I would have made a stinky but I was in a good mood and in a hurry. I'll make a stinky later...

I hate that too. My closest Game Xchange leaves NES-N64 boxes out like that.

I went to the counter with a Paper Mario and the guy goes back behind the wire shelves where they keep extra carts/discs and looks through a stack about 5 Paper Mario's. Two were at least boxed! He brings me a shrinkwrapped loose cart. I asked if I could have one in the box and he told me "The managers make us sell the cart only games first" I said no thanks and walked out.

[9c1lt1]

He's a pawnshop owner, what do you expect. x_x
There is a pawn near where I live that has a Sega CD and genesis. They have a nice cover of dust, He doesn't have any games or any other systems and wants $50. Year later, still $50.