There's a thrift store here in town that's known far and wide around central California as a great place to pick up stuff for resellers. Piles of stuff finds it's way through there, I've personally picked up a number of expensive items over the years for a couple bucks. They're still great to this day, but they don't deal in video game stuffs any more. None of what comes to them does so as discarded items, it's not a Salvation Army shop. Games/gaming stuff worth actual money are sold via other methods before it even becomes stock they can use. So, the token glass case of gaming stuff is normally just Wii/360 sports games. I think the rarest thing I ever found was a back of PC gaming manuals one of the employees tossed in a clear bag and hung on a random hook. Aside from that, the local flea markets are the main place to find game stuffs, but it's all people trying to sell at marked up ebay prices.

I'm part of the problem too, though. The odd times I look at gaming sections, nothing looks particularly interesting these days, so impulse buys are way, way down. I turned away from collecting proper...actually not long after I first joined DP.