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.

[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.

[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.

[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".

[TonyTheTiger]

I rarely trade stuff in. In fact, I could probably name every item I've ever traded in with the exception of about 14 Japanese Saturn games I owned for about two days before trading to Joe. Other than that, my last trade in took place when I was still in grammar school. At the time, Funcoland kicked ass and I was buying up all the Mega Mans, a bunch of great NES games, and such. To keep my funds in check I would trade off NES games I didn't care for (though a few I bought again since I made some stupid choices back then).

The only non-NES trade was actually the only embarrassing one. I had the Super Scope 6 and it was pretty busted up. You couldn't really tell just by looking at it but the place to put the batteries was nearly ripped out. Made a smooth $10 in store credit that day.

Scratch that: There was one other embarrassing trade in. When I bought the Gamecube, EB Games was forcing people to buy a bundle with three games and an extra controller. I didn't particularly mind since there were about 3 games I wanted anyway though it was still a sucky practice. The problem was that they didn't have any official Nintendo branded controllers. I had to buy this cheesy off-brand controller that was much larger and had the most absurdly sensitive stick you'd ever touch.

I kept it for a while (up until a week or so after Smash Bros. Melee came out). Picking your guy with the controller was the hardest part. I decided to get rid of it in favor of a real controller but when I went to trade it in, the guy at Gamestop didn't even have the thing in the computer. In fact, I don't think I've seen the controller ever again. It wasn't the more common off-brand controller with the start button shaped like a star. The clerk ended up taking it in anyway and gave me like $4 credit.

[Kevin H]

Bought FF3 for 2 bucks at a pawn shop. I knew it was an extra so i took it to Rhino and got 30 dollars 5 minutes later and got Dragon Warrior 4 which I needed.

[jupitersj]

During last gen EBGames had a deal where you trade in 2 games and get an additional $10 credit. There was no exceptions except i think sports games.

At the same time Toysrus had a 90% off sale going on. I bought tons of ejay clubworld, mojo, primal and some of my repeats in my collection; each of these games cost me $1-2 each. They traded in for like $0.50 each but ofcourse I got an extra $10 for each 2.

I remember spending like $500 and making $3000 in credit... plus i traded out all of my used game cases in my collection with the games I bought for trade I didn't even bother to remove any of the stickers(which were from eb/gs in the first place)...sucks for them...

Needless to say that EBGames doesn't like me anymore >_>

[outofkeyslightly]

After recovering from a particularly debilitating attack of said sickness while attempting to play the game, I traded in Pac-Man Fever for the cube. Obviously I didn't pay any money for it in the first place. I'd rather listen to the song once than play that game ever again. Fucking Chef's Love Shack is a better game...

[Bandicat]

I traded in a red Gameboy Pocket that had magically just stopped working one day to a Game Crazy. They didn't even test it. I ended up getting like $4 for it.

I also did what Blitzwing256 did, well the buying up the SMB/DH Cartridges, not the selling. One of the SMB/DH's was covered in blue marker on the back. It looks like it used to belong to a video store, but someone decided to scribble that out. They also wrote "Mine" on the caution label. Someone obviously traded this into Funcoland at some point.

[SpasticFuctard]

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".

MUAHAHAHAHA!

[Trevelyan]

I once traded in an N64 game without the manual, which would have resulted in lower cash back for me (as was the way of the shop). I strategically added in a few extra official nintendo game instructions booklets & me & my mate thought long and hard about how they would check it, hoping it would be a quick/half assed examination. It was & they tagged it in as complete!

Pretty weak on my part, but it was kinda their fault!