Game Shops Are Not Evil
When I go into a physical game shop, I know that they are a business. Now I know you may think that this is an obvious statement, but hear me out. When I see a card that strikes my interest, I tend to look at the price soon after. In big retail stores, that price will be right on the mark compared to MSRP.
For a game shop, what is MSRP for a light play Charizard from the 90’s? Last time I checked, Target isn’t selling these. The only way to tell is to look at the secondary market and look up sales trends. For collectors in the trading card scene two giants stand out amongst the rest: TCGPlayer and eBay. These two companies are the standard when a consumer tries to figure out the price for anything collectable.
This includes the cards that the game shop is trying to sell.
As a consumer, I use the tools available to me to get an idea on how close to the mark the game shop is to what trends show up online. I then can decide whether or not the listed price in the store is overpriced or not. If the card is overpriced compared to online sales through TCGPlayer and eBay, this is where I remember that the game shop that I’m currently standing in is physical.
Why does that matter?
Think about it. If TCGPlayer is selling that light play Charizard at $500 and the shop that I’m in is selling it for $550, then it’s overpriced right? This is where the benefit of being an online store comes into play. TCGPlayer can have listing lower than $550 because there is a lower overhead cost to do business. The shop however is paying rent, insurance, licenses and other costs to have that card be presented to you. If they were forced to “price match” with online resellers, then they won’t be there for long. Plain and simple.
Again, there are some game stores that will be so overpriced that no one will buy from them. This post is referencing the shops that are trying to be as fair as possible within reason.
The other huge benefit is taking advantage of trade programs. This is where physical game shops have a huge advantage over online resellers. If you accumulate a collection of cards that you don’t want to sell individually on eBay and only make a few bucks (after fees), then it might just be worth keeping around. However, if you walk into a store and see a Metagross Gold Star and complete in box (CIB) Pokemon Yellow game, you may be willing to trade your unwanted Neos cards that you didn’t want to sell on eBay.
This is what happened to me.
I immediately whipped out my binder and started collecting cards that I was willing to trade in for store credit to put towards these two items. Fast forward to where I have a stack of moderately played Generation 2 cards from the Neos sets, I was able to reduce the price by more than half. Had I not been in the store, I would have never been able to afford these items without taking advantage of the trade-in option.
At the end of the transaction, they got a nice restock of Neos cards that they were looking to fill, and I got two big ticket items for half the cost. What was so evil and greedy about that?
To wrap up my rambling, we just need to realize that people who are opening physical game shops are taking huge risks. Also, these game shops are slowly becoming overtaken by the competitiveness of online resellers. Without these stores, we would never have cool spots to check out with our friends and drool over items in their showcase that we all want. However, that item may be up for grabs if you trade in a few things and you walk out of there smiling and having a great transaction with another collector.
Try doing that on TCGPlayer or eBay.
