Be Excellent To Each Other

http://fscked.co.uk/post/5727078956/uk- ... -in-prices

I gone done some blogging and some analysis.



TL;DR: trade in at Asda, spend that store credit on groceries you were going to buy anyway, buy your games elsewhere.

Why would I ever want to buy any of these rehashed games?

I think you've missed the point, bud.

Nice work, my most excellent Doctor of wave carrier signals.

My gamestation has always accepted printouts from CEX, or the HMV android app, to pricematch.

Also, CEX's prices are higher than most other places (especially for preowned).

Edit: Here's my guide to get the best prices for trade ins.

Good work dude, didn't realise the difference was so profound! Asda it is from now on...

Oh, how about adding musicmagpie.co.uk to the list, if you can? You need barcodes though...

Do we have a new troll?

It was a bit of a drive by. 5 quick fire posts then away!

Good. Mine doesn't, and many more don't. Frankly, its ridiculously inconsistent policy and crappy baseline prices are enough that I'd rather not do business with them at all, even if it did offer me an extra quid across my nine games. YMMV.

CEX is a pain to get to as there's so few stores; my nearest is nearly 30 miles away.

Yeah, i don't have a CEX anywhere near me (i think there is only one in Scotland but there might be none ) and I have only managed to get the pricematch thing once from Gamestation, when I printed out CEX prices from the net and then told Gamestation before asking for the pricematch that I would be spending my credit on a new console. Even then they were reluctant, and the staff member then manager wanted to confirm what exactly I would be purchasing before agreeing to the price match.

Do you consider price difference though? Can you get a better deal trading at a lower price with Gamestation than CEX? Say you're trading in a game for £12 there but only get £6 at gamestation but the game you want is £20 at CEX and only £10 at gamestation. For instance. Also if you can use the price promise it can be very good. Remember CEX sell recently released second hand games for a lot more than the gamestation brand new price quite often.

Was the ebay analysis based on completed listings prices or just prices that people are offering things for on Buy It Now? With Amazon did you only view the lowest price regardless of condition?

Yes. Read the post. Or even just this bit:You buy elsewhere wherever they are cheapest, negating the need to calculate differentials.

This is all covered in the post.

I started using Asda as soon as I found out I could buy food with it, no longer being tied into the shitty "trade for heehaw or run the ebay gauntlet" system is lovely

2 games paid for nearly 3 weeks food

Don't Music Magpie offer the lowest of all prices though? I'm basing that on how much they give for DVDs so I could be wrong but it would still be interesting for comparison.

Indeed, the prices I got for a couple of games in my recent batch were low, but not stupidly low. Be interesting to see how close they are, as they are really convenient to use and you get cash moneys...

Not very good:



(I've already traded the other games in. Does someone who have the discs want to give me the barcodes for LEGO Rock Band, Halo: Reach, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Crackdown 2?)

I tend to do all my trading in at HMV now, simply as whilst I'm living with the 'rents I don't really need to do my own grocery shopping and because I hate buying things from Cex. Seriously, our local Cex (and pretty much any other one I've ever been in) are pretty dirty and any games or DVDs I've ever bought from them seem to come in sticky grimy boxes. I'd much rather buy new stock with my trade-ins.

Turns out there's a database (user-submitted, I think) of barcodes at http://www.icollectmedia.com/

I got the barcodes from there, tapped them into Amazon's search box just to make sure they corresponded to the regular versions, then put those into Music Magpie.

Updates! Thanks Stu and Dimmers!

Very interesting to see that Music Magpie offers better prices than Game and Gamestation... Very interesting.

Careful, they were only around the same price on lots of titles. Reach and RDR were outliers than pushed the overall total up.

They seem to have a a fair number of outliers though, some weirdly high prices for random things when I traded in my uber-batch of stuff.
They do PC game tradein too, not sure if the others do that?

Legislation compels CEX to have five 'neds' lurking outside and 1 inside, with his missus, haggling over the price of a scratched Nokia.

Due to all such neds being evenly distributed around English city centres, you can't really have a CEX in Scotland.

Only CEX I've been in was in So'ton, and unfortunately it stank rather a lot, making Gamestation seem positively aseptic in comparison. Seemed to have a bit of a Cash Converters air to it as well.

Edinburgh, although Ballymena is apparently not much further if you fancied a wee trip on a ferry

The Gamestations in Glesga decide whether or not to pricematch with them depending on who's working & down the road they tell you to fuck off 9 times out of 10 (might be why there are next to no Gamestations left in the 'shire).

My local Gamestation only price match if you have written proof (ie, a recepit) stating how much a competitor will give you for your trade-ins. The local Cex point blank refuses to provide you with anything of the sort for this very reason.

I have never had an issue with my local Gamestation price matching CEX. Now I just show them the CEX website on my phone and they add the £1.
Of course you end up paying more than the "best" price when you come to spend it. As my GF uses Asda for her shopping I might give them a try in future. The one at Merry Hill doesn't do trade-ins apparently, but the one in Bromsgrove does which will be handy after I move.

Worth bearing in mind that Gamestation now have a loyalty reward scheme whereby you accumulate 'XP' on trade-ins and purchases.

I got £5 worth of XP on my card trading in Tekken 6 and Portal 2 (£42 for both with price match against Cex) for LA Noire and MK9 (£80 for the pair).

I sell (well sold) all my games at CEX. They offer the best price compared to the other high street game shops plus I can find out what everything is worth online before I go. I never buy anything from there though.

I now have a lot of PS2 games and a console to sell. Might have a shop round, but as I want a 2nd xbox, is it best to trade and exchange?


That article you wrote is great.

Of course another factor to consider perhaps is wait times. I should expect that ASDA would win on this respect as well and CEX are almost certainly the worst. Wait times there are often monumental.

However in the end what you should have said was take your games to your local market and sell them there no matter what price you're offered. Especially with Derek.