As some of you may or may not know I am what Funktastic would consider a “compulsive collector” of video games and video games memorabilia. I will go out of my way to find something rare or goofy just to add it to my collection often disregarding its condition or completeness. Yesterday however, I broke what I believe to be one of the core rules of collecting; I traded in 12 games and received 4 in return.

It all started when I called my local GameStop to see if they had any copies of Demon’s Souls left, the guy on the other end of the line said that they had two left and asked if I wanted one held until I got there. I told him sure and that I would be in between 6:00 and 7:00 pm. I had to pick up my daughter from school and then I had to make a stop by the house. When I got home I walked past my game collection, something caught my eye, I’m not sure what it was but it caused me to stop and just look over all of my games. I started thinking about the stuff that I’ve yet to play and the stuff that I’ve only played once and didn’t care for. After a few minutes I decided that I didn’t need some of this stuff and that I could probably use a lot of it towards some new stuff that I had wanted to get. I started grabbing stuff that I had no interest in anymore and by the time it was done I had twelve games that I was willing to part with. A few minutes later I left with my games and headed towards my local GameStop.

Luckily for me the GameStop near me is only a two minute drive away so I was there in no time at all. I was pretty hesitant about going in when I got there. I almost didn’t do it, I paced outside of GameStop for 10 minutes, had I been a smoker I would have gone through half a pack of cigarettes. What was I doing? Why was I here? What were these games doing in my hand? I didn’t want to go in, I didn’t want to give up something that I spent my time in getting, even if it was something that I would never play or have yet to play. My daughter on the other hand couldn’t wait for me to go inside because she knew that she would be walking out with something, like always.



So in I went, head down and games in hand. The guy behind the counter looked in my direction and said “lookin ta’ trade in some games huh?” “Yeap” I replied as I slowly approached the counter. He asked me if I was looking to pick anything up or if I was just looking for store credit, I told him that I wasn’t sure yet and that I haven’t traded in any games since the days of the SNES so I wasn’t even sure what this stuff would go for. The GameStop employee looked over the pile and said that I should do alright based on what he saw. After ten minutes or so the GameStop employee was done with his tally, and boy was it more than I expected. When I initially walked in I was expecting to get $40 or $50 bucks for the whole lot, I wasn’t expecting to actually walk out with multiple games, especially not multiple games AND zero dollars out of my bank account. I was in luck however, GameStop was having one of their “Power Trade-In” specials and I have an Edge card which gave me an additional 10% towards my total.

After the tallying was over the GameStop employee asked once again if there was anything I was interested in, now that I knew what I had to work with my reply was, “yes, yes there is”. That night I walked out of GameStop the proud owner of Demon’s Souls for the PS3, Borderlands (360), Modern Warfare 2 (360) and the new Mario Bros. game for the Wii. All in all a pretty good take for what I gave up (all this-gen stuff btw).

I’m still feeling a bit guilty for what I did but I’m glad that I was able to get more than I was expecting. Demon’s Souls is completely addicting so far and just as tough as everyone has been saying. I know that Borderlands won’t disappoint and MW2, well it’s MW2 you KNOW that shit’s gonna be good. Oh and Mario, yea that one’s gonna cause me to dust off the Wii and let the 360 & PS3 collect some dust for a while.



For any of you wondering why I traded in some of my games from my collection, it’s not because I couldn’t have just bought those four games outright, no it wasn’t that at all. You see, I got to thinking over the past couple of weeks about my collection, how big it has gotten and in how short of a time it got to be so large. I’ve put a lot of time and money in to my collection and I think it may be time for a break. Lately my gaming has been slowing down; playing games has started to take a backseat to more important things, things that mean a lot more to me than a videogame. Work for me is more stressful than ever as well and I am finding that I don’t have as much “me time” as I have had in the past. I will regain what I have given up though; I am positive that my weekly/bi-weekly visits to Goodwill will continue, whether or not I actually buy anything is another story. There are also so many good looking games just around the corner that I can easily see myself falling back in to old habits. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh and my daughter, she didn’t get anything from GameStop that night but she did end up getting a Slurpee and a pack of Skittles from 7-11 so she was happy lil camper as well.