Welcome back, cheap asses. Today we're gonna toss out a few money saving tips. For those of you who weren't around for the general efficiency guide I suggest you read up. In fact, those of you who already have might want to check too, as the article has been completely streamlined. For those of you who don't know what Goozex is at all yet, you can read the series from the beginning.

Wait for price changes and use E-Mail notification
Last time I showed you ways to search for the best deals and to put everything you want on hold in order to make the best use of your time. Now I'm going to tell you the added benefit of being patient. If you don't already get E-Mail notifications for price changes, do so now. The E-Mails will monitor everything on your list, including everything on hold, and inform you of Goozex price drops every week. Goozex only changes prices by 50 points per week, but observing will help out. Games can fluctuate in price depending on demand pretty frequently, so this is a really good way to turn that 200 point game into a 100 point game. It helps out on observing bigger price changes too, but I personally use it to penny pinch.

Recycle your bubble mailers
I'm sure a good deal of people rip up and throw away the envelopes their games get delivered in; in fact I used to do it myself. With Goozex you have to pay your own shipping as a seller, so cutting costs will really add up in the long run. The Post Office doesn't care how much you mangle up your items so long as it's in one piece and has an address on it, and so your greatest ally is shipping tape. USPS charges a few bucks for very good tape that I personally recommend. What I do is apply tape generously to attach a piece of folded paper over the original address then reseal the package. It's a bit of extra work, but considering I've recycled about 30 dollars worth of mailers so far I don't regret it.

Mail disc-only if there's any demand
When it comes to shipping, weight equals money. You won't save a ton, but if somebody out there is requesting the game you have as disc-only you may as well let them have it and save a dollar or so on shipping. Personally I'd skimp out on delivery confirmation too, which again can tack off about another dollar. Like I said I've got over 100 trades and nobody's tried to lie about getting the game. I don't advise this when you're just starting out, though. In the beginning play it safe.

Buy trade credits in bulk
Likewise this is more of a longtime user sort of tip. Goozex will offer you discounts depending on how many trade tokens you're buying at once, and if you become a heavy duty user you should very much so consider this. I've probably spent about 250 dollars over about a year on trade credits. Totally worth it, but it could have been 125 dollars if I bought in bulk. Admittedly to get 50% off you need to buy 120 trade tokens, but I know that I'd use them myself. Buying 30 trade tokens at 20% off is much more realistic for most of you readers, I'm sure.

Compare the Goozex price with other sources
Last article you learned the scale used to convert Goozex Points into cash, and you'll put it to the most use researching the cheapest source for your game. You can check my GameStop Shopping Tips for the best ways to use GameStop's website. What's more you should be looking to sites like Amazon as alternates. For the single most comprehensive price check available though, you should go to Videogamepricecharts and install their Firefox add-on. When you go to any compatible website, this add-on will activate and tell you the average price among all sources and the cheapest place to get the game you're looking at aside from the potential choice of GameStop. You'll even get a chart of the game's value in recent months or even years.

There's actually a link to every game's Amazon page on Goozex itself. Usually just jumping to the Amazon page of any game gives you a decent comparison, but having the price charts add-on installed you turn that Amazon link on every Goozex page into an automatic price check. In this particular example's case, Goozex is one of the cheaper options at 400 points or 20 dollars, especially because you can get a full package copy.

Take advantage of overpriced games
You might be thinking to yourself, "How can I take advantage of this?" In short, you want to flip a game that's cheap somewhere else and more valuable on Goozex. We're not really going to concern ourselves with WHY some games are overpriced. The easiest place to search for these sort of deals is GameStop because they don't often observe price trends on less mainstream (which usually means more valuable) games. Paying for shipping from an online vendor cuts into the deal as well. One of the very best times to strike is during price drops, which once again you can get help with from my GameStop Shopping Tips.

For example, I just did this with Chrono Trigger on the DS. The game was at the time worth 900 points, or 45 dollars in credit. GameStop had just price dropped it to 26.99 used, and there was a Buy 2 Get 1 Free deal. Now, when you buy 3 used games (that are all the same price) with an Edge Card during such a sale, you can consider the total deal to be about 35% off.

After calculations I bought Chrono Trigger for about 17.50 and traded it for 45 dollars in points. If you want a list of all the most valuable games on Goozex, click on a system button then hit the search button without typing anything in (this gets you the entire list for that system), then take a look at the sorting dropdown menu. Set it to "Sort by: Points (high first)" and you can find all the games that would be most advantageous. The DS in particular is a very good system to flip deals for, considering the Goozex price cap is 1000 points and most DS games don't sell for more than 30 bucks.

WARNING: Absolutely always make sure there is demand for a game before deciding to try and flip it. Refer to the efficiency guide for looking up supply and demand. These sorts of advantageous deals don't just jump right out at you, you'll need to do a little research. If you know you can get a hold of a game and are afraid the demand will be gone by the time you get it, put up an offer and match yourself up with a request. Select "ship in 3 days" and you will be guaranteed a trade as well as have time to go pick up that game. You can cancel if it turns out you can't do it, but I only advise you do this the game is already on hold for you at a store or something.

Stay Tuned
That's it for now. Next time we'll be finishing the series with a special Collector's Edition. We'll be covering various ways to make Goozex a stronger tool to other collectors like myself. For the complete Ultimate Goozex Guide, check to your right in my sidebar.