The Sad Future of Video Game Vendors 

I really like this channel's videos of video interviews of people who own a business, whether it be a full physical store or display cases/booths in an Antique Store. I, myself, have a Display Case in an Antique Store with $5k worth of Pokemon Memorabilia, but I also flip on eBay and I'm a Spark Delivery Driver Full-Time. The hustle is real. The sales are slow. I don't have a family, but I do have goals to reach and debt to pay off. Hope everything works out for him!

Props to that guy he’s really putting in the leg work and getting to see the behind the scenes of everything was nice.

Lol Caleb's amazon store has prices higher than dkoldies

How nice of Caleb to unload his garbage on his “friend”. What a guy. 😂

I go to garage sales every week and I almost never find video games anymore. If I do, it’s usually overpriced

This is why you A: Can no longer find any games worth anything at thrift stores, and B: Why stores like Goodwill price things high now or put them online. Goodwill is wise to value of things now and they also want to make money.

I have ran into Tim a couple times at yard sales, very cool dude and friendly. He beat me by like seconds on a Wii U once lol

I hate the, "I will look it up" because they will look at asking prices, not sold prices.

I live in Louisville I have done business with Tim he bought my nes collection and PS2 collection and Xbox when I got out of collecting. He's a good dude

“Really hard to find at the low price I want so I can flip it for high”

While I respect what both of these guys do, I'll never understand why you would want to give your reselling secrets to thousands of people on the internet.

Collectors pay a lot for old games, but mostly to collect dust in a cabinet

Yep, bad time to be a seller And bad time to be a buyer.... time to just play games that we have!!

i think your friend could do a good channel on his own.

i think a large problem withthe secondary market is, its kind of an inflated market and not enough customers that are willing to pay a premium to sustain a storefront.

"Hey these guys are all going out of business so just buy from me from now on!!!!"

This snake is just looking for some ideas he may have missed

Flips Thrift and yard sales finds video tapes it, laughs to thr bank. People find out, copies this method and increases prices 10 fold. Cries when it back fires

Around here we have a street that is probably about 8 blocks long. The stores along this street were originally hardware stores, drug stores, appliances stores, apartment buildings, etc from the 1930's to 1940's. The interiors have been gutted and divided up to small connected rooms. Venders rent one of these rooms and stocks it with their merchandise. Each vendors merchandise has a tag with their code. There is a central register to pay for everything. The gaming merchandise in these places is usually Ebay plus pricing!

bro really offered 45% even though tim shilled the oneup app so hard bruh i cant even my local store (video game connection in cleveland) does like 60% atleast in trade credit like smfh how cheap will caleb stoop too bro

Ive just bit the bullet and started emulating. If i find a copy of something for cheap then thats awesome. But if not then i can still play the game.

People keep overpricing shit. Look at Pokémon games just as an example

Tim is the man. Always great prices and willing to cut deals.

Sourcing at thrift/pawn shops really isn’t worth it when you take into account the amount of time it takes to find inventory there.

there to swoop in and reap the benefits like jimmie moore from 'the wedding singer' when robbie loses his mind.

You ever wonder why he stopped hunting? He's scanning his competition and finding out weaknesses to where he's only buying from vendors. Vendors find the games out in the wild and sell to Caleb. Doesn't even need to hunt anymore. But yall love supporting him, make it make sense

These over priced games is why people rather emulate their own games

There is so much competition out there. Everyone is flipping and reselling video games, the weird thing is why people who do this for a living make videos telling everyone else to do the same thing. Just raises the prices when everyone is fighting for the same items to sell

Goodwill stores in my city suck, you cannot find a single video game.

I think the main lesson to be learned from this video is to diversify your portfolio in reselling. Figure out how to sell multiple types of items and that will let you typically make more money than sticking to just something like Videogames.

This video reminds me of myself, except I was a collector and hunted video games to keep. Not to flip or resale. I remember my rarest finds were Shadow tower (Ps1) and God Hand (Ps2) got both complete mint condition for $2 at a thrift store. I remember back in 2015, I saw Kuon (Ps2) complete mint condition at a pawn shop selling for $1 ( at the time, had no idea it was rare). It sat on the shelves for 4 months straight and was always there when I would come into that specific pawn shop 3x a week. Nobody wanted it and I myself was not too interested in it. Then finally after 4 months; it ends up selling and I felt like I should have got it. Anyways one year later, someone decides to sale me Kuon ps2 complete mint condition for $50 and I can’t complain after it was going for $300 at the time. Then another situation, I ended up getting Rule of Rose (Ps2) complete for Free. I will tell you how it happened. The game was selling for $750 on Ebay, I ended up making an offer to the seller for $500. I paid $550 after taxes and everything for the game ( I paid for it). Then all of a sudden 2 weeks later, I receive a notification from Ebay that my $550 has been refunded to my account ( I am assuming the seller made a mistake, or forgot; I didn’t say anything…. I just kept quiet). So I ended up getting to keep the game ROR ps2 and got full money back for what I paid for it. And NO, I didn;t complain nor demanded a refund… I was completely unaware about it until Ebay refunded my bank account, but I never said nothing to seller and just played along with it. So therefore, I got Rule of Rose (PS2) for free and Kuon for $50 complete mint. The video game Gods really blessed me. I don’t collect ps1, ps2 games anymore… I already own 4000 video games and that is enough for me. I buy and play Ps4/Ps5 games now. I appreciate this seller in the video hustle, but I will be honest with you video game hunting and flipping is basically a dead business… If you want to hunt and collect for fun then great! But you will not find nothing rare anymore in flea markets, garage sales, pawn shops, estate sales, church sales, or thrift stores because everyone looks up the prices online and if it is rare or worth a lot of money, then people will pocket it and flip it, sale it themselves. The only thing you really find in thrift stores now is just sports games. Plus piracy is killing the video game industry because of all them plug in plays such as pandora boxes or hyperspins where they can load up 100K games on the system and it has everything such as NES,SNES, dreamcast, Saturn, SEGA CD, master system, genesis, arcade, ps1, ps2, PC, Amiga, Atari, PS3 (PC version of the ps3 games) and PS4 (PC versions of the PS4 games) since Ps3 and ps4 emulators do not exist. So Yeah video game hunting and flipping is basically dead.

It’s all a rat race to the bottom

Man retro game selling is a passion hustle. You have to absolutely love what you are doing otherwise it can never work. Does Tim have a channel? He's probably crazy busy, but would be amazing to watch his hunting.

as soon as switch 2 drops, the second hand market will be flooooooded with switch stuff. you can already see it in the console itself, switch or switch lites.

I wonder if he pays these guys or if the promotion on the channel is payment of itself

I’ve been running a vendor market game and anime stuff shop for several months now and it’s definitely a lot less overhead and required just time to source, price and package and sort/reorganize the store shelves.

Sega GT 2002 is an under 5 dollar game. I got mine under 5 bucks with Jet Set Radio included.

I'm a reseller, too. To be 100% honest, the internet and sites like eBay and Amazon have completely ruined selling as a whole. It has gotten so competitive and anyone with a phone and ebay thinks they're a seller. I get so annoyed when people think ebay is the "Be All End All" for pricing and selling things other places than ebay. I wish I could have a store location back before the internet, with real in person negotiations, and no loser checking ebay and trying to offer me what the lowest outlier sales price is.

That vendor's village place is cool. They have old retro arcade games set up in the front to play for free.

You can tell Tim has been waiting to do that videogame flip at the end for years 😂 (Legend)

The keys to take away from this video is: Hustle, if you want to make money, do the work. The more you put in, the more you get out.

Michigan State Spartans hat!! That is cool! Super cool store.

I absolutely LOVE when rent-chasers cry that they can't chase rent as well as they did in the past. Good, your ilk is WHY the entire thing is collapsing, if you didn't know this by now.

Like always, entertaining video especially when you interview other resellers and show us how they run their business. On another note, I think it's true that it's getter harder to find games cause their are more collectors, more than ever, and companies are making less and less physical media.

Caleb! This is awesome, love the inside look on retail for videogames

Wtf are theses notes, rules and demands. No wonder they losing money because you can tell how shitty customers are treated there.

Markets move in response to many different factors and thats what is happening in game sales. I casually flipped retro games and consoles for about 15 years - the sweet spot as a seller was from 2005 to 2015. Sellers tended to be people not as familiar with the internet who were just happy to get, for example, $20 for a decent condition NES which you could flip online for upwards of $50. By about 2015 in my view, games and equipment worth owning had mostly found their way into the hands of people who knew they could get higher prices and the margins became razor thin. Its rare to see decent video game stuff at a yard sale or Craigslist, etc - and if it you do find it, its probably priced to match what they see online. Bottom line, sellers have more information now. There's nothing wrong with that, it was bound to happen - but it does mean that the days of casually buying and selling games is over. You have to engage in serious, focused hustle now.

I live in Clarksville Indiana I didn’t even know that place was there 😂

23:45 this is really interesting, I wish we had places/display booths like that here in the UK, we literally have nothing like this here at all.

So Tim is the reason I never find anything good at that Goodwill 😂

Maybe I missed it but what I wanted to know was how do the payments work, like who is selling the stuff for him like an employee of his or someone who works in that building and does he trust them and how does he know what sold cause it seems like he stuffs them but I don’t see any type of sale system or inventory system.

This vid is jam packed with knowledge. Thank you guys

Great video and appreciate the behind the scenes! Congrats with the twins!

Y’all hit all of my old routes bro that’s awesome! I miss the hillview area lol!

This was a good one! Appreciate the honesty and different take.

Is there a good UK version of Phoenix Resale on RU-vid? I've resold a few video games here in the UK but the US market is totally different.

Man his profits are so small I’d be afraid to live like that

One question I have when you have a booth at a small shop like that do they sell the items for you or do you have to be there to make a sale yourself? thank love the content considering the fact that I am in Southern Cali looking to get into the retro gaming re-sale market! thanks!

enjoyed the video.. enjoyed Tim opening up to the audience on his struggles and success!

This hobby has become MAJORLY TOXIC in 10 years. RU-vid/tiktokkers have ruined it to the point little old ladies are fighting over games. I rarely hunt games at yard sales and thrifts anymore. I have the games I want. (Had them since the early 80s on)

Having a booth is really fun, much more fun than listing on eBay in my opinion!!! Great video!!

I wish we had these in the uk, most of the retro stores have closed down now, and we don't really have flea markets here in the uk, but you can sometimes get lucky at car boots, they're just not as accessible as shopping centres in america.

I loved the Mr krabs voice “money”

That little golfing bit was hilarious!!😂❤

Probably cause he charges too much for his games so it is what it is

No one is going to pay unreasonable prices for old physical media.

Very informative and interesting. Great video!

Collaborate and don’t compete sounds like a pyramid skeem quote….

How do you find places like this that have these displays ? I would like to go check them out here in California LA area

Tim seems like a good dude and very smart about managing his business. Nice to see Caleb give him a break on that deal.

This video perfectly outlines how the market has been destroyed by resellers. They all want to buy low and sell high, and a game only has to change hands three or four times before it reaches and ungodly price where both the buyer and seller are likely screwed. The buyer, because they're getting ripped off if they actually pay that high price, and the seller because there is a high probability that it won't sell at that price, and they will wind up having to take a loss to get rid of it. Resellers have completely taken this away from your average video game enthusiast and transformed it into a market of nothing but resellers just shifting product around in circles.

One of your best episodes… solid businessmen right here

Awesome video for sure, and yay congrats Tim on the twins!!!

I’ve had over 30 locations and been doing this for over 25 yrs. Still going but I spent many years sleeping in my stores and working side gigs. It isn’t easy

Brick and Mortar needs to price below online markets. Premium services get premium prices when every person who would purchase video games is checking ebay to make sure they aren't getting screwed. The game is changing and more people are aware that they'll have value.

Market saturation could be a problem I would consider. So many resellers and either exact market pricing means buyers either buy from sources like eBay with protection or shops. And many resellers need to consider gamers might not think of certain places for buying video gamer. Especially those not into RU-vid and social media and just buy from common places like eBay, Amazon or their local game shop. Especially those that wish to just relive the childhood games.

Wow! I haven't seen a video from you in 4 months !😢 I don't know what happened today but glad you are back in my feed!

Clarksville, Louisville..... oh brother this guy stinks!

A box trailer would be a nice investment over renting a uhaul.

OMG! A rare Double flip at the end!

Used games "business".. If you can call it that, is not viable long term.

We really don't have many stores like this in Wisconsin. Sucks. We got plenty of goodwills but not many resale markets like this.

I go to peddlers mall looking for a deal, not same price as reseller stores

Really good video and love the hard work that not everyone sees

Ah the gross practice of looking up everything at goodwill to make a few dollars.

It's cool to see someone who shops in the same goodwills as me.

Dude thanks for the 15$ credit!! On whatnot I got my mario vs donkey switch game your the best video game channel on here!! Love ya man!!

Also goodwill 20% off if you spend $20.

Fantastic video. Very interesting to see the different sides of the retro game world

4:05 there is my favorite word Diversify! i started full time reselling in 98' just started college prior to that i was setting up at flea markets and shows and i learned the best piece of knowledge i ever got from a very wise reseller he told me to get a white board draw diversification in big letters on it and then a circle around that word he said make diversification the center of your reselling biasness i drew branches out from that circle and wrote different aspects of the reselling biasness so Sourcing, Inventory, Platforms/venues, price points all of these things within a reselling business should be diversified! if you can diversify all those things in your reselling business it will never let you down and i'm 100% serious it will always keep your business afloat so diversify where you sell (on and off line) diversify WHAT you sell (inventory don't niche down niche up) diversify were you source (source both online and offline) Diversify your price points (sell low medium and high dollar items so you cater to all buyers) also diversify STR (have long tail and short tail items or Low and HIGH STR items)

That's the market guys. If people truly wanted physical media and brick and mortar, they wouldn't go obsolete.

Why would I buy video games from a shop like yours when I can buy them off Facebook marketplace for a fraction of the price people that own shops like that are a rip off

I'm jealous, I live in Missouri and all the flea markets charge 10% for each sale. That's awesome you only get charged 8.

My Peddlers booth has been going down as well. My best year ever was $75,000 Gross income last year I was at $4600... It is crazy how much Media has gone down. Video games are almost impossible to find in my area.

You are the sad future of video game vendors

how do u take a pic it show u how much it cost & the info of the item? what app do u use?

Moral of the story is own the display cases, not the seller in the displays.

Gee, it's almost like the consequences of your own actions...

People like this ruin game collection for kids. I'm glad hes going out of business.

Tim is a very smart guy