I’m wondering what people’s experience with retro & used game shops have been around the world.
I live in Vienna and there’s like 8 used game shops in town (GameStop has stopped doing business in Austria), but most of them are super overpriced. I’ve seen them sell Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for like 200€ CIB when you can get the same game for a fifth of that price on our local Craigslist equivalent.
There’s one shop I go to regularly however that tends to have fair prices (around 10-20% more than online, rather than 2-3 times the price) and they often open to haggling.
I kinda wish the stores we have had more of a cozy recordstore type vibe, rather than dollar shop atmosphere.
there used to be a retro and game rental shop right next to where i live, i got Manhunt, WCW vs the World, and NBA Live 2000 from them many years ago. it’s been a cleaning materials shop for a few years now, even before the pandemic i think
There’s a rhythm game arcade in my city that now sells some games for pretty uncool prices.
Any city in america’s gonna be so damn expensive that a dedicated videogame store probably just wouldn’t be worth it.
In my hometown there’s a cool store that’s defeated the odds and been open for about 13 years now.
The prices are about what you’d find on ebay.
What really brings people there is the small arcade with some cool rhythm games, fighting games, and shmups.
They have gunpla as well, but idk how much they really make from that.
if anyone finds themselves out by lakeland, FL (it’s not far from orlando if you’re ever doing a disney/etc trip) a friend of mine runs a spot called cyber sage, he’s been at it for years & is super knowledgeable as well as picky with both condition of said games & trying to stay under ebay/pricesharting #s
he puts up new inventory on the store’s IG page, and ships as well!