Two blog posts in three weeks? What the heck is going on?!
I had a $60 store credit at the Ice Man for well over a year now and while they have a downtown Toronto location, it is too far to justify making the subway ride down. The store I frequent the most is Ice Man’s Peterborough location on George Street. They sometimes have some NES games I need, but most of the time they either don’t, or when they do the price is so jacked up that it’s far from worth it.
This time Ice Man had a game that I needed… Bandit Kings of Ancient China. Of course the price was $140, which is about $33 over what it’s worth which normally I would have just passed on to look for a better deal. However as I mentioned I’ve had a store credit for quite some time now, and didn’t really see me using it in the near future. I rarely buy from the Ice Man anymore because of his high prices. But using the store credit which is money that I’ve long forgotten about, I figured I could maybe justify the cost. After all,
after the trade, $80 for the Bandit Kings cartridge felt okay.
So I was shocked when the store clerk asked me for $92! Apparently when you do a trade-in, unless you use your store credit right away they charge you tax. This doesn’t feel right as they didn’t give me the extra tax value when I traded in my stuff… so why now? Is this a normal business practice? Please let me know!
Long story short, I did the trade as I figured I would never end up using the credit. I used a $60 credit to save $15 from what the game should normally sell for ($107). While I’m not really pleased with this purchase, I’ve learned not to trade in games with stores anymore unless they have games that I need in stock at a reasonable price. It just isn’t worth it.
Nintendo Joe
SEGA Corner: The Sega Dude lent me his copy of Wonder Boy III – The Dragon’s Trap for the PS4. It’s an awesome remake, but I’m just not that into playing games anymore. It’s almost like I have to force myself to play these days?! This will in now way effect my growing NES collection.
My Nintendo Dimension 
I’m the blue bearded guy that works in a local store down town an I REALLY think you should get a youtube Channel and/or a book published with your passion for retro gaming its awesome!
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I agree with you. I’m also done with store credit that sits doing nothing while the price tags of inventory continues to climb. All value is lots if you don’t use the credit right away.
So for me personally, I wont do it anymore. Even trading feels stacked too far in the favor of stores. What I’ve started doing is selling my games on local online classified for hard cash that I can do whatever I want with.
Maybe someday you’ll want to give that awesome Wonder Boy remake a chance! But if nothing else I hope you’re still enjoying your NES collecting.
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