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The Hill of the Thrunt

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Today was an O-K day.
I decided to hit Clay/North Syracuse and DeWitt/East Syracuse.
The first place I stopped was K-mart in Fulton. There was a small blurb in the ad about clearance games being buy one, get one 40% off.
They didn't have much of anything. This Kmart is hit or miss with me. Fulton is a small city and there's a super walmart, which is where most people go. Kmart is usually a ghost town.
The employees rarely keep up with the markdowns, which is good for me. It's rare that a game rings up for what it is marked. After digging through the bin of games up front near the registers, I went to the electronic section. As I said, slim pickings but I did find these:

They're marked $6, but rang up $4.50. They didn't ring up buy one get one 40% off like the ad stated, but the inevitable argument with management wasn't worth my time. Not the greatest haul, but Tatsunoko is a solid game and I can mark the other two $15 and some cheapo will buy them. My goal is to at least double my money. If I can triple it (or even better in Tatsunoko's case), then I am a happy lad.

Next stop was an indy shop in Clay called Microgame. In my five years of hunting in Clay, I've stopped at this place maybe 6 times. Their prices on modern games are Gamestop or a dollar cheaper, and their classic stuff is eBay at best, but often even more expensive than eBay prices.
A few examples for you. Super Mario Bros 3 averages around $10 on eBay. You can have it for the low, low price of $24.99 at Microgame.
Legend of Zelda? It eBay's for around $15. Microgames price? $28. Atari games? $4 no matter what the title. They're insane!
You see why I never go there? But things are different now. I'm hunting Nintendo Tapes not just for resale, but for myself. I'm willing spend consumer prices if it's something I personally want.
Sadly, they had very few CIB intendos. But I did get:

for $7.
They also had some commons buy two get one free. I grabbed these:

for $6 total. I will sell them for $5 a piece.
They also had a buy two, get one on PS2 and Xbox games. Picked these out:

for $20. I will be sitting on these for a while.
After I was rung out, the nice lady working the counter said I was free to pick out a DVD for free. I grabbed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Sorry, no pic.

From there I went across the street to The Great Northern Mall. That name is sooo deceitful. The mall isn't all that far north, and it certainly isn't all that great. First stop was Sears.
Now, I love Sears. For whatever reason, they carry games and I've never seen someone buy a single game from there that wasn't heavily discounted. Well, I guess the bean counters finally noticed that, and most Sears around here have started clearing out their entire stock. If they do quit carrying games, my ability to grab closeouts will be greatly diminished. I will still have Target and Best Buy, but how much longer will it be till they give in as well? I used to be spoiled with Media Play, Circuit City, and even FYE delivering decent deals on the regular. Now it's slim pickings and places like CAG have made it so more people are paying attention to this stuff than ever before.
Anyhow, Sears. While just about everything has been put on clearance, most of it isn't cheap enough to be worth trying to flip. I did get these though:

God of War III was $13, everything else was $10. Yeah, that's right. Flingsmash was $10 brand new with the remote. I've read on CAG that others have found it for as little as $8. I'm a little jealous, but that's okay.

Drove around the back of the mall and stopped at BJs. If you don't know what that is, think Sam's Club or Costco. They had nothing.

Next was Toys R Us. They have a buy a game for $19.99, get one 40% off deal.
They had nothing.

We leave the mall, cross over 481 and hit the plaza with Best Buy. PAY DIRT.
Best Buy recently started their own shitty print mag. I can usually read it cover to cover in the time it takes to do number two. The mag is worthless. The coupons inside? Priceless. Not only are the coupons for significant discounts, they also stack with sales.
I bought these:

and then bought these:

Thanks to the coupons Resistance 3 was $10, Deadliest Warrior was $10, and Dragon Age II was $5. Halo and Zumba 2 were on sale for half off msrp.

-Note: Some people may be put off by my buying these things in quantity for resale. To them I say:
1) I've seen quite a few "el hoardos" in action. If I don't grab this stuff, some other asshole will and most likely that asshole will just open them up to trade in to Amazon, Best Buy, or Gamestop. Who really profits from that? Shitty corporations. I do this to feed my family and keep a roof over their heads. I am not a soulless corporation. I'm a soulless individual. Fuck off.
2) These were bought from two different Best Buy stores, and though I had plenty of coupons, I did not clean the stores out. I grabbed two copies of each game from each of the stores and left a few of each on the shelf for others. I'm not that greedy. So really fuck off.

Back on topic, there was a small bin with a sign that said, "All games in bin $4.99 and up". Seriously, the "and up" was really small on the sign. Douchebags. There was nothing worth picking up in the bin BUT in front of the bin were five PS3 Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2011 gun bundles marked $24.99. They have dropped to $49 at most places, so half off isn't a bad deal.
What makes it a better deal is that Best Buy was nice enough to send me a buy two new, get one free coupon in the mail. So I grabbed three. Paid $54 for them. That means I can under cut most places by marking them $40 and still more than double my investment.

I love that I can sell this stuff for less than what it would cost me to order it from a distributor.
Everyone wins.

I moved onto Target. If I love Sears, then I must be deeply, stupidly infatuated with Target. Sears is cool because I can get old, yet popular stuff on the cheap. Target is cool because they will put shit into clearance at the drop of a hat. If a newer title isn't moving, they won't wait for a price drop. They will clearance that shit out to make room for the next new release. I honestly don't understand how they can make any money. Two weeks after the collector's editions of Tiger Woods 13 and Resident Evil Raccoon City came out, Target had them clearanced for $35. Yeah. It was $25 cheaper to buy the collectors edition than it was to get the regular edition. Their business practices baffle me, but I ain't complaining.

Now that I've built it all up, I got nothing exciting to share. Thanks to the Avengers movie, I have seen an increase in sales of any Marvel related game. Last week I sold my last Marvel Super Hero Squad for Wii for $20 new.

Now I have three back in stock, at $10 a piece. It would have cost me $16 a piece if I ordered them from my distributor.

We leave Target, get back on 481 and head south to DeWitt. First stop is Sears. There I got:

Pokemon Black was $20. More than I would like to spend on a game that retails for $35; but it is A) popular, so it'll move quick B) the only one left, and C) would cost me $28 to order from the distributor. Pokepark was $10, and the Guitar Heroes for $4 a piece. They have a lot of games in the $13-$15 price range. Maybe they'll drop into my buy range next month.

From there I stopped at Kmart. They had nothing.

Next, and finally was the other Best Buy where I got the other half of the games in that other pic.

I didn't find much for me personally, but I did find some decent stuff to sell. I'm working the next three days, so I won't be hunting again until Sunday at the earliest. Just in time for the new ads to roll out.

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Updated 06 Jun 2012 at 11:30 PM by Some Stupid Japanese Name

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Video Games , News and Culture , Personal

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