First off we need to understand what factors could make a video game collectible. By nature a collectible is somewhat rare and desired by collectors. Now many games are rare but they aren't desired by collectors, why? Because they are rare because they simply weren't that good. They had low printings because they didn't sell well. We want ones that are rare and desired. This could be for a number of reasons the game is part of a popular series, the game introduced new game play, it was a really good game that was not well marketed, it was an imported game or it could be the least popular game in a popular series. Also for some reason many RPG games end up being collectibles. It could be RPG fans are natural collectors. Whatever the reason, how can you find out which games are collectible and buy them at a cut-rate?
Some people will tell you to buy a price guide or pay for market research. The problem with a price guide is that it is not really correct. In the age of eBay and Amazon and e-stores the price of items is an ever fluctuating variable. Market research may yield better results but now you're investing more money which will likely eat away at your profits. Instead try this, choose a gaming system you'd like to research. Go to Half.com or Amazon.com and find the category of games for that system. Okay, now choose sort by price: highest first. The games selling for the most money for that system will appear first. Using this you can begin to compile a list of games you'd like to buy and resell. It's a good idea to check multiple markets before deciding if a game is truly collectible. Amazon.com, Half.com and eBay are good choices. If the game is highly valued on all three than more than likely it's a collectible.
Now you can begin compiling your list of games to buy and sell. A good feature on half.com for is their buying wizard which was previously called a pre-order list. Instead of buying an item at regular price you can set a pre-order price that you'd be willing to pay. When a seller offers the item at your price it will be purchased automatically. This is one way to get games at a discount price. It can also serve as your main list to refer to. You can also set up favorite searches on eBay for specific prices for each game and run them every so often to look for bargains. Which brings us to our last point how to calculate how much you are willing to pay for a collectible game.
First decide what price range of games you'd like to sell. For some people a $30 transaction is just not worth the effort of buying and selling. Others may be perfectly happy with that size transaction. The next step is to decide how much percent profit you'd like to realize on each transaction. Let's say you'd like to make 25% profit on each transaction which is very reasonable. So if the game normally sells for about $100 you'd have to buy it for $75 to make your profit margin, right? Wrong, we have to calculate our cost of selling the item such as if we are selling games on eBay there is a 15% FVF and a 3% PayPal fee so that means we got $82 from our $100 sale. Then we pay for shipping that's another $2 so now we have $80 dollars from the sale and we paid $75. So we only made $5, not really worth it. To make our profit margin we would have to buy the game at $55 dollars or sell on another venue.
So as you can see it is possible to buy and sell collectible games but by no means is it easy. As with anything in life it requires hard work and determination. If you follow these steps though you'll be on your way.
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