I haven't bought anything pre-owned on the high street for a long time for exactly that reason Toad, it's a sorry state of affairs to be sure, there is so much mediocrity!!

Having said that I am having more luck finding what I want at reasonable price on eBay. I recently managed to get Ico again, having sold it way back, in a fit of madness! I thought "I'm never going to get that again, certainly not in good condition with all the original packaging and art cards!" But low and behold there it was on eBay for fifteen pounds as well as a couple of pounds postage. I know that's not that cheapest example, but to be quite frank I would rather support gamers and resellers on ebay than paying over the odds in places like Gamestation and Game.

I have never really been a huge fan of eBay, although I've been most impressed thus far with all the people I have dealt with and long may it continue, my only wish is that I had started using it earlier rather than letting my personal prejudice about eBay get in the way. To it's credit their gaming user base is huge. I've managed to source all sorts from there in recent months..

Very True, unfortunately gone are the day when you used to get decent money back when you trade in a good game. For a time I used to work for Game station in the final days before Blockbuster and Game sunk their teeth into it. We would reward people on whether the game was in good condition or not, whether it was rare evening basing it on our own perceived opinion, sometime even giving a better price than we should have.. Similar to a comic shop with a kind of grading system but they in those days it was run by games for games and you could get awesome deals.

There is a nice tidy profit to be turned from pre-owned games now, with so many shops jumping on the bandwagon, (even HMV do a trade in service), these shops could potentially resell any game three or four times and no money goes back to the developer or the licensee's. Not to mention if say, there are inundated with copies of Grid for example. There will come appoint when shop will start to refuse trade ins on certain titles. Which is surely to the detriment of the customer.

Sadly the glory days of pre-owned have long gone, you walk into Game or Game station now, you won't get half the money you once did and if you walk back in a day later you'll see you game up on the shelf for double what you got back for it.