A Retro Hunt Down the Ebay Rabbit Hole

I recently started collecting some older games that I guess would be considered early retro. I decided to try my luck on Ebay after not buying from there from years. I found a few good deals, but you really have to dig for them sometimes as a lot of games are over priced or are fakes that haven’t been removed. I’ll start with what I was looking for.

What I Was Looking For

I was on the hunt for Pokémon games. I went looking for Pokémon Emerald since it was a great game and I had recently reacquired a Game Boy Advance. As soon as I searched it on Ebay I was shocked to see it being bid for at $100 and being sold sealed for three times that. I searched for Pokémon Sapphire and was able to get it for around $38.00. I also wen looking for Pokémon White and was able to get a bundle deal with that game and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time for $80.

The Numerous Fakes

As I went through Ebay I came across numerous Pokémon games that were obviously reproductions. I have no issue with people making and selling reproductions so long as it is fully disclosed to the person buying, but a good amount of them were not. Here is a reproduction of Pokémon Ruby. Just one look and you’ll know exactly what is wrong with. I reported this item to Ebay several times as it was being sold as real despite being fake, yet it remained.

The Prices

As I mentioned earlier the prices that some of these games can get to are outrageous. Below are a few screenshots of such prices. Let me remind you that some of what I was looking for was a 10 year old game. Of course you can find them lower than what you see below, but this just shows how much some people try to sell these for.

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The Sellers

Some sellers are just downright shady. It’s just one of the things you have to be careful of since anybody can be a seller on the site. I had one experience a couple years back where I won an item and the seller claimed they didn’t know how to ship the item. Ebay wouldn’t do anything so I got refunded through PayPal. The best advice I can give is to go to a person’s reviews and make sure that they have reviews as a seller. You also come across people like I mentioned earlier selling reproduction games while claiming them to be real.

Alternatives

One of the best alternatives that I’ve found is Etsy. You can find people selling retro games there as well as other things like custom game systems. I got my custom Game Boy Advance from Etsy and have been very pleased with it. It’s also easier to message people if you have questions on an item or need support for something.

Conclusion

I still think that there are things that you can only get on Ebay, but I honestly do not think its worth the effort. I got the things I wanted but it took days of searching and waiting for auctions to end in order to get the items. It costs more to straight up purchase it on other normal sites, but I much prefer this to bidding. Ebay has a buy now option, but a lot of the time the price is more than what the game is worth.

Thank you all for reading as always. Let me know what experience you’ve had with Ebay or other similar sites in the comments. As usual if you’d like to keep up to date with what I post and when it’s posted you can follow me on here or on Twitter @realgamerwithg1.