Buying GBA games

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PeZ

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#1  Edited By PeZ

As time goes by, it becomes more and more clear that GBA is morphing into a retro system. Getting games new is pretty tough, but worse yet, the market is so saturated with pirate carts, it's disgusting. Which very much saddens me as a collector. So I have a question to the community, and especially those who are into collecting - where do you  get your GBA games?   
 
I know the obvious answer would be ebay, but as I said 8 out of 10 games there are Chinese knock-offs, 1 is a loose cart, and one is a boxed-sealed copy that's going for 40+ USD. Sometimes Play-Asia and videogames.ca carry some stuff worth buying, but it's mostly showelware.  And since I live in a small country, going browsing the leftovers in GameStops or whatnot isn't an option either.  
 
So - any help or ideas? Or is ebay still the only option?

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Mushir

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#2  Edited By Mushir

eBay really is the best thing I can think of. Although there might be a special site mainly for GBA games. I'm just assuming this.

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Branthog

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#3  Edited By Branthog

Might want to be wary of eBay, too -- if you're looking for exclusively authentic original run games. It might not be as bad for GBA games, but there's a game store online called "Game Quest Direct" that negotiates deals with license holders for certain games and then runs off about 100,000 prints of them without making any distinction on them to indicate they were printed in, say, 2009 instead of 1998. Then they sell them for a ridiculously high price on eBay, until people catch on and the price people are willing to pay drops. Then they sell the rest via their website (without, again, indicating that they're not the real/original thing) and sometimes they dump them on Gamestop stores who will open the packages and put them on display as "rare, used, vintage games" for a ridiculous price.
 
Some might see it as a great service that they're putting out prints of games that people otherwise might never get to play while others may see it as shady and deceitful. I kind of personally fall in-between the two.

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#4  Edited By PeZ

Wow, I've never heard of such a practice, pretty devious, actually. Though, I don't mind as much as it still is an official product, especially if the price is reasonable.  
 The loose carts and listings with no photo shipping from Hong-Kong are far worse.