I feel like usually when people mention how little Gamestop gives for trade-ins/buys, people tend to have a reaction ranging from shock, to outrage to disappointment.
And I totally understand that, especially because most people aren't hugely clued into the retailer secondhand market, not just Gamestop. People expect to sell a new game back to Gamestop and get like $40.
But considering Gamestop will sell it for $55, that margin for the bulk of their profits would be completely unsustainable even if used games were still huge.
Getting $25 back for a new game sounds exactly like what I would expect. It's a game they know they can sell within a week and so they do the best they can, in that range of 40-50% od what they'll sell it for.
And that range is pretty standard across the board for secondhand retailers buying items they know they can sell fast. If 40-50% is unreasonable to you, it's not just Gamestop that should tick you off. Also card shops for MTG and Yugioh, the best you will ever see from them is 50% too.
And used bookstores too. I worked at one for 3 years, and 40% of what we'd sell it for was the best we paid for a new book or media that we would sell in a week. We HAD to, to stay in business. But even that rate was tough for us, the actual profits (and presumeably Gamestop's profits too) came from people selling books that we were super unsure being able to sell, so paid a fraction of their worth. And the one or two books in the bunch that would sell at a budget price, but at a great margin, was how that store stayed afloat. People would literally get insulted that we were giving 5 cents for the 37th copy of Twilight that day, but we paid as much as we could. And bookstores are all struggling now too.
My point of all this is that it sounds super shitty that Gamespot offered you $25 for a new game, but really that's what you should expect from any business based off selling used shit, it's either Gamespot and all those other stores being shitty, or it's the balance between the stores paying what they can to turn a profit, and the customer getting a lower amount because of the convenience of a middleman you meet in person, not needing to find a buyer yourself.
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