Why do we Trade In instead of simply Trading?

For all the physical disk owners out there who obviously get the short end of the stick when trading games in to companies like Gamestop, Game, etc, why dont we simply trade with other consumers rather than being given close to nothing by these "trade ins"?

We've all got some sort of backlog, and I'm sure plenty of people are more than willing to swap more recent games for much older ones, which they never had the chance to experience.

[Have been thinking of ideas for apps, and this kind of popped in the other day.]

Thoughts?

Logistics.

To elaborate. Unless you have a bunch of friends with a deep bench of games and can simply meet up with them and trade the logistics of trading games directly is a hassle. You would need a tool to organize things, arrange trades, what about deliveries, who pays with what service, postal rates vs value of games, just having to mail a game is itself a minor process, what about assurances of not getting screwed, games getting lost, damage, having to swap addresses, different delivery timings, that's all just off the top of my head as considerations, I'm sure there are many more. So people just trade in, you come in and just get your money/credit end of story.

We already have sites that just sell your brick a brack to strangers, something specific to do trades would need to be along those lines, in terms of robustness, would be only for a minor subset of goods, and trades wouldn't deal in money theoretically.

There are game trading websites out there; I used to be active on one of them several years back, but postal rates got so crazy in Canada to the US (most users were US based) that it became unfeasible. People also over-value their own stuff just as badly as stores like Gamestop undervalue trade-ins, so the value argument was moot.

Selling games on eBay is also pretty easy. Just sell them singly and at a decent buy it now price and have it auto relist if it doesn't sell.

In terms of apps, it'd be cool if there was a place which aggregated all of that but that's essentially just eBay anyway. So I can't really see it being muhc of a big deal.

Games are not as liquid as money is so its easier to trade games for money over trading game for game

Yeah, I just sell my old games online at this point (Amazon) you make a better deal then trading them in that's for sure.

Just use CheapAssGamer.com

Problem solved.

I LOVED doing the game trading thing over websites back in the day. There was something so tremendously satisfying about identifying someone that had the exact game you wanted for something you had.

That's not how money works

I want to say that the reason is because the Gamestop model of trading in games for credit is on the mind of many gamers, which also has made its way into other retailers' plans. The selling of games on ebay has also allowed gamers to get money for games instead of trading 'game for game' with a friend, and that trend is happening all the time. Another idea is that many players like to play a game for about a few days after release and then trade it back in for credit while the value is still high. An example of this is the recent Halo 5 release: play through the single player, test out multiplayer for a few rounds, and then trade the game back in. In the old days, I think friends would look to trade a game with each other first before deciding to sell a game. But now, with money tighter and time harder to come by, the trading in option offers the best value option for many people.

Those are my thoughts, anyway.