Hoarding older material for business

[RCBH928]

So , being retro and all, I ordered the movie Hackers on VHS from amazon. I was very surprised to see many offers on factory sealed copies for a very cheap price.

I would like to hear from those who know, why would any one care to store anything for 10-20 years then make very little money on them? Why would you even go through the trouble?

Even when you think about it in the videogames world, its very amazing that I find brand new Saturns or SNES unopened . Sure those will probably have higher price points like $300-500 , but would you really wait for 20 years just to make $500?

its one thing to own the system for that long and then decide to sell it, its another to store it on the shelve and make business out of it. Storage space is to be paid for.

In the end , I benefit by getting retro material in brand new condition but I wonder why would people out there do this?

[AppleQueso]

Usually they don't keep that old media around on purpose. Sometimes it's just old stock they found buried in a warehouse.

They aren't gonna throw it away, as that'd be wasteful. Even selling it for a buck each, they're making some money back on it.

[Menegrothx]

I've been wondering the same question when buying a lot of sealed Dreamcast, Atari Lynx etc stuff for super cheap prices from a German online gamestore. VMUs, vibration packs, games etc unopened&unused for next to nothing. For example I got some Atari Lynx games that were made in 1989&1990 that were still factory sealed for 3-4 euros.

[Hobie-wan]

As stated, usually these have been sitting in a warehouse forgotten or something. Let's say they find 10 cases of 10 widgets still sealed from 20 years ago. They'll have a clearance sale to get stuff gone and someone will buy those 100 brand new widgets for $50. So the warehouse got a little money and freed up space. The buyer got a bunch of new things for 50 cents each. If they have the space to sit on them while they slowly sell for $1 each they've doubled their money. Maybe they sell cases to other people for $20 each and quadruple their money.

[flojocabron]

I wouldn't really mess with tapes.

They need to stay away from heat and magnetic fields.

I haven't bought vhs tapes for a loooong time now. But in the past I've purchased vhs tapes still new in the wrapper at fleamarkets; only to not play at all.

When it comes to disc stuff, it can fall out and jiggle in the case. I've also picked up cheap wrapped DVDs and finding certain types of scratches from the disc being loose.

Then there's another problem with storing the merchandize.

Self-storage places cost money. And you may not have space at home for so much stuff. Unless you live in a big ranch house with a couple of acres. Not to mention protecting the stuff from heat and the elements. And especially the sun. Nobody want to pay full price for sun faded objects.

That's why retail makes stuff clearance. They have to pay rent for square feet of the building. It may cost too much to send it back, and selling cheap makes back a few cents.

In truth, there is profit in buying the cheapest stuff to resell it. Dollar tree and the like make good money from buying and reselling stuff like this.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Purposefully "investing" in video games or other media is generally a bad idea. There are better ways to make your money grow.

[RCBH928]

@AppleQueso @Hobie-Wan

I see where you are coming from, but a warehouse will probably have a management and it costs money to maintain one . I have a hard time believing they just didn't realize they have a batch of brand new items sitting around for 13 years. This warehouse must be the size of Russia . Especially in a country like the USA where its all about the business.

I understand if there is one guy who still has a brand new item still around, for example we have a local store here who still own brand new consoles such as Neo-Geo's or SNES with their games, but that is just because he never got to sell them and they stayed around the house, he also wants to sell them for their original price still if not more expensive. But I see old material brand new way too often to think this is the case any way.

@Flojocarbon

I dont know about this media thing not resisting conditions. We moved about 9 years ago and I just discovered about 30 VHS tapes that have been stored in a room with no air conditioner and they work just fine, in fact some look great! I live in an area where summer reaches 122F and high humidity, during the winter you can see droplets on the car. It survived this for 9 years!

I also have a bootlegged WWF RAW for the PSX , I stopped playing psx in about 1999. I am not sure how this survived with me or how it moved with us from the old house, but I inserted in my computer and it worked!

I do agree with you that storing stuff costs money, so why do these people hang to stuff for such a long time only to sell it for few dollars. Many times shipping is more expensive than the item.
This is why I am amazed and this is why I opened this thread

[CRTGAMER]

There is a seller at the Swap Meet who buys merchandise by the pallet, and resells individual product at the Swap Meet. Last Sunday he was pulling dogpiled games out of of the pallet box and trying to guesstimate the value of each on Ebay with his cell phone. Good luck on that, the work, time, stall rental, online cell data usage and gas probably too much a loss. Most of the games were still buried in that pallet box. A lot of the cases in the "Dirty Laundry Box" had discs spilling out. I dug thru a bit in the Pallet Box and saw Gamecube Animal Crossing with Memory Card but no disc and a CIB PC Flight Simulator X. Since he was matching online prices didn't even bother asking a price to buy them.

Imagine a box this size full of CD and DVD cased games piled as laundry inside!
Maybe I'll go back next weekend and do a serious dive in there, might find a treasure?

[flojocabron]

Those big boxes are used at Goodwill's merchandise warehouse to sort items. Or to move old product from store to store.

Some its filled with boardgames/toys, small kitchen appliances, books/knicknacks and of course music/games. Many times they have old stores prices on them.

From the main warehouse, They are then sent out to smaller thrift stores. But sometimes they arent. There are auctions sometimes and instead of moving it to a store its auctioned off to the public.

Its done like this because many times theres no space at a smaller store to take this pallet in. It costs to much to ship it farther than usual. Or they do it to make a quick buck selling it to flemarket people.

Some stuff is sorted beforehand at the goodwill facility, but there are times when its not even looked at; it goes straight into the box/pallet.

Its kinda random for whats in there. You can buy these too if you're brave/willing to risk it.

People buy muliple pallets of this stuff for a couple hundred $$$ and some may have better product than others. If someone buys three pallets and they make good money off of at least one of them; the other too are somewhat sold at a loss, but they still made good money.

it makes good business doing this kind of thing, but you definitely have lots of random crap left over.

[RCBH928]

Well...

Whatever makes them happy, because it definitely makes me happy to find stuf from 15-20 years ago still factory sealed I was just wondering how they do it. I figured that storing material for such a long time costs them money, but if they find it profitable... more power to them