A Console For Five Pounds… Part 2 – The Joy Of CEX

As you will hopefully have read in Part 1, I’ve set myself the challenge of buying myself a Commodore C64GS games console starting with a meagre budget of £5 building that up to its current market value of around £500 through retro game trading. After a couple of lucky breaks I’d managed to get the pot off to an impressive start reaching £18 within a couple of days which is where things were left last time…

I was left with a modest budget and just one game left for sale. I’d had no luck on Facebook so I knew that eBay was going to be my best chance. I was in no rush at this point so I was happy with it being a slow burner so I listed it for £6.99 with free UK postage.

One game wasn’t much use to me so it was back to the charity shops and another local run proved to be a bit. One store was having a clearance on all their CDs and DVDs (and included games amongst this) so I left with a small bundle of four for £1. Nothing spectacular but certainly enough to be profitable.

Funds remaining: £17

Next shop a few doors down was even better though. By the counter they had a selection of PS3 and Wii games. They were priced up at £1.99 each so after checking the condition and going with my instincts I left with three for £5.97…

Funds remaining: £11.03

As before I wanted to turn these around as quickly as possible. Despite the quality of the games, eBay prices seemed to vary wildly so once again it was going to be another visit to CEX to cash them in. The three Wii games alone would net me £19 cash so once more I was on to a winner.

With the remaining games, another would get a further £1.50 from CEX so its fate was sealed while the last three were destined for eBay.

Well that was my initial thought but as always I ended up changing my plans. I looked into the possibility of trying to raffle off all of the games to boost my income further but before I could do this I made another chance visit to the same charity store I picked up all of the Wii games from. Astonishingly they had a few other games in and after a little checking I left with these for £1.98…

Funds remaining: £9.05

So onto the revised plans and that’s left me now with six Nintendo Wii games on hand so those are all making their way to CEX to be traded in. I still need hard cash despite the generous trade-in offer, so I planned for another visit to the ever-reliable CEX. I checked online and it looked as if all six would net me the tidy sum of £34.50 to add to my cash fund…

With another game added to my eBay listings (Star Trek Pinball), the remaining titles were put aside for a “rainy day” or to add value to bundles if needed in the future.

Come the day of the CEX trip and things changed. Their trade in and sales prices are always in a state of flux and it was no different for my bundle of Wii games and now they were only worth £33. Still a healthy profit though. However with plenty of charity shops nearby I’d be foolish not to check them out first!

Most didn’t really have anything of note and despite a few false alarms (and trying to hide the fact that I was checking prices on CEX’s website from watchful eyes) I finally found something of interest…

It may have been selling for £1.99 but with CEX just a couple of doors down offering £5 cash I’d be a fool to leave it on the shelf so that was a late purchase. So with that in hand as my final grade, I headed off to CEX to duly hand over my latest haul for the agreeable sum of £38. Incidentally, they were happy to offer £58 in trade value but as I had no interest in making a larger purchase there it wasn’t much use and as they say, cash is king!

It was an equally positive streak online as Spyro sold on eBay just a few days after being listed for the £6.99 asking price. PayPal and eBay took their own slice of the proceeds, as did the Royal Mail for postage. I usually keep a supply of padded envelopes but for the sake of this challenge I still factored the cost of that into the sale (fortunately bulk buying kept that down to a meagre 17p!) and I’d already covered the cost of the game so I was able to add another £4.46 to the pot!

So looking at the cash total so far, after two weeks my initial £5 fund has already grown to an impressive £49.52 – almost ten times my original stake!

So with a comfortable profit in hand and one more game waiting online to raise more money, that C64GS could well be mine sooner than I thought…

About Simon Plumbe 203 Articles
Husband, father and lifelong geek. Originally from the West Midlands, now spending my days in South Wales with my family and a house full of animals. Passionate about video games, especially retro gaming, the Commodore 64 and PlayStation Vita. Love pro wrestling, sci-fi and I'm an animal lover and vegetarian. Enjoyed this and my other articles? Why not buy me a coffee: http://ko-fi.com/simonplumbe

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