I play a lot of video games, so normally after I finish a game that does not have a multiplayer aspect to it that I enjoy, I'll sell those games on eBay after I complete them. Most recently I bought God of War III for the PS3 on it's release day and had completed it within a week. Since this game had no multiplayer and I couldn't see myself playing it again, I decided to throw it up on eBay, as I normally do with games, and recoup some of the cost. I ended up selling the game for $45+$4 shipping. After eBay fees and paypal fees I probably came away with $40-41 (I'm assuming). I didn't think it was bad at the time, but now that I think about it I basically rented the game for a week for $20. Had I been the one to just wait a week and bought it myself on ebay I could have saved a few bucks, and I have done this in the past, but this game was just too good to wait for. But hey, at least I'm not sitting on a $60 game that I'll never play again, right?
Sure there are other options out there that would probably cater to my video game playing hobby better, like Gamefly. But at $14-15 a month for 1 game at a time, I don't think it's worth it... God of War III was just that good that I couldn't stop playing it, but I don't do that with every game. Shit, I bought Final Fantasy XIII on launch day and only have about 7 hours invested in it... that came out a week before God of War III. So I can't justify a monthly fee in order to play games like that, plus who knows how long the new releases will take to get to me. So that leaves me with the buy and sell option that I've been using lately. eBay is a great place to pick up used games a week or two after they are released for a good price and if you beat them quick enough you can recoup pretty much all your money. I actually made money on Infamous for the PS3, I bought it on ebay for $35, beat it in a week and resold it on eBay for $38. So eBay is always a great method for buying and selling games, but I wanted to give another service a shot and see how it played out.
That service is Glyde.com. I don't know much about the history of Glyde, but my girlfriend's brother told me that he thinks it used to be mainly for books before, but they've since transitioned into video games and stuff of that nature. Basically Glyde is a marketplace for books, movies, CDs and DVDs where you can buy and sell stuff at market price. As a test I threw up some older Xbox 360 games that I no longer play and actually still had a fairly decent market value. I didn't waste my time with any game that was going for less than $10.
As a test I put up Skate 2, Left 4 Dead and Shaun White Snowboarding. I bought Skate 2 on eBay last year sometime and I believe it was only around $25, the market price on Glyde, in excellent condition, is $14.50, so that's what I listed it at. I also bought Left 4 Dead off eBay a few months after it's release for around $30, I listed it at market price of $12.00. And Shaun White Snowboarding I bought brand new when Amazon had it for sale for $20.00 the day after it was released, I played it once, it's terrible. I listed it at market price of $12.75 last week and now the market price is $12.25 (but that does not affect my listing price).
So as you can see, nothing terribly new, nothing expensive, this was just a test to see how the system works. To list a game there is no listing fee like eBay has for most people. How it works is that they take a fee as well as charging you for the price of the mailer. So far the only game I've sold is Left 4 Dead and as of Saturday the transaction was 75% complete. The game sold early last week and I received an email saying that I would be receiving the packing material in a few days and as soon as I did I was to pack up the game and ship it out the next day.
On Friday I received the pre-paid bubble envelope to put the game into, it was shipped to me within a larger media mailer, which seemed like a waste to me. There has got to be some sort of packaging method they can come up with similar to Netflix where it's one envelope that also doubles as the return package, but apparently not. The return mailer already has the recipients address printed on it as well as tracking information and a return address to Glyde's headquarters. So I put the game in and it was ready to go. The only issue I ran into was that the envelope was too big to slide into the Outgoing Mail slot at my apartment building so I had to go to a mailbox to drop it off and it just so happens that the mailbox I dropped it in had it's last pickup at 1PM, it was 2PM already... oh well. So other than the wasteful method of getting me the prepaid packaging and the fact that it wouldn't fit in my mailbox (not Glyde's fault), the whole shipping process was pretty smooth, but let's compare fees.
So Glyde charges you $1.25 for the mailer itself, which isn't too bad when you're selling a few games here and there. I'm sure I could find media mailers cheaper elsewhere, but when I sell a game I usually just buy the mailer at the post office when I'm shipping it out and each one costs around that price, $1-1.25. So the cost of the mailer isn't a big deal and Glyde has already covered the shipping costs so that's not an issue, but I usually charge $4 for shipping on eBay anyways, which covers the cost of the mailer+shipping, so advantage eBay. Glyde then took their fee of $1.20, or 10% of the sell cost. Now on eBay they would take around $1 for a $12 item, so pretty close there, but then on top of that there are Paypal fees which are 2.9% of the amount received, plus $.30 cents. So in this case the $1 from eBay and the $.65 from Paypal would have brought my fees to $1.65 (plus listing fees if you get charged them, I don't). So in this case the fees from Glyde are more expensive than if I had sold the item on eBay.
With that said, Glyde is nicer for the fact that I don't have to go to the post office and stand in line, I don't really have to worry about anything except putting the game in the envelope when it comes and dropping it in a mailbox. So even though Glyde charged me about $.60 cents more in fees, the convenience factor was a lot nicer. However, I probably could have gotten more for the game had I sold it on eBay. The original Left 4 Dead has sold for anywhere between $7 all the way up to $17 in the last couple days. There's obviously a larger user base through eBay which can bring the price of your sale up.
To wrap things up, I really enjoyed the Glyde experience and will probably sell more games through it. I like the fact that you put the games up once and they sit there until they sell, and the company takes no money until they sell. I like the idea that I don't have to worry about shipping or going to the post office as well. I don't like the fact that the fees are a little more, the user base isn't as large and I could most likely get more money through eBay. The wasteful shipping packaging could be re-thought, but it's not a big issue. I'm also not a huge fan of the fact that you can't have the money put directly into Paypal after the recipient receives the game. So if you have a few old games you don't want anymore and you don't want to pay eBay listing fees, then I highly recommend giving Glyde.com a shot. Like I said, there are no up front costs so if the game never sells you never pay any money so it's not going to hurt you.
