Random Video Of Man Trading Rare Retro Items For Zelda: TotK Switch Goes Viral

Probably a fair deal as far as absolute dollars and cents go, especially with the $700 payout, but the stuff he traded is likely to continue appreciating in value while the stuff he got will not (especially if his plan is to use that Switch).

But assuming he's a collector (which is a fair assumption if he's got these things in his possession), it's an absolutely baffling trade. The Pokemon set is a crown jewel, and I'm not even a big Pokemon or N64 fan.

Stuff is only worth what people are willing to pay. If those eBay listings are still up then nobody has bought them yet.

If this is legit then I don't blame this gentleman for trading in his goods. Sometimes it's less risk and effort than heading to eBay.

Even still, I probably would have tried eBay first 😅

The Switch probably will appreciate in value by a hundred quid or so I imagine, even used if well taken care of. I suspect the other items are more volatile and will go up and down over time.

Honestly, I wonder if these retro systems ever belonged to this guy. He looks to be in his mid-20's. Wondering if he found them in his dad's garage and decided to hock them for his drug of choice having no idea what they were actually worth. I wonder if his dad even knows he took them? 🤔

@ralphdibny It's pretty easy to check sold prices on eBay though. Doing so suggests that orange Pikachu N64 in box goes for about £300. A NES Action Set about £200-300. The games about £75-100 a pop.
Even allowing that the store has to underpay to make a margin (and even then, given he's trading in rather than selling, they could cut him a bit of slack there) and the convenience of trading in vs selling yourself, he's been done. His gear was about three times the value of the OLED.

@TransmitHim yep fair enough, but even what you listed there comes out to about a grand average and he did get at least 700 dollars.

@ralphdibny Hmm, yeah, I forgot about that element.

As others have pointed out, unsold Buy It Now auctions on eBay are not a measure of worth. If you look at actual completed listings, his items may have been worth $1k-1.2k on eBay. They gave him $700 cash.

However, if he had sold that on eBay, with the recently updated tax law coming into effect this year, he'd be forced to declare it on his taxes. Unless he can prove when he bought those items and how much he paid, he'd be on the hook for short-term capital gains tax (probably ~20%) on the full value of each item. Add on eBay fees, PayPal fees, packaging costs, fuel cost, time investment, and that $700 doesn't sound so bad.

That said, if he was willing to invest the time, he would have been best served just dealing with others locally through something like Facebook Marketplace or groups / forums.

Need to check the Sold items on ebay. I could put a twig on ebay for $1,000,000 doesn't mean it's worth that much.

Why are we paying attention to what morons on Twitter think? The actual value of those items is nowhere near the prices on those unsold Ebay auctions. Nothing says lazy journalism like articles focusing on what some rando on Twitter posted.

@tektite_captain I agree, very strange article to post. Lately the stories and features here have been top-notch but this one feels like a knee-jerk, surface level research before publishing. I get they are reporting on the twitterers reaction but that in itself is so pointless to post about unless this were a satire/comedic site poking fun at them.

@TransmitHim 100% this. How people still don't know to ignore unsold posts and look ONLY at sold listings when determining "value" is baffling.

dude gets 700$ cash + oled totk special edition switch console for, at most 1200$ worth of trade-ins. looks pretty fair…twitter being twitter isn’t really newsworthy imo.