Online Gaming Sites You Trust?

[telekill]

Hi all.

I regretted selling my Sega CD model 2 system back in the day (around 2012?) and want to get one again. While I would love to get a Sega CDX, I think the model 2 Genesis with the model 2 Sega CD is probably one of the slickest system designs (visually) of all time.

I've started the process of looking around price wise. My local shops don't have a Sega CD 2 and I've checked www.estarland.com and they don't have any either. Half or more of the Sega CD 2's on eBay are broken and state as such but for some reason, they still ask the amount of a working one. So a couple questions for the community here:

1. What online sites other than eBay would you trust to purchase retro games/systems from?
2. What sites/businesses do you trust to fix your broken systems?

Thanks for the replies.

[tripredacus]

1. I haven't bought anything from a regular website in a very long time. I have bought games/hardware from various forums but with a forum you are limited to what people are selling and there isn't any garauntee that anyone will happen to be selling anything you want and/or for reasonable prices. For online markets besides ebay, I've only bought items from Japan with Suruga-ya or the proxy service One Map From Japan.

2. For repair purposes, I do everything local to my area. Either something I can do myself, or I will ask one of the local arcade collectors for help.

[redblaze57]

Yeah I tend to also just go local if I can't fix something myself

However I think I got a second Sega CD 2 LAYING laying around somewhere. I can check and DM you later if your serious about getting one

[sworddude]

I would trust any big place in which people offer up 2nd hand goods

Just have good judgement per listing if said seller actually owns the item. asks for specific pics if you don't feel a listing is legit to make sure they own the item. otherwise any retrogame store is pretty trustworthy but you'll pay allot more than market value at that point

in terms of broken harder to find consoles such as the sega cd. People actually pay quite a bit for those not to far off a working one, a thing for allot of retro consoles unless the casing is in trash condition. They are usually not to hard to fix for quite some folks hence why the prices are still pretty high. It just depends if you value your time or not an old console usually doesn't have huge issues to get it to run again.

[dhaabi]

eStarland has a good reputation for repairs, but I've not used their services to provide any first-hand experiences. I've visited their physical store on several occasions years ago, and it seems like repairs (at that time, at least) are done professionally.

[sworddude]

if you are planning on buying a broken console. I would go for tutorials on potential problems if you want to save a buck. usually not somthing huge

because otherwise repair costs might actually surpass the cost of a working one unless you got a really good price on it.

If your planning to get a console fixed but not want to do it yourselves. might be better to just skip the repair step and get a working one it's probably cheaper

[ferraroso]

Here in Japan, I mostly use
Yahoo! Auctions (https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/),
Mercari (https://jp.mercari.com/)
and
Off-Mall (https://netmall.hardoff.co.jp/cate/00010012/)

I've also used
Suruga-ya (https://www.suruga-ya.jp/)
and
Famicon Tsuhan Tea 4 Two (https://www.tea4two.jp/)
at least a couple of times each.

For buying games from South America (plenty of awesome Tectoy stuff down there), the best option is
Mercado Lib(v)re (https://mercadolibre.com/)

I've never had trouble buying from any of these sites.

[tripredacus]

Outside of Japan, some of those you need to use a proxy service to buy from. Most will have an advertised proxy service on the site somewhere, like I think YAJ has buyee.jp proxy. Suruga-ya you can buy direct but proxy services can buy from them also.

Has Mercadolibre changed for Brazil changed? For a long time you couldn't buy from there because the sellers wouldn't ship to US. Maybe they like Japan better.

[ferraroso]

Has Mercadolibre changed for Brazil changed? For a long time you couldn't buy from there because the sellers wouldn't ship to US. Maybe they like Japan better.

Yeah, you're right. For Mercado Livre BR, it really depends on the seller's will to send the item abroad. Maybe they tend to be nicer to me because I'm a fellow countryman? Haha
In my experience, eBay sellers (especially those in the UK, for some reason) tend to be more problematic when In try to order something from here...

[NickAwesome]

Are you in any national facebook collecting buy/sell groups?  Outside of ebay, I often find buying from other collectors and resellers is the way to go.  Some groups I recommend- Retro Universe, Filthy Games, Collectors of America, Planet Retro, and many more. 

Even better- do you have a local/regional retro Fb group?  Living in the PNW, we have two major communities- Portland Retro Gamers and Greater Seattle Area Retro Gamers- I've made some great friends and gotten some great deals on games and consoles over the years.  It's how I got my Vectrex!

[sworddude]

Has Mercadolibre changed for Brazil changed? For a long time you couldn't buy from there because the sellers wouldn't ship to US. Maybe they like Japan better.

Yeah, you're right. For Mercado Livre BR, it really depends on the seller's will to send the item abroad. Maybe they tend to be nicer to me because I'm a fellow countryman? Haha
In my experience, eBay sellers (especially those in the UK, for some reason) tend to be more problematic when In try to order something from here...

There might be multiple reasons for that. UK is one of those countries in which allot of regular folks sell on ebay. you have allot less normal people that sell on ebay in most other european countries. mostly collectors or retro stores since common man usually has other sites for getting rid of 2nd hand goods. The more experienced the seller is the more likely it is they want to go through the hassle that is called international shipping. It is time consuming and there are quite some risks attached so I could see why allot of folks including proffesional sellers might not want to deal with it.

also to top it off in recent years. UK is excluded from europe so you got big time import taxes when you buy from the UK even from a neighbouring european country which does cut the price quite a bit. so for monetary reasons even within europe less buyers that want to buy from the UK or vice versa sell to europe.