Fischer: The Game Market

Last week I wrote about how I have become hard to shop for.

This week I’ve discovered that I may also be hard to shop from.

First, some back story.

I bought my PlayStation 4 in a post-Thanksgiving splurge back in 2019. “Marvel’s Spider-Man” had been on my mind for a while and “Final Fantasy VII Remake” was on the way. With both games being exclusive to the Sony platform, I figured I may as well pull the trigger.

And those two games are pretty much exclusively what I’ve used the console for. I never even touched “God of War” or “Horizon: Zero Dawn,” which came bundled with the system and are stellar games in their own right.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret my purchase. “Marvel’s Spider-Man” and “Final Fantasy VII Remake” are two incredible games that are well worth purchasing an entire system for. In fact, I’ll likely have to face a similar decision for the PS5 when their respective sequels get closer.

That said, every game I’ve mentioned so far is now available on PC. I haven’t re-bought them yet, but I can if the desire strikes.

All this means that my PS4 is effectively about as useful as a paperweight. It’s exceedingly unlikely I’ll ever be inclined to turn it on again.

So why do I still have it?

Well, right now, because nobody’s bought it from me yet.

Deciding I no longer needed the system, and after soliciting interest from my social circles, I put it up on the marketplace of everybody’s favorite social media platform.

I’ve never bought or sold anything over Facebook before. So far, it has been something of a wild experience.

The first response I got came from a guy who immediately tried to offer me $30 less than my asking price. When I declined, he made a counter offer… of $100 less than my asking price. I asked him if that was a typo and haven’t heard back since.

The next response I got was an obvious scam from the start. I’m not sure what the scam was, but the guy’s profile was full of Russian memes and he immediately offered to pay me over a service I’d never heard of and asked for an address so his brother could pick up the product. I asked the guy if his brother was in the area and he confidently asserted that his brother was in “Lowa.” Yep. “Lowa,” not “Iowa.”

Smooth.

Since then the experience has been pretty standard. A couple of people have professed their interest and then promptly vanished. A couple others have asked me to sell at two-thirds of stated price. I don’t blame them for bartering, but I’ve already set a pretty fair price and I don’t feel the need to discount it quite yet.

It’s only been a couple days and at this point I’m kind of more interested in seeing what kind of responses I get than I am in selling the system. This is the most entertainment I’ve gotten out of my PS4 in months.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and accepts cash or equivalent value in burritos.