Cleaning Some Games

Today I had some spare time, so was able to get through some of the horde of games I've been gathering. I want to start getting them up on eBay as soon as I can, and until today I hadn't put up any listings.

The most recent bundle I bought was this one, where the majority of the games are PS2 games, all in all, there are more than a few relatively valuable ones in this lot.

I don't want to upload any items that are dirty, so the process of cleaning them all down is important. Also, it gives me a chance to really inspect them; it's important to be transparent and honest about what you're selling to ensure that you don't get any negative feedback.

The stack was a bit immense, and kind of shook me a bit, so I decided to break it down into a smaller stack.

I heard this saying before, "When you're doing the washing up, don't look at the huge stack you have to do, just focus on the plate you're cleaning.

That quote has a lot of weight because when I look at the stack of games, it's hard to find the motivation to start cleaning them. The smaller stack though, helped, even if it is only an illusion.

With the stack ready to go, I went and gathered all of the bits and pieces I needed to not only clean them, but also photograph them afterwards.

There isn't too much needed, and I've got it all on hand, so I don't need to go routing for it all.

I set the lights up, plugged them in, and left them off for the time being, while I focused on cleaning.

I'd love to have a free space in my office to set up like this, I think it would be much easier to chip away at it all, piece by piece over time.

I was cleaning, and it was going well until I noticed this.

It says Blu-ray disc at the top of the game box.

This is what it's meant to look like.

As I started looking, I noticed that a few of the PS3 games were in these boxes.

Here's another one that I intended to take photos of today.

This is what I mean by knowing what the product is, that you intend to sell.

Someone could have bought this, had I not noticed it, and they may have requested a refund, or they may have left bad feedback. Which, they're well within their rights to do, because they bought something that they weren't told about.

I decided to switch another box and Red Dead. There are a good few stickers on this box, and they can be a bit of a pain to get rid of because some tend to leave a residue on the plastic.

I took out the covers, cleaned up the boxes, and started to make the switch.

This is what I'll need to do for now, until I can potentially find some more PS3 boxes.

The best thing about it is that - I can swap inexpensive games whose price won't be affected too much by the odd box - with more valuable games.

Burnout had this sticker on the cover itself, which I can't get off, so the value of this one is a bit shot. (Not that it's ridiculously valuable to start with.)

There was this stick on the back which was a nightmare to peel, and it left a bunch behind.

I scrubbed it with some water, which seemed to loosen all of the paper.

But, I was left with all of this glue on the plastic, and I couldn't get rid of it.

The sticker is from Gamestop, and it's almost like super glue or something.

I steamed it, and used boiling water, but noting worked. I think I'll need some anti-adhesive or something to clean it properly, so I put this to one side for the time being.

This game is worth around 30+ but the box was fairly rough.

Some don't require too much cleaning, but as you can see here, this one did.

It's strange though that the manuals, disc, and cover are all in such good shape, considering the box is horrible looking.

It also had the same sticker as the last one, which wouldn't come off, so I just switched it for a cleaner-looking one.

Taking a game, in a good box, which is worth a 5er, and putting it in a slightly worse-looking box doesn't lower the value all that much anyway, so it's not a big deal.

After about an hour or so, the cleaning was done, and the stack of games was ready for photographing, but first I had to clean up the workspace.

Here are a few of the finished shots once I got through the pile.

It's in really good shape and is also complete, so I don't think I'll have trouble selling this one.

Here's a shot of the box open.

Here's everything the game comes with.

The discs are hard to photograph, and it's something I need to work on a bit or get a better camera.

Here's a shot I took of the poster, to show that it's in decent shape.

On the flip side of it, is this map of the world.

I miss when games were physical, and came with cool things like this.

Here's the spine.

Currently, I have 5 listings up on my eBay store, and I have multiple folders of pictures now in my drive so I can start putting up a listing a day, and then slowly turn that into 2 listings a day as I get through and clean the rest of the pile.

I heard it's better not to put up too many listings per day, especially when you start out, because you could trigger a response from the eBay bots, who may shut your account down.

It's all good though, I don't mind going slow and steady to start off with.