GameStop customer earned over $10,000 in store credit from a stack of broken consoles — traded ‘hundreds’ of PlayStations, Xboxes, Game Boys, Switches, and more

One man’s trash is another’s treasure, and that certainly seems to be the case for ‘Josh,’ a GameStop customer. The well-known gaming and trade-in business says that Josh came into its Clackamas, Oregon store and “traded hundreds of broken consoles for $10,690.06 in store credit.” In its Twitter/X post, GameStop shows Josh looking pleased with a fistful of trade credit cards, another image showing reams of receipts, and a far too small photo of the broken console haul.

That’s a lot of in-store credit to spend, but as most GameStop-ites will know, your trade-ins go further this way. In other words, if you asked for cash instead of credit, you would get less. Accepting the compromise of in-store credit can actually net you up to 50% more cash to spend – albeit with your choices locked to what GameStop has in stock. This might not be a big drawback if you like video games. But $10,690.06 is a lot of credit, even for the most avid gamer.

Checking the GameStop website today shows it doesn’t embrace gaming PCs or laptops, or PC components. Your local store might have a selection available, though. What I did see today were a few meager electronics items like MacBooks and iPhones listed. The major trade at this retailer is in PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch consoles and games. This is where most customers would probably expect to use their credit.

I found it interesting to try and identify the few broken consoles we can see in the plastic crates. Without too much scrutiny and pixel peeping, there are clearly a few Nintendo Switch Lites in there, a Sega GameGear, a pair of Sony PSPs, and numerous Nintendo Game Boys representing a few eras (GBC, DS, DSL). Under that crate are what look like a black and a white Xbox 360. There must have been many more crates to tally up to “hundreds.” Squinting at the receipts shows there were indeed multiple PS4, Xbox One, Series X, and 360 consoles in the traded collection.

In terms of pricing, the receipts reveal Josh traded in multiple Xbox One consoles for $7.92 each, Xbox Series X consoles for $10-11, PS4 consoles priced at $16 each, and working Xbox One consoles at around $40. Pricing for the more exciting stuff is unfortunately illegible in the photos.

Some social media keyboard warriors throw scorn at Josh for selling this bountiful collection of broken consoles to GameStop. The key accusation is basically that he’s been swindled by GameStop, who would pay a pittance compared to what could have been raised selling on auction sites like eBay. Perhaps he could have made a lot more cash selling his broken consoles independently, but depending on how many auctions he generated from the 100s of items, that would be a lot more effort: dealing with accurate description writing, photography, shipping, and the inevitable returns.

It would similarly be interesting to find out how much profit GameStop ends up making from this pile of consoles, but it isn’t likely to share this kind of business data. Some of the consoles will likely be irreparable, only useful for spares and donor components; others, perhaps if there are rarer special editions in the collection, could bring in a lot of cash if fixed and refurbished.