Categories
Blog News

PlayStation continued !

To continue my post about the PlayStation one console I bought, the only thing still missing was a savegame-card. Since Tom is extremely keen on playing the Dinosaurs game, on Tuesday during lunch hour I went to the local Photohall shop in the Brussels North Train Station. Unfortunately they did not have it.

They could order one though, for 16.97 euros. Geez, that’s about half of what I paid for the whole setup at the flea market in the first place. However, the guy behind the counter told me I could probably get them at Pele-Mele, a shop near the Brussels South Station that specialises in second-hand book, computers and game consoles.

So I took the pre-metro (an underground tram) over there, getting off at the ‘Anneesens’ stop. After some bumbling around, going the wrong way, I found it. It’s actually so close to the exit of the pre-metro that I had not seen it coming out.

They did indeed have a savegame-card, at the cost of 10 euros. I figured I could either wait until there was another brocante, and perhaps not find it, or pay for it right now, so I bought it.

There was also a second-hand PSP (!) that was on sale for 190 euros (they also had them at the regular price of 249 euros), a PlayStation 2 for 100 euros, Nintendo gameboys, gameboys advance and DS a gogo, and a large collection of second-hand games.

Lots of people come in and sell them their no longer used games, all the time. While I was there a kid – probably 14 years old – sold them his Gameboy and all the titles that came with it. Probably saving up for a PSP.

I also noticed something strange – a couple of brown-skinned youths selling 2 PS2 games were accompanied by a guy that I can best describe as a tramp. I was wondering why he was there until I noticed the body language of the store clerk – he was obviously not happy seeing him and the youths.

After watching the whole sales process I puzzled it out – anytime you sell a game, the store clerk takes a photocopy of your identity card, so they know from whom they bought it, and very probably to have a trail in case they buy stolen merchandise. This is where the tramp came in handy for these two youths : when they sell the game, it’s not their identity that is copied, it’s the tramps one. He probably gets a free beer out of it, and since he is a tramp, he is probably not that easy to find should anyone wonder why he is selling all these games.

The store clerk definitely was not happy buying games from these guys, but since they fulfilled the legal obligations, he did accept the games from them, even if they were sort of smirking in his face.

You learn something every day… nothing good though, today.

(Visited 21 times, 1 visits today)