The craziness of Ebay pricing...

[abrugsch]

Tl;Dr - don't bother looking for broken DMG's on Ebay (UK anyway)
So I just had a quick look at ebay to see if there were any broken DMG's and what I found was interesting...

Typical BIN price for a working but maybe a bit shabby DMG: ~£20-22 (+ delivery sometimes)
Typical BIN price for a broken/spares or repair unit: £30-40 (sometimes even more!) + insane delivery! (everything from a screen that's totally irreparable to some slight battery terminal corrosion which will cost next to nothing to fix...)

W. T. A. F.
I guess the decent priced ones get bought instantly by sudomoders

I'm going to stick to car boot sales or maybe even my friend in Japan... or just use repro shells for any future ones...

[Camble]

The price trend seemed to skyrocket quite a bit after the forum became more established. At least it's possible to use a replacement shell instead of hacking up an old gameboy.

[Tamasco]

I dont know where you have been looking, but I have already bought 3 broken DMG (one supposely broken and was working) and a Pocket (broken and working also), at less than 15€, in really good state. The last one I have bought was a DMG Play it loud green.

You need to look for "gameboy junk" bidings. Every week there are plenty of them. Look for play-japan, isoy-jp2015 and dora(something else) sellers.

[Camble]

I got a good deal on one of mine as it was just listed as "DMG-01". It didn't show up in most searches.

[ChunkeeMunkee]

I paid £18 for mine on Ebay with a faulty screen and discoloured shell. Thought I grabbed a bargain at the time, now thinking I was ripped off!

[abrugsch]

I dont know where you have been looking...

I have other places to source them apart from ebay - a few retro buy and sell groups on facebook, charity shops and boot sales etc. This was just the result of a quick search for "gameboy", "gameboy spares repair" and "gameboy broken" that i did this morning. I just found it laughable that people are selling broken ones with a buy it now price that's higher than working ones.

I guess with anything like this, timing and luck play a part too.

[Tamasco]

I dont know where you have been looking...

I guess with anything like this, timing and luck play a part too.

Exactly, you dont need to russ to buy this things. Just look on eBay once in a while, find the one you want, and bid in the last moment. As I said, you may end with a working gameboy for less than 10-15€.

[abrugsch]

...you may end with a working gameboy for less than 10-15€.

unfortunately, this is what keeps happening apart from the original pair that I bought last year, any supposedly broken GB has been either working perfectly or had such a minor fault that it's basically working. And I won't destroy a perfectly serviceable unit to mod into a PiBoy

so far 3 GBC's and one DMG have been declared broken and turned out to have essentially no fault! (well the DMG needed a battery terminal de-corroding (had a spare in my bag-o-bits) and a few vertical lines needed the soldering iron over the ribbon treatment. )

I'm not after one per-se right now as my project has a fair amount of work to go before it's finished... but just always on the look out