Today I’ll show you how we store discs for used disc-based games. We’ll start with a tour of the system for selling a game, and then I’ll give you a process instruction list for use in your store. Then I’ll give you links to the supplies you’ll need, then we’ll talk about the advantages and challenges of this system.
Process for selling a disc-based game:
Dragon Age: Inquisition. For eight bucks, this is a lot of entertainment! The case is displayed empty, of course.
On the back of the case is a label with a number written on it. We should find the disc in envelope #938.
These cabinets behind the counter hold all of the envelopes. I see in the photo that someone has used their foot to close one of my very expensive drawers. Hmm.
Hooray! Here’s the disc. Actually it’s two discs for this game.
After the discs are removed, the empty envelope goes into a giant unsorted pile of empties and is available to use again.
Process for receiving incoming trades:
- Start with your big pile of disc-based games in their cases. We usually don’t sort them by system or sort them at all for this step. They’re just discs in cases in a stack.
- After cleaning the outside of the cases if needed, flip each on over onto its front and put a white label on the back. Don’t write anything yet.
- Once you’ve labelled all of the cases, get your pile of envelopes out. There’s no need to sort them.
- For each game, open up the case, remove the discs, put them into the envelope, and write the number that is on the envelope onto the label. It’s very important to do this entire step all at once for each disc. Don’t try to be cute and do several at once. You will inevitably mess up the order, record the wrong numbers on the label, and hate yourself later.
- Aside for multiple discs: Two discs can safely fit inside a sleeve. I would never advise a customer to do this at home, but these envelopes will almost never be handled, so the discs-rubbing-together issue isn’t a big deal. For more than two discs, add another envelope behind the first, and rubber-band them together. It doesn’t matter what number is on the additional attached envelopes. Just go by the number on the front-facing one.
- Put the numbered envelopes with the discs inside into your CD storage apparatus of choice, in order.
- Price-label your games if you haven’t done so already, and put them out on the shelf.
What you’ll need:
- An apparatus to store discs. When you’re just getting started you can use a row of properly-sized boxes. We started out with these snap-together boxes. They worked until we had about 1,200 discs, then the space requirements became too much. Eventually we bought some $2,000+ media storage cabinets from Gaylord Archival. The model we have (Russ Bassett 5 Drawer Locking Lateral CD/DVD Cabinet AV-LD-5-8-LK) isn’t on their site anymore, though they do have some taller ones. If you know anyone who bought fixtures from Hastings last year, they’ll have some CD/DVD cabinets in a great modular form factor. I’ve got ten three-drawer units in a shed behind my house that can be yours if the price is right.
- CD/DVD sleeves. You definitely want the ones with the window on the front.
- Labels for the backs of the game cases. I like these from Avery. I probably wouldn’t cheap out on these: If they fall off regularly, you will have a bad time.
Pros, Cons, and Alternatives:
The most common failure of this system is caused by human error, usually by someone new who thinks that they can improve the process by numbering multiple games at once. The biggest downside of this system is that errors are catastrophic: That is, if you have four thousand discs in numbered sleeves, and a customer brings a game case with the wrong number or no number at all, you are totally hosed. When you’ve got only a few hundred games, you can spent a while sorting through your envelopes and eventually find it. At any volume, that process breaks down and it’s hard to make a customer understand that the $3 game you said you had in stock IS in the cabinet someplace, but they can’t have it. Bad.
If someone shoplifts a game case, we don’t have an easy way to recover that case’s sleeved disc from the cabinet. This means that we probably have a few dozen orphaned games in the cabinet. I’ve learned to be serene about these sorts of inefficiencies, knowing that a perfectly-solved system would probably cost me a lot of time that I’d rather use making money.
There are variations that I’ve seen on this process, like keeping a separate numbering scheme for each console category. This lowers the number of envelopes to sort through when an error occurs, but I feel that it also adds more complexity to the process of putting trades out for sale.
There’s other ways. In high school I worked at a game store that had clear plastic CD cases on racks behind the counter. When we put out trade, we’d write the game name on the edge of the CD case and rack it in alphabetical order. Re-using the cases involved copious amount of solvents, and was the primary reason behind the added expense of a linen service at the store. It was time-consuming and required a lot of space. I was recently in that store. They’ve switched to the numbered sleeves.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s good enough, and it scales reasonably well. It’s one of those things that I’ve been doing so long that I take it for granted. Thanks to those of you who asked for a post about it.