I worked for Goodwill for more than three years. No, I'm not a criminal or otherwise unemployable--it was just a good job at the time and I needed one. I am amused by how many people think they're "helping" Goodwill by donating all of their useless junk to them. I was a donation attendant, and whenever myself or anyone else refused their "help" because it was clearly garbage, heads would roll. Most people treat Goodwill as a free alternative to the garbage dump, and most Goodwill stores consequently have garbage bills adding up to thousands of dollars a month. Even if you place signs on all of the doors saying "we kindly ask our patrons not to donate after hours," you will inevitably find 600 pounds of trash lying in front of the doors the next morning -on a good day-. Nothing made me angrier than waking up on a Saturday around 5 AM, arriving at work, and then immediately being told I had to carry two soiled mattresses, a couch, some useless particle board "furniture," five broken televisions and about 100 pounds worth of broken concrete weights to the trash compactor BY MYSELF within five minutes of being there. A lot of people were even less subtle about it, and would just leave five or so garbage bags literally full of garbage and soiled diapers right next to the door. One woman actually had the nerve to throw a vomit-soiled shirt in my face, just for laughs, and a lot of other people would throw or push pieces of furniture at me in dangerous ways just because they were angry I wouldn't accept something they intended to get rid of. I preferred the ones who just threw bags of clothes at me, because at least they were soft. Confront people about the garbage they're leaving you and they will scream at you, and all of the nerve you must have for daring to insult them after their gracious act of charity. You would think that only a small portion of people were like this, but I'd say roughly 1 in 4 people donating were consciously aware of the fact that absolutely nothing they were donating was of any use to anyone. The best we could do was to simply let them give us their trash if they seemed like they wanted to cause trouble, and let the garbage bills rise as a result. This ultimately led to higher prices for everyone shopping in the store. To sum it up, the Goodwill raises the prices of things you want to buy in order to pay for having to get rid of your junk, among other expenses. Think about what you donate before you leave it at the door. If you don't want it, chances are they won't either. Goodwill does not repair, clean or refurbish anything, so anything that isn't in good, working condition goes straight to the dump.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't blame Goodwill. Blame the people who abuse Goodwill and take advantage of the system. They're why your games cost more, in part, though I can't help but say I'm a little annoyed by the price increases, too.
Tupin is right, though. I saw some pretty awesome stuff go into the compactor, and I've personally thrown some pretty cool things in there, just because they set the prices too high and no one could afford to buy them. the general excuse for not lowering prices on expensive goods is that if they did so, no one would buy them at their original prices, and would wait until the prices for everything went down before buying anything. That makes sense, but in my opinion they would save a lot of waste if they just set the prices lower to begin with. It broke my heart to destroy some of that stuff, but I guess that's why I got paid.
As for finding games at Goodwill, I just walked out of my local one last week with a boxed copy of Ogre Battle 64. Other good finds I've had include two separate copies of Lunar (PSX and Sega CD), Breath of Fire 3, Wild Arms, a Master System with about 20 games for about $20, and a sealed copy of Dr. Mario. I know that last one isn't very impressive, but I thought finding a sealed NES game was pretty cool. It had been years since I had even seen one for sale outside of an actual gaming store. I got my half busted PS2 there for $20 a year or two ago, too (it doesn't play CDs, and I'm too dumb to take it apart without detaching that little ribbon that connects the two halves). Goodwill isn't as good of a place to find games as pawn shops are, but I like shopping at mine because I'm probably the only person who goes there to look for games anymore.
Aslo, a quick addition that I forgot. The games (and pretty much everything else in the store) are primarily expensive if the employee working in the electrical department is an idiot. That employee is also the reason why there was packing tape on your game. That's about the only reason. They have set prices that they try to use for games and other items, but most of the pricing usually ends up reflecting whatever the person pricing something thinks it's worth. There's just too much stuff to price in a day to refer to a list every five seconds. If the electrical person doesn't know a thing about games and doesn't care, they tend to sell for next to nothing, or the going rate for that store. If they think they know something but really don't, then you'll find a lot of bad games for high prices. If they actually know what to look for, you'll never find a good game in that store, because it will be sent somewhere else.
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