For the first time since COVID, I went into the local Cash America today (Western Wa's largest pawn chain.)

blu's were priced at $3.99 ea or 4 for $10.

Unfortunately, the selection sucked. All I saw of interest was 2 Disney's for resale. 1 was scratched, & as i have no idea what they're selling for (Jungle Book & Little Mermaid) I passed. Rest was total junk.

DVD's (they didn't have many) were $1.99

They'd totally stopped carrying cd's.

There's a Cash America down the street but I've never been there. Maybe I'll check it out to see what they have,

Years ago, when they were called Pawn X-Change they were my main supplier of used cd's. Definitely years ago; my original "dealer discount" was $4 for used cd's, which I sold for $8.

I’m just too grossed out by used movies now that I am older (people are filthy). Well that and I can honestly say that I have looked quite a few times at pawnshops/garage sales/swap meets over the years and have never seen anything interesting, seems to be exclusively movies for old people or kids.

Except for 1 time where I saw a Severin dvd in the wild that I already owned it on BR. (It was Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau).

I'd estimate that about a third of my 1000 blurays and almost all of my 190 dvds came from goodwill or pawn shops. Restarted my collection in early 2016. Easy to find lots of good cheap movies when starting from scratch. These days I only go into the 3 or 4 pawn shops/good wills two or three times a year as I have the vast majority of what I want already but usually find at least 1 thing I enjoy everytime I make my rounds. Last "Great" find was all 7 seasons of Deep Space Nine, hardly touched past the first two seasons for $50 this time last year.

I had some amazing scores in the day, including lots of box sets. Mostly dvd; as until about a year before Covid blu's were too expensive at pawn shops..

Picked up a sealed copy of Kino's 'Woman One Longs For' (1929) for $7.99 at a Goodwill near me.

I found a nice copy of the Star Wars The Complete Saga on BD for $40, I took the bonus discs for the OT out and threw the rest in a closet. Now along with my copies of the Despecialized trilogy and the bonus DVD from the first Star Wars trilogy set I think my collection is done.

The only place I've consistently found decently off-beat used Blu-rays is at the small bookstore and media retail chain Second & Charles. Never had much luck at Goodwill and other types of pawn shops - they all deal in very common family flicks and a few mindless action blockbusters.

I’m fairly certain that chains like Goodwill and Savers have taught their sorters to pull out the good titles so they can sell them online for more money.
They don’t catch everything though as I’ve found some nice stuff in the past few years like the Star Wars DVDs with the original versions for $4 or the extended Blu-ray of the LOTR trilogy for $5.
And just Friday I found a sealed Criterion at Goodwill, only $3.

They also know how to find good Magic The Gathering cards because I don’t find those on the shelf anymore either.

Also found at Goodwill (but did not purchase) were sealed copies of;
Two Mules for Sister Sara (Kino, with slip) - $9.99
The Best Years of our Lives (WAC)- $7.99
Quantez (Kino) - $7.99

i have on occasion found multiple 4Ks of Disney titles Target editions which were closed out several moons ago.

People online used to talk about the great deals they got at pawnshops. I tried a few times to buy tools or DVDs at one. Pawnshops around here priced merchandise at 75% of full retail. I would have done better to wait for a sale and buy it new.

All the good stuff in Goodwill now directly goes to their online bidding store. Increasingly the B&M stores are storing more junk. And they seem to be using online winning bids to price the junk in their local stores. Receivers and speakers and their likes used to routinely be $10 - $15, now they’re more like $49.99. The problem they can’t tell junk from good and price it all equally. It’s a hit or miss

Truth is, the pawn shops mostly get stolen items from Big Lots, Walmart, Dollar Tree, etc.

Many of the pawn shops (& 1/2 price books) price based on what the UPC/SKU shows on Amazon. So the best deals are going to be pre UPC or oop print items that Amazon doesn't carry.

When I was doing online retail & Amazon started selling their bar code scanners & subscription service; it really was irritating. Until then, to be successful with used movies & music one had to have a clue. Amazon changed all that, & when every loser in town was haunting the Pawn shops for product, it got somewhat hopeless. For a few years, I had a deal with a couple of the 1/2 price books where they'd let me go through their clearance before they put it out, but between lower quality (they now have a website) & streaming It got to a point where I wasn't buying enough to make it worth their while, (or selling enough to make it worth my while). It also hurt that "people" were selling new items on Amazon for under CLEARANCE wholesale. While I still have a website, the biz is 99% dead. This is starting to look like the first month where I didn't sell anything.

Reading stuff above , i wont shocked if workers pull the gold and post to sites from home and not for store any if store runners dont see they pull for store site any. i seen past videos on youtube where some times back goodwill just charged more for media anytime unless u scored some good media on the cheap by chance. even a place i used to go pretagged cause had no site but checkd stuff and priced as if selling on a site so resellers had to pay any extra just to get it anytime. i scored some stuff i thought resell might try grab for own want or resell and and scored some good stuff still sealed or preowned but watchable any. cause learn from yt they show what to get if at thrift anytime and so i check cds and decide how bad i want at time. i even went back and thought maybe stuff i saw might stil be there but nope it was gone cause collector or reseller anytime. so u gotta snag at time if u want it that bad. but i have scored some good stuff before collectors or resellers anytime by chance.

I have seen that happen, even when it was grounds for termination.

I know this kinda off topic but relates any. I can see reselling being a pain cause u compete against other sellers doing the same thing and if u dont price right u loose or gain sales anytime. and seeing how sites keep changing to make selling harder any it can be a real pain in the butt.