Eden on curation, mark-ups & the Friday Drop.

Joey: How does intake actually decide what we'll buy?

Eden: Three filters, in order. First — could I imagine genuinely keeping this on my own shelf? If the answer is no, I don't buy it. Second — is there a market for it inside the next six weeks? If we'd be sat on it for six months, the price-anchoring goes wrong. Third — is the condition straightforwardly gradable? I won't take in something I can't grade against a written standard, because the moment a grade is a "vibe", we're not running an honest shop any more.

J: Why no day-one releases?

E: Two reasons. The first is unromantic — margins on day-one are awful and the floor's been done better by GAME, Amazon and Smyths since I was a teenager. We'd be a worse version of those shops, on a worse high street, with worse stock turn. The second is the romance one. The reason I open the lockup in the morning is to find a copy of Vagrant Story with an intact map in a brown box from a Surrey estate. I don't get that from selling someone the latest Call of Duty.

J: Price-anchoring — explain it to a teenager.

E: Pull the last six weeks of actual sale-comp for the title across eBay, Music Magpie, CeX, the major Discord trade channels, and three other retro specialists. Calculate a weighted average — weighted by condition tier and time decayed. That is the anchor. We list at the anchor or slightly under, never over. The "RRP from 2003" is meaningless to our pricing — we never use it. We don't invent an inflated RRP to put a percentage cut on it.

J: What are the rules of the Friday Drop?

E: Eight, off the top of my head. (1) The drop is exactly what came in that week. (2) Nothing is held back for resale later at a higher price. (3) Mailing list gets the manifest twelve hours before public. (4) Prices are anchored on Wednesday; no last-minute jumps. (5) Single-piece lines decrement live — first to clear payment wins. (6) Nothing is rolled into a "loot box" or bundle. (7) Anything that doesn't sell on Friday stays at the listed price until next Friday — never knocked down to clear. (8) If a price was wrong (typo, decimal point), I personally email the buyer and either correct or refund.

J: Most surprising piece of intake in the last year?

E: A SNES Super Scope in its original box, original styrofoam, with both the receiver and the gun's foam shroud intact. From a Cardiff estate clear-out. Twenty years old, hadn't been opened. We listed it at £210, anchored — Sofia ran the comps three times because she didn't believe it. Sold in fourteen minutes to a collector in Dortmund. He sent us a photo of it next to the rest of his light-gun collection, which is now insured for €40 k.

J: One game you'd never sell?

E: Vagrant Story, the PAL big-box with the intact poster and the Square preview booklet. The one we have above the photo bench. It's on the shelf for £0, listed but not orderable. Three people have asked to buy it. I've turned them all down.

J: Hot take that'd get you cancelled on Discord?

E: The DualShock 2 is still the best controller ever made. The DualShock 4 is not even close. The PS5's pad is too heavy. Theo agrees. Marcus is on the fence.