Hey, anyone feel like paying $59.95 for an Xbox memory card? That’s an original Xbox memory card. Not an Xbox One memory card (those don’t exist) not an Xbox 360 memory card — an original Xbox memory card, like for the first Xbox.
This picture was taken today, in a David Jones store in Australia. It is there, right now. It is on the store shelves. You can totally buy it… for $59.95.
I mean really. What is going on here. I’m flabbergasted. I’ve seen some crazy retail shenanigans in my time, particularly with big mainstream retailers and video games, but this might just take the wooden spoon.
Borderline unbelievable.
Thanks to Skitzo12 for the image
Comments
74 responses to “Australian Retail Summed Up In One Perfect Image”
But its a collectible in mint condition!!!
Yeah, I’d be considering this an antique. 10 years old, unopened, works with the classic console.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Original-xbox-memory-unit-card-brand-new-and-sealed-Australian-stock-rare-/271356581190?hash=item3f2e1cd546
Considering you can find GB-GBA games for around $20-50 and they’re a bit older (and arguably more collectable) then an Xbox memory card, surely no one would pay this much…
Oooooh man, maybe they’ll have a boxed mint condition SNES somewhere in the back room!
With a Wii U sticker on it!
That would at least explain why it was still unsold…
I wish, I’d actually buy that
So would I, Sughly. So would I.
How can someone let it sit their in its original wrapping in the back room when it could be sitting in its original wrapping in MY back room!
Would cost you less to build one.
For $600
“David Jones” – Ah, think I found your problem right there
David Jones don’t do home entertainment anymore. Blame Dick Smith, they run the department now!
Torn on this. While on one hand I want to rant and scream ripoff, fact is, it’s now considered a ‘collectible’ and that price, when packaged, is probably about right. lol.
I have one of the first series release 1GB SCSI hard drives. I paid a little over $1,000 for it.
Anyone want to offer me $1,000-2,000 for it? No? aww *sad face*
You have to be pretty fanatical to collect unopened OEM memory cards at that price than again eBay can be pretty expensive sometimes so I guess I can see it happening.
You do, but there’s plenty of people out there who are…
I don’t think it has reached that level of worth yet, by far.
You can get them from between $5 to $10 elsewhere. Hell, Gamestop sells them for $1.99 new and $1.75 used!!
Give it 10-20 years though..
I bet the department manager would slash it down to $5 anyway at DJ’s.
You’ll always find that one collector who convinces himself/herself it is though… what it IS worth versus what people believe it’s worth is amazing in its difference quite often.
Please to be remembering brand new games in Australia have been known to hit over a hundred dollars. For a STANDARD edition.
It’s probably a combination of lax stocktakes and out of touch managers who don’t understand what era of gaming this belongs to. Less of a statement on Australian retail and more a statement on the culture of retail in general
I am not sure if its the photo quality, but the price sticker looks ancient, prob threw it in the bargin bin without repricing
as someone who used to work in retail – oh hell yeah.
But that explanation would not lend itself very well to a sensationalist headline.
Big W still sells Animal Crossing for Wii, with the WiiSpeak bundle. $140+ I think? WiiSpeak is $4, if you can find it.
I’m a huge adventure game fan and back in the day when I was looking for boxed versions of classic games I’d always go to these department stores cause they were the only ones who still sold stuff from years ago. 😀
Pretty sure the Brisbane City Target had a copy of TIE Fighter sitting on a shelf up until the mid-00s.
Department stores are NUTS about not wanting to shift their game stock for any less than cost.
I always wanted to visit department stores of rural areas to see what type of rare things they would have lying around but if you consider the fuel costs and long shot luck involved it just seems widely too impractical to do.
One can dream though.
The big chains will move stock around too, so chances are even lower.
Not necessarily.
If you happen to be in a small town with a Dick Smith, see what they have lurking. When things are cleared, rural centres sit on display models, sometimes even unopened stock because managers get super-precious about paying for transfers.
This is how I got my copy of Grim Fandango, about five years after it was out of circulation but before the internet was place to buy games.
I’m probably one of the few who got a Wii Speak (I’ve never used it because none of my friends have it and the voice quality is awful). But I got mine with Endless Ocean 2 for $60 together, so it’s not nearly as bad.
I have two of them D:
I got that bundle for 7 bucks in Kmart last year.
I got that bundle new factory sealed on eBay for $4 lol.
I wonder if it was in a bargain bin everything $10. As other people said its probable getting into collectable territory now
Oh come on, I’m pretty sure they’ve forgotten that item even exists and wouldn’t update it.
There certainly is no other store like David Jones
i thought David Jones got rid of all their gaming stock?
anyway this is kinda cool… sure $60 seems like a lot but like others have said… its new and sealed for an old console… thats cool!
With Dick Smith running the electronics side of things DJ’s should be getting back into the Gaming.
They have to expand their chain beyond Sydney – seriously there’s only 3 of them in Brisbane, none west of Marinyrnong in Melbourne.
They’re needlessly expensive and CBD-centric and every time I’ve made the effort to visit one has been a disappointment.
Someone said xbox one, someone else assumed that meant first xbox?
you’re confusing the xbox one with the XB0Ne. common mistake
I had to buy an audio cassette head cleaner… Ended up costing me close to $20!!!
(Long story, its for my partners dad who still likes to listen to tapes)
The takeaway for me though was that technology becomes more expensive based on its rarity… I would have considered what i was looking for completely redundant, so worthless… But when i needed to get it, its scarcity forced me to pay a lot for it!
Can’t you just use a cutip?
Did anyone ever actually use one of these? I never plugged on into the top of my OG Xbox controllers, or even saw one in the wild.
Same. I think they were really only used for transferring savegames between devices or taking your saves around a mates place to continue on their console. Seeing as the saves were on the internal hard drive, most people never bothered with these.
Don’t think Mark thought this one through. Talking about the madness of David Jones selling a original sealed xbox memory card for $59.95 and not thinking that’s actually a great buy for a collector.
Found one for a mere $52.95 3 years ago. Also had a 512MB memory card for a mere $129.
Pics here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=269867&id=714116839&l=0178e14031
I can guarantee that this will scan at either $1 or 1c. Purely a case of Dick Smith not ticketing it as such
If this was spotted in a Gametraders, nobody would bat an eyelid.
That’s because if anyone did spot it in gametraders they’d be too young to know what it was and go straight to fawning over the wall of lol-so-nerdy bobbleheads.
Are there any of those left? I feel like their lunch has been eaten somewhat by all the HD remakes, Virtual Console etc
No idea. My local closed down about a year ago. Was a bummer, I picked up a bunch of retro stuff from there.
You’ll probably find it was lost under a fixture or in a storeroom many years ago, it has most likely be written off in a stock take but someone found it, and not being sure what it was decided it must still be a current product because they saw the Microsoft and Xbox logo and put it on display.
With retailers like Myer and DJ’s cutting staff back to Part Timers and Casuals, staff with any actual product knowledge are few and far between.
Some middle manager probably found it in a stock room somewhere, thought “xbox… those things just came out right? must be brand new!”
And what are the odds that he looked at the packaging and thought it was some 3rd party maker, what with the weird stylizing of the name of the console and everything.
My brother got me a boxed copy of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines from David Jones in 2006, mind you it came out in 2004!
Dick Smith have bought David Jones Electrical. The clean up was massive. Some of the shizz that is in there back rooms was incredible. Now it’s being gotten rid of to make room for new stock. Btw that ticket is ridiculously old. It’s probably on a clearance table for $2.
There’s probably a lot of obsolete games and hardware relegated to David Jones’ Locker.
I could get one on ebay for $39.95
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Genuine-Microsoft-XBOX-8-MB-Memory-Card-Brand-New-/181265304723
Mind you I have no idea what I would do with one.
You’d use it to softmod an old Xbox and turn it into an XBMC/emulator box.
I scored a Dreamcast from Big W on the end of it’s era, $60 brand new! Sometimes it can work in your favour 😉
back when I worked in Sainsburys (UK supermarket for the uninformed) we had all our dvds and what have you plus a VHS of Saving Private Ryan bundled with Medal of Honor on PSone for £20. This was at a time when you could buy the dvd of the film for £5 and the PS2 was in its prime.
It could scan for a lot less.
I remember seeing the original Street Fighter 2 for the SNES at K-Mart for $139. In 1997!
I’m pretty sure it was the same box on the shelf from when the game was first released. Still not as bad as my mate’s copy of Baseball Stars on the Neo Geo which he bought off eBay with the original sticker on it: $359!
This is how I feel when I see Wii games still priced higher than brand new Wii U games…
You see this kind of thing a lot with technology in department stores. It’s not the area they specialise in so they’ll get a game or something similar and just leave it on the shelf until it sells. They have no concept of how these things lose their value as new technology is released, or how older games can’t be sold for full price.
Got the Metroid Prime Trilogy for $40 new at David Jones once. Good find indeed.
I remember last year in a K-Mart that had Sega Superstars Tennis / Xbox Live Arcade Compilation Combo Pack for $115. Couldn’t stop laughing.
I remember seeing a NES cart at a k-mart in 2003 going for $69.95, and I bought my dreamcast racing wheel from a dick smith store in 2007, not so suprised by this one
What do expect from David Jones. I’m not aiming this at the people who work there but at the company itself. David Jones is for people who don’t know how much the world has changed and will pay as much for any old thing. They are so behind no wonder why they haven’t progressed as a department store. Every DJ store I go into feels old and outdated. Its like they have 90 year old men running the show up at Ol’ David Headquarters.
David Jones keeps stuff on its shelves way past its expiry date but I think the best time was at an EBGames in Sydney very recently and they still had Gameboy Advance games on the shelves… new… with $69.95 stickers.