Game Swappers is a store in Montclair, California, a part of SoCal that is known as Inland Empire. William Gonzalez and his crew run the shop in addition to making their way to just about every west coast gamer convention they can get to. They effectively pack up almost their entire store, re-set it at the convention, and spend the weekend making deals with collectors and gamers at each of those events. I have personally seen them at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo and the Retro City Festival in Pomona, California, not far from their store. Their store is super fancy, but that’s not a bad thing! These guys, especially William, know their products and are gamers themselves. It shows in their style and attitude. Every time I see them I know that these people with which I want to do more business.
William grew up in the age of the later Atari consoles along with the start of Nintendo taking over the market in the early 1980s. He tells me about how his mom, back in the day, bought all his games for him (most of the games we grew up with). And then about 5-6 years ago, he started to get the bug.
Read the rest of this article by clicking here!
Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here!
Also check out the article:
Frank Schwartraubner: Iowa RPG Collector – By Aaron Burger
Old School Gamer had the pleasure of meeting Frank Schwartztrauber at a recent arcade game auction in Central Iowa. It’s fun to meet Iowans that appreciate video games as much as we do and have the collecting bug. Most of the time it takes the Internet and Facebook to bring people together that live 10-15 minutes away from each other, even when they have similar interests. And that’s the case this time with Frank, who lives in Des Moines and has an amazing collection of consoles and games that has taken over his house, just miles away from our Grimes offices.
FRANK: I just remember going over to a friend’s house when I was a kid and seeing pong being played on TV. I played it and got hooked. But my favorite game on there was Breakout. I would go over to this kid’s house whenever I could just play Breakout.
As the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo started to fade away, he kept looking at his collection and seeing those boxes complete with everything in them for several Final Fantasy games and Legend of Zelda games.
Be sure to sign up to get Old School Gamer Magazine for free by clicking here!