The £10 Extra Promotion Summary + Pipeline Promotions Announcement
Greetings & Good Morning To All My Fabulous Readers!
Now that I’ve had the free time (a well placed long bank holiday weekend) to review the receipts and calculate the expenditure/return, I’m now happy to report my findings.
Don’t be disheartened if you have missed out on this – I dare say a lot of people made a lot of extra ‘buck’ on their normal day-to-day-trading by the addition of the extra £3.40 per title. *BUT* there may be a silver lining – as according to some of the GameStation memos I’ve had the pleasure of having forwarded to me (I would say public thanks – but the guy knows who he is, and he knows how much I appreciate his communications) but they are considering two new promotions to trial – and there’s a potential that they will execute BOTH promotions at once… But keep your ears peeled – and this may also be store specific.
But they will either be offering 25% More on Consoles (not very helpful, but loopholes via CEX/eBay may become apparent when prices confirmed) or/and they will be offering +£2 Trade on EVERY title brought it!
So wont be as great as the +£3.40 that the “£10 Extra” is adding, but still, at +£2 – this could leave a few of these cheeky prices very much open 
So, we’ll keep our ear to the ground at LoopHoler HQ and let you know as soon as our man in the know – lets us know – but until that point – here’s some of the absolute beauties we managed to use and abuse during the “£10 Extra” promotion.
Also, In helpful alphabetical order:
100 Classic Books DS £1.98 (GS Online) Trade £6.40 [+223% Trade Profit]
Advance War Dark Conflict DS £3.00 (CEX Online/Instore) Trade £7.40 [+146% Trade Profit]
Armored Core V £19.95 (Zavvi.co.uk) Trade £31.40 [+57% Trade Profit]
Assassins Creed Brotherhood Xbox/PS3 4-for-£10 (Blockbuster Online) £9.40 [+88% Trade Profit]
Beatles Rock Band £6.00 (CEX Online/Instore) Trade £11.40 [+90% Trade Profit]
Binary Domain Xbox/PS3 £12.49 (Shopto.net) Trade £25.40 [+103% Trade Profit]
Brain Training £1.66 “3 for £5” (ThatsEntertainment) Trade £11.40 (towards the end of the promo reduced to £7.40) [+587% Trade Profit]
Call of Duty World at War PS3 4-for-£10 (Blockbuster Online) £9.40 [+88% Trade Profit]
Carnival Funfair Wii £3.98 (GS Online) Trade £7.40 [+86% Trade Profit]
F1 2010 Xbox/PS3 4-for-£10 (Blockbuster Online) £9.40 [+88% Trade Profit]
Fast Food Panic £9.99 “Buy 2 Get 3rd Free” £6.66 (Game Online – £12.99 at GS Online?!) £11 Trade CEX, £12 PriceMatch – as that beats the £4.40 they try to give. [+80% Trade Profit]
Goldeneye + Controller Wii £15 (CEX Online/Instore) Sell Controller back to CEX for £9 Cash (LoL) and then, Trade £15.40 (Game Only) [+157% Trade Profit]
Halo 3 £2.50 (CEX Online/Instore) Trade £6.40 [+156% Trade Profit]
Madworld Wii £2.50 (CEX Online/Instore) Trade £6.40 [+156% Trade Profit]
Mario Charge Strikers £1.98 (GameStation Online) Trade £7.40 [+274% Trade Profit]
Mechanic Master DS £1.98 (GS Online) Trade £18.40 (Yep – Eighteen) [+829% Trade Profit]
More Brain Training £4.00 (CEX Online/Instore) Trade £13.40 (again, moved to £9.40 towards the promo close) [+235% Trade Profit]
Pokemon Blue Rescue Team DS £2.98 (GS Online) Trade £11.40 [+283% Trade Profit]
Red Steel £3.00 (CEX Online/Instore) Trade £8.40 [+180% Trade Profit]
Segoku Wii £6.00 (Amazon) Trade £13.40 [+123% Trade Profit]
Simpsons DS 4-for-£10 (Blockbuster Online) Trade £11.40 [+128% Trade Profit]
Tony Hawk Ride Xbox/PS3 £4.98 (GameStation Online) Trade £19.40 [+290% Trade Profit]
Warhammer 40K Space Marine £1.98 (GS Online) Trade £7.40 [+273% Trade Profit]
Wii Play £1.66 “3 for £5” (ThatsEntertainment) Trade £7.40 [+346% Trade Profit]
You’re In The Movies 30p (Now 50p) (CEX Online/Instore) Trade £4.40 [+1,367% Trade Profit]
Etc etc etc etc (Faaaar too many screens to list – but you get the idea. Im hoping that people know that im not full of hot air and that I only speak the truth!)
There were various other CEX titles available that would make ‘a profit’ but I’ve tried to stick with the ‘winners’ and also those that there would be shelves FULL of (like Halo 3, Madworld, Red Steel, Wii Play etc)
Had to play around with the 4-for-£10 deal at Blockbuster, because it was platform specific (i.e. 4-PS3-Games-for-£10 etc) but you could only buy 2 of each game… So I stuffed my stocking with some other titles that I knew we knew enough to either return decent money – or at a minimum get the base line £4.40 price (take a 60p hit on those games in order to make a +4/+5/+6/+7 profit on another title).
I’m not going to lie, in light of Gamestations rudeness, bad mouthing and attempts to get me banned from neighbouring gaming stores (by accusing of them of committing a crime by “Aiding and Abetting” haha) I did in fact hoon the above titles to death.
But, for the purpose of today’s calculations – I will go purely on the basis that you have gone for 1 title (which I know, is impossible, as a lot of them were 4-for-£10, or 3-for-£5 etc) but lets play dumb and see what we would have made *IF* we only stuck to trading one of each game.
Spend: £115.58
Gamestation Credit: £291.60
Credit/Profit Rate 152%
So considering they have felt the need to ban me over the quantities of games I have traded in the last few weeks – I’m hoping that gives a slight painted picture to the levels of how much credit I am now sitting on.
Every £1 I have spent on LoopHoling – has returned £2.32 credit (at a minimum) Obviously, the ones above that returned the ‘super-juicy’ profit – I would have done more of then the ‘smaller fish’.
That’s 40p in the £1 when buying anything in a GameStation store from now until (probably) the end of the year (again – minimum!)
Tom Clancys Ghost Recon Future Soldier, due for release soon’ish.
Going by the same model that is applied to all new release games – GameStation will sell for £37.99 or £39.99. CEX will offer £28 Cash (minimum). Worse case scenario – GS Credit will Cash-out at (£28.00/£39.99=) 70%
So that £291.6 is now worth £204.12 CASH (at the 70% Rate), minus out “1-Copy-of-Each” outlay of £115.58 – and that’s £88.54 profit (a nifty 77% cash return).
Extrapolate that to the quantities of whatever you managed to do over the “£10 Extra” promotion – and you’re talking either A) A ‘phat’ wodge of cash in your skyrocket or B) Enough credit to drip feed every new release for the next year or so.
I would say – that’s ‘Job Done’ in my book!
But obviously, I’m not going to rest – for those that miss this deal – or start reading/following in the coming weeks/months/years, I will be supplying new loopholes to feed your gaming addictions (and wallets) for as long as I draw breath. Who cares if I’m not allowed in the stores (snigger) I can still tell everyone else how to do it. No harm in that 
Unless you’re worried about being arrested for “Aiding & Abetting” me for reading this. Oh Local GameStation staff – why have my olive branches and attempts at a new leaf been so harshly denied.
We could go back to being friends tomorrow – but you seem to think that banning me from the store will somehow take away my passion for finding a bargain.
If anything, all those lunch times I spent travelling during my lunch breaks – just gives me more free time to find more loopholes for everyone else to use.
Note to readers – if you’re still happy reading/using them – I’m still very much happy finding them.
**8th May Update**
Having traversed the North of England on work related business, I managed to stop in at GameStation Birmingham – and got them to kindly amalgamate my Trade/Credit Cards into one big über Trade Card (we scanned them all, wrote down their values – then added it up – and I ‘bought’ a GameStation Gift Card’ for the sum value – then used the 10+ cards I had accrued/laying around to buy it!)
So I’m delighted to say that purely from the “£10 Extra” event (that was kindly extended an additional week to the 2nd of May) has provided me with…
[drum roll please]
£881.09
For those of you sniggering, or already drafting the “I’ve done £1,000,000” emails – this figure includes sufficient cash out (via Star Wars Xboxs, cheap shelf BluRays and various new release games over the course of the event – FIFA Street, Tiger Woods 13, Racoon City etc) to cover my expenditure.
So the figure you see is my PURE PROFIT figure!
I’m not going to lie. I’m happy.
I’m content.
I could use this to buy every new release on all the platforms I own until the end of next year.
But we’ll see how rested on my laurels I become… I dare say, that’s going to be about 5 days!
