Jay's CD and Hobby — Attraction in West Des Moines

The store itself is very nice but when someone tries to rip you off and is able to keep a straight face and act like it is a normal occurrence when you tell them it is concerning. I brought in about 25 switch games including 7 switch 2 games; the reason I came here was because about 2 years ago I sold them 20 switch games when my transmission was going out and they gave me a fair price on them. This time I returned to get an offer and was told I could get $175 cash. Now an insulting offer on the games I brought in would have been about $300, meaning you offer me 300 and I tell you that's borderline insulting as I have already totaled the aggregate from price charting, looked up what GameStop would pay and checked market price on the switch 2 games as they are just released recently. So GameStop would pay about $400 for the games I brought in and 40 percent of price charting would be $385. So had I accepted $175 for these games someone from this store could have literally drove down to GameStop and sold them for $400 making $225 for 20 minutes!!!!!! I ended up selling them to another local game shop for $480. Reason is the games I had were all top selling high end games in perfect condition. So the question is how many people has this place ripped off? If you don't have a big turnover for used games and you make your money off of tcgs,action figures , merchandise, whatever then an honest place would tell you up front: "hey we are not able to really compete in this market so if you need the money for something your better off checking around". But when your advertising buy/sell/trade it gives people the impression that they would at least get an offer within 10-15 percent less of what GameStop would pay if you have even decent current games especially switch games much less the higher end games . The offer I received was literally less than 20 percent of the price charting total even though the person making this offer said they pay 30percent. This is literally an attempt take advantage of someone so be very careful about selling anything to these people. I could have gone to a pawn shop and borrowed more than they offered and still been able to get my games back!!!! What doesn't make sense is how these people were reasonable 2 years ago and now they are doing this. I had a serious financial crisis and had I not absolutely needed the money I may have not have done the research and might have accepted something like that. It puts the entire store into question I would advise be cautious on any transactions with these people until they either offer a reasonable market price or tell people up front they are not able to like any straight up business would do . So again just for clarity: these people offered me $175, I drove 20 minutes to another local shop on the same day selling the exact same games and got $480!!!!!!!!!! One more time, $175 vs. $480. Now how can you look someone in the eyes with that and not start laughing uncontrollably and act like...

I do not know what happened to this place. I have been thinking about this for days now.

I moved back to Arizona a couple of years ago and this used to be my favorite place to come when I lived in Clive. Came back recently to help a buddy move, he had some stuff to get rid of, I wanted an excuse to come here anyways.

Immediately we were greeted by the stench of what I can only call a mix of BO and sewage. Staff all are not pleasant to talk to or be around, with the exception of the older guy stocking vinyl, and the LEGO guy who was super nice and helpful.

I have sold here before with my ex, and we used to get pretty good trade in credit offers, it was better than Gamers and Gamestop and we'd usually find something cool if we didn't do the cash at a lower amount.

They are 100% lowballing people now. They refused to give us an itemized breakdown of how much they are paying you for each item. We didn't bring in a lot, but it was some uncommon PS2 games and a PS5 console, all mint, games in protective cases. (Suikoden 3 and Xenosaga 3 are not cheap games by themselves)

I cannot imagine what people who are doing many, many things at once get offered and taken advantage of with.

Given our math of their offer, and what we noted their listing prices as being on some similar stuff (which we had plenty of time to notice while wandering the store forever waiting on the staff to stop joking around about comic book movies, eating tacos, and talking to their buddies who were in shopping and actually do our trades) they were offering us probably under 20% of what they are listing things for, and they are at or above Ebay pricing on nearly everything in the store. This is, as stated in another review I saw on here, indeed worse than most pawn shops.

We politely declined, said we would just sell stuff later in Illinois and try to get a better amount, and the buying staff immediately got an attitude with us and snippy. I guess they really wanted our stuff, but didn't want to pay fairly for it. BTW, thanks for slamming the box down at us.

I will never set foot in here again if I ever come back to DSM. The staff were rude and unhygienic, aside from the two guys listed previously, the buy-in and resell prices are insane. Most of the things we picked up and looked at had water damage of some kind of weird stains on them. Steelbook movies all thrown out on metal shelving getting scratched and dented. Figures with visable dust and what I think was mold on them in the display cases.

What a joke. I feel bad recommending this place to people as this USED to be a rad place to come.

They sure do have a lot of Funko Pops for whatever reason, though.

What a waste of an...

This is a Des Moines area treasure and by far my favorite store. If you like video games, board games, card games, comics, collectable toys, movies, or records then you've got to check out Jay's! They have an impressive selection that varies at each of their stores. I wish they would add arcade games to their stores though!! I miss good old fashioned arcades and Jay's could dominate if they ever converted a part of their stores to them. The West Des Moines store has a perfect card gaming room that would be PERFECT for a small arcade. The only reason I can't give them 5 stars is because they have the most disorganized and inconsistent point of sale system I've ever experienced in my life!! They don't have a way to track their inventory or price things consistently. It's completely manual and archaic so is very frustrating for customers. Things are often priced wrong (always too high, never too low) and one thing that costs you $6.99 can cost you $14.99 at another of their stores. Heck, they often have the exact same item in the same store priced multiple ways and you will pay what the sticker says because they don't have an actual pricing system. Ex. They had three Mario Maker 3DS games in the case. One was priced $26.99 and the other two priced $17.99. Another example is a GBA game that costs $8.99 in West Des Moines but the exact same game costs $14.99 at Merle Hay. I've been overcharged so many times because they are extremely disorganized. If not for that seriously frustrating issue, this store would be 5 stars all the way. Even with as crazy as the customer unfriendly pricing system makes me, this is a must shop store for anyone that enjoys new and old toys, comics, and games alike!! If they ever add an arcade or a selection of Nintendo branded clothing I think I'll have to get a...