Off House and their Tape Fetish

Does anyone out there frequent Hard Off or Hobby Off? Ever notice that the people who work there are absolute morons?

They take stuff that they can't identify and then wrap tape and stickers all over it.

They take working stuff they think has no value and put stickers and tape all over it.

They take boxed systems they think no one wants and then make sure of it by engulfing it in tape:dammit:

Two examples:

A PCFX that was nice and minty, complete in the box. They assumed no one wanted it, so the SEALED THE ENTIRE BOX IN CLEAR PACKING TAPEOH:

I just bought a Neo Geo CD in the box from one for 500 yen... why so cheap? Did it not work? No... it worked fine... they just decided to bundle the power supply with another system so without a power supply, it became 500 yen junk. Even though they had a loose power supply for 850 yen on their shelf they could have thrown in with it.

I swear, I'm delighted at some of the things I find there, but the disrespect they show obscure and retro systems really steams me:evil:

I'll get off my soapbox now.

 

I visit Hard Off a few times a month. My local one has been open for about 8 years now and has had the same main two staff since then. One really knows his games which is why my local Hard Off never has shit all over boxes or tape over rare stuff. They really do a good job at keeping everything clean. All I can say is that your local Hard Off is nothing like mine.

 

Yeah can't complain neither with my 5 hard offs in 15km radius

I just wish that they would use easier to remove 100yen stickers on the junk games..lol.

Also I'm quite glad that they aren't all retro game pros, otherwise it would be even harder to dig some treasures nowadays. e.g. well working PCE DUOs or Sega Master Systems for 500 yens.

If you want the nice stuff, go to akiba and pay the twentyfold.

 

Somewhat off topic: Whats the significance of the name Hard Off and Hobby Off? Is "Off" just another term that Japanese people use liberally? Like "New Item Get", where get it isn't really used in the right manner?

 

heh your post reminded me of shipping. It's great to get good protection but sometimes Japanese people go overboard with the tape and you risk damaging the item just opening it from the bubble wrap. One guy buys a ton of vintage catalogues through me and sometimes they put so much tape around the envelope to protect it that it's impossible to not bend or crease the catalogue when you remove it. What are they keeping it safe from, an AK-47?

 

I hate it when they put the price stickers on the back of Super Famicom games in the junk bin that seem to bond to the sticker on the back of the cart.

There's only 2 Hard Offs that I know of that are super bad. One is in Haijima and the other is in Tachikawa.

Recently, I was lucky and found a Mega Jet for 1,400 yen at one. I find the interesting stuff seems to come in waves. There's high tides and low tides...

 

It seems very likely. The Japanese love to use English words in the wrong grammatical sense. I really hate the"get" usage. Another one I hate it. 10:30 OPEN! Why not say it the correct way , Open at 10:30???

 

I really enjoyed net cafe's that were open until 27:30. Also know as 3:30 in the Western world. I pointed it out to my host mother and she was like ''now that you mention it, maybe a bit strange.'' Maybe a bit much, lol.

 

There's a Books Tama that proudly proclaims that it closes at 2600, as in:

10:00 OPEN!
26:00 CLOSE!

But I don't see how "Off" got associated with "used" or "recycle" (as they like to say over here). Maybe the idea is that if you are "Hard Off" you don't have a lot of money, so you would either have to sell your things to get money, or buy the things you need second hand.

 

Basically it's just another piss poor effort of using English. I'm sure they don't care how stupid they look to the rest of the world and even more so to other Asian countries who at least try to make sense.

Yakumo

 

The Hard Off chain did have a small number of shops called Junk Off...

 

never seen that. where were they located?

 

There was one in Tochigi, opposite a Hard Off it basically was a place where there was a lot of unsorted junk, mainly clothing and home wares with obvious defects, although had a lot of things that had no use, like mobile phone charges and mobile phones for dead networks, cables, etc.

 

We have a "Book Off" here in San Diego and they tend to be a bit over priced on their games. The stickers are not really an issue because they use small clear bags for everything.

 

Book Off is part of the hard off chain.

Here is a list of ALL the stores.

Hard Off - Games, CDs, hardware, stereos, instruments, Media and so on.
Off House - House hold goods and furniture
Book Off - games, CDs, books, DVDs and things like that.
Hobby Off - Hobby stuff such as models, toys, playing cards and so on
Junk Off - Pretty much the same as Hard Off
Mode Off - Brand fashion items such as bags
Garage Off - full of car gear from wheels to seats.

Yakumo

 

I would say it's more the other way round

There are also B-Sports, B-Kids, B-Life & B-Style which are part of the OFF groups.

 

I got a great buy at an off house the other day... they has a sony MSX2 HB-F1 II in the box in great condition for 1200 yen. There was a note on the box that said the price was so low because the floppy disk drive didn't work.

I'm thinking the reason they were having trouble with the FDD was because the HB-F1 II DOESN'T HAVE A FLOPPY DRIVE. Thing works great.

 

Good buy! Yeah, sometimes you can get some real deals due to mistakes. I once bought a Dreamcast with a BBA for 500 yen! The notice on the card said the internet connection wouldn't fit due to missing addaptor :lol: I ended up selling the BBA for 8000 yen and the DC I kept for parts.

These days however the super cool finds aren't as common down my way.

Yakumo

 

Yeah, I always look for those. The best deal I ever got was 500 yen for a completely mint SuperGrafx. The box didn't even have worn corners. This thing looked BRAND NEW. There wasn't a scratch on the system, controller, or ANYTHING. I might even go as a far to say that it has NEVER been used. Everything inside was perfect. At first glance I thought it was 5000 yen. Even at 5000 yen, it would be a steal. I took it to the cashier just waiting for him to say there was a mistake, but he didn't say anything. He did look kind of confused, but I walked away with a 500 yen mint CIB SuperGrafx.

 

I think the best deal I got at a Hard Off was probably a Mega Jet for 1000 yen. But my friend found a mint working 64DD in a junk bin once for 500 yen.