Gamestop's Trade Anything Day Was Unhinged, and Here's Why
On December 6th, GameStop decided to wake up and choose violence with the first of its kind Trade Anything Day. The idea was simple on paper: bring in one item, any item, and walk out with $5 in store credit. The fine print was long enough to qualify as a novel, but the message was loud and clear.
The Fine Print In Question...
"*Bring Whatever, Get Store Credit! Some Questions Asked!: Limit ONE item per customer. Exclusions include - Hazardous waste or material, chemicals, liquids. Lithium ion batteries or items containing lithium ion batteries. Weapons and ammo. Dead or alive animals (Taxidermy items are valid for trade). Alcohol, Tobacco, drugs or pharmaceuticals (legal or not). Computers (such as desktops, laptops, notebooks, all-in-ones, minis, workstations, e-readers, tablets, thin clients, smart displays, virtual reality headsets with built-in processor, interactive flat panel displays with built-in processor) excluding certain MacBooks GameStop normally accepts in trade. Computer peripherals intended for use with a computer and weighing less than 100 pounds (monitors, keyboards/keypads, mice/pointing devices, external hard drives (excluding those normally accepted in trade), facsimile machines, document scanners, printers, 3D printers, label printers, digital picture frames. Small electronic equipment (portable digital music players, VCRs, DVD players, DVRs, digital converter boxes, cable or satellite receivers, projectors, including those with DVD player capability). Small scale servers. Televisions. Gift cards and other currency (foreign or domestic). Jewelry. Sexual and explicit items. Items resembling body parts. Item MUST fit in our 20x20x20 measuring box. Terms and conditions of promotion are subject to change. GameStop employees have the discretion to reject any item. Limit ONE item per customer.
Additional Exclusions: Broken games. Siblings, and other close relatives. Living animals (yes, that includes your ant farm). Guns, unless it’s the Halo 3 Battle Rifle. Stolen items of any kind, unless it’s Half-Life 3. Recently unburied copies of E.T. The Video Game. Italian plumbers, mushroom people, and giant fire-breathing tortoises. Counterfeit currency. Dirty clothes of any kind including but not limited to socks, underwear, t-shirts, pants, shorts, and underwear (seriously, don’t bring us your dirty underwear). Greg. Torn up Mark Sanchez trading cards. Illicit drugs and alcohol. Chaos Emeralds. Vacuums filled with ghosts. Whatever the heck a Bandicoot is. That Zune you only used once. Bonfires. Ashes of your loved ones. Nuclear bombs. Any UAVs, ray-guns, or noob-toobs. Cherries, Nuka-Cola, sweet rolls, star drops, Jill Sandwiches, pork buns, or any other food item. Your ex’s espresso machine. The 2007 hit “Bee Movie”. Your dying gardenias. That one gift from Aunt Helen (don’t worry, we won’t tell). Sonic The Hedgehog 2006. Any Books of the Dead. Mercury, arsenic, anthrax, any other sort of poison. Full-size planes, trains, and automobiles. Life-size cardboard cutouts of your celebrity crushes. The entire 2002 Cleveland Cavaliers roster. Fraudulent gift cards. Your cousin’s mixtape. Any recently resurrected dinosaurs. Bones. Cursed items. Suss individuals. Copper wire, alternators, transmissions, and other vehicle parts. Stone wheels. The Mayan Calendar. Any historical artifacts such as the riches of El Dorado, The Ark of the Covenant, and the Scion. Halos. The Hammer of Dawn. Rethink your life choices if you’re still reading this. But also thank you for reading this. Church organs. Car seats. Cribs. That one janky controller you give to your younger sibling. Social security cards. Expired drivers licenses. Macaroni art of ANY kind."
The Internet Did Its Thing
Social media did everything you'd expect when you give the internet an unlimited supply of new stock images. People posted memes, photos, and stories of what they were planning on bringing in. They grabbed everything from old landline phones, single-use straws from Wawa, busted consoles from 2009, random collectibles that nobody remembers buying, and stuff that's been sitting in your Grandparents' closet since 1932. If you have ever worked retail, you know some GameStop employees were probably just standing there mentally preparing like soldiers before battle. Reddit threads filled up with old stories of people attempting to trade in bug-infested consoles, cursed-looking accessories, and items that absolutely should never have made it through the door. Trade Anything Day just took that crackhead energy and ran with it.
The Craziest Things That Were Traded
From an Advertising perspective, this was actually kind of genius. It pulled people into empty stores in the middle of the holiday rush without relying on just another gimmick. It gave everyone something to talk about and made GameStop fun again. On a single day in December, it didn't involve pre-orders, midnight launches, or trade-in values being heavily debated. Even though you only walked out with five dollars in store credit, you still walked out with a story. Honestly, that is worth more than some discounts in a lot of cases. Trade Anything Day was not about value. It was about bringing people together all across the internet, and for what? The strangest collection of modern junk, pop culture, and craziness the internet has ever seen.
