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Turning
work into a game — it really can be done
There
comes a time for most young people when they realize
they can't make a living playing games. Unless, like
Joe Yamine, they get into the business of buying and
trading games.
Yamine
of Roanoke graduated from college in three years, only
to discover he had no idea what he wanted to do. After
a few unrewarding jobs working in the video game business,
Yamine pushed his own personal restart button, turning
his passion for Nintendo, Play Station and Sega into
a full-time job. Yamine founded a company that sells
used video games at prices far below what consumers
would pay for new ones.
Captain
Gamestation and its array of used video games, equipment,
posters and figures opened last September. By March
of this year, the 23-year-old Yamine had mastered this
new game so successfully that he was able to buy his
first home.
"That
first summer after college came and went and I wasn't
sure what I wanted to do," he recalls. Yamine was
lamenting his fate with a friend who had helped establish
a video game-trading service for one of the larger Roanoke
retailers. "I said to him, 'Why did you do this,
because they really don't appreciate you, and you and
I could do this so much better because we have a real,
personal passion for video games,'" recalls Yamine.
"And then we just blankly stared at each other
for a few seconds, and it was like, 'What's stopping
us from doing it?'"
Money
for one thing, but Yamine, who graduated from Roanoke
College with a history degree, was already working on
that hurdle. He was trading action figures over the
Internet and turning a tidy profit.
Coupled with insurance money from his father's 1997
death, Yamine pulled together about $10,000 and opened
up shop in a vacant part of a family-owned building.
The hours are often long, but so far it's still like
advancing to a new level on the latest game - fun and
rewarding.
Yamine
purchases "pre-owned" video games, typically
for a $3 credit at his store, then resells them for
about $10. A more expensive $15 purchase might resell
for twice that, but still significantly less than a
brand new model, all in a market chock-full of kids
and Generation-Xers looking for new challenges. "I
think the thing that really helps me is (my customers)
know they can trust me. They can tell this is my passion,"
says Yamine.
-
Mike Ashley
Return
to Virginia Business - July 2002
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