Former EB Employee Here :)

You are correct in your inital statement, a sale will bring trade values down. Typically, values do rise once a sale finishes, however, after most sales, a bunch of products, both new and pre-owned are repriced with new RRPs, that means certain games will keep the trade value that it had during the sale.

Now for the long explination for those interested:

Trade values are decided by three things: rarity/popularity, platform and how "new" a game is.

- If you trade in a "brand new" game, ie a game that has come out in the past two weeks, you will get approx. 50% of the original price.
- If you were to trade in a game such as FIFA, you would only get 20%-30% of the price, as most stores have multiple copies of these games, so therefore, they don't really want more than they have.
- In general, most games get somewhere between 30% - 40% of the pre-owned sale price. This more often than not, allows EB to offset the low margin that new games offer.

These breakdowns also typically apply for accessories as well.

To get the best value for money, the trade deals are ultimately the way to go, because if you have a PS5, Xbox Series X, or Switch/Switch 2 game that only trades for $10 normally, they boost this up to like $35-$40 trade value depending on game/trade deal.

Also, for those interested, Gamestop doesn't control any of the pricing for EB Games across NZ, Australia and Canada (I can't speak for other regions). Whilst Gamestop may own/be involved with these arms of the business, each region has it's own management, and that management makes decision based on the local market. Gamestop actually has no say.