How a Blackpool man's idea could save gamers money and the planet too

A Blackpool man's new business aims to be a winner for computer gamers and for the planet too.
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Aaron Morris, 30, has launched GamrTradr, an online marketplace for people to sell and buy unwanted computer games at reasonable prices.

He said the idea came when he went to a high street store to trade in a computer game which was still in its cellophane and perfect condition, but they only offered him £1 for it, so he thought there must be a better way of exchanging games.

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Aaron, who has worked as an actor, comedian and TV presenter, came up with the idea for GamrTradr in 2017, but has spent time perfecting the idea, including building the website and doing all the coding for the site.

Aaron Morris has set up GamrTradr, a new marketplace for gamers to trade video games.Aaron Morris has set up GamrTradr, a new marketplace for gamers to trade video games.
Aaron Morris has set up GamrTradr, a new marketplace for gamers to trade video games.

He said: "After visiting the high street store, I looked it up online, the game was being sold for £15 so the mark up at the high street store was huge. So, I came up with the idea of creating a marketplace where gamers could trade their games more fairly.

"So I created GamrTradr. Gamers decide what they want to buy or sell and we just take a 35p to cover paypal charges and 8 per cent. So if someone sells a game for £10, we get 80p plus the paypal charge, they get £8.85. Also ebay's fees are higher, between 12 per cent to 20 per cent on each sale.

"The gamers get the majority of the money and get what the game is actually worth rather than taking it to a high street store for a quick sale. We don't have the store overheads, we don't have premises we are just a hosting website.

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"It's a lot better for the gamers, it gives the power back to them. We don't buy games from them we let them sell directly to other gamers.

Aaron Morris is also aiming to help the planet by using some of the profits to plant treesAaron Morris is also aiming to help the planet by using some of the profits to plant trees
Aaron Morris is also aiming to help the planet by using some of the profits to plant trees

"There are loads of gamers who love playing classic games and loads of people who have old games sitting there on their shelves that they will never play again so we hope to give those games a new lease of life."

He said that as the business was founded on the principal of recycling and giving new life to unused games, he wanted to expand on that and do something to help the environment too.

He added: "We found this organisation called ecology, a company that plants trees indifferent parts of the world that really need it - replanting the rainforests and helping with other carbon reducing projects. We pay a percentage of what we ear to them and in the past three months we have planted 318 trees.

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"The more we grow the more we will be able to do. Although 318 trees is quite a large number in so short a time it is a fraction of what we want to achieve.

"Weirdly a lot of retro games are big sellers. A lot of the PS3 and PS4 are getting sold. We host everything from PS5 games to Nintendo 64 and DS games. People can sell all their old games form older platforms. We get a lot of retro gamers getting involved."

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