GameStop on Wednesday touted strong early results with its iOS trade-in program. The progress had “exceeded our expectations,” the game retailer’s president Tony Bartel said. It believed that many customers post-holidays would be using GameStop as a way to clear out older iPads, iPhones, and iPods that had been replaced with gifts.
While the company wouldn’t provide hard details as to its results, it planned to keep expanding the number of stores that would both take and sell Apple device trade-ins.
Trade-in programs aren’t new and include dedicated services like Gazelle, some of which are potentially higher value than GameStop’s. As a large physical retailer, however, it acts as a much more accessible exchange point and a more guaranteed way to get cash. Apple itself will usually only recycle old devices for a small amount of store credit.
