I grew up on video games. Not as a hobby — as the thing that got me through everything else.

The first console I bought with my own money was a Nintendo 64. I remember exactly how that felt. Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, Turok, Body Harvest — hundreds of hours, probably a spit ball or two lodged in a cartridge somewhere, back when life was a lot simpler.

You grow up, and somewhere along the way you lose track of the stuff you actually loved. Work takes over. Bills take over. The collection sits in a closet until one day you need the money more than you need the memory, and you sell it. I did. Good titles, clean boxes, real value — gone, along with a chunk of what those games actually meant to me.

That was that, until one day at a toy and comic show, my wife found a CIB Sega Genesis Model 2.

I'd never owned one. Never played one. Always wanted to hear that Sega chime for real. She didn't hesitate — grabbed it on the spot.

Not long after, I tracked down a CIB Sonic the Hedgehog to go with it. It scratched exactly the itch I thought it would.

It also opened my eyes to something else. Video games and TCG have become a magnet for resellers, scalpers, and people just looking for a quick flip — and it's made the hobby harder for the rest of us. The actual collectors. The people who still play. The ones who just want to find something they love without getting lowballed or ripped off along the way.

Cart-A-Vision exists because of that. Built on real math, not a mood. Games pay 55% cash / 75% credit. Cards pay 75% cash / 85% credit. Same number for everyone, every time — no manual overrides, no inventing a figure because we feel like it that day.

This is a shop, sure. But it started as a shelf gap in my own collection first.