I pride myself on being meticulous and nit-picky, and as such, I don’t do dirty.  EVER.  You will never receive a product from me, which employs a used piece of hardware, that is dirty, crusty, smelly, etc.  It won’t happen.  This is part of my process.   Even if you send your own personal fresh and clean unit in, it will come back to you fresher and cleaner than when it arrived.   I soak, spray, polish, scrub, wipe, and whatever else it takes to make sure these things are as close to factory fresh as humanly possible.

I’ve been trying to find the perfect example from which I can extract a very clear illustration of the lengths in which I will go in order to bring something back to life.  That example arrived at my doorstep not long ago (I actually bought this one online knowing good and well how utterly disgusting it was).  This is how it arrived, in a stinky padded envelope, wrapped in a sticky grocery bag.

collage before copy

Click on that sucker to see it in all its icky detail.

Amazingly, it worked.  The buttons felt like they’re been soaked in Dr. Pepper and the power switch required a pry bar to slide, and it smelled like it had consumed an entire carton of Philly Blunts on its own, but it worked.  Success!  This IS the Gameboy I’ve been looking for!

Believe it or not, this is the exact same unit.  The only replacement parts were a battery cover (since none was present) and a glass lens.  EVERYTHING else is original.

collage after copy

See that plastic cup in the upper-left corner?  Yup, that’s what remains of the stuff used to clean this thing.  A dozen or so Q-tips, a fistful of paper towels, about a third of a magic eraser, etc.  Not to mention the strain that this thing put on my cleaning products 😛  I would actually feel comfortable licking this GBA at this point.  Now its something that I would have no issue with handing off to a customer.

And I do it all for you! 🙂

cheers,

wiggy