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GameTZ.com is an online community allowing people the opportunity to trade items (games, books, music, etc) with other users around the world. The community, comprised of many long-time trading veterans, is statistically a safe and effective service to obtain new acquisitions while generally paying little out of pocket costs.
After the demise of popular game trading website Switchouse.com many traders began searching for a trading site they could call their own. Game Trading Zone's (GameTZ) intuitive forum design and trading/matching system fostered a largely enthusiastic trading community, now strong as ever.
Multi-platform gaming magazine GamePro has cited trading sites, specifically GameTZ.com to be great alternatives to selling your games back to retail outlets at significantly reduced value.
History
The Used Game Trading Zone (UGTZ) was an idea put to work by the website's founder, Stephen Osborne. When UGTZ came into being is uncertain, but it has been traced back as far as # December 23, 1996 (via a USENET posting by Osborne).
UGTZ continued to grow and become perpetually more difficult for Osborne to maintain. In October of 1997, Bill Marrs created a system that automated much of the work Osborne had been doing by hand. For a short time thereafter, parts of UGTZ were maintained on both Osborne and Marrs' sites. Eventually, the decision was made to move the whole operation to to Marrs' site.
The domain name "ugtz.com" was registered in the Summer of 1998, followed by the implementation of an independent database in the Spring of 1999. In an effort to generate some income, 1999 also introduced advertisements, subscriptions, and an affiliate program to the site.
In March 2000, the site was renamed Game Trading Zone and the domain name GameTZ.com was registered. Marrs cloned the GameTZ trading engine and established three other sites MusicTZ.com, MovieTZ.com, and BookTZ.com. However, at the beginning of 2002, the music, movie, and book domains were dropped and all four "Trading Zones" were folded into the main GameTZ site.
In February 2003, the site went to a subscriber-only format. Passive use of the site by non-subscribers was still possible, but a subscription was necessary to initiate trades, and be actively involved in the community. In August 2005, the site reverted back to voluntary subscription status (non-subscribers were again allowed full access to GameTZ's trading features).
With over 120,000 total trades completed through the website's history and a busy forum with thousands of discussions among the site's community, GameTZ is continually growing and evolving to better suit the needs of its members.