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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 was an idea put to work by the website's founder, Stephen Osborne. It's unsure as to the exact beginning of UGTZ, but it has been traced back as far as December 23, 1996.
In time the website continued to grow and became perpetually harder to maintain. Bill Marrs, current webmaster of GameTZ.com, stepped in and automated it with an interactive web system in October of 1997. It was at this time that the site was being managed on both Osborne's and Marrs' personal sites. A few months later it was decided to move the entire site to Bill's home page.
The domain name "ugtz.com" was purchased in the Summer of 1998 followed by the use of an independent database in the Spring of 1999. Summer of 1999 marked the beginning of several income-gaining methods including advertisements, subscriptions, and an affiliate program.
In March 2000, Bill modified and cloned the trading engine used by UGTZ to handle trading music, movies, and books, the name of the site was shortened to Game Trading Zone, and the domain GameTZ.com (along with MusicTZ.com, MovieTZ.com, and BookTZ.com) began being used. At the beginning of 2002, all four zones were recombined into GameTZ and the other three domains were dropped.
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 use many fundamental features. In August 2005, the site reverted back to voluntary subscription status (non-subscribers again gained almost full access to GameTZ's site 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.