What We Pick Up in Lubbock

Console games across most generations. Cartridges and discs. Controllers, charging cables, and accessories. Strategy guides. Older console games that have been sitting in a drawer in the Stubbs neighborhood for fifteen years. Newer-generation games the household has finished. Pack them in the same boxes as your books and media, set them outside, and your Local Pick-Up Partner collects them on a scheduled service day.

Give My Books Network is a nationwide community book-sharing network, and video games are part of the items the network handles. Same free pickup model applies. Schedule the time, pack what you have, leave it in a covered, dry spot starting at 8 AM. Done.

What Conditions Work and Don't

Game discs should be playable. Cartridges should be intact. Controllers should be in working order, with cables and components present. Cases without discs are mostly fine if the disc is somewhere in the box.

What doesn't work is anything heavily damaged. Cracked discs. Cartridges that are physically broken. Controllers with major component damage. If a box of games sat through a hot Lubbock summer in a non-climate-controlled garage and the cases warped, those items probably can't find a second life.

You don't need to sort by console. Mix Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, Sega, Atari, all of it. Your Local Pick-Up Partner handles sorting offsite.

Where Donated Lubbock Video Games Go

Video games take a few specific paths. Some are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to schools, after-school programs, shelters, and other organizations that maintain media collections. The Texas Tech esports program and various campus gaming groups have a steady demand for older console hardware. Some are resold by Local Pick-Up Partners through resale channels and community sales, which helps sustain the free pickup service. Items that cannot be reused may eventually be recycled as a last resort.

Broader patterns of how community programs handle media and game donations are part of the landscape described by the American Library Association's Book Donation Programs guide.

Why Lubbock Donors End Up With Old Video Games

Most of the time, it's generational. Kids who used to play moved out years ago, but the games stayed in the basement or a closet near the Texas Tech campus. A family inherited a collection from a relative. A long-time resident off 82nd Street is clearing out a property and the previous owners left an entire shelf of old games. A garage cleanout in Tech Terrace turns up a box of cartridges from the late 90s.

The pickup model fits all of those situations. Pack what you have, schedule the pickup, set the box outside, and let your partner do the rest.