Video Game Giants owner Luis Lopez celebrates the opening of his new store with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
Reminder Publishing photo by Tyler Garnet
CHICOPEE — Residents, video game enjoyers and trading card collectors will have a new place to visit as Video Game Giants opened a new location in Chicopee after a grand opening and ribbon cutting was hosted by the city on March 11.
Video Game Giants, located at 40 Center St., buys, sells and trades video games. They also have a large inventory of trading cards, vintage toys, comics and autographed memorabilia.
“We have everything from Atari to like PS5s. Anything in between we have. We carry a lot of used and pre-owned items and we also have newer items,” owner Luis Lopez stated when talking about his new retail store.
The store is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. They are closed on Sunday.
Lopez explained that his business started in 2013 as a flea market before eventually expanding online.
The back of the store is Chicopee Bullion and Coin which has coins that are mainly collectible, silver, gold, dimes and nickels.
Lopez said he found the place in Chicopee after his partner and owner of the Chicopee Bullion and Coin store, David Roman, found the spot.
“We got together, and we opened it up to see,” Lopez said, “It has a good reputation of video games in the past. We took that as piggyback and see hopefully we can revive that a little bit.”
The former location that Lopez is referring to is Video Game Castle, which was forced to close two years ago after it owed tens of thousands in state taxes before having its inventory auctioned off.
Before that, Video Game Castle was able to operate successfully for 30 years before health issues and the coronavirus pandemic caused the owner to fall behind on taxes.
Now Lopez hopes to bring that location back to a popular spot that people want to check out in Chicopee.
He said, “We’ve been open, and the community is really nice. People come back and get amazed of this use to be this place and its Video Game Giants, and we like it, we needed something in the community like this. We never did something like this before. We either went online or we just open up a place somewhere so it’s very exciting that we have a lot of officials coming in.”
Since the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of supporting small businesses has increased and Lopez talked about why he thinks his small business will succeed.
“This is our job. This is what we do to take care of our family so when people decide to come into our small business, it helps us out a lot. [COVID-19] was hard. Everybody closed down. I closed down for two years, I was doing online so I couldn’t do it anymore. When people come in and support us, it put food on our tables,” Lopez said.
Besides also providing an income, Lopez said he enjoys the face-to-face interactions with his customers and also explained he enjoys being able to help them out with a deal.
Lopez used to operate online out of West Springfield in which he described as a “depressing, tiny office.”
He explained, “We can actually pass down the savings and everything is going to be a little cheaper because we can afford to do that. We’re not a big company with pressure on business and employees and all this stuff so we can actually give a game that is a dollar off because someone may only have $9 instead of [$10] so I can say go ahead you can have it.”
Mayor John Vieau was at the ribbon cutting to officially welcome the store to downtown Chicopee.
He said, “There’s nothing better than welcoming a new business and new stakeholders to downtown Chicopee. I wish you many years of good health and success and I know you picked the right location. It’s certainly up and coming.”
Vieau alluded to the central library renovations that is aimed to welcome a hub of activity. He also mentioned how the store faronts on Center Street are filling up and it’s a great spot to be.
Video Game Giants also received an official citation from the Massachusetts Senate to congratulate the store for opening its new location.
To check out the store’s inventory, readers can check out their website at videogamegiants.com.
