If you’ve never heard of the Southeast Game Exchange, also known as Sege, here’s the short version. It’s one of the biggest gaming conventions in the Southeast, held every year in Greenville, South Carolina. Think rows of vendors selling retro cartridges and rare collectibles, arcade cabinets on free play, tabletop setups, cosplay, and a genuine chance to meet the content creators and voice actors you’ve been watching for years.
It sounds like a dream weekend for anyone who grew up with a controller in their hands. And it was. But getting there? That’s a completely different story.
Our buddy Cranked drove 17 hours from Minnesota with his kids to make it happen. Minarum flew in from Houston for his first Southeast Game Exchange ever. Between the two of them, this trip somehow turned into one of the most chaotic gaming stories we’ve ever heard, and we’re going to walk you through every painful, hilarious detail.
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The Car Breakdown That Started It All
Cranked made it 16 hours into his 17-hour drive before his car gave out an hour from the Airbnb. It was 90 degrees outside, the AC belt snapped, and the pulley seized up completely. So he did what anyone would do. He called his insurance for roadside assistance.
He waited five hours. Nobody showed.
Eventually he got a lyft to the house, left the car behind, and figured a tow truck had it handled. Except the shop never got the car. It just sat there. A whole day passed before another towing company finally picked it up.
Here’s where it gets worse. That “insurance company” Cranked had been talking to on the phone during the breakdown wasn’t actually his insurance company. It was a scammer who’d gotten a hold of his information. His wife texted him mid-convention asking if he’d just spent $265, then $185 five minutes later. He hadn’t. His bank account had been hacked in real time while his kids sat in a dead car for five hours in the heat.
Add in a $1,200 repair bill, and that’s how day one went for Cranked. Not exactly the relaxing gaming getaway he’d planned for a year.
Minarum Lost His Wallet Within 24 Hours
Meanwhile, Minarum landed in South Carolina, hit up a few breweries while waiting for Cranked to arrive, and had a genuinely great first night. Dinner, friends, no drama.
Then the next morning, right as they were packing up to head to Southeast Game Exchange, his wallet was just gone.
They tore the house apart looking for it. Nothing. It came down to three possibilities: a restaurant, the parking lot, or the Uber ride home. The Uber driver eventually claimed he didn’t have it, though the way he responded when Minarum thanked him for checking felt more than a little shady.
The wallet never turned up. Cards canceled, ID gone, a trip to the DMV waiting for him back home. Losing $200 in cash stung less than losing the ID and having to deal with the replacement process for weeks afterward.
And if you think the scammer story ends there, it doesn’t. Right before recording this, Cranked got a call from the exact same scammer, still trying to squeeze more money out of him. He called the guy out on the spot for making his kids sit in a dead car for hours just so he could steal from them.
The Flight Home Was Its Own Nightmare
Minarum’s flight home somehow found new ways to go wrong. No card meant no checked bag fee, until he found one of those cash-to-card machines that charged him an extra six bucks just to load his own cash onto a card. Then the flight sat on the tarmac. Then the connecting flight got moved gates twice. Then the plane landed and just sat there for 25 minutes with the doors open and no air conditioning running.
Baggage claim wasn’t even safe. The conveyor belt just stopped mid-unload with zero explanation, and his bag ended up rerouted to a different belt that nobody announced. What should have been a quick trip home turned into arriving at 1:30 in the morning instead of 12:15.
Cranked’s trip home wasn’t much smoother either. He still had to retrieve his car, which was parked at a shop up a gravel hill so steep the Uber driver refused to drive all the way up it. A 17-hour drive home with his kids followed, broken up by a hotel stop with a pool so the kids could actually enjoy part of the trip.
So Was Southeast Game Exchange Actually Worth It?
Here’s the thing. After all of that, both of them said yes without hesitation.
Cranked had planned this trip for an entire year. He’d been saving, coordinating, and looking forward to finally meeting online friends he’d only talked to for two years. Getting to meet Minarum in person, along with creators like RNG, Grail Bound, and Arcade Haven from Space, made the whole ordeal worth it in his eyes.
That’s really the core of what makes conventions like this special. It’s not just the merch tables. It’s the community showing up in person.
What Actually Makes Southeast Game Exchange Worth Attending
Once they got past the chaos of just arriving, Southeast Game Exchange delivered in a big way.
You can trade in and sell your own games. Minarum sold a stack of old GameCube games expecting maybe $140 for the lot. A vendor, who happened to be popular YouTuber Retro Wolf, offered $175 instead. That cash ended up covering food and essentials for the rest of the trip since Minarum’s cards were still missing.
Moments like that are exactly why physical media still has a place in this hobby. You can’t walk up to a vendor table and trade in a digital download. If you’ve ever gone back and forth on whether physical or digital is the better way to build your collection, we broke down the whole debate here.
The deals get genuinely good, especially on haggling. Vendors expect you to negotiate. Ask for a lower price and more often than not, they’ll take it.
Sunday is fire sale day. Prices drop 20 to 40 percent, buy-two-get-one-free deals show up everywhere, and vendors are just trying to clear inventory before packing up. The guys almost skipped Sunday entirely because they were exhausted, and they’re glad they didn’t. Both walked away with more games than expected using nothing but the cash left in their pockets.
The custom stuff is genuinely impressive. Hand-painted consoles, custom controllers, tiny recreated Super Nintendo boxes sized to fit a single cartridge. It’s the kind of stuff you won’t find anywhere else, including eBay.
It’s kid-friendly. Between CRT setups with classic consoles, modern PS5 and Xbox stations, fighting game tournaments, a bouncy house, and a Nerf gun booth raising money for autism awareness, there was plenty for Cranked’s kids to do all weekend.
The Not So Great Parts
It wasn’t all wins. A few things are worth knowing before you go.
| The Problem | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| A small percentage of vendors overprice items | Some refuse to haggle even when the same item sells cheaper two tables over |
| The official convention app | Described as a mess, with a broken interactive map that was more confusing than helpful |
| Autograph pricing | $50 per signature, $70 for a photo, with lines running over an hour just to get in |
| Crowd hygiene | Let’s just say deodorant should be mandatory at gaming conventions |
The autograph pricing stung the most for Minarum. He brought his Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare copy specifically to get it signed, only to realize getting the full cast signed would run close to $300. He walked away without a single signature, choosing to put that money toward more games instead.
The Real Takeaway
Minarum summed it up best. Keep your head up, keep moving, and don’t let bad luck ruin the whole trip. Both of them agreed they made the best of a situation that could have completely derailed the weekend, and honestly, most people probably would have thrown in the towel a lot sooner.
Minarum is already planning to go back next year, and this time BB is coming along too. Cranked’s take on his own return trip? Flying in instead of driving 17 hours each way. Fair enough.
If nothing else, this trip proved something we talk about a lot around here. The games are great, but it’s the people and the stories that actually stick with you.
Want to Save Some Cash Before Your Next Gaming Haul?
If a road trip to a convention isn’t in the cards but you still want to grow your collection without breaking the bank, check out the current deals we’ve linked through GameFly and Green Man Gaming. They’re the same tools we use to stretch our own gaming budget.