If there’s one thing that sucks about owning a console, it’s the cost of games. Most new releases run between $50 and $60. If your state/country has sales tax on top of that, then adding games to your collection can really become prohibitively expensive in a hurry. Even if you shop for used games at stores like Gamestop or EBGames, it’s hard to find good deals because the inventory has been picked over.

However, there is a way to get great deals on games at insanely low prices. It just requires a bit of patience and some knowledge of the eBay advanced search interface.

The process is simple:

Bring up eBay in your browser.

In the search box, search for the name of the game that you’re looking for. Don’t include colons or any extraneous words. (i.e. “red faction guerrilla”, “grand theft auto 4″)

You should get a “popular products” box at the top of your results page featuring covers for the game that you searched for. Most games are available across several platforms. Click the cover for the console that you own. This will refine the search to only that game, enabling you to refine your search in ways that you can’t otherwise.

This is where you may want to make some quick tweaks to your search. You can refine results on the left-hand side of the page. I tend to search for games in “like new” condition with “price + shipping: lowest first” as my sort order. If the game has been out for a while, you may even try your hand at finding a “brand new” copy. I’ve never had a bad experience buying a used game in “like new” condition, however, and they’re almost always cheaper by at least a few bucks. Be sure to check both, whatever you do. I’ve actually found several games cheaper brand new than in “like new” used condition. Also, be certain that the seller has a copious amount of positive feedback.

Although the temptation to grab the “buy it now” games is strong, you can sometimes get an even more amazing deal by placing bids on lower priced copies. It’s a waiting game sometimes but in the end it may save you more than a few dollars.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy, here’s what you could get right now as of the minute of this posting with $153.93 grabbing “buy it now” copies of NTSC format Xbox 360 games. These prices include shipping.

Red Faction: Guerrilla – $15.98

Grand Theft Auto IV – $13.00

Halo 3 – $14.98

Fallout 3 (GOTY Edition) – $35.00

GRID – $16.99

LEGO Batman/PURE Pack – $12.00

Borderlands – $25.98

Left 4 Dead 2 – $20.00

That’s a total of nine games for the price of three sealed copies of brand new games purchased in a retail store. You’d get well over two hundred hours of single player gameplay out of these games, not to mention the fact that all but one game (LEGO Batman) has a robust multiplayer component.

As a final point of reference, I’ve purchased at least 80% of my console game collection this way. I’ve spent under $800 on games in the past two years and I own at least 100 titles for my Xbox 360 alone.

Happy hunting!