It's hard to make those sorts of shops work. There's one in my town, but they barely manage. And I admit it, their competition is such that they are overpriced in every area. I can't even justify buying their import games when I know what they go for on eBay. The market has enlarged and it's harder to get the specialty or niche crowd to shop your store for their specialized products. I'd probably take the hit, but their dicks too.
You really need to establish your prescence in a town that supports local, independent retailers. Also, a college town would probably be ideal as its the sort of product that needs a youth prescence to thrive.
I had a lot of years experience running used book stores...and one advantage of that scenario as opposed to the game shop, at least in my region, was that the superstores weren't able to copy a profitable system for selling used items. I don't know why, they just never found the right people (they tried). Not so with games. There's a new Gamestop and it's like every week here and more and more retailers get into used games.
You can differentiate some by being more vintage focused, but you still have the crunch because the buying population is still pretty small percentage wise for that stuff.
