3DS Lost 3DS - help finding owner?

Daniel Haworth

Daniel Haworth

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Hello there!
I have a weird situation. Quite some time ago, probably almost a year now... I bought a 3DS on Ebay from a seller that gets stuff in bulk and lists it.
Nothing came with it. No games, no SD card, no charger, no stylus. Stylus and charger were easy enough to get on Ebay as well, and I have SD cards.

But, charge it up, turn it on, and it has several games installed on it! Weird, I didn't think there should be any installed on a system that I assumed had been reset.
Tried to connect it to my home WiFi and parental controls didn't allow it. Also strange.

So, looked in the system settings, and there's someone's profile.
Look in the pictures, and there's pictures of a little boy and his friends at school. Great, I have a 3DS that was lost or stolen or something.

Called Nintendo, they gave me a code to unlock the parental settings, but couldn't help me locate the owner.
Emailed the state police in the region the profile was from, they were no help either.

There was only one friend on the friend list, and she's never online. I set the status message to "I found this ds". But with the messaging system disabled, I don't have a way of messaging this person, and they have no way of messaging me.

So it sat in my desk drawer.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I thought about it today, turned it on and let it download an update. Thought I'd search around and found these forums!

Here's what I have.
I know his name is Chris, his username is cxp03.

The serial number is in tact, so if someone has the box or can list off the games that are installed on it, or they look like the person in the pictures I guess, I'll gladly send this 3DS back to its rightful home.
 
you are a very upstanding person for thinking of the other person and trying to locate them. Have you tried contacting the seller? Aside from that, idk what else you could possibly do. The fact that it came with no sd card may mean the child kept it, for maybe his new 3ds. He probably kept his charger for the same reason. Besides, every ds or gameboy cartridge i bought used always had saves left on it, so maybe he didn't care about his old pictures.

After contacting the seller, you should take comfort in knowing you did everything possible to get in touch with this child. You have gone above and beyond being a good, concerned person. And welcome to the forums, you will fit right on in!
 
Well, the seller is a consignment shop in new York I think. They didn't know anything about it, just that it came to them in a big box. It's not uncommon for companies like that to strip things down and sell the individual pieces.

Doesn't doing a system transfer wipe the system you're transferring from?

If it was just saves, that would be one thing. Those are hard to remove from a cartridge without special tools.
But this is several full on games. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Nintendo attach purchases like that to devices unless you do a system transfer?

It's all just very strange. :(
 
yep, as a parent i'd be irate if someone stole my child's (whatever) and sold it with personal info still on it. this is the world we live in. This is a very hard issue to deal with, i guess no matter what you have to keep it. I've never bought anything off of ebay, and rarely have i used amazon. just never know
 
I use ebay and Amazon all the time, but this is a first.

At least now it's out there that I have this unit and there's a chance for the owner to find it. I might repost this on another 3DS board.

In wondering if it would be a good idea to post his friend code?
 
i don't know, the sad thing is, people are gonna come out the woodwork trying to scam you out of this poor kids 3ds. be careful. i don't know if i'd put his code out there
 
Like I said, I wouldn't give it to someone unless they could tell me the serial number, games that are on it, or look like the pictures :)

Meanwhile, is there a buying/selling/trading board that I'm not seeing? I wouldn't mind buying a different 3DS if it was the owner selling it and they transferred their stuff off it (even if its broken, its my job to fix little things like this).
 
maybe you could try 3ds forums, this board has been awful quiet lately. maybe someone there can help. good luck
 
Maybe the kid's mom pawned the 3DS or maybe the kid himself sold it and didn't care enough to erase the DLC. While there is a chance that the system might have been lost or stolen, it's not a given by any means.
 
Unless you have a GPS chip on your 3DS or someone finds you somehow, you are unfortunately not getting it back. Nintendo really should implement some sort of Find My DS service like Apple does for Iphones. Your best bet is to go buy a new one and be careful with it.
 
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