RF Generation Message Board

I picked up a Coral Pink DS Lite at a garage sale for $5 today. The system plays perfectly fine but the hinge on the right side is busted off and there are some good scratches on the bottom screen. My original plan was to buy a replacement hinge, but after looking at it more closely, the whole top half of the shell on the bottom part of the unit would need replaced. A full replacement shell is $9-10 on Deal Extreme, but from what I've read there, these shells are a major pain to replace. So I basically have two options. Put $10 and a few hours into fixing this one, or selling it as is. DS Lites with broken hinges seem to be selling on ebay for $13-25.

If I do go with a replacement shell, should I go with the same color (the color itself doesn't bother me since I was planning on this being for my niece to play with, so the pink actually works out), sticking with pink also means I would only have to replace the part of the shell that is broken rather than replacing everything.
But if I go with a different shell, I could get one like these:
[img width=600 height=600]http://img.dxcdn.com/productimages/sku_18706_1.jpg[/img]
[img width=600 height=600]http://img.dxcdn.com/productimages/sku_14159_1.jpg[/img]
[img width=600 height=600]http://img.dxcdn.com/productimages/sku_13869_1.jpg[/img]

Any advice?

I would definitely go with one of those cool replacement shells.   They are cheap.  After a little time investment if you don't like it you can prolly flip it back out for a decent profit.

Reshelling a DS lite isn't that difficult at all as long as you have the proper tools. I've fixed several DS' and have had no problems. I always pick up broken ones for cheap/free when I can.

Thanks for the comments, I think I'm going for the black Nintendo World shell. Hopefully it'll be worth the extra effort.

I love DealExtreme, I got the new shell, the trigram screwdriver and 8 new styluses for $12.07 shipped.

Sweet.

Got the new shell in today and started swapping it out. It was a challenge putting it back together, after 2.5 hours near the end I was putting the ribbon cable back in and the damn thing ripped right across like tissue paper. I looked on DealExtreme, but they apparently don't sell just the cable, I'd have to buy a whole new top screen for $10. Which isn't a bad price at all, but I'm worried I'll forget how to put this thing back together in the 3-4 weeks it will take for it to get here.

Yeah those little ribbon cables are always the most annoying things for me whenever I deal with a DS.

Aww, that's too bad.  Those ribbon cables are pretty flimsy though but I suppose they have to be in order to loop through the hinge like they do.  There are a few US based sellers of DS Lite screens on eBay and this would enable you to receive it quicker.