Sonic Jam acquired!
Only 11 more US titles to have them all.
“Is that girl a boy, too?”
Picked up this rare title today, along with a bunch of others for about $5 each. Expect cartridge spam.
Look what I won on eBay! Finally broke down and bought an Atari Jaguar CD. Should have it in the mail sometime this week! Can’t wait to get the Highlander game, then I’ll have almost every game ever made for it (since there were only 12 total).
Less than a dollar a piece for each of these! HELL YEAH!
I also got about 20 more PSX titles, but they need to be buffed. As soon as my JFJ Easy Pro Plus gets here, that’ll get done.
Coming back through Nashville from AdventureCon, I decided to hit the old favorite Great Escape in Nashville, and found a lot of old Nintendo Power mags for only $2 a piece. They are all mint!
Thinking I’m gonna go back and buy the others I left there.
AdventureCon in Knoxville, TN this past Saturday was a total bust. I traveled all around Knoxville and checked every game store I could possibly find (lots of Packard’s, a CM Games, Game Haven, and a few independent places). This little lot was all I came up with on the gaming front.
About a week ago I got a Facebook message from an old friend from high school. It was a short note about how he’d seen my blog and knew I collected games, and thought maybe I would be interested in buying some games his parent’s had from their old video store. He said there was quite a bit, and he didn’t want to break it up, just one lump sum for everything. I told him that was no problem, just let me know where to look at it.
A few days later I get another message asking for my e-mail address, that he had a picture of the games he had for sale. I gave him my e-mail without knowing what to expect. I got the first picture (the one on the dining table) along with a list of the games, boxes, and manuals included in my e-mail this past Tuesday while visiting my parents.
Needless to say when I saw the magnitude of what he had, I flipped. I was like a little kid who saw the commercial for the toy he’s always wanted for the first time, and Christmas was just a few days away. I contemplated many things: ”How much does he want for it? Could I even afford it? What condition are they in?” I quickly e-mailed him back and asked to look before making an offer, because I’m a skeptic.
I’m so skeptical that I go in a downward spiral of doubt. I went from excited to “I bet they are all in crap condition”. I try not to build things up so that I don’t get too let down. I didn’t hear back from him for a couple of days, which worried me even more that maybe he thought they weren’t in good condition, or if they were, he would sell them off somewhere else.
By about Thursday I gave up, I’d sent another e-mail the day prior and gotten no response. I figured something had come up and I had somehow missed my chance. Then I got an e-mail right after I got home from work saying that he’d be home all evening if I wanted to come over then.
Come to find out the guy, Nathan, lives about 2 minutes down the road from me, but I drove at a speed that made it only about 30 seconds. As I pulled up, he met me outside, and we walked into his dining room where everything look just like it did in the picture.
I froze. I honestly don’t remember thinking anything except, “I must have this. I must have this all now.” The first individual game I noticed was “Night Trap” for the Sega CD. Then “Final Fight CD”. ”Time Gal”. All in boxes. All… shrink-wrapped?
I asked him what the deal was with it all, and he said that when they had their store and they got new games in, they would immediately open up the box, remove the game and manual, and shrink-wrap the box back to go on display. So that meant every game box I saw was empty, had been shrink-wrapped back immediately after opening, and had been completely protected for over 20 years.
The condition of all the boxes was absolutely remarkable. They (almost) all looked brand new. Then there were the stacks upon stacks of games in their old rental cases. Let’s just say that kids in Fairview, TN took care of their rented games. Every game looked brand new and the only rental stickers are put in places that are easy to remove. This was a dream come true. Over 300 total items. Then he said, “Oh yeah, we found the Super Scope the other day too” and set it with everything else. Mint condition all the way.
I stare for a moment, and finally ask “How much are you WANTING to get for all this?” This is my normal approach to any lot, because while I am looking to get a deal (if I wasn’t I would just buy everything on eBay), but I also don’t want someone offended by an offer they feel is too low. He told me he had figured out how much per game and such, I did some calculating to see about what he wanted, and we quickly settled on a price with no problem whatsoever. It was a DEAL!
Then came the part I hadn’t thought about: How do I load this in my car. I drove my wife’s hardtop convertible, which has a really small back seat and trunk. His family and I spent the next 10 minutes or so packing everything into boxes, bags, and whatever we could find. It took up the entire trunk and front seat, with a little bit having to go in the back seat. I’ve never driven so carefully in my whole life.
I got home and put it all into my game room, and began sorting. I’m still sorting. When I go home from work today, I will continue to sort everything out and try to size it up. I am finding things that are very rare, and some that aren’t. Needless to say I got the deal of a lifetime, and I will have a very enjoyable weekend.
Something to note was that in the lot was the NES copy of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. I’ve purchased the game since my childhood, but every time I would go to the Budget Video in Fairview, I would rent that game. Probably rented it 3 times during my childhood. Never got the game for a birthday or Christmas though. Now I own the exact copy of the game that stood as a symbol of a good report card or other milestone achieved as a kid. I sat and looked at that copy of Temple of Doom for a good 5 minutes last night. It’s amazing how something like that can take you back and bring up so many memories.
I just bought all this and more. This is the single biggest purchase to date, and it is all in mint condition.
Had lots of great games waiting on me from eBay when I got home from DragonCon. This brings the Saturn collection much closer to completion, as I only need 17 US retail releases to have them all!
Another great haul from The Great Escape in Nashville. Saturday was a 25% off everything in store sale, and someone happened to drop off their entire Dreamcast collection, which included a TON of titles I did not have, among some other things that were all priced extremely low. A terrific haul that was completely unexpected at this location, and not a better day to find them since everything was on sale!
How cool is that Game Boy bag (especially for only $3)?
I stop in a Goodwill in Nashville on my way out to some game stores yesterday, and see this Nintendo 64 bag in the glass case up front. I immediately decide to get it, even at a semi-high price of $6 for only a bag. After I shop around and find a few old zombie favorites (I own RE2 like 3 times now, I can’t leave a copy for $1.50), I go to check out and tell the nice black lady ringing me out that I wish to purchase the Nintendo bag in the case.
She points at a Playstation 1 controller, “This?”
“No, the Nintendo bag.”
She points to some 35MM camera, “This?”
“No, the bag that says Nintendo on it, it is the only bag in there,” I say in my polite tone, while face palming in my mind.
She pulls the bag out and lays it on the counter. I thank her and look to the screen to tell me my total as I pull out my debit card.
“Ain’t you even gon’ look whass inside?”
I started to chuckle, because I didn’t even about something possibly being inside of the bag. Alas, it was an N64 console with no cables or attachments.
“Oh, nice. I thought it was just a bag. Thank you.”
She looks at me like I’m a retard for buying any of this crap with such a goofy ass grin on my face, and I pay my 11 whatever moneys and leave. As I rode onto the next destination, I happened to think about one little gem that might be hidden inside this random purchase of mine. Sure enough, there is an Expansion Pak inside. These are worth more than the bag and console combined. Ain’t I even gon look whass inside.
This, my friends, is the pure essence of how we play the collecting-on-a-budget game. Spend $11, get 3 things you want, find a thing inside worth $25 that you don’t want, eBay it, and get paid to have the things you just purchased spend the difference on more games.
It doesn’t always work out that way, but by gawd when it does, it makes my day. Yeah, it doesn’t really take much.
