RF Generation Message Board

It's becoming less and less common these days, especially in metropolitan areas, but I'm remembering fondly upon an old honey hole that a friend and I found when we both started seriously collecting (which, as hard as it is to believe, was 15 long years ago).

Looking back, this is the thing a seasoned collector like myself could only dream of: an entire chain of rental stores goes out of business, collects all of their inventory into one place, and is looking to unload. We showed up looking for the "old stuff" - Genesis, Nintendo, Super Nintendo - and the company wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible. They told us to take as much as we wanted for $2 per game, and they'd even give us breaks on that if we bought enough at once. We spent hours sifting through garages, semi-trucks, basements and storage spaces; boxes upon boxes filled with dozens of copies of Super Metroid, Bad Dudes, and Dragon Warrior. We had our trusty Video Game Bibles nearby to check on games we weren't familiar with, or games we thought might be rare or valuable. We did this 3 or 4 times, filling the back seat of my friend's Ford Probe each time, spending maybe $50 each.

As great as that was, and as much as we took advantage of our fortunate situation, I still have so much regret. I am nearly certain that if we'd gone in with $500 cash, we could have taken everything. Even as 19 year old college freshman, surely we could have come up with the money. Thousands of games, for pennies on the dollar. Sigh.

Did you ever have a favorite honey hole? Do you STILL have a favorite honey hole? Tell us about it.

I never had a place that was as good of a deal as what you posted there, but I do remember going in Funcoland and some local video stores and picking up games at $1 or $2 each back during the Playstation days. I wish that I had grabbed a lot more back then, but when you're young you don't have a ton of spare cash, and the idea that they would be worth much in the future never crossed my mind.

I'm sure this is going on right now with future PS2 collectors. They won't think much about the dirt cheap prices until they hit 30 and see them going nuts.

Oh, I just remembered.  My best honey hole was an EB near my college.  This was 2002, and the EB was just getting around to blowing out SNES games.  I was picking them up for $2-$5 each.  The biggest scores were probably Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Super Ghouls & Ghosts, and Super Castlevania IV.

I was too young and I hadn't started collecting yet unfortunately. I do remember when pawnshops didn't take retro games because there was "no market" for them.

My best places were GameStop when they were doing closeout for the Dreamcast.  It really got my collection going back in 05-07.  I remember buying N64 games with box from a closed rental store.  Finally, my best place was a pawn shop downtown that did a flat rate of $5 for PS1 and NES games.  I regret not looking for Intelligent Qube... because my buddy swiped it up!

---

Now is kind of a last call for 6th gen collectors.  It seems like the folks who don't give up on their old collections during these "down" times are the ones who see the payoff when collectors start to notice it again.  N64 used to be overlooked.  Now it is currently appreciating, so it's going to be harder to collect in the future.

Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2, and GameCube are at the later end of this "cheap" period, and I expect the rare titles to start rising over the next several years.  Also, I think these may be hot consoles in the distant future, because of the high failure rate of 7th gen consoles.

For the price of a new console and a few games, you could amass a sizeable portion of a library, and for the price of the yearly online subscription... shelving to hold it all!  Now is the time to be a hipster.  Use the unpopularity as a bartering tool and get stuff on the cheap. 

Which is one of the reasons I'm buying PS2 and Xbox stuff left and right.  Some of the games I'm nabbing for $2 or $3 I'll never play (most of them, probably), but in 5-8 years when the nostalgia hits, I'll have a large trade stock to help me acquire some of the stuff I truly want and will play.

Salvation Army used to be solid around 12 years ago. They would actually make a deal with you. Got 1 or 2 SNES consoles with no cords and 17 CIB or at least boxes INTV games for $15 one time.

There also used to be a CD Tradepost by my house that was good for the occasional snag. Got a Tengen Tetris there.

I got my Tengen Tetris CIB at a FuncoLand for $6, in 2002 or 2003. Probably the last really great find I had at a Funco/Game Stop.