We've all been there. You've got a friend or two checking out your collection and someone really likes a particular game. They like it so much, they don't want to quit playing. Finally, they just come out and ask if they can borrow it. But since they no longer have that old Atari, they'll need the system as well. Plus some controller, power adapter and those old timey hookups. Maybe an old TV too.

So, what are your thoughts on lending out games/systems to family and friends? Perhaps you'll only lend to those you know very well and  trust with your life. Or maybe you don't even lend out the most common of games. Or maybe you're a really trusting person and will lend anything to anyone as long as they say they will return it eventually.

Also, feel free to share your experiences with lending games, whether they be positive or negative. Did you lend out that super rare game to a friend only to have them move away with it? Or did they return it in deplorable condition? Talk about good experiences as well, maybe you let a friend borrow a game and he was so grateful, he gave you a box of old games he doesn't play anymore.

Collecting without the Internet Posted on Nov 15th 2008 at 10:50:19 PM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Random, Internet, Collection, Thoughts

Collecting without the Internet

Imagine with me if you will, a world without the internet. I'm sure some of you remember this world quite vividly, others could never imagine such a thing. I was fortunate enough to remember what it was like not having the Internet, anyone else remember cutting up old magazine pictures for school reports? Or hand writing everything? Well I'm getting a little off topic now, but you get the idea.

I started writing this to allow you all to imagine game collecting without the use and help of the internet. Some of you rely completely on the Internet to get your games through the usual sites, while others (like myself) buy completely from the "wild" as it's now called. But just from the simple fact that you are reading this people proves that we all use to Internet somewhat in our collecting ways.

Maybe you just use this wonderful site to track your games and occasionally chat with others, or maybe you use the internet to its fullest extent and get every piece of information you can find on a game before you buy it.

This blog doesn't really have a point, I was just thinking of how different my collecting habits would be without the internet. Maybe you would like to explain how your collecting life would be different? Or maybe the thought of not having an Internet makes you want to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room, and you don't want to think about it anymore.

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I don't rely on the Internet a whole lot in my collecting ways, I don't buy from the Internet and I still keep offline collection lists. I would probably still be buying a lot of the same stuff, but it just wouldn't be as much fun. Without my printed checklists, I wouldn't know which games I had left to buy, or which ones were considered rare. I would have no idea what a game was worth and without the huge audiences of Internet stores/auctions, a lot of stuff just wouldn't be worth nearly as much. Plus, I would have no idea there are thousands of other people who collect old games and I would never get to show off my awesome collection.

Treasure Hunt Chronicles 2008 - A Farewell and Recap Posted on Nov 11th 2008 at 02:57:43 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Treasure, Trophies, Scores, Deals

Well, another season of treasure hunting and bargaining is now over (for the most part anyway). We went to a few garage sales this weekend and didn't find a single thing, and didn't even bother going to the flea market due to cold weather.

Looking back this season was a blast, found some awesome new treasures, met tons of people, and it even got me a staff position on the greatest website ever. It saddens me to think this season is over but after looking back at all the stuff I got, I think I'm ready to take a break from buying games and maybe spending a little more time actually playing them.

And now, a recap of the 2008 Treasure Hunting season with what I thought were my best finds. But, please, if something I bought really impressed you and I didn't put it on my list, feel free to leave a comment.


Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles 2008 - A Farewell and Recap

How Do You Feel About Others Touching Your Stuff? Posted on Nov 9th 2008 at 09:16:23 PM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Opinions, Playing, Random

I was about to post this in the Collection Diary, but it was getting kind of long and off topic for that, so I decided to make it a blog post instead.

Anyway, here's the situation: my parents had a "card party" last night, which included 4 of my cousins, two around the age of 10 and two closer to my age. Me and the older ones get along great and we were playing Guitar Hero III, but then the younger ones wanted to play also, and kept "trash talking" us saying they were better and we were playing too slow. So I hooked up a spare PS2 and another guitar with Guitar Hero II on another TV for them. They got bored with it after 5 minutes, and then wanted to play Duck Hunt, so I set up an NES with that. At this point I was tired of listening to them, so I left to play cards with everyone else, but every 5 minutes they were coming to me asking me if they could play the Wii. I told them "No" every time. So a few hours later I go back up to find the youngest playing World of Goo on my Wii 

I don't mind them playing my games, as long as I set them up because I simply don't want them breaking something. It's bad enough when they're tripping over cords and stepping on guitars, but it really irks me when they go against my permission and start playing something I don't want them to.

It seems like every time they come over and play my games, I have bitter feelings about it. On one hand, I know they're just games and they're meant to be played, but on the other hand, they're mine and I don't like others going through them and playing whatever they want. To a very small degree, I have a similar feeling as when someone gets robbed, how they just feel violated that someone touched their stuff without permission.

And I think the worst part of it is, that they have no respect for not only other people's stuff, but for the games themselves. They see most of my collection as "old junk" and think it's worthless and don't care about it whatsoever. They just don't understand how a 20 something year old boxing game is worth more than their precious Rock Band.

So, now I'm thinking of banning them from my game room altogether. I don't really want to, but I really don't want something to break either.

Now, this wasn't supposed to be just a rant, I want to get your opinion on how other collectors feel about other people touching your stuff. So give the world your opinions on how you feel about friends/family members playing your collection.

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #27 - The End Posted on Nov 2nd 2008 at 11:26:24 PM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Treasure, Trophies, Scores, Deals

It looks like the end of the season is over. I'm kind of happy that I can start sleeping in on the weekends and that I don't have to rearrange my game room to get stuff to fit each week, but of course I'm sad that I won't be getting many more games until Spring.
Regardless of how I feel however, this season is dead. It was a very nice weekend with temperatures close to 70 but we only went to 4 garage sales all weekend long. The flea market was about half the size it usually is and there wasn't much.
So here's my final finds for this season, this is last week as well as this week.


Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles #27 - The End

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Collector's Dilemma #5 Posted on Oct 27th 2008 at 04:45:24 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Collectors Dilemma, Collection, Polls, Opinions

Form or Function?

CD: Form or Function?

Everything is in alphabetical order, regardless of color/shape/size.

Everything is categorized by color/shape/size.

A mix of both; most are alphabetical but some are by color/shape/size.

A mix of both; most are by color/size/shape but some are alphabetical

Getting poll results. Please wait...

Ah, the good old debate of which is better, stuff that looks pretty or stuff that works. Now, you're probably wondering how I'm going to relate this to game collecting. But anyone with a sizable collection of boxed Genesis games or loose Atari 2600 games knows the answer to that.


Continue reading Collector's Dilemma #5

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #26 Posted on Oct 20th 2008 at 03:52:27 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Treasure, Trophies, Scores, Deals

Absolutely spectacular weekend for treasure hunting. The weather has finally started to get cold this season, which cut down on the number of sales, but the ones that were open seemed to be selling really cheap to counter act the low number of customers. I think we only went to around 20 sales and were home around noon. A good 2-3 hours sooner than usual.

Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles #26

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Two Years Posted on Oct 17th 2008 at 12:25:43 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Collection, Milestone

This blog post is a follow up to one that I made one year ago today. In that blog post (my very first blog post ever) I made reference to the fact that in one year I had accumulated approximately 800 games, a major feat that I was very proud of. Now, one year since then, I accumulated about 500 more games. A year ago, I was trying to get to 1,000 more games, but didn't quite make it. Since then, I was trying to get to 2,000 total games but again, I didn't quite make it. Right now, I'm sitting at 1,872 total games. Which is an increase of about 500 games. Not as good as the previous year, but I did get a lot more uncommon/rare stuff this year than last. Now, I haven't kept track of how many games I sold/traded, so if I hadn't sold or traded anything, I might have had 2,000 games by now.
A year ago, I had 347 duplicates, but I now have 457 duplicate games. Which means for every 5 games I bought, 1 was one I already had, which isn't bad considering the majority of my purchases are lots.

And for future reference (mostly for myself), I'm compiling a list of how many games I have for each system, the first number is the total number, the second number is the unique number.
NES: 343/266
SNES: 204/139
N64: 101/78
GCN: 39/39
GameBoy Color: 12/12
GBA: 11/10
Genesis: 277/193
2600: 318/167
PS1: 203/177
Dreamcast: 49/41
TI-99/4A: 7/7
PS2: 82/78
Game Gear: 13/10
Odyssey^2: 1/1
Sega CD: 32/27
Saturn: 25/25
7800: 2/2
GameBoy: 7/7
SMS: 29/29
32X: 1/1
Game.com: 4/4
Tiger Quiz Whiz: 2/2
Xbox: 32/28
Intellivision: 23/17
3DO: 18/18
ColecoVision: 1/1
Wii: 4/4
TG-16: 32/32

And in case anyone is wondering, October 16th is no special date, it just happened to be the day I passed 500 total games, so I'm just using it as a base point in my personal collection timeline.

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #25 Posted on Oct 13th 2008 at 07:21:54 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Treasure, Trophies, Scores, Deals

Once again, the weather has been spectacular, and the deals are flowing. Although I really didn't think it would be a good weekend, judging by how badly it started out.  The garage sales on Saturday were terrible, there were a lot of them, but there just wasn't anything at all. I don't think I saw a single video game the entire day. 

Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles #25

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #24 Posted on Oct 6th 2008 at 05:10:53 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Treasure, Trophies, Scores, Deals

I can't believe it's October and I'm still able to find enough each weekend to make a post. The weather has been spectacular these past few weekends and I think that has a lot to do with it.
Now, onto the deals.

Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles #24

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Collector's Dilemma #4 Posted on Oct 2nd 2008 at 09:08:50 PM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Polls, Opinions, Collectors Dilemma

Museum or Arcade?

Collector's Dilemma: Arcade or Museum?

Strictly an Arcade; what's the point of having it if you're not going to play it.

Strictly a museum; this stuff is valuable, no one can touch it, EVER.

Mostly arcade; most of it is playable, but a few things are off limits.

Mostly museum; everything but the most common and worthless stuff is under lock and key.

Getting poll results. Please wait...

Now, we don't all have the pleasure of having a huge room devoted to our gaming collections, but we've all got something. Whether it's a small corner in a basement or a building built solely for games, we are all proud of what we've got. But, we all look at our collections a little differently.

So, my question to you is, how do you treat your game room/collection? Is it like a museum where everything is on display and nothing can be touched. Or more like an arcade where everything is out to be played a no one cares if a game label gets scratched or a CD gets a few scuff marks?



Continue reading Collector's Dilemma #4

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #23 Posted on Sep 29th 2008 at 06:05:07 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones

The garages sales were plentiful this weekend, but weren't all that great. Again, the flea market was great as I've now bought nearly everything from my new favorite vendor. He's still got a few more things I want, so I should have a couple more 'Chronicles' this season.

Saturday Garage Sales The Monster Rancher 4 and Finding Nemo were from one sale for $3 for both. Both in excellent shape (and CIB) for being kid games. Big Game Hunter (CIB) was $0.50 and THPS (CIB) was $0.25 from another sale. They also had an N64 with hookups, 2 controllers, and 2 Football games for $10/make offer. But I didn't bother with it, probably should have picked it up, but I just didn't want to be bothered with re-selling it.

Got this from a sale for $0.50. It was marked $1, but she just wanted to get rid of it. I probably could have gotten it for $0.25.

I didn't get this from a garage sale, but I did pick it up during my saling time, so I'll count it here. I actually got these from FreeCycle. She said they go from 2000 to 2004, but I haven't had time to check them over. There are 40 of them though. A little rant here: why do people at local sales, tear off the address label. I was at your house, I know where you live, what info could I possibly get from the address labels that you need to tear them off and rip the cover in the process?

This was a strange sale. It appeared to be a guy selling off stuff people left in his storage building. My dad got another set of lawn darts for $1. I got the TRS-80 Color Computer 2 for $2. I almost didn't see it as I just assumed it was another typewriter, but something made me take another look under the translucent dust cover.

Sunday Flea Market Bought these for $2 each. He had about 30 more and said I could take them all for $30, but I didn't need any of the others, plus they weren't in very good shape.

Traded Super Mario 64 (PC), Mario Kart 64 (PC), LOZ: Majora's Mask, SMB, SMB/DH and Super Mario World plus $5 for all them. The top two rows are CIB, the bottom two rows are missing the manual. All but one are in mint/excellent condition. Oh yeah, this was in that lot too. Yeah, it's complete and mint.  Anyone know what's it worth? I didn't realize what it was when I bought it, but once I got home I learned it's THE hardest to find SMS game.

All in all, a very good weekend. Although I have no idea what I'm going to do with all these SMS games. Plus the guy has a SMS that I'll probably trade for or buy next week since I haven't found one yet.

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #22 Posted on Sep 22nd 2008 at 06:44:47 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones

This garage sale season is definitely winding down. We only went to around 20 sales on Saturday, but luckily, I had an awesome day at the flea market, so it made up for it.

Saturday Garage Sales This was the from the very first sale. And it was a great sale, everything was priced cheaply plus it was all 50% off the marked price. The N64 was marked $5, PSOne car adaptor was marked $2, the Multi tap wasn't marked so that made it $0.50, and the N64 memory card was $0.50. I got it all for $3.

These were from a small neighborhod flea market. He wanted $3 each, but said I could have them all for $14, then said $12, so I gave him $10. All but Commandos 2 are CIB.

Sunday Flea Market This table had a stack of 20-ish NES games for $1 each. I was absolutely sure I didn't own either of these so I didn't bother checking my list. Turns out I already had the Sesame Street game.

These were from the guy that I've been buying from a lot lately. I traded him several Nintendo games (Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, NBA Jam, LOZ:LttP, DKC, and DK 64) plus $20 for all the Sega games. I told the guy about the $1 NES games, and we made a deal of I would buy them for him (he couldn't leave his booth) in exchange for the CIB Dudes With Attitude. Sega CD games: Sewer Shark CIB Rise of the Dragon CIB Surgical Strike CIB Mighty Morphin Power Rangers CIB Wheel of Fortune CIB Bram Stoker's Dracula CIB Heart of the Alien CIB Android Assault CIB Cliffhanger CIB Double Switch CIB LoadStar CIB Chuck Rock II (no game) Dungeon Master II CIB Star Wars: Rebel Assault CIB Racing Aces CIB Tomcat Alley CIB Joe Montana's Football (no manual) Dracula Unleashed CIB Saturn games: Pebble Beach Golf Links (no manual) Slam N Jam 96 (no game) College Slam (disc only) NFL 97 CIB Madden 98 (no manual) Madden 97 CIB Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball CIB NHL Powerplay 96 (no manual)

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Treasure Hunt Chronicles #21 Posted on Sep 15th 2008 at 01:49:03 AM by (NES_Rules) Posted under Collecting, Trophies, Treasures, Scores, Deals, Milestones

A fairly disappointing weekend, it rained all day Saturday. And it didn't just rain a little bit, it poured for the good part of the day, I was completely soaked by the time I got home. I tried using an umbrella but it wasn't worth all the trouble of opening and closing it constantly, and the rain was at least warm, so I gave up on the umbrella.

Saturday Garage Sales The PS2 games were marked $2 each, the PS1 game was $1. I really only wanted the MGS game, so I offered $10 for the whole box. My offer was taken.

This was from a huge moving sale, where nothing is priced, which I hate because you spend a lot of time gathering up stuff only to find they want a fortune for it. Which wasn't true this time. She wanted $2 for it all. But I was really only interested in the SMS controllers and power supply, so I offered $1 for it all. She accepted. The NES is dirty and looks like someone spilled some pop in it (I opened it before bringing it inside to check for cockroaches) I don't have high hopes for it working, especially since it had the wrong power supply with it, which leads me to believe they were using it for the NES.

I also got an old loudspeaker from one sale $0.50. It's not super loud, but I can plug my iPod into it and get a very respectable sound level out of it. It's great for outdoors or in the truck because I don't need a power source for it.

Sunday Flea Market It hasn't rained yet today, but it has looked like it will all day and a lot of people were not at the flea market, including the guys I do trading with. This was the only thing I could find worth buying. One thing I did see which gave me a good laugh was a guy selling dirty, loose NES controllers for $10 each. His N64 controllers were in the $30 range.

Just a heads up regarding future installments: The garage sale/flea market season is winding down, so don't be surprised if this turns into a biweekly feature.

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