I never owned a Commodore 64 (C64).  I knew of the C64 back in the days of old, but it was that magical machine that took a long time to load up Blue Max, which was the only game that the kid across the street played (look but don't touch for me).  Back in the days of yore I was a seriously minded arcade monkey.  I didn't have any home systems save the O^2 and an Atari VCS and quite frankly didn't want anymore.  My eternal hunt for more returnable bottles consumed the time not spent playing arcade games or running for my geeky life from bullies.  I didn't have time to wait for Blue Max to load.  Sure, there was something hypnotic about the sound the drive made, or that the games came on these thin disks, but nothing that could keep me from Tempest or Berzerk.

Fast forward until now and currently I have eight tabs open in Chromium: four for eBay (showing the newly listed games, the games I am bidding/watching, and the games ending soonest), two for RF Gen (one for this window and another in the database), and two displaying several homegrew accessories and options.  All are related to the C64.  The funny thing is that I can't really explain why I like this system so much.  Is is possible for a person to be nostalgic for a system he/she never had or even really played?  Apparently so.  Personally I blame all that Retro Gamer Magazine I used to read, though I guess I should be grateful I never latched onto the Speccy in the same way, else I'd really be up a creek.

Anyways, on an almost yearly basis I get itchy for a C64. Normally it passes and I move on, but for some reason I decided to move forward and begin seeking out a C64 and it's gaming accessories (disk drive, data set).  The only question is price and availability.  For price I decided to draw up some metrics from eBay, as this seemed to easiest way to come up with a general fair market value.  After all, I do this all the time at my work (computer remarketer), so how would this be any different? Turns out the answer is the difference between night and day.  First, buyers on eBay seem to not discriminate the functonality of the item and will seemingly pay random amounts of money on stuff in auctions that were pulled from attics, garages, and basements with no hope of return if it doesn't work.  I can't imagine doing that myself, so I gave up after only an hour of creating a spreadsheet and decided to leave eBay for software only.  The price would just have to come to me in the wild, I reasoned.  Plus, I get to keep it local, avoiding costly shipping fees for now.

So, with a new plan under my belt I approached the most prolific thrifter I know.  Turns out he had beat me to the punch, and decided to make C64 stuff part of his regular rounds after hearing me blather on about the C64 once or twice.  Despite the amount of time he'd spent looking the local and semi-local thrifts, he'd not seen one piece of C64 hardware or software.  In six months.  Or anytime in the near-past up to the time he threw away his broken C64, which was a decade ago.  I don't mind sharing that this revalation took some serious wind from my sails.  Still, spurred by the amazing myriad of games I saw on Youtube I decided to shift plans.

Normally about this time a normal person would have turned to Cragslist, and indeed I did.  Managed to find a C64 for a nice price.  The only problem is that my wife has expressly forbidden me to use Craiglist, due to some secondhand information from a friend who treated a stab wound victim related to Craigslist.  And since I gotta keep Momma happy, I stay away from Craigslist (though it doesn't stop me from attempting to bribe my friends to get it for me, thus creating a loophole).

My new plan would continue to ask my friend to keep a close eye out whilst I try to hit the thrifts that he doesn't hit (or I think he doesn't hit).  I have a strategy to look at the staff at the thirft and make a judgement call about my lieklyhood of finding stuff in that store.  I'll supliment this when it warms up by hitting garage sales manned by old people and ask them as well as trying to make friends with the video game horder at the sort of local flea market.  From what I understand he pretty much scoops up all the game related inventory from within the flea market, leaving little bits of sad scrap with crazy prices attached to it ($100 loose VCS with tangled cords, anyone?).  Who knows, maybe I'll even venture into a pawm for the first time.

Next: Pawn shops and (more) Thrift stores!

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