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Another great weekend for treasure hunting. I was able to do some saling Friday again, but this time I was alone, so I was able to cover a lot more ground in a shorter amount of time. The sales weren't very good on Friday though, I only bought one thing the entire day. Luckily, Saturday was better, not a lot of stuff, but I got something that I never thought I would find, but had always hoped I would. Sunday at the flea market was freezing, Saturday was close to 80, but Sunday never went above 60 and was about 45 when we went to the flea market. Despite the cold weather, the place was packed and the deals were abundant.
I'm going to start out with my personal favorite find of the week. This beauty came from a garage sale that I go to every couple of months because the guy always has video games (priced reasonably at a little under market value) and he usually has some oddball or old things that are very cheap (I got a free ColecoVision from this guy last year). At first I didn't see much that I really wanted, but as I was leaving, I spotted something under the "free table" and my first thought was "could it be? No, it can't be that" but sure enough, I looked and it was most certainly a Vectrex. I was flabbergasted at first, and asked him if it was free as well, he said yes, and I knew it must not work. He explained that he bought it a year ago but left it in the garage over the winter and it no longer works. I told him I would gladly take it off his hands for him.
Once I got it home, I tried powering it on, but turning it on did nothing, so I was expecting either a loose plug inside or blown fuse at best, but expecting it to just be dead. So I opened it up and checked out some of the connections, the fuse, and blew off some dust, I closed it up again and tested it again. Nothing. I tried turning it on and off several times and nothing worked. So I was just messing around pushing the Reset button and turning it on/off and suddenly it came on. The sudden burst of sound scared the hell out of me, but everything looks to be working fine. I can't believe how bright and crisp the lines on this are, it looks much better than anything on the 2600 IMO. I still need a controller for it though, anyone have a spare they're willing to trade for?
This nice little Genesis lot came from another garage sale that was supposed to open at 9, but we got there at 8:45 and it wasn't open. So we came back at 9:30 or so. I wanted to just say "screw it" and not go back because they couldn't be bothered to open 15 minutes early but had signs up all over the place well before then. But luckily, my dad convinced me to go back to it.
The games were priced at $1 each and the system had a $3 sticker on it. I picked out 8 games I either didn't have at all or I didn't have CIB, and thought about just buying the 8, but instead offered $10 for the whole box. My offer was accepted. The funny thing was that the woman said she didn't want to sell it because she loves Cool Spot, which was 1 of the 3 games I already had and I would have let her keep it, but she didn't have a Genesis to play it on anymore anyway. Almost every game was complete with manuals and inserts, plus there was a bag of Genesis system inserts stuff in one of the cases.
While I was leaving this sale, a guy that was also leaving the sale asked me if I had bought the video games there (well duh, you just watched me carry this box of video games away from the sale you were just at) and asked me if I was interested in Nintendo games. I said that I might be, and he said that he would be having a garage sale next week and had "hundreds" of games for NES, SNES, N64. He said he's "not going to sell 50 games for $25, because [he] can get more than that at GameStop" but when I tried telling him that Gamestop doesn't take anything older than PS2, he wouldn't believe me. I'm hopeful for a good score from him next week, but he'll probably look everything up on eBay and price accordingly.
Nothing special, but each were $1 each from different garage sales and are games I didn't have. Chessmaster 3-D is CIB, Quackshot is missing the manual.
This was from the flea market, and as you can see is complete. He was asking $3 for it, so I offered $2, but he said it was his son's and couldn't take $2. So he offered to call his son to see if he would take $2, but he never pulled out the phone, I think he wanted me to just say "never mind, here's the $3" but he obviously doesn't know me. Since he wouldn't give it to me for $2, I started to walk away, and he said I could have it for $2.50. Since I always have a pocket of quarters, I paid him the $2.50.
These were also from the flea market. I almost walked by this stand because it was by itself at the end of the last row and it didn't look like they had much, but the classic Atari orange game box caught my eye. I see "Star Raiders" and grab it, and realize it's a lot heavier than I was expecting. I looked inside and saw all those manuals, game catalogs, and extras stuffed into it. From looking through them quickly, I already had most, if not all the manuals, but the extras are nice to have. And there was neat "Kids' Video Scorebook and Diary" that was partially filled out with some kids' scores complete with dates, which I think is just really neat. I paid $1 for them all.
This is perhaps one of the more strange bargains this year. Simply because I've never seen a Vic 20 before, let alone 4 boxed ones in one location. The woman wanted $5 each for them, and I only wanted one, but I couldn't figure out which one I wanted (some were more complete, others were in better shape, one had a cassette player) so I did what every good collector would do, I bought them all. I offered $15 for all 4 and she quickly accepted the offer, I probably could have gotten them all for $10.
I'm going to pick out the best pieces from each bundle and get the nicest, most complete one I can, then sell the other 3 for $10 each + shipping (maybe less depending on condition), one is spoken for, let me know if you want one.
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