A Mixed Bag of Good and Bad Luck
Well, this thread began life as a description of my consistently terrible luck in hunting for great game deals locally. However, shortly after I started the thread, I started winning the game of Craigslist somehow. This first post will act like a table of contents, as well as the first post of the journal.
Contents:
05/29/10 - No games, TMNT VHS's . . . . . . . . . . Page 1
06/04/10 - Nice NES lot find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 1
06/05/10 - The rest of the previous lot! . . . . . . . .Page 1
07/08/10 - Two CL deals back to back . . . . . . . .Page 2
05/29/10
The first entry finds our hero and heroine (me and my GF) at 10 garage sales throughout the day. It got hot very quickly, just after a couple sales. The first "find" was 4 XBox 360 games, none of which were worth anything and were all priced at $5/pc. I'd be lucky to sell these titles on eBay for anything, let alone make any money off of them, or even keep them to enjoy. The next, I dunno, probably 6 or so had nothing game-related whatsoever.
Then, the next sale on the list turns out to be a ghetto used electronics store having a "garage sale" out in front of their store. They advertised games among other crap in their CL ad. There were no games outside, so we checked inside. Few PS3, few 360, mostly PS2, not interested. Sometimes, my GF will ask the sellers if they have any NES games or older games. She's not into gaming pretty much at all, so she asks for me, because I'm awkward as hell in situations like that. The guy says "like, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo? Yeah, we got a whole box of that stuff up there." We look up to see two huge totes full NES and SNES systems, and a very long row of carts were visible. To make this part of the unfortunate story short, they wouldn't even show us the contents, because they were determined to put it all on eBay. When I asked what they were looking to get for it all on eBay, he said "Well, the last stuff we put up went for like $300." No thanks, I don't feel like buying $300 worth of stuff at eBay prices and trying to resell most of it just to score some carts. Of course, they wouldn't break out the few Tengen CIB's that I saw in there either.
Much later, after we thought we were done scoping out the sales, we were on our way to her grandmother's house about 45 minutes away, and saw some sale signs. It was getting close to closing time for sales; it was around 2:30pm and most of them end around 3:00pm. But we stopped at a few anyway. The only games here were a few Genesis completes, one of which was Ecco the Dolphin, for $2 each. I didn't pick it up, because I had Ecco on that PS3 Genesis compilation disc, and didn't care for it.
In order to share my one purchase from this day of sales and keep this thread *somewhat* on topic, my finder's keepers of this weekend was composed of two of the four Ninja Turtles cartoon VHS's that were available through Burger King in the early 90's. I had two of them as a kid and watched them a million times. The one I remember is when Shredder and the gang turn an anti gravity device on, and everything just flips over. I never thought that was odd as a kid, but whatever. If anyone has the other two, let me know, I might be interested, especially if you can come close to the 25c/pc that I got these for! lol...
Contents:
05/29/10 - No games, TMNT VHS's . . . . . . . . . . Page 1
06/04/10 - Nice NES lot find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 1
06/05/10 - The rest of the previous lot! . . . . . . . .Page 1
07/08/10 - Two CL deals back to back . . . . . . . .Page 2
05/29/10
The first entry finds our hero and heroine (me and my GF) at 10 garage sales throughout the day. It got hot very quickly, just after a couple sales. The first "find" was 4 XBox 360 games, none of which were worth anything and were all priced at $5/pc. I'd be lucky to sell these titles on eBay for anything, let alone make any money off of them, or even keep them to enjoy. The next, I dunno, probably 6 or so had nothing game-related whatsoever.
Then, the next sale on the list turns out to be a ghetto used electronics store having a "garage sale" out in front of their store. They advertised games among other crap in their CL ad. There were no games outside, so we checked inside. Few PS3, few 360, mostly PS2, not interested. Sometimes, my GF will ask the sellers if they have any NES games or older games. She's not into gaming pretty much at all, so she asks for me, because I'm awkward as hell in situations like that. The guy says "like, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo? Yeah, we got a whole box of that stuff up there." We look up to see two huge totes full NES and SNES systems, and a very long row of carts were visible. To make this part of the unfortunate story short, they wouldn't even show us the contents, because they were determined to put it all on eBay. When I asked what they were looking to get for it all on eBay, he said "Well, the last stuff we put up went for like $300." No thanks, I don't feel like buying $300 worth of stuff at eBay prices and trying to resell most of it just to score some carts. Of course, they wouldn't break out the few Tengen CIB's that I saw in there either.
Much later, after we thought we were done scoping out the sales, we were on our way to her grandmother's house about 45 minutes away, and saw some sale signs. It was getting close to closing time for sales; it was around 2:30pm and most of them end around 3:00pm. But we stopped at a few anyway. The only games here were a few Genesis completes, one of which was Ecco the Dolphin, for $2 each. I didn't pick it up, because I had Ecco on that PS3 Genesis compilation disc, and didn't care for it.
In order to share my one purchase from this day of sales and keep this thread *somewhat* on topic, my finder's keepers of this weekend was composed of two of the four Ninja Turtles cartoon VHS's that were available through Burger King in the early 90's. I had two of them as a kid and watched them a million times. The one I remember is when Shredder and the gang turn an anti gravity device on, and everything just flips over. I never thought that was odd as a kid, but whatever. If anyone has the other two, let me know, I might be interested, especially if you can come close to the 25c/pc that I got these for! lol...
Comments
...OK, I didn't think the third movie was as bad as everyone else did when I was a kid. But the Ooze was where it was at.
Yeah, your luck is pretty damn bad! Sorry! Hehe.
I texted my GF about it. Around an hour later, she texts back. "I got ur games babe." She picked up an NES and 32 games for $40! Apparently the guy had another NES, and he wanted her to leave 8 games for that system, so she left "sports and Mario games."
I have no idea what games are in this lot, so it's like a surprise. It's like Christmas, kinda. Even if they are all commons though, it's OK, cause that's less than 2 bucks a cart with a free console essentially, and I need a ton of commons. I left what collection me and my bro had as a kid with him, so I started fresh last year and don't have many games.
More info later when I dig through my box of goodies!
Does Rad Racer belong in that black box or black label series? Along with 10 Yard Fight, Baseball, etc? Here are some of what I would consider highlights:
I actually already had Ninja Gaiden II (don't have 1 or 3 yet), but the rest out of this pic are new to this collection.
So there are positives to this story and actually some negatives. Since this is a thread that was supposed to be about bad luck, I'll start with the negatives!
-This lot is definitely from a smoking household. Electronics from smoking households have a very distinct, terrible smell, much different than straight cigarette or cigar smoke (or any other variety I've ever had the pleasure/displeasure of smelling)
-My GF had $40 on her. The guy had another NES and 8 more games. He said he'd take $50 for the lot, and she explained that she only had $40. The deal they made was to pick 8 games to leave with the other system. She ended up leaving a couple more black label games (which she didn't pick to keep because she knows I generally don't like sports games - she was thinkin of me!), a gold Zelda 1 which I actually don't have yet (remember, this particular collection is a baby!), and TMNT1 which I love and also still don't have. Nothing of huge value, but there are a few carts in the lot that I ended up with that I would gladly have traded for these games (Bases Loaded..).
The positives:
-I only had 6 of the 31 games in the lot!
-All but 3 games came with sleeves, a handful of which are official Nintendo ones
-Without testing anything, and despite it smelling like cancer, everything looks like it's in great shape. Even if I have some trouble with something, I'm sure cleaning some nicotine off of it will bring it up to speed.
The best part of the positives really isn't even in the lot itself. I was at work, and my GF had to be to work at 2. I want to say I saw this around 10:30am. There was no contact in the CL ad. She used pretty much all of the free time she had before work to drive 45 minutes away to a garage sale to buy these video games for me, without even knowing if they were still there. And she's not even a gamer in the slightest (beyond Petville on Facebook). So I think that's the best part.
But the games are pretty sweet too
Stay tuned for tomorrow, when I'm sure to be back to good ol' bad luck! We're going to a town wide garage sale, and I guarantee I won't find anything good! I might try to talk her into driving back to this place on the slim chance that the other stuff hadn't sold yet, including the NES and games, Dreamcast, N64, PS1.. apparently this guy had a ton and was in the middle of nowhere. But even if I have bad luck, this lot makes up for it for a while.
I woke up this morning, grabbed my phone and started checking random stuff on the internet, which is something I do to try to prevent falling back asleep when I want to get out of bed. I found that this same guy re-posted his CL ad for the garage sale with all of the games. IT wasn't a direct copy & paste, it was retyped, and he mentioned the other NES and games I got yesterday. So we took the drive out there to get the rest! I guess yesterday, he wasn't talking about including the other console and accessories when he offered the $50 deal to my GF, so when we went back, we wanted to sell all or nothing. He had it marked $30. I was kinda let down that he wouldn't just give us the rest for $10 to complete the $50 deal. But I haggled a little and got him to throw in a complete Goldeneye 64. So for $30, I picked up another NES, 3 controllers, a Zapper, a 4 Score, 9 games (Gold Zelda, Battletoads, TMNT, Baseball, Tennis, Mario 1 & 2, and Mickey's Mousecapade), and the complete Goldeneye. Later discovered Excitebike was in the NES! Double score! I only had 3/9 of these games.
There was also a ton of Dreamcast stuff. I didn't have the money to tie up in this stuff for resale, and I'll be honest, I don't know much of the value of DC stuff. So I called up my reseller buddy to see if he was interested. The stuff was marked $50, but he said he'd take $40. I mentioned on the phone that it had MvC2. He goes "yeah, totally grab that for me, I can get $40 for that game alone." So I used the $40 I had set aside to make a deposit with to buy this stuff. It was well over $100 worth of DC stuff. There was the console, 2 controllers, 8-10 games (including MvC1 & 2, Seaman, Shenmue LE, Legacy of Kain), a VMU, a memory card, the mic and mic attachment for Seaman, guide for Shenmue, a carrying case for all of it, and a big ass arcade stick. He gave me a CIB Kirby's Adventure 9.5 for picking the stuff up for him. I'm sure he's going to make a lot more off the lot than that, but hey, he's gotta make money too, and I couldn't tie that $40 up in the stuff. So that was cool too! Got a CIB Kirby for virtually nothing!
Ok. So it wasn't a bad find. $40 total.
Does Rad Racer belong in that black box or black label series? Along with 10 Yard Fight, Baseball, etc? Here are some of what I would consider highlights:
I actually already had Ninja Gaiden II (don't have 1 or 3 yet), but the rest out of this pic are new to this collection.
So there are positives to this story and actually some negatives. Since this is a thread that was supposed to be about bad luck, I'll start with the negatives!
-This lot is definitely from a smoking household. Electronics from smoking households have a very distinct, terrible smell, much different than straight cigarette or cigar smoke (or any other variety I've ever had the pleasure/displeasure of smelling)
-My GF had $40 on her. The guy had another NES and 8 more games. He said he'd take $50 for the lot, and she explained that she only had $40. The deal they made was to pick 8 games to leave with the other system. She ended up leaving a couple more black label games (which she didn't pick to keep because she knows I generally don't like sports games - she was thinkin of me!), a gold Zelda 1 which I actually don't have yet (remember, this particular collection is a baby!), and TMNT1 which I love and also still don't have. Nothing of huge value, but there are a few carts in the lot that I ended up with that I would gladly have traded for these games (Bases Loaded..).
The positives:
-I only had 6 of the 31 games in the lot!
-All but 3 games came with sleeves, a handful of which are official Nintendo ones
-Without testing anything, and despite it smelling like cancer, everything looks like it's in great shape. Even if I have some trouble with something, I'm sure cleaning some nicotine off of it will bring it up to speed.
The best part of the positives really isn't even in the lot itself. I was at work, and my GF had to be to work at 2. I want to say I saw this around 10:30am. There was no contact in the CL ad. She used pretty much all of the free time she had before work to drive 45 minutes away to a garage sale to buy these video games for me, without even knowing if they were still there. And she's not even a gamer in the slightest (beyond Petville on Facebook). So I think that's the best part.
But the games are pretty sweet too
Stay tuned for tomorrow, when I'm sure to be back to good ol' bad luck! We're going to a town wide garage sale, and I guarantee I won't find anything good! I might try to talk her into driving back to this place on the slim chance that the other stuff hadn't sold yet, including the NES and games, Dreamcast, N64, PS1.. apparently this guy had a ton and was in the middle of nowhere. But even if I have bad luck, this lot makes up for it for a while.
i feel you on this, i have this client that is an older lady that has lived in her house for at least 20 years... the place is completely unbearable, wreaks of smoke. but like you said, not necessarily smoke itself, it's a very stale smokey smell that has enveloped every item in her house. it is completely overwhelming.
I'm going to pick up a lot of 21 games after work for $35 too. I'll post pics tonight! This will put me over 100 uniques in my collection! ^_^ But I REALLY gotta get to cleaning these dupes and make some of my money back...
Two days in a row, I got a couple of nice lots. The first caught my eye because it included a Power Glove, which I still didn't have. The guy was asking a pretty steep $75 for the lot, so I lowballed him pretty hard (his CL ad said "will dicker," why not) and he actually took it. Got this lot for $50. I use the $2 per cart rule, so by that rule, I got a console, an Advantage, 2 controllers, a Zapper, and a cleaning cart for $10. Oh, and every game came with manuals. And some manuals for games that weren't included. And a power pad manual!
The second lot was another CL ad. It was posted at around 2am, after I'd gone to sleep (I have a 9-5 job, sooo). Sometimes, I'll check stuff like CL, eBay, NA, etc., on my phone after my alarm goes off in the morning, just so I don't fall back asleep, so I saw this ad at around 7:30am. He left his phone #, which in my experience, means they won't check an e-mail if you send one. So I decided to call him on my way to work. He was already at work as well, so I didn't feel too bad. Spoiler! I got the lot. He said he got a lot of e-mails after me, so I pretty much rock.
I gave him his asking price of $35 for 21 games, which works out to be about $1.67 per cart. This lot wasn't as exciting, with no manuals, no sleeves, and some labels were worn. But it was still a pretty good deal.
Now, all good deals I've gotten this year aside, I've spent well over two hundred bucks on Nintendo games. I know this is probably small potatoes for some of you guys, but it's not for me. I have a fresh mortgage to pay. So I really gotta get my ass in gear and start cleaning carts for resale! I will soon have carts and some manuals in a new for sale thread, keep an eye out for it if you're like me and still need tons of commons.
I also plan on custom painting and modding the extra consoles I have. I'm going to start out by practicing on a Gamecube shell I have by painting it into a question mark block. If it turns out nicely, the next attempt will be an NES. Ultimately, I'd like to try doing one of those mods with the window on top and LED's behind it. I won't ruin the design in case I ever get around to it. It's a sweet idea ^_^