It has been a while since I posted one of these. Let’s just say my life got very crazy for a while there but I think things have calmed down a bit now. I feel inspired to continue with my series of Kijiji Tales. This one is a classic and I loved re reading it almost 10 years later. Enjoy…

Please note that this story takes place in about 2012 and I wrote it in about 2014…

Sometimes on Kijiji, you actually meet someone that turns out to be pretty cool.  Like in this classic tale. Nowadays, he is quite the Kijiji annoyance. Simply because he updates all 50 of his ads daily so that they are always on top of the results list. To do that you need to delete the ads, and then one by one re-post them, which is totally time consuming.

Any who, I often work night shift and usually the night before my first shift I stay up all night trying to adjust my sleep schedule. It is a technique I have perfected over the many years in my industry. I will often go through loads of caffeine in the form of Rockstar energy drink and input my recent pickups list into collection tools online. So I figured why not try to set up a late night deal to help with my ritual. I figured I could take as long as I wanted since I needed to stay up all night anyway. So I got in contact with this notorious guy. I say notorious because he always had numerous ads up. As I soon found out after contacting him, He was a night-owl himself and we agreed that I would drive across town to his place at 11pm.

I went there in good faith with no real solid deal in place. I packed up a huge box of trade bait and headed there hoping for the best. As I pulled up to the house, he was having a smoke and a beer on the front porch. We properly introduced ourselves then chatted a bit before heading to the basement. First thing that hit me as I entered the door was the smell.  Reminded me of a pet store. Then as I crept down the steps to basement, there was a poop smear in the rug at the bottom of the basement steps.  I am hyper-allergic to cats so it bothered my nose and eyes right away. The distraction and discomfort quickly dissipated as I noticed the wall-to-wall games that lined the basement! "Suck it up buttercup!" I told myself.

So we got to business right away and he gives me free reign to go through everything. As I dig through game after game, I could slowly feel a grimy film collecting on my fingertips. I kept my focus though, and just kept going and going trying to do the math in my head. No real gems but some solid titles for sure. Minty box and manual for Mega Man 2, CIB minty Atari Jaguar console, nice box for the NES Action Set. All stuff I wanted at the time.

So as the night went on, he kept hiccuping more and more as he tried to talk to me. He kept slamming beers and running out for smokes. Then as he was explaining something about his collection, when he abruptly stopped, looked me in the eyes and said 

"Do you smell that?"  Before I could answer he belted back. I was definitely puzzled at his sudden question.  

"Smells like the cat took a shit" he pointed behind me "Go close that door!"

"Ahhh okay" I thought and went over to the door he had pointed to. 

"Yeah, the cat poops in there and it stinks"

The words "oh really???" popped in my head, "the cat poop stinks???"

Once the door was closed, he continued to ramble on…

Time just seamed to fly by; I must have been there 2-3 hours before I went through everything. In the end, we both had a massive pile of each other items stacked up. I found it very bizarre and entertaining how he priced his items, I simply judged mine like most people would have, eBay sold times. He on the other hand judged by how much he liked the game. Which really worked out for me in most cases but a few of them were completely out of my price range. For example, Warhammer Shadows of the Horned Rat for PS1, he wanted over $100 for but at the time, it was maybe a $10 game.  After a bit of intense bartering, we did a massive trade that I was very happy with. He took all my more common Mario’s, Zelda’s, Mortal Kombat’s, etc. He also took a few NES Systems. I got all the uncommon stuff I could grab. I figured the deal was done and I was ready to leave, but I was wrong! The final part of the deal was that I had to sit down to write out on a piece of paper everything I got from him. I was kind of puzzled at first then he admitted “I have been drinking a lot and I might forget when the trade was… I need to keep track”. So I did as he wished, then headed home at 4am. Overall, it was a good night, one to remember for sure.

Hopefully I can get the next tale out in a more timely fashion.