Your Best Pickups: on NA, in the wild, on ebay

[attakid101 | 267]

What are your top 3 scores from the given categories??

Here’s mine:

On NA— I traded a minty CIB copy of Earthbound for this Earthbound poster. A lot of people think this trade is crazy but the truth is I can buy another CIB EB any day of the week. This poster...not so much.

On ebay— A few years ago I scored the SNES Exertainment 9XS Bike. I paid $1K and it came with a beautiful copy of MBR/SR

In the wild—cutting a long story short here but I recently found a rare Pikachu statue less than 5 blocks from my house. Paid $200 for him.

[DefaultGen | 5,401]

Ebay: NTSC M82 for $500 browsing newly listed Video Games in 2006. Just sitting there chillin' unsold.
NintendoAge: No idea. I got a Cowboy Kid for $5 on DigitPress from a guy who was like "This is going to be rare one day!". Thanks dude!
Wild: Maybe my TX-Sector pinball machine for $1500 right after it became really collectible and started selling for $2500-3000? Hard for old video game Goodwill finds to beat a $1500 discount.

[kapitank00 | 8]

Best find in the wild was probably finding a Saturn in the box at Goodwill a decent while back.

On Ebay, I took a shot in the dark and bought an as-is Sega CD with a Genesis attached. It was 80, and actually works really well. Sold the Genesis for 15 I think, so a solid deal for a working model 2 CD. 

[A_Feisty_Pickle | 244]

Bought an M8 from a game store of all places for $330 after tax. Ended up selling it a few months later to help pay for honeymoon. Besides that not much stands out as huge deals. I got about $1k worth of NES/SNES/N64 games from a couple moving across state. Paid around $250 for that. Nothing too spectacular this year though! 

 

EDIT: Just remembered a post on FB Marketplace earlier this year. A box of books with some PS2 and PS3 games barely visible beneath them. $.50 each. Couldn't see what they were in the pics but I took the chance anyways and drove 20 minutes to meet them. Lots of filler but a few good $10-$20 games. Big win was the CIB Haunting Grounds though! 

Edited November 14, 2019 by A_Feisty_Pickle

[RH | 4,903]

1 hour ago, kapitank00 said:

Best find in the wild was probably finding a Saturn in the box at Goodwill a decent while back.

Actually, same here.  They had a couple of game items out at the Salvation Army down the street.  Some how, they had put something out on the shelf and another part was missing, so they let me rummage the stock in the back. OMG, there it was.  An in-box Saturn and about 8 games.  A few were sports titles, but the others were $20-40 games.  I also picked up 3 wavebirds, and a GameCube.  I think the whole lot was less than $50.

By far, that was my best score.  The next was picking up Azure Dreams for $3.  It was a sad copy though.  Everything about it was perfect, as if the original owner opened it and never played it.  The game, manual and case were in perfect shape... but for one problem.  Someone left it out in the sun a long time. I searched long and hard to see if there was a way to reverse sun fading, and there just isn't.  I think I still got about $40 for it, though, which is over 10x what I paid.

[Strange | 1,700]

My best finds in the wild are Samurai Western for PS2 for 25 cents, a loose R.O.B. for $3, boxed Exocet for Atari 2600 (more rare than valuable), Stubbs the Zombie for $1.

[Skorp | 383]

Found a prototype of a SNES game in a Goodwill auction once if that counts. Pretty much ended up free in price considering I paid very low for the lot.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Skorp

[ALTQQ | 87]

On NA I bought Hagane box and manual for $50.

I bought wild guns at play and trade for $8 back when it was already hella expensive.

On Ebay I bought zero the kamikaze squirrel cib for $30

I still have wild guns  it I sold the other stuff last year.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

My absolute best haul. My boss at a previous job asked if I collect games, he said he had a few boxes he could give me. He unloads the back of his truck into my car and this is what I find when I get home. It's all the best games from a personal collection, all Mega Man, Zelda, Super Mario, Contra. There is a variety of NES, SNES, N64 and Atari 2600 with accessories like the Power Glove, various controllers and multiple different consoles.

The most valuable item in the lot is an incredibly uncommon Atari 2600 game titled Spider Maze, it's worth about $150.

The price? It was completely free.

[SuperJimtendo | 1,121]

Winning the age of Aquarius thread. mister 3000! I scored a set of black box nes games. The McDonald's smb3 display signs and a ton of steam games. 

[Tanooki | 4,932]

The area I'm in and I know I'm not alone here with that, is not great for founding some of the mind blowing stuff this thread has or will show.

I decided to add 4 images of some solid finds on the high end of what has been possible.  The VB was a $75 pick up for everything you see there, it needed the ribbons fixed and only lacked a stand.  The ZOID there that's an original year one from Japan I strangely found locally for $10 and it's brand new and very hard to come by so they get fairly well up there.  And Pokemon was $100 which came from the same place as the VB and as you can see it's in quite nice shape.  The fourth is the Israel Defence Army Set, an exceedingly rare toy set, the company lasted only 5 years in Haifa Israel and is their rarest boxed set and second only to one stand alone, and insanely another goodwill find and another at $10 too.  I've had an offer from a toy collector on that one for $2000 because he has the only other known complete in box set as had 2 boxed variants with a couple differing vehicles.

There have been other toys and strangeness but those are the most notable to me in the last 5 years, probably overall with the army set (second would be the home use only pin-bot I have in value.)

[Jono1874 | 144]

Wild: A pristine, complete copy of Mega Man Legends 2 for $30. It was going for well over $100 at the time.

Ebay: a lot of 16 NES controllers for $8. All of them worked great. I'm set for life.

NA: I dunno. There was a period where Battle Kid 1 was out of stock for like 3 months and someone was kind enough to sell me there copy for a slightly higher amount than what it usually goes for. Not a deal at all from a monetary standpoint but the guy did me a solid and I was very happy to recieve it. Still my favorite hombrew title.

[RH | 4,903]

Ah, I have one because it’s a brag on the community

After the whole, low stock debacle that was the NES Classic, the NA community decided to organize and create a list of people that decided to help each other out in getting SNES Classics. The idea was, we kept a first come, first serve list.  If you were on the list, and found two SNES Classics, you’d pick up both, and sell one at cost to the person at the top of the list, and we worked our way down.

Although the SNES Classic was way more accessible than the NES, I ended up getting my SNES about a month or so before I spotted one. We worked as a team and were fair.  In the end, I think about 50 of us helped each other get a cool system at a fair (cough, as in non-scalped) price!

Thanks participants! You all were awesome.

[broncofantd793 | 138]

On the same day from different garage sales, I found Cubivore for $5 and Einhander for $0.50.  Also, a beat up Turok Rage Wars Grey cart for $5 in the wild about a year after the craze started jumps out in my mind.

I've had some good lot finds or good groups of minty games, but the best values vs prices paid are above.

[arnpoly | 198]

NA

Getting a copy of StarKeeper was probably the best.

Honorable Mention: NES Miracle Piano CIB.  I paid retail for it but it's a hard set to find all together in nice condition.

In The Wild

At a yard sale, I found a box of CIB SNES and N64 games for $2/each.  Far and away the best one was Pocky and Rocky 2.  This was back around 2007/2008.

Honorable mention: Found a box of NES stuff, and tucked away inside CIB RoboWarrior was the official hint sheet.  Rare paper!

eBay

This is a tie with two amazing scores a month or two apart.  This was in 2014.

1. Newly listed NES lot with 50 games for about $300.  Included both Little Samson and Panic Restaurant with manuals for both.

2. Another NES lot with 30 games for about $200.  Included Flintstones Dino Peak and Kid Klown.  Started as an auction, and checking it later saw a BIN was added.  Just dumb luck

 

Perhaps the best part of it all is that I still own everything mentioned.

[Romiked2689 | 120]

My best na find would have to be my favorite item not based on price but just because where else do you find a prototype SMW 

 

best eBay find is my talespin prototype for 1100. Come to find out from another member here @TVGP it was used during the 1990 disney championship. 
 

my in the wild find is hardly even in the wild since I’m very busy and hardly get to look but I’m gonna pick my free pick up of a dmg display cabinet I got from another forum about arcades 

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

On NA, nothing crazy, but I was happy with the CIB copy of Cheetahmen II I snagged right before price and demand seemed to spike (as I ended up with a bunch of PMs about it despite not being in the market to sell).  In the wild, nothing for years, but at the time, paying $15 for a CIB Action 52 had me weak in the knees; from that same era, but taking modern pricing/demand into account, picking up M/NM loose copies of Panic Restaurant and Zombie Nation for $2-3 each from random flea market booths who specialized in bulk-stock NES games ranks up there.  For eBay, I'd have to say snaking a $100 Dino Peak after the price shot up to/above $1000 was pretty sweet; the wording in the auction made it seem like he was selling an SNES game but the photos were of the NES version, so I took the shot, figuring eBay would side with me should it be the SNES version, and I won out.

For a bonus, the best Software Etc. pickup I ever had (this was just before or after GameStop bought them but before every store was rebranded) was an absolutely mint, completely CIB (including the original store receipt tucked into the manual) copy of Chrono Trigger.  I worked at the pizza place next door and was frequently in there buying up whatever NES titles I didn't already have or whatever else struck my fancy and one day one of the assistant managers comes into the store and tells me the Software Etc. manager needs to see me in their back room ASAP.  I took a break, headed over, and was greeted with, "I figured you'd want this, so I held it back here before we did any stickering or let anybody else handle it" and Jeff holding the beauty in his hands.  I think I paid something like $35 for it and was happy for the privilege.  I'd still have it to this day, but as fun as it was, a good friend was collecting every Square game in as complete a condition as they came and had been pestering me to sell it to him from the day I picked it up.  I ended up selling it to him for $100 (his initial offer) after never playing all the way through it and ending up with the Playstation version when it came out.  Kind of wish that I still had it, but happier that my buddy still has it as a gem in his collection.

[the tall guy | 63]

On NA... man over 10 years I've been beyond fortunate, could probably list 50 different deals, but one that just came to mind was @Pats1717 trading me a Contra Force box for loose copies of Mario World and Mario Kart.  I still have that box.

I don't really use eBay much if ever, but probably the only time I did was when the guy was selling a pile of grey rage wars carts for $12 each.  I picked one up and ended up selling it later.

In the wild, so very many.  Loose Rob for $3 at a flea market, dead mint cib final fantasy for $5, loose earthbound for $5.  Random thrift store had a cib Mr Nutz for $5.  

[snk2d4ever | 96]

Wild: Winning Post at a thrift store for 3$

NA: Little Samson cart for $400

eBay: A lot of crazy stuff, but most recently an NES Tetris display for $120

[Jeremyamoto | 30]

I think my best find thus far was stumbling upon the artwork for the unreleased Lobo SNES/Genesis game.

 

[snk2d4ever | 96]

On 11/13/2019 at 10:55 AM, attakid101 said:

On NA— I traded a minty CIB copy of Earthbound for this Earthbound poster. A lot of people think this trade is crazy but the truth is I can buy another CIB EB any day of the week. This poster...not so much.

And now that poster is worth more than Earthbound CIB.

[barrels | 125]

Wild: CIB SNES Chrono Trigger at a thrift store. 100% complete and in great shape, all for $4. This was back in 2012 (I think).

Edited November 14, 2019 by barrels

[Romiked2689 | 120]

1 hour ago, Jeremyamoto said:

I think my best find thus far was stumbling upon the artwork for the unreleased Lobo SNES/Genesis game.

 

Post your best from Nintendoage then eBay then the wild  

 

very nice art I’d take Turok  over this one Personally 

[DarkTone | 984]

NA: got a boxed Terranigma for half the price, bundle of GameCube games for £4 each including paper mario, or a CIB kirby's adventure for free. All from the same member (I miss you man).

Ebay: my Miya 2000 CIB. Crazy that I own the thing! 

Wild: Duck tales 2. CIB. £20 

[Jeremyamoto | 30]

On 11/14/2019 at 12:28 PM, Romiked2689 said:

Post your best from Nintendoage then eBay then the wild  

 

very nice art I’d take Turok  over this one Personally 

Haven't had any NA or eBay pickups that have come anywhere close to this!