Sweet score, dude!

[Link | 2,876]

Tell a story about a collecting moment that you remember nostalgically. A landmark moment for your stash, making a new friend along with the deal, you bought something you didn't know was signed by a programmer you really like... 

[Link | 2,876]

Here's the one I thought of that made me wanna hear these. It's nothing amazing but it is from the very beginning of my getting back into plastic squares.

I think I had posted about that on facebook, and a friend noticed it. Unlike me, he didn't miss the wave of good thrift store days. And he was moving, and had decided he no longer needed piles of common Nintendo and Super Nintendo carts. I didn't buy everything he had; he kind of wanted his SuperScope to go to a good home and I wasn't very interested, didn't have room to carry it... but I got a really good deal on those stacks of carts. And a nice afternoon with my friend.

[Fleck586 | 324]

I don't know if this qualifies, but...

I bought a couple of old Coleco tabletop arcades from a guy off of Craigslist about 15 years ago. As we are talking, I ask him why he is selling, are you a collector, etc. He says he used to be and that he once had a full NES set but he sold it before he moved here and that he still might have some things if I'm interested. I told him I was and that night he texted me and said he had a bunch of N64 games. I obviously told him I was interested, and he said he would make a spreadsheet and show me what he has. 

It takes a few days and just when I thought it was dead, he emails me a list of over 400 games, including several duplicates, manuals, boxes, and these super cool clamshell cases with high quality box art prints for all the ones he doesn't have boxes for (pictured) and some cool accessories to boot! He says he doesn't have any zelda games, which OK. I already had those so no biggie. I look at his list and Sculpters Cut, check, bowling, check, Stunt Racer, check, Worms Armageddon, check... you get the idea. I'm freaking out. So, I ask him how much...

Days go by with no answer again. Then, out of the blue... $350.  What!?! Now I'm really freaking out. I wait an hour or so trying not to look desperate. I say I will take it and arrange a meeting. This is where I sit down to watch TV to wait for our meeting and I see this episode of American Pickers where they made about 3 times as much off of selling something than they thought and go back to give the guy they bought it from more money out of kindness.  Now the video game gods are talking to me through Tv shows... LOL!

He shows up with 4 big boxes full of stuff. I look through it all and find all the big hitters and tell him that I watched this Pickers episode and blah, blah, blah. I gave him $700 and walked with it all. My best score ever. At the time, it was probably worth $11-1200. Now obviously a lot more. I paired what he had with what I already had and it made a full US set. I sold off the extras and made most of my money back and even traded some for NES games I was missing at the time. 

My favorite story to tell and it's all still here and in those clamshells. 

[Fleck586 | 324]

It wouldn't let me add both images, so... double post!

[Link | 2,876]

4 hours ago, Fleck586 said:

I don't know if this qualifies, but...

Holy shit dude, yes it absolutely does. Fkn beautiful story! 

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,087]

Back in 2012 I had started making reproductions of various NES hacks and translations. There was a retro game store that opened up around the sane time about 40mins away from me. 

I went in one day to check it out and got to talking to the guy that ran it. I think he was part owner. The end result of the conversation was I agreed to make reproductions for the store. The vast majority of which were Castlevania hacks, I guess he really liked the idea of those for some reason . 

That relationship lasted around 2 years I think and there was many times that I would trade the repros for stuff instead of them giving me cash. Some things I got that way were:

Jaguar Console

Justifer Gun sets for both the SNES and Genesis

Miracle piano (in a obliterated box) for NES

and untold number of games

The store changed location and owners a couple of times but they still exist, but it’s more of an arcade for birthdays now than a real store. I don’t know how many trade ins they really get anymore 

 

[T-Pac | 7,824]

I got the majority of my Atari 2600 collection in a huge lot from @BortLicensePlate in 2020 - and it was really cool because I got to meet him in-person (albeit briefly). Still the only VGS member I've met offline.

Also he gave me a killer deal on the games - especially considering all the extra manuals he threw-in, too. (Thanks again, dude!)

[T-Pac]

[CT | 153]

I went to a church rummage sale in 2018. Got there right as it opened, and the first box I looked into had a smoke grey n64 looking perfect with one game.  Scooped that up and some camping gear, a cooler etc.

It was one of those sales where they just tell you the price at the end at the register. She took a look and was like "is this some video game stuff."  I said yes, and she said how about $10 for everything.

[Fleck586 | 324]

Keep the stories coming, guys. There's got to be more like these. I love hearing people's score stories. Especially the wild ones.

[CT | 153]

The year was 2017 and I would always drive by this Mom and Pop thrift store on my way home for work.  I just had a feeling there were games there.

Finally stopped in one day and they had Genesis games CIB.  I saw Gunstar Heroes and a few others. Scooped them up.  Cashier said 'hmm there is no price on these, how about $2 a piece?'  I said 'great.'

[CT | 153]

Back in 2015, where finding stuff on Craigslist was much more frequent, there was guy with about 30 NES games but all really beat up with marker all over them, ripped labels, dirty etc. 

I offered $40 for Bucky O'Hare and Mega Man 1 (the one game that was in ok shape), which I thought was a fair deal considering the guy had no idea. I passed on the rest of the games.

Looking back at that email, he also had Kickmaster and Frankenstein but also a bunch of common stuff. I definitely wasn't as well-versed in the NES library as I am now, so I'm kicking myself (no pun intended).  But the games were definitely not in a good condition so not a huge loss!

[Link | 2,876]

50 minutes ago, CT said:

Mom and Pop thrift store

That's really nice. 

I live in Chicago, big city, all of the thrift stores and even specialty stores are very picked over for vintage stuff here. Once we went on vacation to a small town and finding some carts (specifically Genesis games, funny enough) there and not high prices was  really nice. 

36 minutes ago, CT said:

Craigslist

And here's a missed opportunity, but it's a story.  

[3rdStrongestMole | 438]

I don't have a necessarily crazy valuable score to share, but I do have a nostalgic one.

Back in 2015, I lived in Pittsburgh. I got a call from a buddy back in Indiana @Ghostofsparta about a local NES/SNES lot he found on Craigslist. I wanna say it was upwards around 50-60 games, some CIB, some loose.

The price was about half the value of the lot, but he wanted to let me in on it, so we split it 50/50.

Then, the best part.

We decided to split the cost equally and do a draft for the games. So, we flipped a coin for first pick, then did a snake draft, back and forth, all the way down to the last game.

It was one of the most fun times I've ever had doling out an awesome Nintendo lot, and I'll never forget it.

Now, it's hard to do. Can't get a game lot that big without dropping over a grand. Not to mention, all the titles except for the bottom ten or so were legit.

I still have my Zelda, Metroid, and others from that lot.

 

[Code Monkey | 2,115]

How many do you want? I have 15 years of finding things for pennies, feel free to jump through these if you like, I've separated them by paragraph to make it easy.

I was rummaging through the $3 NES cartridge bin at a flea market and found a Casino Kid II that got thrown in there because it's so obscure. At the time it was worth about $100.

Same flea market, same seller, I saw a complete Dragon Warrior IV on his table and didn't bother asking for price because I couldn't afford it. The following week I went back there just 30 minutes before close after missing almost the entire day and when I got there, the same game was on the table of another NES seller across the aisle. I knew him better so I asked him for a price and he says, "Ahhhhh...... 50 bucks." That was weird, that means he got it from the other guy for less than $50 and it sat there all day without anyone buying it, I didn't understand it but I bought it.

This is my weirdest story. I looked on Kijiji (like Craigslist but in Canada) and saw SNES games for sale but just skimmed them and didn't see anything I wanted. An hour later someone messages me and asks if I saw the post, I told them I did but passed. They ask if I saw the Ninja game so I looked at it again and saw I had missed a complete Ninja Gaiden Trilogy for $60 and my heart sank because I knew it would be gone by now but I messaged the seller anyway. A little while later he gets back to me and says it's still available and he would hold it until after work. I meet him at an A&W and he brings out the game and says, "Yeah, someone messaged me and told me it's worth more so I'll need $120." Usually out of principle I'd pass but it was such a good deal I still did it. Then he asks me if I want more games, he has a complete Dragon Warrior III. He runs back across the field to his house, comes back with it and asks for $50 so I bought that as well. I got home to post it on Nintendo Age and saw someone else posted their pickup of Ninja Gaiden Trilogy boxed on the same day. I see he's from the same city and I call him out for lying about picking it up because I picked it up. He posted photos to prove it and posted the link tot he Kijiji sale, it was the same as mine. I message the seller to ask how many he had and he tells me I bought his only one. To this day I can't figure out what happened there but it was absolutely legitimate, I kept it for about 10 years and sold it a few months ago for about $700. If the person that bought that is still here, please tell me what happened there.

I bought a complete Chrono Trigger from eBay for $109, kept it for about 10 years and sold it a few months ago for about $800.

My boss at work found out I collect games so he told me he had a few boxes at his parents' house and I can have them. A week or two later he brings in multiple boxes and there were literally too many to sort through in the boxes, they were full. He gave them to me for free and I sorted through them after I got them home to find NES games like Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, multiple Mega Man games, The Legend Of Zelda, Battletoads and all the good titles. Plus uncommon SNES games like Dragon, Chavez II, good stuff like Super Punch Out, A Link To The Past, Castlevania. Plus there were piles of PlayStation games, loads of Atari (included a $150 Spider Maze cartridge) and peripherals like multiple Power Gloves, arcade ssticks, controllers and multiple consoles from Atari to SNES. I got the entire lot for free. He told me he has another few boxes he will bring me when he goes back to see his parents and it never happened, that was 10-12 years ago. I still see him as we are both investors in similar companies and I see him at board meetings but we've never spoken about it after.

I discovered there was an NES game I had never heard of titled Frankenstein and I realised this game was very uncommon but nobody was talking about it. I felt like it would become a sought after game so I decided to buy a seealed copy just to see if I would be correct in the future. I went on eBay and found 2 sealed copies, both for $200 each and looked at the photos to decide on the best condition one. A few years later I sent it to Wata for grading, it came back as a 9.6 A+ and is worth probably $4000. I was right.

I can't remember how but I had a woman contact me asking if I wanted some old games so I went to her house and she had a box full of complete SNES games. Nothing spectacular but some good games so I picked them up for very cheap. A week later she calls me again and asks if I want an empty SNES box which I went back for, it was free. A week later she asks if I want to buy her dead husband's Game Boy and games so I went back again and got those for cheap.

My girlfriend said I should go to yard sales for games and I didn't believe there would be any, this was about 2014 or so. Our very first house, I ask if they have games and their son says they have a NES with some games. He comes out with a stack of all the best games plus the NES is a top loader, he wanted $60 for it all. He tells me the console doesn't work so I bring it home, stripit apart, look at every little capacitor, piece, connector, check the power, I cannot figure out the problem. Someone on a forum suggests I check the switch to see if it's on channel 3 or 4 and I felt like a dumbass. I switched it to channel 3 and it worked perfectly.

I was at a different flea market with my parents and got separated from them. I went into this game seller's space, didn't see anything I wanted so I left. Later I met up with my parents again and my dad asks, "Hey, did you see this guy's booth with games?" I told him I did but he tells me there's some weird gold game I should look at. I was confused so I went to look and I did indeed miss a game up on top of a cabinet in a spinner. I pulled it down and it was a gold Camerica cartridge with a handwritten label and I was totally confused what I was looking at. The guy wanted $80 and I agreed, then went on a mission to figure out what it was. It turned out to be a press review copy of The Ultimate Stuntman which is now worth quite a bit. I have no idea why he had it.

I've been colleting for so long I bought Sqoon on eBay for something like $45 because I knew it was uncommon. I'm cruising local Facebook groups and I see someone selling just the box and manual for $100 so I bought it to complete my copy and it was nearly mint, still had the cellophane on it. That's worth almost $2000 now although I did pass on a Chubby Cherub box and manual while I was there for another $100, that one still hurts. Before I left, he offered me a sealed Othello for $20 so I bought that too.

I got a message from someone on Facebook selling 24 complete Atari 2600 games, half of them sealed. I wasn't willing to buy them because Atari games were worthless but they wanted a trade so I offered a duplicate NES Kickmaster cartridge and they accepted. I graded some of those games and they came back pretty high.

I was buying someone else off someone on eBay so I browsed their store looking for other things to throw in. They were selling cases and cases of sealed Atari 2600 games so I picked out a few I didn't have, I didn't care they were sealed. I got 2 different games for $8 each and since graded both. One of them is the only variant of the game Wata has ever graded, 1 of 1.

Last year or the year before, I got offered a big lot of boxed Atari 2600 games and they were all early print, including Beat 'Em And Eat 'Em which is one of the adult games and worth 3 figures on its own. I bought the lot and after they were shipped, the seller tells me they forgot to mention a few of the games are sealed including the most valuable one, the Beat 'Em And Eat 'Em and also Yar's Revenge. This guy just forgot to mention the values of these are tripled? Weird.

I got interested in the Atari 2600 adult games after seeing James Rolfe's review 10-15 years ago so I went to buy a few from eBay. Someone was selling sealed Beat 'Em And Eat 'Em for $50 each so I bought one case fresh. I recently sent it to VGA for grading and it came back gold.

I went to a convention and one of the sellers had a NES Death Race on his table but the box was trashed, I mean it was destroyed. There was no top and it had packing tape across the opening to keep the contents inside and packing tape generally holding the box together. I looked through the clear tape at the top and saw the cartridge plus some manuals so I looked at the seller, held up this destroyed box and started to laugh. He laughed and I asked for a price, he shrugged and said, "How about 10 bucks?" I knew the cartride alone is worth $90 so I agreed. When I got home I pulled out about 10 manuals for other games including some pretty uncommon ones like Galaxy 5000. The cartridge was in perfect condition.

I went to a video game store and they had a display case full of NES games. I was wondering what their pricing was like so I just asked for a random game price to get an idea so I asked about a complete Power Blade. The guy at the counter says, "Oh, it's the same price as loose." I was confused, why would the box be free? I figured it would be $50 which was the cartridge value but he comes back and says, "It's 10 bucks." Huh? I have so many questions but I didn't bother asking, I just bought it. I have no idea what happened there.

I bought my Mega Man 3 prototype from The Nolans for $1250 USD, who knows how many zeroes are added to that now. It was an outrageous price for a video game at the time.

I replied to a Kijiji listing selling games and they had a SNES console with a pile of SNES games, half of them boxed, for $150. I told him I was on the way and he agreed so I left to drive over there immediately. It took me about 30 minutes to get there and when I arrived, he told me he got loads of messages from other people but he decided to stick with his word to sell to me, what a relief. I boxed up everything, gave him the money and then he starts adding more stuff onto the box. Stacks of Nintendo Power, additional games, it just kept going into the box. When I got home, there was a loose Chrono Trigger, loose Uncharted Waters, complete Dragon Warrior II, complete Super Castlevania IV, complete Mystic Quest, complete Star Trek (SNES) and a bunch of others I can't remember.

I found a Mighty Final Fight at a convention for $175 and it was worth about $170 so I passed to wait and find it cheaper. 6 months later I went to another convention, same seller had the game for $190 and now it was worth about $190. I hadn't seen it since the last show so I decided to just pay full price for it instead of waiting to find it cheaper which may never happen. I have since bought a boxed copy and I'm now about to sell this game for $350. I learned from this mistake to not feel badly about paying full price for games that you only see once every year or two. If you never see it, just buy it.

I enjoyed Silent Hill when it came out so I kept buying the sequels and playing them. When I went to buy Silent Hill 3, it was no longer being made so I found a sealed copy on eBay for $25, bought it, opened it and finished it. Now it's worth over $100 and if I had kept it sealed, who knows. At least it was fun to play.

I still have almost every game I just mentioned except for a couple SNES which I changed my mind on collecting.

[final fight cd | 226]

a while ago i sold a bunch of shiz on ebay.  somebody messaged me regarding an item and we struck up a convo.  after a couple back-and-forths, turns out he had a game i really wanted.  he wasn't ready to sell, though.  fast forward a couple months and he reaches out to me ready to sell.  a deal was made!

after all was said and done i thought to myself, "wow, making online friends is cool! i should try to make more online buddies!  More good things may come when working in groups instead of alone!" 

this wasn't quite a decade ago, but close, and i still don't have any online friends .

but with that being said, if it wasn't for that convo he started up on eBay i am very certain i would have never owned the game.

he was an NA member, also.  but thank you, who-ever-you-are. i still have the game.

Edited July 12 by final fight cd

[sixtyfourbits | 13]

I remember about 10-11 years ago when I got clay fighters sculpter's cut for the n64, cartridge only for $12 Canadian at a fleamarket.  I remember they had sculpter's cut for $12 and 63 1/3 for $14.  That memory stands out as it was when I realized I really could complete the set someday, which I did.  That sculptures cut was sold about 5 years ago when I sold my complete N64 set.

I miss the days when vendors, thrift stores, pawn shops, etc  didn't automatically access the web for all their pricing. sigh lol.

[Andy_Bogomil | 857]

A seller posted that they had a Super Punch Out! box on FB way back almost 15 years ago. I posted that I would buy it but couldn't grab it until the week after as I worked out of town but would be up to visit my girlfriend who lived there at the time (about 4 hours away). The guy said he was hesitant to hold it for that long, so I just let it go and forgot about it. When I got home to visit my girlfriend the next week she surprised me by buying the box without me knowing and would have had to bus across town for what was a $10 box at the time and she wasn't keen on my collecting at all. Anyway, now she's my wife and it's a nice little memory in my collecting quest. It's still a game where I only have a CB copy with that box and the cart I've had forever - plus it's a favourite of mine to boot.

[twiztor | 903]

a couple little scores/quick stories:

was on a forum when somebody offered a nearly complete run of Nintendo Power Flash and Fun Club News. Can't remember exact price, but something like $400. absolutely insane deal. worked something out with this dude from Germany. there would always be like a week between messages, so i'm constantly waiting for the news that the deal was off. Guy actually cancels completely at one point because "there was damage to some of the mags and he didn't feel comfortable selling them to me for that much". i assessed the damage, was still MORE than OK with the deal, and got it back on. He sends the package. Then messages me to let me know he found a bunch of duplicates and tossed them in the box too. i sold the duplicates and made WAY more than what i paid. Plus i still have a full run of both of those short lived newsletters. Fun Club #1 is worth a couple thousand by itself!

i bought a copy of Contra Force off eBay (for $20! this was in like 2002ish) and it wasn't until it arrived at my house THE NEXT DAY that i realized the seller was a pawn shop in the same town i lived in. stopped in sporadically afterwards, but never found any good deals. don't know how the Contra Force slipped through the cracks.

was working at a retail location and there was a different company located inside our store that took game trades. somebody brought in the Zelda Collector's Edition for Gamecube. they weren't able to take that game as a trade-in (not sure why) but the guy just.....left it there. so the worker offered it to me since he knew i was into video games. hell yeah!

ordered Gauntlet: Dark Legacy for the PS2. seller sent the Gamecube version, which was like 3x the price. i immediately messaged, and the seller was just like "sorry about that. here's your money back. don't bother sending the game back". was awesome, because i wanted the GCN version but didn't have the money for it, so settled for the PS2 release.