VGCollect Forum
General and Gaming => General => Topic started by: gngtiger on January 27, 2022, 06:59:50 pm
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I found Luigi's Mansion (Disc only) for the GameCube for one dollar at a yard sale.
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Nice, I personally haven't found anything too notable. Mainly some complete PS1 games at a thrift store for $3 each.
I noticed a trend though in the past 2-3 years that thrift stores have actually started to research video game prices before displaying them on the shelves now. Few years ago, I'd see Wii consoles for $5 but now they'll sell these for like $30 which is ridiculous.
I'm sure other people's experiences will vary though, maybe it's just my area.
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Not that I'm trying to boast, but there's just so many from back in the day. There's great versus what you were getting for the money, and then there's great because it's your favorite thing in the collection.
Years ago, I found a Vectrex with some boxed games, I think I paid $20 for it all. It was probably the rarest thing I've ever found, I almost didn't buy it at first, because I didn't know that it was a game system. I found a huge lot of ex-rental NES games with their boxes, think I paid like $3 a piece. I used to find top tear N64 and SNES games at yard sales for like $2 each. I found Sword Quest Water World for like $3 once. I used to pick up retro consoles for maybe $5, often times with games included.
It was the golden era, it was just a lot of stuff. I'm sure that I'm forgetting a lot of finds from back then.
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My best was years ago, like...early to mid 2000's, I went to the pawn shop in town and was looking at the games and then noticed there was some games in a bag behind the counter that hadn't been put out yet, and realized they were CIB SNES games, in top quality condition. It's a small town, I know the owner enough as a regular, I asked if I could look at them, and yeah...Final Fantasy 3, Super Metroid, Mega Man X. I don't know how I got them, but I got them all for like 20 bucks each. I thought about keeping them, but at the time I needed the money more, so I sold them on Ebay for what seemed like a nice price at the time, I don't remember exactly, like it was maybe a 120 bucks each or around there. Wish I kept them, because I remember they were like the most perfect boxes I'd ever seen, they almost seemed new.
Another that was cool, was maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I was browsing thrift shops, and I hit a Salvation Army and they had a stack of Dreamcast games, I never see those in the wild. Was like 7 or 8 at least and all for like a couple bucks a piece. Nothing crazy rare in them, but it was a great deal and a neat find. When to a different Salvation Army the same day, they also had a stack of Dreamcast games and by the end of it, I had like 15 to 20 Dreamcast games all still in their cases and reasonable condition.
Got Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for a buck at a thrift shop that use to put the Playstation games with the CD's, at the CD prices, though they've changed the prices for them these days unfortunately.
And a fun one, even if it isn't worth much, was I was at a Goodwill, thought "Hey, is that Banjo-Kazooie?" and sure enough it was, not the boxed N64 game, but one of those promo VHS tapes for it which was a great, random, find as that's just as cool as finding the actual game to me to have some old school promo material.
Haven't been finding as much great game deals lately these days. Goodwill never gets games in, the Salvation Army's around here mostly shut down and the one left in the area doesn't have much, and the one regular thrift I go to every week has pretty higher prices these days compared to what they use when I could get deals, like the PS1 games, or once I got like Super Mario World and a couple other games for like 5 bucks each.
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I used to find top tear N64 and SNES games at yard sales for like $2 each. I found Sword Quest Water World for like $3 once. I used to pick up retro consoles for maybe $5, often times with games included.
Roughly the same for me, though I never got consoles quite that cheap. Several NES, SNES, N64 bundles at no more than $5 a game and as low as $3. Stuff like Mega Man 2, 3, Super Metroid, Super Mario RPG, Mario Party 2 & 3.
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I think two years ago now I saw Obscure at Goodwill and passed on it not knowing what it was at the time and thinking the title was too on the nose to be something valuable.
For one I actually bought: MS Saga: A New Dawn.
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Goodwill never gets games in, the Salvation Army's around here mostly shut down and the one left in the area doesn't have much, and the one regular thrift I go to every week has pretty higher prices these days compared to what they use when I could get deals, like the PS1 games, or once I got like Super Mario World and a couple other games for like 5 bucks each.
I understand. It was as COVID was starting that I got into game collecting, and I honestly couldn't have picked a worse time. Games are so expensive, and literally every game I check at price charting.com has a sudden spike that starts in March or April of 2020 and usually doesn't go down (I blame the chip shortages, people bored at home, and people who grew up with GameCube games wanting to revisit their childhood) I forgot to mention I once found an entire Xbox 360 at Goodwill for 20 dollars (which I did not buy), though if I'm buying a game there now, it's usually to harvest it for its shell to replace a damaged case for a game I own. It's almost exclusively early-mid 2000s EA sports games, Kinect games, or Sims PC games, and not a one priced over ten dollars.
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(https://i.imgur.com/cGQOOoM.jpeg)
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There have been many. For a garage sale I think it would have to be a Sega Nomad with battery pack for $5.
Thrift store is not something that immediately comes to mind. I have mostly gotten PC games from there but there have been so many that nothing really stands out to me.
Flea market would be the Judge Dredd promo cart (https://vgcollect.com/item/47764).
Back in the 90s I had found a NES and about 40 games in the trash.
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Probably Garfield: Saving Arlene for the PS2. I know what it's worth (around $200 as of now)...
I picked it up at a flea market for 20 danish crowns, which is around 5 US Dollars. Can't be too unhappy with that :D
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Probably Zelda the Wand of Gamelon for 50 cents
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A Commodore 64 for $20 at Goodwill.
And I found CIB copies of Castlevania and Contra on NES for $10 a piece at the same Goodwill.
Those days are over, now. They don't even put out video game stuff anymore.
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Those days are over, now. They don't even put out video game stuff anymore.
Goodwill's auction site has utterly destroyed it as a thrift shop.
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2 I can think of. One was army of the dead for the Saturn for $4. The other was the Zelda board game with all pieces for $20.
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not really /my/ find but a few years ago i went to a garage sale and as I arrived someone was buying all their cib pokemon games for a dollar each :'(
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A few years ago I found Mega Man 7 for $10 and Super Mario All-Stars+Super Mario World for $25 at the same thrift store on the same day. Other than those I got a GBA SP AGS-101 at a yard sale for 50 cents and another one at a thrift store for $5. The one I got for 50 cents had a bulging battery and scratched up screen protector, but those things were easy to replace.
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games like suikoden II, klonoa door to phantomile pokemon xd gale of darkness for 1$ all cib where some of my best finds at a thrift store. Pokemon games happened quite a bit there aswell same prices as shovelware. I miss them pre pokemon go days :-\
Or boxes full of boxed snes titles for 1$ each including cool stuff like super castlevania zelda etc. Just asked what they wanted for the whole box lol.
When you find something at these places it's cheap but I do find that there are limitations in what you can find. cardboard will usually not survive here and sets can't be to big in my experience at least. people have to put in some effort to get stuff to these places. Yardsales fleamarkets are definitely the places to go to compared to thrift stores though imo.
It's always fun to browse thrift stores but in the last 5 years it definitely ain't worthwhile pretty dry and usually priced up sky high compared to the past or just picked through by people who work there. Their auction sites do occasionally have messups though, so at least you can score some good stuff at a deal withouth going through the effort of visiting these places.
yardsales still worth although kinda non existent in the past few years thanks to covid :P
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A few years back I found a Super Nintendo with a cib mint copy of Donkey Kong County for 20 at a yard sale.
My best thrift store deal was 700.00$ for a Sega Saturn with (three copies)Tomb Raider,(two copies)Resident Evil,College Slam,Die Hard Trilogy,Guardian Heroes,Myst,Nights into Dreams,Panzer Dragoon ll Zwei,Sega Rally Championship,Skeleton Warriors,Sonic 3D Blast,Virtual Fighter 2,(two copies)Virtual Open Tennis,Panzer Dragoon saga and one 3D Analog Controller. At the time panzer Dragoon Saga was only worth 180.00$ and I had buyers remorse because I only needed a couple of the games. But now the price of all this is just crazy.
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On my end, it was my copy of OverDrivin' on the 3DO, and this is exactly what led me to find VGcollect.
We're in 2017 and I'm still just a teenager with barely 80 items in my "collection". I visit the shittiest thrift store which smells weird in my hometown (in a remote region of Canada). Inside a plastic bin and in the middle of lots of PC shovelware I see a cover that intrigues me. OverDrivin' for the 3DO, CIB with the obi-strip inside. At that time I very vaguely knew about the 3DO. I also had no idea that this game was in fact the very first Need For Speed which was branded differently in Japan at the time. So I ended up paying 5$ for it, and I immediately hop on my bicycle and get home. I look it up on the internet, and that's how I find VGcollect.com, thanks to item #15478. I'm sooo frickin proud that I create my VGcollect account and this item is the very first that I add to my collection. If you go to my profile and click on the gallery you'll see hilariously outdated photos of my "collection" when it started out in 2017, and you can always see OverDrivin' proudly displayed on the pictures.
I also have another interesting thrift store story, but it doesn't involve video games.
For a long time I was desperately looking for the VHS of The Fifth Element. I would go very often to the thrift stores and check EVERY bin for it but it just never popped up. Then one day, I'm there with my cousin. We notice that they added a new shelf with more tapes inside. On the bottom tablet the tapes were very misorganised and placed chaotically. Because I'm standing up I can't see the tapes on top of that misorganised pile (since they're hidden from my point of view by the next tablet). So I crouch down (without looking) and I say to my cousin "Watch this, I'm going to FINALLY find the Fifth Element without even looking". Just by feeling the tapes with my hand, I blindly pick one VHS on top of that pile... AND IT'S THE FUCKING FIFTH ELEMENT. We flipped the f* out. What are the chances? (especially since that's exactly the reason why we were at the thrift store in the first place)
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Too many good ones to pick just one
Went to a garage sale near where I used to live back in 2010. It was advertised on Craigslist and there was some PS1 games in the pic, nothing crazy, but stuff I wanted. I make sure to get there right when it starts and am the first one there. Immediately start looking for PS1 games and to my surprise there's a huge stack of about 20 of them. First game is Tekken 3, next is FF8, the freakin Valkyrie Profile, then Ogre Battle, then Legend of Dragoon, then Ehgiez, and so many other heavy hitters and excellent titles. I ask how much and the older couple selling them says $2 a game. I buy the whole stack and walk away. This was the find that got me really into game hunting.
A local used media store that was owned by Go Hastings used to be a goldmine for me for several years. My best finds from there were getting a bunch of rare Dreamcast and Gamecube games that just got traded. I picked them up at $3 a piece and it had games like Mega Man X Collection, Phantasy Star Online Collection, Spawn (Dreamcast), Skies of Arcadia Legends, Chibi Robo, and a bunch of other great games. Another amazing score actually happened well after the employees caught on and started sniping all the expensive games that came in. There was a bunch of Saturn games that made it out to the shelf including Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2, Winning Post, Mega Man X4, Saturn Bomberman, and about 6 other good Saturn titles. Again, $3 a piece. That store went out of business in 2016 and I miss it so much despite it starting to suck towards the end.
Went to a large local flea market on a Friday which I'd never done before. It was mostly a ghost town with about 1/10th the typical amount of sellers. I hadn't found anything until I came across a guy selling an Ice Blue N6 console with about 25 games. Almost all the games were desireable titles including all your must haves, but also all Mario Party 3, Ogre Battle 64, Harvest Moon 64, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. I ask him how much he wants for the whole box and he says $60. I don't even try and talk him own on it. I found SO MUCH stuff at that flea market from like 2010 until 2013. Unfortunately it really sucks now, but it used to be incredible.
Early on in my game hunting days I used to go to an independent thrift store in a rough part of town. They had a glass display case similar to what Goodwill has and occasionally I'd find some retro games in there, typically priced no more than $5 a game. I check it out one afternoon during the week and immediately see a mix of loose and boxed SNES games. I ended up getting Earthbound loose, Breath of Fire 2 CIB, and about 4 other pretty good SNES games for a mix of $5 and $10 a game.
We have a local used media store called 2nd and Charles that has several locations in my state. When one of the stores first opened my wife and I went to check it out. Behind the glass case were several CIB SNES games, all in really good shape. Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, FF3, and a few others were among them. The price tags were on the other sides of the box so I had to ask to see them. I was expecting them to be insanely expensive, but too my surprise they'd priced them as if they were loose and also slightly lower than that. I ended up getting those three games and a few other good ones all under $150. It was amazing!
I'm probably forgetting some, but yeah those are the ones that stick with me the most to this day.
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Quite a few in the old days... as many have said the golden age that ended many years ago was crazy.
One of the most high priced indivual items is probably when I bought a CIB Copy of Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel at a place called Entertain-mart for less than $10. Good thing I had played it a lot at my daycare as a child so I had reason to pick it up as I had no idea it was so oddly expensive.
I also picked up a copy of Dragon Fighter on NES for something like $20 at Movie Trading Co. (Vintage Stock) which is another one I am shocked to see how much it is now. I obtained tons of NES games for $5-10 dollars there that are now worth hundreds... what a great place it was in the past. Up until like 2014, they charged the same price for CIB games as they did loose ones... man I miss that.
Half Price Books used to be a truly great resource, before becoming a terrible one. Some highlights include picking up Gunstar Heroes CIB for like $5 (there where also a ton of other Genesis games I picked up that day) and it had a final hurrah after I had already considered it dying when I got Soul Blazer for less than $10.
Goodwill is another terrible case in that it used to be great... glad others in the thread have gone over it's sad decline. I got many game systems for great prices. CIB Donkey Kong N64 for like $20, Pokemon N64 + Controller for $10ish, a Game Gear in a carrying case with 20 or so games for $20.
Man, I miss when this was not just possible but somewhat frequent...
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Most people talk of Goodwill like it was the GS of thrift stores. Goodwill never yielded squat for me, even back in the good ole days. Just no games there, ever. There must have been a game collector who worked in the back. Salvation Army on the other hand, did yield stuff.
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Most people talk of Goodwill like it was the GS of thrift stores. Goodwill never yielded squat for me, even back in the good ole days. Just no games there, ever. There must have been a game collector who worked in the back. Salvation Army on the other hand, did yield stuff.
Honestly, though I found a lot of good stuff at Goodwill over something like 5-7 years, indivual games where not all that common. In terms of loose games it was one of the worst for the 10 or so places I visited weekly. In terms of consoles, especially boxed ones, they where on the upper end... perhaps even #1. Of course they are different in every state and even city and the idea of an employee scooping things up is always something to be paranoid about.
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Not a massive bundle but I was delighted to find Jet Set Radio Future on original Xbox for £1 Which as also in Mint Condition! It's a ame I thought I'd never find and there it was one day :)
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Oh, one more I just thought of that had something else happen while I was grabbing some games.
Another Craigslist garage sale ad that pretty much just listed off a bunch of retro gaming platforms they'd have consoles and games for. One of them was the Dreamcast so that alone got my attention. I arrive early, but since the ad specifically said "no early birds" I wait in my car until the sale starts. About 20 minutes before the sale start some middle aged women walks on up while they're setting up and then suddenly the couple doing the sale starting putting these totes on a table. I immediately see games in the ladies hand, so i pretty much just say screw it and run up to the house. The lady was an obvious reseller; she had a spreadsheet in her hand and was trying to match up prices with the games she was looking at. Unfortunately she beat me to Power Stone 1 and 2 and a few others, but because I actually knew what this stuff was I was grabbing games left and right while she was fumbling through her spreadsheet. At one point we were going through the same tote and she actually put her arm across it trying to block me. She just stared at me, and I stared back for a sec before politely moving her arm out of the way so I could continue looking. After I grabbed everything I wanted out of that tote I went to the next and the next, and the next. Half the time while I was doing this the reseller lady was desperately trying to find some Digimon World games the seller said he had, but weren't in any of the totes. In the meantime I grabbed about 10 Dreamcast games, a CIB SNES, a bunch of desirable SNES and PS1 games, and a few other things I can't remember. There's a lot I didn't get, mostly scraps, so I guess it's a consolation to my rude reseller adversary.
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It wasn't a thrift shop, but a mom and pop video rental store.
It was just a little hole in the wall, so they didn't have much space, so in 1997 when I rented Chrono Trigger, they told me to keep it because they were getting rid of all their SNES stock to make room for N64 and Playstation. Best $1.99 I ever spent.
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I haven't seen videogames at a thrift shop in well over a decade and don't really do yard sales. I did see a third party Sega Genesis controller last week. It was gray. Looked weird.
For gaming, I usually go to a local retro shop that has games, movies, music, comics, etc. They have everything going as far back as the Atari 2600 all the way to the modern PS5. It's impressive to take it all in but they rarely have those gems I used to look for.
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About 20 minutes before the sale start some middle aged women walks on up while they're setting up and then suddenly the couple doing the sale starting putting these totes on a table. I immediately see games in the ladies hand, so i pretty much just say screw it and run up to the house. The lady was an obvious reseller; she had a spreadsheet in her hand and was trying to match up prices with the games she was looking at.
It never ceases to amaze me how of all things, video games are the freakin' number one money grubbing item for people out there to be after. Listing video games in a yard sale is like saying "we have a little bit of everything, oh and some 14k gold too, various pieces of gold..." People with money on their mind just come salivating for it, whether they've studied up on what's what, or are completely clueless. Who cares about antiques, or power tools, one of kind art pieces, designer clothing, they're gonna have video games!!!! These 'Uhtendo playin' nerds are gonna re-pay me handsomely for these babies! Lord... why?! Find something else to go ruin.
Had a dude buy an entire flea marketer's table of games right in front of me as I was looking through it. I even knew he was gonna be there because I knew his vehicle and we were riding down the highway right beside him the whole time. The flea marketer accepted his offer and so the reseller was like "this is all mine" as I was still looking. So I was kinda like, "well can I buy something from you then?" and he's like it's not getting priced today, I've gotta go look them all up on eBay. So annoying, the people that get into this just for the damn money. Whoop-de-do you found something to flip, get a real job. Hate resellers like this.
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About 20 minutes before the sale start some middle aged women walks on up while they're setting up and then suddenly the couple doing the sale starting putting these totes on a table. I immediately see games in the ladies hand, so i pretty much just say screw it and run up to the house. The lady was an obvious reseller; she had a spreadsheet in her hand and was trying to match up prices with the games she was looking at.
It never ceases to amaze me how of all things, video games are the freakin' number one money grubbing item for people out there to be after. Listing video games in a yard sale is like saying "we have a little bit of everything, oh and some 14k gold too, various pieces of gold..." People with money on their mind just come salivating for it, whether they've studied up on what's what, or are completely clueless. Who cares about antiques, or power tools, one of kind art pieces, designer clothing, they're gonna have video games!!!! These 'Uhtendo playin' nerds are gonna re-pay me handsomely for these babies! Lord... why?! Find something else to go ruin.
Had a dude buy an entire flea marketer's table of games right in front of me as I was looking through it. I even knew he was gonna be there because I knew his vehicle and we were riding down the highway right beside him the whole time. The flea marketer accepted his offer and so the reseller was like "this is all mine" as I was still looking. So I was kinda like, "well can I buy something from you then?" and he's like it's not getting priced today, I've gotta go look them all up on eBay. So annoying, the people that get into this just for the damn money. Whoop-de-do you found something to flip, get a real job. Hate resellers like this.
I'm still waiting for these scumbags to move onto a new hobby to cannibalize and destroy. It was vintage toys and comics before it was video games, and sports cards before that. These people go where money can be made from collectibles and they've more or less ruined this hobby. We now have people grading games (aka putting a game in plastic with a sticker on it with a giant number and then magically its worth 10x more), which is a whole new low in game collecting. I realize grading collectibles is not exclusive to video games and it's been in practice for decades, but its growing presence and popularity gives me a sick feelings in my stomach. I actually met someone several months ago that not only grades games, but buys a lot of graded games for those ridiculous prices you see on ebay. He admittedly isn't even a gamer, but an "investor." He truly believes his graded games will be worth way more someday like some pre-WW2 savings bond or some rare antique.
I've become more and more convinced that the video game collecting craze will never die, or at least not for a very long time, but the number one reason I hope it does crash someday is so all the resellers and investor types flee the hobby completely since there won't be any money in it anymore. All the bandwagoners will also jump ship leaving only people who genuinely care about and play these games. I pray I get to see that happen someday.
I've noticed video game collecting seems fairly cyclical; it seems like the people that were aged 5 to 15 when a given console was out are the ones that flock to collecting for it once they hit their mid 20s to late 30s. It happened with the NES hard early in the 2010s, then the SNES and TG16, then the N64, and so on. I'm starting to see a massive uptick in PS2 and Gamecube collecting over the past couple years, which aligns with this observation. Sure, people still go crazy for NES and SNES games, but I've noticed the abundance of those consoles that had their time in the limelights have become way more abundant and prices have mostly normalized in recent years. I've also seen a lot of former big time collectors for these consoles either bow out of collecting or downsize significantly as well. So who knows, maybe in 5-10 years video game collecting will be mostly abandoned and people will be chasing NFTs or some stupid bullshit. One can hope.
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My best shot was a sale via facebook. I payed 30,- € for 2 GameBoy Color that came with lightmaster and bag each and with about 15 Games, including PokéMon Silver Edition - that one didn't save anymore, but that lil battery was replaced rather quickly. Regarding the cost of a single GameBoy Color, this was by far the most cost-effective deal I ever made.
Besides that, half of my Sega Megadrive Games collection was passed over to me for free, including many titles that are quite expensive nowadays, for example castlevania (cib), or rocket knight adventures, and so on ...
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About 20 minutes before the sale start some middle aged women walks on up while they're setting up and then suddenly the couple doing the sale starting putting these totes on a table. I immediately see games in the ladies hand, so i pretty much just say screw it and run up to the house. The lady was an obvious reseller; she had a spreadsheet in her hand and was trying to match up prices with the games she was looking at.
It never ceases to amaze me how of all things, video games are the freakin' number one money grubbing item for people out there to be after. Listing video games in a yard sale is like saying "we have a little bit of everything, oh and some 14k gold too, various pieces of gold..." People with money on their mind just come salivating for it, whether they've studied up on what's what, or are completely clueless. Who cares about antiques, or power tools, one of kind art pieces, designer clothing, they're gonna have video games!!!! These 'Uhtendo playin' nerds are gonna re-pay me handsomely for these babies! Lord... why?! Find something else to go ruin.
Had a dude buy an entire flea marketer's table of games right in front of me as I was looking through it. I even knew he was gonna be there because I knew his vehicle and we were riding down the highway right beside him the whole time. The flea marketer accepted his offer and so the reseller was like "this is all mine" as I was still looking. So I was kinda like, "well can I buy something from you then?" and he's like it's not getting priced today, I've gotta go look them all up on eBay. So annoying, the people that get into this just for the damn money. Whoop-de-do you found something to flip, get a real job. Hate resellers like this.
I'm still waiting for these scumbags to move onto a new hobby to cannibalize and destroy. It was vintage toys and comics before it was video games, and sports cards before that. These people go where money can be made from collectibles and they've more or less ruined this hobby. We now have people grading games (aka putting a game in plastic with a sticker on it with a giant number and then magically its worth 10x more), which is a whole new low in game collecting. I realize grading collectibles is not exclusive to video games and it's been in practice for decades, but its growing presence and popularity gives me a sick feelings in my stomach. I actually met someone several months ago that not only grades games, but buys a lot of graded games for those ridiculous prices you see on ebay. He admittedly isn't even a gamer, but an "investor." He truly believes his graded games will be worth way more someday like some pre-WW2 savings bond or some rare antique.
I've become more and more convinced that the video game collecting craze will never die, or at least not for a very long time, but the number one reason I hope it does crash someday is so all the resellers and investor types flee the hobby completely since there won't be any money in it anymore. All the bandwagoners will also jump ship leaving only people who genuinely care about and play these games. I pray I get to see that happen someday.
I've noticed video game collecting seems fairly cyclical; it seems like the people that were aged 5 to 15 when a given console was out are the ones that flock to collecting for it once they hit their mid 20s to late 30s. It happened with the NES hard early in the 2010s, then the SNES and TG16, then the N64, and so on. I'm starting to see a massive uptick in PS2 and Gamecube collecting over the past couple years, which aligns with this observation. Sure, people still go crazy for NES and SNES games, but I've noticed the abundance of those consoles that had their time in the limelights have become way more abundant and prices have mostly normalized in recent years. I've also seen a lot of former big time collectors for these consoles either bow out of collecting or downsize significantly as well. So who knows, maybe in 5-10 years video game collecting will be mostly abandoned and people will be chasing NFTs or some stupid bullshit. One can hope.
Yep. When people who don't even care about a given market start throwing around huge money in it, you know it's over. I watched the exposé on the dudes associated with WATA. Bunch of scumbags who are investing huge money just so they don't "miss the boat on the next big collectible thing". Totally out of touch, and out of their minds. Bunch of snobby rich kids who have access to all kinds of cashflow trying to turn a big investment into even more money down the road. Arbitrary grading, arbitrary values, extremely dubious "auction" methodology that basically amounts to fraud. Of course, news reporting eats this stuff up. "Mario is worth a literal million dollars!" No, just no. I'd curb stomp that thing, and dare them to try and sue me for a million over a destroyed sealed copy of Mario 64. It's a fraud. They're not rare artifacts, or one of kind paintings. No body would EVER actually pay that.
If there's one benefit to all digital, it's that the clowns have no real business trying to screw it up. "I've got this hard drive that has the super rare Wii Sports on it." Make no mistake, I'm almost certain that's a thing.
Sorry, had to rant.
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About 20 minutes before the sale start some middle aged women walks on up while they're setting up and then suddenly the couple doing the sale starting putting these totes on a table. I immediately see games in the ladies hand, so i pretty much just say screw it and run up to the house. The lady was an obvious reseller; she had a spreadsheet in her hand and was trying to match up prices with the games she was looking at.
It never ceases to amaze me how of all things, video games are the freakin' number one money grubbing item for people out there to be after. Listing video games in a yard sale is like saying "we have a little bit of everything, oh and some 14k gold too, various pieces of gold..." People with money on their mind just come salivating for it, whether they've studied up on what's what, or are completely clueless. Who cares about antiques, or power tools, one of kind art pieces, designer clothing, they're gonna have video games!!!! These 'Uhtendo playin' nerds are gonna re-pay me handsomely for these babies! Lord... why?! Find something else to go ruin.
Had a dude buy an entire flea marketer's table of games right in front of me as I was looking through it. I even knew he was gonna be there because I knew his vehicle and we were riding down the highway right beside him the whole time. The flea marketer accepted his offer and so the reseller was like "this is all mine" as I was still looking. So I was kinda like, "well can I buy something from you then?" and he's like it's not getting priced today, I've gotta go look them all up on eBay. So annoying, the people that get into this just for the damn money. Whoop-de-do you found something to flip, get a real job. Hate resellers like this.
I'm still waiting for these scumbags to move onto a new hobby to cannibalize and destroy. It was vintage toys and comics before it was video games, and sports cards before that. These people go where money can be made from collectibles and they've more or less ruined this hobby. We now have people grading games (aka putting a game in plastic with a sticker on it with a giant number and then magically its worth 10x more), which is a whole new low in game collecting. I realize grading collectibles is not exclusive to video games and it's been in practice for decades, but its growing presence and popularity gives me a sick feelings in my stomach. I actually met someone several months ago that not only grades games, but buys a lot of graded games for those ridiculous prices you see on ebay. He admittedly isn't even a gamer, but an "investor." He truly believes his graded games will be worth way more someday like some pre-WW2 savings bond or some rare antique.
I've become more and more convinced that the video game collecting craze will never die, or at least not for a very long time, but the number one reason I hope it does crash someday is so all the resellers and investor types flee the hobby completely since there won't be any money in it anymore. All the bandwagoners will also jump ship leaving only people who genuinely care about and play these games. I pray I get to see that happen someday.
I've noticed video game collecting seems fairly cyclical; it seems like the people that were aged 5 to 15 when a given console was out are the ones that flock to collecting for it once they hit their mid 20s to late 30s. It happened with the NES hard early in the 2010s, then the SNES and TG16, then the N64, and so on. I'm starting to see a massive uptick in PS2 and Gamecube collecting over the past couple years, which aligns with this observation. Sure, people still go crazy for NES and SNES games, but I've noticed the abundance of those consoles that had their time in the limelights have become way more abundant and prices have mostly normalized in recent years. I've also seen a lot of former big time collectors for these consoles either bow out of collecting or downsize significantly as well. So who knows, maybe in 5-10 years video game collecting will be mostly abandoned and people will be chasing NFTs or some stupid bullshit. One can hope.
It's not just games, though. It's most hobbies. It was already happening before COVID, but COVID made stuff just go through the roof. Comics, trading cards, and VHS are all things I collect as well that have gotten out of control.
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It wasn't a thrift shop, but a mom and pop video rental store.
It was just a little hole in the wall, so they didn't have much space, so in 1997 when I rented Chrono Trigger, they told me to keep it because they were getting rid of all their SNES stock to make room for N64 and Playstation. Best $1.99 I ever spent.
Well, if we’re including video rental stores, I might as well tell my little story again…
In the early 2000s my local Blockbuster was selling off their rental inventory of N64 games, along with other old stuff like VHS tapes. Saw Clay Fighter Sculptor’s Cut and I knew it was a BB exclusive so I jumped on it…and now it’s the most valuable game I own. They also had another exclusive, Transformers Beast Wars Transmetals, but I only got the one. At one point I think I saw Final Fight Guy available for sale when they were getting rid of their SNES stuff but that may have been a different sale.
About 20 minutes before the sale start some middle aged women walks on up while they're setting up and then suddenly the couple doing the sale starting putting these totes on a table. I immediately see games in the ladies hand, so i pretty much just say screw it and run up to the house. The lady was an obvious reseller; she had a spreadsheet in her hand and was trying to match up prices with the games she was looking at.
It never ceases to amaze me how of all things, video games are the freakin' number one money grubbing item for people out there to be after. Listing video games in a yard sale is like saying "we have a little bit of everything, oh and some 14k gold too, various pieces of gold..." People with money on their mind just come salivating for it, whether they've studied up on what's what, or are completely clueless. Who cares about antiques, or power tools, one of kind art pieces, designer clothing, they're gonna have video games!!!! These 'Uhtendo playin' nerds are gonna re-pay me handsomely for these babies! Lord... why?! Find something else to go ruin.
Had a dude buy an entire flea marketer's table of games right in front of me as I was looking through it. I even knew he was gonna be there because I knew his vehicle and we were riding down the highway right beside him the whole time. The flea marketer accepted his offer and so the reseller was like "this is all mine" as I was still looking. So I was kinda like, "well can I buy something from you then?" and he's like it's not getting priced today, I've gotta go look them all up on eBay. So annoying, the people that get into this just for the damn money. Whoop-de-do you found something to flip, get a real job. Hate resellers like this.
I'm still waiting for these scumbags to move onto a new hobby to cannibalize and destroy. It was vintage toys and comics before it was video games, and sports cards before that. These people go where money can be made from collectibles and they've more or less ruined this hobby. We now have people grading games (aka putting a game in plastic with a sticker on it with a giant number and then magically its worth 10x more), which is a whole new low in game collecting. I realize grading collectibles is not exclusive to video games and it's been in practice for decades, but its growing presence and popularity gives me a sick feelings in my stomach. I actually met someone several months ago that not only grades games, but buys a lot of graded games for those ridiculous prices you see on ebay. He admittedly isn't even a gamer, but an "investor." He truly believes his graded games will be worth way more someday like some pre-WW2 savings bond or some rare antique.
I've become more and more convinced that the video game collecting craze will never die, or at least not for a very long time, but the number one reason I hope it does crash someday is so all the resellers and investor types flee the hobby completely since there won't be any money in it anymore. All the bandwagoners will also jump ship leaving only people who genuinely care about and play these games. I pray I get to see that happen someday.
I've noticed video game collecting seems fairly cyclical; it seems like the people that were aged 5 to 15 when a given console was out are the ones that flock to collecting for it once they hit their mid 20s to late 30s. It happened with the NES hard early in the 2010s, then the SNES and TG16, then the N64, and so on. I'm starting to see a massive uptick in PS2 and Gamecube collecting over the past couple years, which aligns with this observation. Sure, people still go crazy for NES and SNES games, but I've noticed the abundance of those consoles that had their time in the limelights have become way more abundant and prices have mostly normalized in recent years. I've also seen a lot of former big time collectors for these consoles either bow out of collecting or downsize significantly as well. So who knows, maybe in 5-10 years video game collecting will be mostly abandoned and people will be chasing NFTs or some stupid bullshit. One can hope.
Yep. When people who don't even care about a given market start throwing around huge money in it, you know it's over. I watched the exposé on the dudes associated with WATA. Bunch of scumbags who are investing huge money just so they don't "miss the boat on the next big collectible thing". Totally out of touch, and out of their minds. Bunch of snobby rich kids who have access to all kinds of cashflow trying to turn a big investment into even more money down the road. Arbitrary grading, arbitrary values, extremely dubious "auction" methodology that basically amounts to fraud. Of course, news reporting eats this stuff up. "Mario is worth a literal million dollars!" No, just no. I'd curb stomp that thing, and dare them to try and sue me for a million over a destroyed sealed copy of Mario 64. It's a fraud. They're not rare artifacts, or one of kind paintings. No body would EVER actually pay that.
If there's one benefit to all digital, it's that the clowns have no real business trying to screw it up. "I've got this hard drive that has the super rare Wii Sports on it." Make no mistake, I'm almost certain that's a thing.
Sorry, had to rant.
Yeah, that shady WATA garbage came to mind for me too. One of the top guys in that scam did the same thing with collectible coins back around 1990 and was prosecuted for it (artificially inflating the value and then selling for way over the true value). Clearly just a pathetic scumbag who does this with one collectible market and moves on to the next big thing.
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Count me as one of those with too many stories of thrift/sale finds from the golden age.
The top two that come to mind, Conkers Bad Fur Day still sealed for $20 and a LaserActive with the Sega Pac S-10 for $7.
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I have my own story for Conker 64.... managed to snag it well outside of the "golden days", probably around 2018? A reseller was selling someone else's games that day, think it was a lot with system and other games, I forget how much. I just wanted the Conker, the guy knew nothing about it. So I made a sort of generous offer of $20, to try and coax him into the sale. He thought about it for a minute, then accepted. At the time I think it was going for about $80 / 90. I bet the owner of that stuff wasn't too happy with him.
I found the Live & Reloaded Xbox version a few years prior at a pawn shop I used to frequent. All of a sudden one day there were some unexpected Xbox games on the shelf and bam, there was Live & Reloaded; a very clean and complete copy, with a $5 catch-all price tag. Good times.
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If there's one benefit to all digital, it's that the clowns have no real business trying to screw it up. "I've got this hard drive that has the super rare Wii Sports on it." Make no mistake, I'm almost certain that's a thing.
Let me introduce you to PT (Silent Hills) on PS3.
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Found a copy of Shaolin Monks today for $2. I guess I'd rank that somewhere in top 50? Realistically, I never would have paid what it's asking nowadays. MK just isn't capable of coaxing much from my wallet.
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Sadly there aren't many places to hunt where I live, but on the one flea market that's nearby, I scored Castlevania Chronicles (complete), Skies of Arcadia Legends (complete), and Earthbound (cartridge only) for $5 each. On that very same flea market on a different day I found Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, but didn't bother picking it up because I was an effing idiot. I still beat myself for that to this day.
While replying to another topic, I remembered back when I joined GameStop's rewards program, the very first game I bought as a member was Blood Will Tell. I can't remember the actual price I paid, but it was between $10-15 ($9-13 after discount).