Who charges $5 for Atari cartridges? What is this world coming to?
There are several pawn shops in my area that have minimally 50 Atari carts, and they won't sell them for less than $5, most of them are priced at $10+.
They are out of their minds. 2600 carts are worth $2.50 each. Tops. I would pay $5 for a complete game in the box with manual. I might be persuaded to pay a bit more if it were a rare game or something very, very specific I needed for my collection. But on average, $2.50 each is about it. My local mom & pop shop typically sells 2600 and 5200 games for $2.50 each, or three for $5.
Every Atari game in my collection I paid no more than 50 cents a piece, I bought them when the market wasn't as crazy as it is right now, but after the Atari bubble burst.
At one point around 1996-ish, I remember finding multiple Atari consoles with dozens of games that were just thrown out in the dumpsters around town. I was staying with a friend in an apartment complex. I was helping take the trash out and in the dumpster was a box with two consoles and about 40 games in it. Just for $hits & giggles, we grabbed the box and tried to hook it up. I'll be damned if the whole thing didn't work like a charm and it looked lightly used at that. The games were all the classics you would expect. Frogger, Xaxxon, Pole Position, Space Invaders, Pong, Pac-Man, E.T., Yar's Revenge, Moon Patrol, Empire Strikes Back....it was all the classics. Just tossed out. I think my friend still has those systems and games.
