The Official "Thrift finds" Thread

[0078265317]

Sunday I went to a Ham Radio Swap Meet and found a box with two Nintendo Game Cubes, one controller, and two microphones. One of the Cubes has a dead motor.

One of the Cubes had the Game Boy player with a boxed disk! There were four games, two notable are Kirby Airride and Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II Plus.

The Phantasy Star is CIB with manual and in near mint condition! Got all this for $20.

 

Made my day!!!

 

 

I also have a spare cube laying around. Works great though. What is a gamecube worth? Just the cube by it self and no controllers or cords?

Edited September 18, 2015 by 0078265317

[karokoenig]

About as much as a cup of coffee or two in these regions of the globe.

[+FujiSkunk]

Yeah, Cubes by themselves aren't worth a whole lot, given how common they are and the fact most Wii consoles can also play Game Cube games. The real valuables are the Game Boy Player and, typical of Nintendo consoles, first-party games.

[+FujiSkunk]

So there's that friend of yours. You know the one: he's impossible to buy for and he's impossible to surprise, making birthdays and Christmas kind of difficult. But then one day you're digging through thrift store wares and bam, there it is, the perfect birthday gift.

 

 

Several of Troma's greatest(?) hits in all their cheesy, gory, dated fun... and then some, thanks to unrated director's cuts! Movies you're not sure you'd want to sit through by yourself (or admit to doing so), but for that friend of yours, they are indeed perfect!

 

Sadly The Toxic Avenger wasn't in the collection, because I might have actually kept that one for myself.

 

And then today I got another fresh batch of good '80s tunes for the vinyl collection, plus a couple I'm not yet familiar with.

 

 

Hopefully they'll be worth the listen.

[cybercylon]

Yeah, Cubes by themselves aren't worth a whole lot, given how common they are and the fact most Wii consoles can also play Game Cube games. The real valuables are the Game Boy Player and, typical of Nintendo consoles, first-party games.

I remember when GS and other game stores had used GB Players with the disc by the boat load. Now it is expensive. So many were made though... I wonder if more of the start up discs have been lost. It is worthless without it

[AtariLeaf]

For a buck I picked up a CIB copy of Kings Quest III To Heir is Human for what I THOUGHT was the PC but I didn't pay attention. Turns out it's the Apple II version, which I don't own. Guess I need to find an Apple II now. . . yea right, it's not like these Apple's grow on trees. . . never mind.

[byonddrivn]

I ran out to a used video game store last weekend. They were having a going out of business sale - 35% off. Picked up a few things, PGA Tour Golf 3 for the Genny, the Logitech Force Feedback Driving Wheel boxed for PS2, Atari 2600 Crystal Castles & Moon Patrol, a couple of other things but they had a Xbox steering wheel, no A/C, there for $90. I didn't pull the trigger on it then. I found out they are now doing 75% off so I went back, it was mostly picked over but the wheel was still there!

 

Got the Xbox wheel

A slightly beat copy of Metroid Prime 3 guidebook

Roadblasters for Genesis

Extreme G (N64)

F1 World Grand Prix bundled with a boxed N64 wheel

Ridge Racer 64

Rise of the Robots (SNES)

Wave Race Blue Storm (GameCube)

Test Drive Off Road Wide Open (Xbox)

Crimson Skies (Xbox)

All for $45.

[thadsilverfox]

I ran out to a used video game store last weekend. They were having a going out of business sale - 35% off. Picked up a few things, PGA Tour Golf 3 for the Genny, the Logitech Force Feedback Driving Wheel boxed for PS2, Atari 2600 Crystal Castles & Moon Patrol, a couple of other things but they had a Xbox steering wheel, no A/C, there for $90. I didn't pull the trigger on it then. I found out they are now doing 75% off so I went back, it was mostly picked over but the wheel was still there!

 

Got the Xbox wheel

A slightly beat copy of Metroid Prime 3 guidebook

Roadblasters for Genesis

Extreme G (N64)

F1 World Grand Prix bundled with a boxed N64 wheel

Ridge Racer 64

Rise of the Robots (SNES)

Wave Race Blue Storm (GameCube)

Test Drive Off Road Wide Open (Xbox)

Crimson Skies (Xbox)

All for $45.

Nice haul

[omegadot]

I ran out to a used video game store last weekend. They were having a going out of business sale - 35% off. Picked up a few things, PGA Tour Golf 3 for the Genny, the Logitech Force Feedback Driving Wheel boxed for PS2, Atari 2600 Crystal Castles & Moon Patrol, a couple of other things but they had a Xbox steering wheel, no A/C, there for $90. I didn't pull the trigger on it then. I found out they are now doing 75% off so I went back, it was mostly picked over but the wheel was still there!

 

Got the Xbox wheel

A slightly beat copy of Metroid Prime 3 guidebook

Roadblasters for Genesis

Extreme G (N64)

F1 World Grand Prix bundled with a boxed N64 wheel

Ridge Racer 64

Rise of the Robots (SNES)

Wave Race Blue Storm (GameCube)

Test Drive Off Road Wide Open (Xbox)

Crimson Skies (Xbox)

All for $45.

 

The Extreme-G games were sort of my 'zoned out happy place' games for a bit. I'd be scared to see how the N64 iterations aged, but for now I have great memories of just zipping through.

[Grig]

working PSP (no screen scratches! yay me!) with a bunch of games - $10

Silver GBA SP with games - $10

[Jess Ragan]

Bitchin'! Which version of the PSP was it?

[Grig]

1001

 

it also has a 32MB DUO STICK

 

seems to work and sound great

[mikey.shake]

So, somehow my wife and I end up at an area flea market at 10:30 on a Friday morning. Not a regular flea market, this is one of those indoor ones, with market stalls. Like a low-end mall. Being a weekday, and 10:30 in the morning, only about 1/3 of the stalls are open, and the parking lot is devoid of the weekend sellers. It’s creepy, in fact, to be in this dingy half-mall and have it be so damn vacant. Somehow, my explorer wife and I find ourselves in what can only be described as the expansive “back room” of a flea market, which is essentially a cafeteria-sized area with long tables piled with filthy crap. (I’ll post a picture someday soon.) It’s that purgatory stop right before junk gets tossed in a landfill -- tables upon tables of unsorted dinnerware, thrashed VCRs, bulk orders of Christmas cards, dirty and broken toys, and tangles of wire that connected to nothing. Exactly how you’d expect to find the “back room” of a grimy flea market in a questionable part of town.

Wandering up and down, half-interestedly looking for whatever, I spot what I always hope for but never see: a stack of games. Right there, perched on top of some other stuff. Like they’d been waiting for me. I'd have been surprised nobody'd snatched 'em up, but there was nobody around. Super Mario Bros 3, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tetris (sadly, not the Tengen one), and Tennis. All in pretty good shape for loose games, if a little dirty.

As I grab them, a nearby pile on the table shifts. But not like something fell. Like something was scuttling underneath. I moved along quickly.

So, as I’m walking across the room to share my find, Mrs. Shake pipes up from about 20 yards away, having discovered something even more unexpected -- an NES! Again, not the kind of thing I ever seem to find in these junk piles. It’s (very) dirty, a few torn and fossilized price stickers from over the years adorned the top, and there were no hookups or controllers. Just lost amid a pile of other almost-garbage. The inside looked pretty clean, though.

So she takes the pile of games and the console to the completely disinterested dude at the register up front. She pitches him $20 for the lot. He takes a long time to consider. A weirdly long time. Then shrugs and says with complete disaffection:

 

“Sure, whatever."

Not too bad! We’ve been to this flea market before, usually on weekends, when the parking lot is full, and sometimes get some alright stuff from the “game stall” guy who’s usually there. Last week I got a filthy-but-cleanable Simon’s Quest and a set of 2600 paddle controllers for $10. But we never really find those nifty “flea market deals” you read/hear about, so this was a nice score for us.

But I wasn’t done. I knew I’d just paid about $7 for three “classic" games I already owned (assuming Tetris and Tennis were about buck-fifty each).

I’m not a game flipper. Not my thing. I like playing ‘em. I don’t like putting in effort to profit on something that’s supposed to be about fun and games. And I don't like resellers who jack up prices. But since I was content with $20 for a probably-repairable NES deck (a refurb 72-pin should do the trick), the games were icing on the cake. So I set out to turn them over for a reasonable price and get some games I didn’t already have. With that, I dove into my first experience turning over gaming bargains, along with a thrift-shop find.

I kept Tetris and Tennis (because I didn’t have them), and took the other 3 games to a particular local retro gaming store that tends to overprice stuff, but has a pretty good selection. We were actually going to visit the store anyway, so it seemed like an obvious thing to do. Much of the selection might come from garage sales and flea markets, 'cause some of the carts are grungier than I tend to find elsewhere. A lot of the NES/SNES gear and pre-NES vintage stuff doesn't have price stickers. My theory is that it’s so the guy who runs it can wheel and deal. [He seems like a friendly enough guy, I’m certainly not badmouthing him. He’s never given me reason to, and usually negotiates even on stickers items. But his setup is what it is.]

I point out that the 3 games could likely get me about $50 on eBay. I’m not trying to con him... SMB3 is currently selling for about $15, TMNT is $10, and MTPO is $25. After his first offer of $35 (higher than I expected he’d toss out), I convince him to give me $40 in trade to blow on things I wouldn’t normally buy (i.e., not on my wishlist).

So, thanks to the flea market find, I blow it on....

- Total Carnage for the SNES. We love (Super) Smash TV at our house, and this was the follow-up I’d really been wanting to play for a while. Pretty good so far, lots of fun, quite silly and cartoonishly violent. Very much a tongue-in-cheek product of its era. Crazy Middle Eastern terrorists kidnapping reporters and threatening to use bio-weapons, weird cultural stereotyping, mutants, insane violence, but the gameplay is pretty solid top-down run ’n’ gun.

- Golgo 13 (NES)... because I’ve always wanted to check it out, and it was on the cheapie rack with a slightly ripped label. I know it’s not expensive or rare, but I never see copies of it in the wild, so I guess I consider it “uncommon”. Why not grab it now, right? I haven’t really dug too far into it yet, but I think I’m with the general consensus that the whole thing seems like a cool idea and maybe a little short in execution. But big points for ambition, and I think I might spend an afternoon with a walkthrough.

- Rolling Thunder (NES) had left me with a lingering fondness after I played it as a kid. I like spy/Bond style stuff and platformers... and this is BOTH! There’s a reason I haven’t picked it up before now, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad I’d finally grabbed it.

- SD Hero Soukessen: Taose! Aku no Gundan (Famicom) - There was a little shelf of assorted Famicom and Super Famicom carts. I LOVE finding Famicom carts in the wild. So colorful and exotic. The selection was mostly mahjong, RPGs, and sports titles. I checked for familiar publishers/characters, but there wasn’t much that wasn’t clearly a roleplaying game (and I don’t read Japanese). So I took a gamble on this one and it seems to be a fun little platformer, apparently featuring superdieformed versions of Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Gundam. Nifty, and it sticks to my general Famicom rule of “Japanese-only”-only.

- Fire Flower Plush Purse (priced at $10). It was really cute, and Mrs. Shake wanted it for a "Mario & Luigi” in-costume bit for a show we’re performing in on Halloween. (She’s Mario.) I’d have been happy to get it for her anyway, but she dug through critter-infested trash, found the NES, and batted her eyes to get me a deal. She’d more than earned a cut.

Sure, the purse and Total Carnage add up to about $20. The other items might not exactly be twenty dollars worth of stuff, but it was probably pretty close. I wasn’t going to push my luck. I’d already come out ahead.

Oh, and after a lot of rubbing alcohol and swabs, the NES should be in tip-top shape with a new pin connector. A boilin' on the stove got the current one to go from "grey screen" to "blinky grey screen", so seeing even one second of the SMB/Duck Hunt screen was enough to let me know the circuitry still oughtta work!

So the ultimate take-away from all this was six good games, a novelty purse, and a fixable NES for twenty bucks. That’s my thrift shop find.

[+FujiSkunk]

Nice little score there!

[Opry99er]

Well done.

[Mitkraft]

Keeping the dream alive! Well done and thanks for sharing!

[MaximRecoil]

I was looking through Craigslist last night, search term: Atari, and came across an ad for an Atari lot, consisting of 5 2600 consoles and 9 loose game cartridges (appeared to be commons; some of them aren't identifiable from the pictures). They were said to be "untested", and didn't include any hookups (aside from the "hardwired" RF cables) or controllers. They all appeared to be reasonably clean and in good condition; no obvious cracks, breaks, or missing/broken switches. The types of consoles were as follows:

 

2 4-switch woodgrain

2 "light sixers"

1 "heavy sixer"

 

The price was $50 for the lot. Given that I've wanted a "heavy sixer" for a long time (whenever I look for one specifically they are always too expensive), I was obviously very interested. The term "heavy sixer" wasn't used in the ad, nor was any special importance given to it in the description at all, so I don't think the seller is a collector or video game enthusiast of any sort.

 

There were two issue that made me pessimistic: the ad was a week old and he was located about 4 hours away, but I sent him a message anyway on the off chance that he still had them and was willing to ship. He said he did still have them and would ship for $20. Sold! It seems almost too good to be true, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I paid with PayPal, so if everything isn't on the up and up, I have some recourse at least. His PayPal address contained the word "auctions" in it, which makes me think these may be leftover items that didn't sell at a local auction or something.

Edited October 6, 2015 by MaximRecoil

[MaximRecoil]

It seems almost too good to be true, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I paid with PayPal, so if everything isn't on the up and up, I have some recourse at least. His PayPal address contained the word "auctions" in it, which makes me think these may be leftover items that didn't sell at a local auction or something.

 

Things are looking good so far. He sent me a tracking number which checks out (expected delivery is the day after tomorrow), along with a picture of himself at the post office with a giant box with my name and address on it.

 

Here are a couple of pictures from the Craigslist ad:

 

 

[Dashopepper]

Last Flea Market of the year.

Got the SNES jr and Mac from same vendor for $69. I have yet to test either. Board game was $10.

[CGQuarterly]

 

...a refurb 72-pin should do the trick...

 

Nooooooooooo!

[mikey.shake]

 

Nooooooooooo!

 

It's okay, Venus! You can chill, baby! I mean a refurbished original one! OEM, like a genuine NES part! Not the cheap modern replacements! A 1:1 identical replacement part, just to see if the machine was otherwise functional...

 

It is. Oh, how it is.

 

DeOxit and a thorough cleaning didn't initially help the one I pulled, so I need to get in there and re-bend the pins and stuff. I'll probably throw the refurb one I bought ($7) in a drawer as a backup in case I find another so-called "junked" NES.

 

Incidentally, I hadn't yet hooked an NES up to my 27" Wega Trinitron. This new console is in the bedroom with it now. It's... it's... so beautiful.

 

*sheds single tear*

 

And the timing is so much better. I didn't think my flatscreen had that much lag, but... wow. I'm having to re-learn how to play the Super Mario Bros. trilogy. For instance, that secret back cave through the first level of SMB2? All my bomb drops to blow the rocks to the exit end up missing the rocks and exploding lower in the pit. It's because I'm throwing it a fraction of a second too early, which is what I've been doing for the past 8 years on my lagging flatscreen. Like a layer of digital cotton has been lifted from the controls. It's a head trip, but also a brain-shock, because suddenly my hands and eyes were interacting with these games "like I used to" in a way that I hadn't done for almost a decade. I used to think that aficionados were slightly overstating the benefits of a CRT display, but I humbly admit I was WRONG.

 

Sorry, everyone, back to the thrift finds... and GREAT SCORE, MaximRecoil! Craigslist found me a like-new H6 just this year as well... seems to still be a good place to snag a deal.

 

Now, if anyone needs Dr. Mikey, I'll be in Andy's office...

[Asaki]

And the timing is so much better. I didn't think my flatscreen had that much lag, but... wow. I'm having to re-learn how to play the Super Mario Bros. trilogy. For instance, that secret back cave through the first level of SMB2? All my bomb drops to blow the rocks to the exit end up missing the rocks and exploding lower in the pit. It's because I'm throwing it a fraction of a second too early, which is what I've been doing for the past 8 years on my lagging flatscreen. Like a layer of digital cotton has been lifted from the controls. It's a head trip, but also a brain-shock, because suddenly my hands and eyes were interacting with these games "like I used to" in a way that I hadn't done for almost a decade. I used to think that aficionados were slightly overstating the benefits of a CRT display, but I humbly admit I was WRONG.

I've played games with input lag before and it is the worst. Mario Kart makes everyone swerve all over the road like they're drunk, and any of the Mario platformer games are suddenly the most impossible games ever made.

[MaximRecoil]

My 5 Ataris arrived this morning, well-packed and undamaged:

 

 

I've only cleaned and tested the "heavy sixer" so far, and it works fine. The colors are brilliant, and the build quality is amazing for something that most people consider to be a toy. I wonder who it was at Atari that decided the original 2600 should be built like a piece of industrial equipment. Who ever heard of using 3/8" thick solid plastic for the case of a small piece of consumer electronics? That's 6 times thicker than the plastic used for the NES case.

 

It was a mess inside; full of crud, pet hair, and one unidentified insect carcass. Even the card-edge connector was full of pet hair, which was a pain to clean, but it is spick and span inside and out now.

 

One of the 4-switch Ataris is interesting; it has a "light sixer" base that was factory-converted for use as a 4-switch base. The opening in the back for the light sixer's joystick ports and A/C adapter jack is covered by a die-stamped black plastic decal of sorts. It has the opening in the bottom for the channel select switch, which is unused because the channel select switch is up on the upper half of the case, and there are no screws in the two outermost screw holes in the bottom rear, nor have there ever been (because the 4-switch version only has 4 screws in the bottom instead of 6+2). It also has the number "371" stamped into the plastic on the bottom; I don't know what that's all about.

 

Of the 9 loose cartridges that were included, 4 of them are the super rare and highly sought after game called "Combat". The rest of them are: Missile Command, Space War, Star Ship, Decathlon ... plus Gyruss for the Atari 5200 (I don't own a 5200).

[cybercylon]

Make sure you have the Video Game Authority grade that Combat cart, have it sealed, and sell it for a high BIN on eBay.

 

I hate it when I find consoles full of pet hair, dead insects, crud, grease, soot, etc. There is pride in restoring it to beauty though.

[MaximRecoil]

Make sure you have the Video Game Authority grade that Combat cart, have it sealed, and sell it for a high BIN on eBay.

 

RARE!!! L@@K!!!

 

I'll make a killing.

 

 

 

I hate it when I find consoles full of pet hair, dead insects, crud, grease, soot, etc. There is pride in restoring it to beauty though.

 

Yeah, it sucks, but on the other hand, at least the undisturbed crud suggests that no one has been monkeying around inside it in recent history. I didn't see any signs that this thing has ever been apart since the day it left Sunnyvale. A lot of people who have no business doing so like to take things apart on a whim, and you end up with things like missing screws, stripped screw holes, missing items such as the foam dust covers on the switches, and in the worst cases, goose poop solder joints, lifted pads, and damaged traces.

Edited October 8, 2015 by MaximRecoil