The Official "Thrift finds" Thread

[SteveW]

Hit the thrift stores again today. I bought a Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40, a little portable micro-laptop kind of thing, from the 1982-1983 era. The bad thing is, I saw a boxed printer for the TI CC-40 a few months ago, but I never got around to getting it. When I finally decided to go back and buy it, it was gone.

 

I bought a Playstation looking controller with a DB9 plug on it, obviously made for a Famiclone, that I think i'll try my hand at rewiring for the 7800. Later, I bought a copy of Cosmic Spacehead for the Genesis, and Bubble Bobble for the GameGear. At a thrift store that I bought an Intellivision 1 unit at last week, I bought ANOTHER Intellivision 1, with three games and a switchbox. I had to pass on a Virtual Boy, because it had no price on it. The last store I went to, I didn't buy anything, but I was really tempted to buy a Commodore adding machine. It had the Commodore logo pretty huge on the front of it. It's model number was #208. It was only $8, but I really didn't want it that much. Do you think I should have grabbed it up? It is a nice piece of Commodore history. And there's one or two people here that like collecting calculators and stuff. I could have passed it on to one of them. Do you think I should go back tomorrow for it?

[SteveW]

I broke down and bought the Commodore CBM adding machine. My best friend would like to get it as a bit of Commodore history. I just need to find a cable and see if it still works.

[kevin242]

today I was helping someone move and I happened to spy out the

car window a big pile of junk computers on the side of the road. I stopped

and looked thru them and talked the guy who was getting rid of various

boring obsolete pc hardware. I asked if he had any classic Atari, Apple

Commodore etc.. computers and he said "we had 50 Apple's I got from

a school, but I dumped them yesterday. If you want to dig thru this

stuff feel free just put it back the way you found it." So I did and slowly

pieced together an Apple IIGS system from the rubble.

 

I found an APPLE IIGS, APPLE COLOR MONITOR, 2 EXTERNAL 31/2 flppys

and a keyboard (missing the caps/lock key). He said oh yea, there

were a bunch like that!!!!!!!

 

 

So I get it home and find a svideo cable to attach the keyboard (still

dont have a mouse) and it turns out the thing has an internal hard

drive and is fast as hell (for an apple II) yea, it has a transwarp

accellerator. It is pretty cool and completely free! Here is a quick

pic I took after I got it going:

[gulag picture radio]

Not much today, besides some ore obnoxious 60's vinyl furniture for my apartment.

 

Though I did scre something that's been on my wish list for years - the Odyssey Voice for $10! Now I have to unearth the handful of voice gaems I've got someplace.

 

For those of you who are wondering, of course the first thing I'm going to do is have the Odyssey swear.

[Jasoco]

Not much today, besides some ore obnoxious 60's vinyl furniture for my apartment.  

Ooh! Pictures?

[gulag picture radio]

Are you serious? I'd be happy to. Paul Slocum can tell you that I've got some pretty weird furniture in my place. He had to crash out on the bright orange sectional couch since I don't have a guest room. I've also got a really nice little lime green vinyl and chrome chair that everyone seems to want to buy off of me. It's not like I set out to "collect" this kind of stuff, it's just that I happaned to have a good run of finding furniture.

 

Today's furniture isn't so stunning, but it was a deal at $20 for two chairs and a setee. It looks like it might be from some doctor's office or barbershop... and it was clearly orange at some time.

 

In the last couple of weeks, I've found more cheap 50's and 60's furniture than I have in years... and dammit if it won't all fit in my apartment. I found a pair of swivelling oddly shaped easy chairs ($30 for the pair), and an Eames designed chair ($50) from the 50's or 60's.

 

My dream is to one day have a "vinyl room" with all vinyl furniture and all of my records (which are made vinyl of course...), but it seems a bit far to go to create a room in the house that's basically a big joke.

 

Oh, and if you're serious about pictures, I'm happy to oblige.

[hhwolfman]

Not much today, besides some ore obnoxious 60's vinyl furniture for my apartment.  

Ooh! Pictures?

 

Yeah Id like to see pictures of the stuff you got today and all your weird 50s 60s 70 s furniture.

[gulag picture radio]

Okay - that's two votes. Good enough for me.

 

I've also gotten into collecting turntables... which is a REALLY STUPID thing to start collecting because they're finicky, you can't use them one they're stacked, and that means that you have to have a whole bunch of amps just lying around.

 

When the LP was yielding to cassette and CD, lots of really bad ideas in turntable technology showed up. Probably the most unusual turntable I have is an upright one that plays records on their side. I guess it would be the perfect turntable to put on the narrow shelf next to the shower. I've also got several units that slide out of drawers (so you can stack 'em), and one even has two tonearms in it so it can play both sides of he record.

 

There were even boomboxes with turntables built in. I used mine a few weeks back at an event where we were showing old home movies that we'd thrifted, and I had some old records with music intended for playing along with home movies. Ahh, the days of Super 8 film - one of you guys out there must have home movies of you playing Atari when you're kids...

 

Speaking of records, (Now watch me wrestle this thread vaguely back on topic) I found out pretty early on that the Atari Video Music is way more responsive to records than CD's. I even tried the same music on LP and CD and the AVM went way crazy over the LP - (Zeppelin and Beatles in case you're wondering).

 

There were exceptions of course. Lots of 80's Euro dirge pop like Depeche Mode worked well as well as the albums one of my fave band of the 90's Optiganally Yours.

 

Anyhoo, I'll take some pics. I'm flattered that you folks want to check out my digs. My messy, messy digs...

[SteveW]

Hey, you might want to get a storage building and save up that funky 50s and 60s era furniture. I remember seeing something on TV years ago about a store in Hollywood that sells that stuff for top dollar. They sell it to movie studios that do period sets, and to movie stars that want to do the retro look for their houses. You could build up your collection, and then haul it all to California and sell it off to those furniture dealers.

[gulag picture radio]

I wish that I had the dough for storage as I've had to let a lot of good deals go by. I used to rent this great big old Victorian house. It was a giant drafty old barn of a place, but it was cheap and had a LOT of space. I was able to buy a lot of big stuff that I never would have had the room for with the idea of putting it all in my own house someday.

 

Then I had three floods "help" me cut down on my collection of stuff. It was truly a blessing in disguise as some new people bought the house and I had to leave. There's no way that I could ahve fit all that stuff into my current place. It makes me think more in terms of only keeping the cream of the crop instead of carelessly keeping every bit of pop culture detritus that I find.

 

Still, I kind of wish that I had an office that I could set up with some cool old furniture, and a waiting room, and several TV rooms, etc. etc.

 

More than once I've given thought to setting up a prop rental business, but it would be a real administrative hassle, and it would take me away from the production side of filmmaking which is more interesting to me. Still, a friend of mine who has this same kitsch furniture illness that I do occasionally talk about starting some kind of business like that.

 

SOmetimes I've rented out my film production gear to friends and independent poductions going on. My prices were always exceedingly fair, but it turned out that renting equipment is a really good way to get your stuff damaged while making hardly any money.

 

I gotta admit though, I really like the idea of collecting a bunch of furniture and hauling it out to California to sell off. Any kind of thrift venues around LA must be so picked over from prop hounds, that it would be beneficial to reinvigorate them with some healthy midwestern junk.

[Raijin Z]

I have unlimited space to store shit, and I NEVER run into the mountains of old tech everybody else finds. Bah! I have a two room garage, a three room basement, crawlspace, 4 closets big enough to sleep in, and more empty space all over the place. >_<

 

Argh! It's not fair, I tells ya!

[DeV0]

Not much for me at all

 

Mortal kombat 2 & 3 for the saturn, some empty cases for various saturn titles.

[vb_master]

Found some nice stuff

 

1. Linksys EtherFast 4-Port Cable/DSL Router BEFSR41 ($2 with lots of CAT5 cable. Missing the CD, and the manuel).

2. 4 Pizza trays ($1, 25¢ each).

3. HP Apollo Color Inkjet printer, used a couple times ($12).

 

In all, I spent $15 on some good stuff. There were some nice NES and Atari stuff.

[Wester]

At two different SA's.

NES "Mat" controller, can't remember what game it was for. $1.50

SNES w/ cables, P/S, and controllers. $5.00

[GrandviewCoin]

Went to 7 mile fair today, and there was alot of SNES, NES & Genesis to b found.. But didn't need any of it..

 

Did get a complete Mig-29 by Camerica for 3.00 though!

 

Daniel

 

And PS! still looking for an Amiga 500.

[Bruce Tomlin]

So I get it home and find a svideo cable to attach the keyboard (still  

dont have a mouse) and it turns out the thing has an internal hard  

drive and is fast as hell (for an apple II) yea, it has a transwarp  

accellerator.   It is pretty cool and completely free!  Here is a quick  

pic I took after I got it going:

Holy crap. So this guy threw out dozens of Apple II systems, of which more than a few were probably IIgs systems with hard drives and Transwarps? Damn. I wonder if he even tried to sell them on ebay.

 

That's funny if all the keyboards were like that. Anyhow, IIgs keyboards aren't that hard to find. Not compared to internal hard drives and Transwarps.

 

(I got two IIgs systems with 8M or so RAM each, SCSI card in one, Vulcan drive in the other.)

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I found this a couple of weeks ago for $25 at my local thrift store. Only thing wrong with it was a bad fuse. While the marquee says it's Pyros, it's actually Shinobi, and it's in a modified Frogger cabinet. (I hope I'm posting this in the right thread even though it's an arcade machine. If not, my apologies )

 

 

 

If the image doesn't post then it can be seen here @ http://www.staticgamer.com/gallery/showpho.../sort/1/cat/511

[gulag picture radio]

SCORE! That rocks! How cool is it that it was just a bad fuse in there?

 

I rememebr years back that every once in a while an arcade cabinet would show up, but back then it never ocurred to me that a regular individual could buy something like that.

 

So is it a Jamma system so you can plop other games into the cabinet without too much work?

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Thanks, I thought so to! It excited me to no end that it was simply a bad fuse. I'm not sure why someone would take it to a thrift store for such a simple fix and it is apparent that whoever has worked on it in the past has had a few different games there before. It is a JAMMA setup, so it shouldn't be too hard to change out, except for a few wires that have been soldered from the power supply directly to the mainboard. That and I need to set it up for coins since I hope to use this in public as well Either way the cabinet is in great condition and Shinobi itself is pretty cool.

 

I was lucky to stumble across this and not have it claimed by someone else. Last time I found an arcade at the same place(which was about five years ago) one of the employees had already claimed it as their own, even though it was in bad condition(that one was a Ladybug cabinet if I recall correctly)

[Bryan]

Just thought I'd add my latest find:

 

C64, 1541, all cables and about 20 boxed games for $5. The only snag is that the 64 is missing the F1 key.

 

-Bry

[Mr Egg]

I found this a couple of weeks ago for $25 at my local thrift store. Only thing wrong with it was a bad fuse. While the marquee says it's Pyros, it's actually Shinobi, and it's in a modified Frogger cabinet. (I hope I'm posting this in the right thread even though it's an arcade machine.    If not, my apologies   )

 

 

DROOOL!!!! that has got to be the ultimate kind of thrift find. your very owwn arcade machine . and shinobi is one of my all time favorites.

[Rockin' Kat]

yea, it has a transwarp  

accellerator.  

 

Gah! A Transwarp GS for free?!! You lucky SOB! I wish I coulda found one for free.... those things go for mucho bucks on ebay.... I ended up paying out the ying yang on ebay to get one for my IIgs(like.... uh.... about $250)... oh well my setup's still better than your so nyah

 

Let me know if you need any software for it... I'm always happy to help anyone looking to setup a IIgs.

[SteveW]

Decided to do a little thrifting today. All I found at first was a Frogger for the 2600 for 44¢. On the way out of the store, I looked in a jewelry case in the corner, and there were a bunch of Saturn games there. Road Rash, Panzer Dragoon, Creature Shock "Special Edition", Johnny Bazookatone, Die Hard Trilogy, Mortal Combat 3 Ultimate, and Doom, all $2.92 each. None of them have instructions, and all the cases are mixed up with other games, meaning only 3 games have their proper cases. All the others cases are for sports games. But still, not bad for $3 each.

[Geeknout]

Pretty good Atari find today at a flea market. I found alot of games that I didnt have and had never seen in the wild before. Unfortuanetly according to AA they arent that rare. Could AA be off a little?

 

Heres what I got for $1 each!

 

SUB SCAN/SEGA

MEGA FORCE/FOX

COMMANDO RAID/US GAMES

FAST FOOD/TELESYS

TANK-PLUS/SEARS

MINATURE GOLF/ATARI

CANYON BOMBER/ATARI

HUMAN CANNONBALL/ATARI

PONG SPORTS/SEARS

WORD ZAPPER/VIDTEC

SPACE JOCKEY/VIDTEC

NAME THIS GAME/US GAMES

CHECKERS/ACTIVISON

BLUE PRINT/CBS

FROGS AND FLIES/MATTEL

BRAIN GAMES/ATARI

BREAKAWAY IV/SEARS

CARNIVAL/COLECO

 

I also picked up an extra GORF and AMIDAR because they look new.

Not bad for $20.

 

[Jasoco]

FAST FOOD/TELESYS

OH GOD. I WANT THAT. Whether it's boxed, or not, I would love a non falling apart version.