The Official "Thrift finds" Thread

[HawgWyld]

Ah, there's still some great stuff in the wild here in Central Arkansas. I was at a flea market in Hot Springs today, when I found some carts for $3. Yes, $3 may be a bit high, but there was some semi-rare stuff here:

 

1. Coconuts

2. Congo Bongo

3. Enounter at L-5

4. Gangster Alley

5. Lost Luggage

6. M.A.D.

7. Polaris

8. Realsports Boxing

 

Now, there's nothing there exactly earth-shattering (although I was glad to find a copy of Polaris), but $24 to expand my collection wasn't bad. Particularly since I didn't have to mess around with inflated prices on eBay.

[Cobra Commander]

Some stuff I stole from a thrift in the last month. KABOOM! (I always scream KABOOM!) Warlords, Sneak'n peek, barnstorming, warplock, Sears SI, Arcade golf & baseball, All cheap, the acti's are nearly plaqueless.

 

I also got (all NES) Hatris, Yo noid, Skate or die, Bubble bobbel & Dr Mario for free from a pawn shop for answering some questions about some glass (My trade is, glazier) for his display cases. When I called with a quote for the glass work he ofered to barter for firearms. Better than chickens I guess, Free NES games though.

[cyberneticimplant]

Some stuff I stole icon_mrgreen.gif from a thrift in the last month. KABOOM! (I always scream KABOOM!) Warlords, Sneak'n peek, barnstorming, warplock, Sears SI, Arcade golf & baseball, All cheap, the acti's are nearly plaqueless.

 

You have no soul.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Some stuff I stole [icon_mrgreen.gif] from a thrift in the last month. KABOOM! (I always scream KABOOM!) Warlords, Sneak'n peek, barnstorming, warplock, Sears SI, Arcade golf & baseball, All cheap, the acti's are nearly plaqueless.

You have no soul.

I think he means "stole" in quotes. As in they charged him 25 cents or something.

 

Anyhow, I had a great find yesterday. Headed out to my most convient Goodwill salvage store and started my usual hour or so to search the bins.

 

Just as I finished up the fourth or so half-row, I spot two Astrocade carts! Energetically digging through the rest of the bin turned up three more!

 

So for $6 total, I got:

 

Clowns/Brickyard (already had it)

Tornado Baseball, etc. (already had it)

2001 280 ZZZap and Dodgem (already had it)

Bally Basic with built-in interface (I already had the rarer separate-interface version)

5005 Artillary Duel (note title misspelled, didn't already have it!)

...and also N64 Wave Race, SNES MLBPA Baseball, and Genesis Sports Talk Baseball (complete, but I already had it complete)

 

I also found the box to Genesis Shanghai II, and case+instructions to GC Sonic Mega Collection

 

A little storage tip: three Astrocade carts fit into a VHS storage case; five or six if there aren't any hub protrusions in the case.

Edited May 29, 2005 by Bruce Tomlin

[yuppicide]

You said you went to the Goodwill and started an hour or so search the bins.. how big is this place?! !ALL! the Goodwill stores I've been to are mostly clothes. Theres not many bins at all. Takes me 2 minutes to walk through the whole place.

 

Anyhow, I had a great find yesterday.  Headed out to my most convient Goodwill salvage store and started my usual hour or so to search the bins.

[Cobra Commander]

Some stuff I stole icon_mrgreen.gif from a thrift in the last month. KABOOM! (I always scream KABOOM!) Warlords, Sneak'n peek, barnstorming, warplock, Sears SI, Arcade golf & baseball, All cheap, the acti's are nearly plaqueless.

 

You have no soul.

863743[/snapback]

 

They were all boxed and I just left the boxes to anger someone in the future.

[madmjennifer]

Sega Lion King and Altered Beast CIB fo $3 a piece at Salvation Army. Not great, but at least it was something.

[Bruce Tomlin]

You said you went to the Goodwill and started an hour or so search the bins.. how big is this place?! !ALL! the Goodwill stores I've been to are mostly clothes. Theres not many bins at all. Takes me 2 minutes to walk through the whole place.

This a "salvage store". That's where they put all the stuff that either didn't sell (usually because some moron overpriced something) or that they didn't want to bother to sort. I currently only know of three of them around here, two in San Antonio, and one in Waco. (The Waco one is only open three days a week.)

 

This is the second San Antonio one, and is a lot smaller than the first one. The first one takes me at least three hours to go through, but it's on the far side of town from where I usually am.

[Malc74]

Prices here are edging slowly through the roof. I picked up 4 boxed SNES games for $6.99 each the other day in my local Value Village - they also have a tatty 2600 Frogger cart for (gulp!) $7.99! (I passed on that one!)

 

Anyway, the 4 SNES games are -

 

Contra 3

Super Castlevania 4

Zombies ate my Neighbors

Eye of the Beholder

 

They've all got their instruction manuals except for Zombies.

 

Makes a change from the usual slew of SNES sports titles that normally crop up.

[flugle]

I scored myself an Exidy Sorceror computer last weekend. Still in its original box with a service manual too. It also has some carts with it, but I haven't had a chance to go through them all

 

Oh, and the price? 50 Aussie Cents (Thats about 40 US cents)

Edited May 30, 2005 by flugle

[Malc74]

Picked up a few things in the local Sally Army this morning -

 

X-Wing (PC 3.5" disk) - $2.99 boxed.

Third World War (Sega CD - with the Sewer Shark CD also in the box) - $3.99 boxed.

K.C. Munchkin (Odyssey 2) - 99c cart only

Asteroids (Atari 2600) - 99c cart only.

[the marvellous one]

Sorry, dumbass Brit question here- but could someone define 'thrift' for me?

 

I keep seeing it all over this website and curiosity has taken over!!!

[Malc74]

Sorry, dumbass Brit question here- but could someone define 'thrift' for me?

 

I keep seeing it all over this website and curiosity has taken over!!!

864414[/snapback]

 

Second-hand store, basically. Many are, in effect, charity shops while some (like the Value Village/Savers chain) are effectively commercial second-hand stores which take donations of stuff and sell them for profit (giving a percentage to a chosen charity - in VV Thunder Bay's case the Canadian Diabetes Association).

[the marvellous one]

Sorry, dumbass Brit question here- but could someone define 'thrift' for me?

 

I keep seeing it all over this website and curiosity has taken over!!!

864414[/snapback]

 

Second-hand store, basically. Many are, in effect, charity shops while some (like the Value Village/Savers chain) are effectively commercial second-hand stores which take donations of stuff and sell them for profit (giving a percentage to a chosen charity - in VV Thunder Bay's case the Canadian Diabetes Association).

864483[/snapback]

 

Thankyou! We have stores like that here in the UK, but they're called charity shops- as everything is donated by the public, with proceeds going to various charities!!

 

While not found in a shop, (I found this one at a car boot sale, don't know if the US has those- everyone chucks all their stuff in the back of a car, drives to a big field and sells it out of the car) I know it's not particularly retro, but I found Blinx The Timesweeper for Xbox for 50p (about 90 cents), in brand new condition! I just said 'how much?' and that was her price!! I know they're pretty cheap now anyway but I did pick up an N64 and Dreamcast about two years ago for £10/approx $19- car boot sales are a haven for bargains, you just need to get there for 7am to catch all the good stuff before it goes!

[icbrkr]

My finds yesterday are better as a picture:

 

 

Those 2600 boxed games are *brand new*. And you can see some of the other 2600 games I found.. w00! It was a great day for hunting yesterday.

[Malc74]

I found this one at a car boot sale, don't know if the US has those- everyone chucks all their stuff in the back of a car, drives to a big field and sells it out of the car).

864498[/snapback]

 

Car boot sales are pretty much unheard of over here (and are something I miss about the UK). Instead people have yard or garage sales, in which they pile all their unwanted stuff into their garden or garage and sell it. My experience of Thunder Bay yard sales is that it's mostly crap, but maybe I'm just getting there too late and missing all the good stuff. My best yard sale find was a NES and about 12 games for $10.

 

 

Those 2600 boxed games are *brand new*.  And you can see some of the other 2600 games I found.. w00!  It was a great day for hunting yesterday.

864669[/snapback]

 

Nice haul! If only thrifting here could be that good!

Incidentally, how much did you pay for that lot?

Edited May 31, 2005 by Malc74

[BeerGnome]

managed to find a pacman, pacplus kit for an arcade PCB! price? $3.98

also, a complete, working, Nintendo virtua boy, with three games for $14.95

 

I didn't find the virtua boy to be that uncomfortable ecept where I had it set up.. I'm a rather tall fellow, so there needs to be special accomodation.. other than that.. something interesting for the collection, and something I always wanted as a kid

 

the PCB.. not sure what to make of it.. I have to hit the arcade boards for this one, but anything pacman related, I'm sure less than $5 is a pretty good score

[SteveW]

The only thing I managed to find today was a huge stack of Philips CD-i stuff. Most of the plain discs without the standard CD-i long boxes are marked "DEMONSTRATION DISC NOT FOR RESALE". There's 17 of those, with mostly lame programs on them, but one was worth it. It's Zelda - The Wand of Gamelon. I was really hoping that one of the Nintendo games would be in the collection, and there was! I've heard that it's incredibly lousy, but I don't care. It's still pretty cool to have a copy of Zelda on a non-Nintendo console.

 

I also managed to find some regular release stuff on their shelves. Pinball, CD Shoot, Paint School II, Story Machine: Magic Tales (shrinkwrapped), Tell Me Why I & II, and Rand McNally's US Atlas.

 

In all, 24 Philips CD-i programs, costing a little over $39 in total. I think the Zelda game makes it all worth it, especially since it's a demonstration disc version. Which brings up another thing I've noticed about CD-i stuff. Honestly, I've seen more "Demonstration Disc - Not For Resale" CDs around this area than retail versions of discs. This is the third lot I've found of demo CDs in the past couple years. I didn't have a CD-i machine at the time, or the money to buy the stuff, so I didn't pick any of them up. It just makes me wonder why there's so many demo CDs around the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

[BeerGnome]

there was some CD-i stuff floating around one of my favorite vint stores for a while. I never picked them up becouse I really wasn't interested in hunting a unit down to play them.. and they were all sports related, and I'm not really into sports games.. so.. eeh

I really ned to do a better job of grabbing stuff up as trade fodder at least.

but that zelda game you grabbed.. the little lady is a big ass zelda fan.. most of the Nintendo units I got were got just for her to play itterations of zelda

and from all the reviews, screenshots, and video out takes of that game..

 

it's fucking cheesy ass awful, I meen, if you take vcs ET, and pacman, and combine them into some sort of hybrid creature that epidimises all that is wrong in the world.. nay.. verily to make the insidisdiously evil darth sidious, get up with Mr. burns and have them both twiddle thier fingers and say "egggselent" and the prospect of something so evil and barbouse to all that is holy..

 

you've got a gem

 

in any case.. I coul'dnt leave well enough alone today, and after the little lad got off of work from waitressing.. we slid on back there and did some more cleaning. I managed to get a VCS keyboard controller with teh star raiders inlay still in there, and a original gameboy with Tetris and street fighter. actually.. the game boy I got didn't have tetris in it.. but the nice young lady with the purple hair let me switch the games between the normal GB, and the Clear one that I actually got.

and now.. the GB shall never leave my side as now I have tetris on demand, and its not the tiny little K7Rave virgin mobile tetris.. original gameboy tetris luvin

so lets see todays haul...

crazy arcade PCB kit .... 3.89

VCS keyboard controller..1.98

NES virtua boy, complete, 3 games 14.95

game boy with tetris and sfII 6.98

damn cool finds, and I spent 27.80

not a bad day thrifting, evenif I didn't turn up any VCS games

[Bruce Tomlin]

There's 17 of those, with mostly lame programs on them, but one was worth it. It's Zelda - The Wand of Gamelon.

Cool! (even though everybody says the CD-I Zelda games suck) Just one thing to remember: NEVER try to clean a CD-I disc with Goo-Gone if it's got color! The color on the label is soluble in Goo-Gone!

 

 

And now for my $40 find today...

 

The nearby Goodwill seems to take great pride in trying to sell older systems as sets. Usually it's a Genesis with four or five relatively common games for $30 or $40. They even had a 3DO (I don't remember seeing any games, though it did have two light guns) for that price. But today they had an N64 set with ELEVEN games (plus Gameshark Pro), three controllers (one ice blue, two translucent red, two generic 1X memory cards), console (ice blue, with P/S and A/V cable), AND an arcade-style controller for $40! I quickly noticed that I didn't have most of the games, and Did The Math[tm] and bought it.

 

The games: Nighttime Creatures, Superman, Earthworm Jim 3D, Mayhem, WCW NWO World Tour, Gex 3, Turok Seeds of Evil, Xena Talisman of Fate, Resident Evil 2, Duke Nukem Zero Hour, and Robotron 64.

 

Ha! I peeled up a price label on one of the carts, and this set was originally being sold for $75! Lucky me!

 

Oh yeah, and I found some stuff yesterday, the best was SNES Toys + instructions for $2.50.

 

 

But here's the best part of all: Now that I had so many more N64 games (and I already had quite a lot, many CIB) it was time to start making a list of what I have. As I was pulling down the last piece, I noticed this plastic drawer thingy that I had been looking for because I knew it had vintage game magazines in it. I knew I had Video Games #12, the only magazine I bought back in the day, and after I saw it, I remembered having found that Colecovision Experience #1, but I didn't remember also having a Video Games #18, Video Games Player Oct/Nov 1983, and Vidiot June/July 1983! My best guess is that I bought those three from someone via the rgvc newsgroup.

 

There was also a How To Win At Videogames by Consumer Guide (lots of classic coin-ops), and a How To Win At ET also by Consumer Guide. And a "Pac-Man Plastic Canvas Projects" book. (16 full-size pages)

 

Sometime next month, I'm going to start scanning them in. We need more PDF scans of entire classic game magazines.

[SteveW]

Cool!  (even though everybody says the CD-I Zelda games suck)  Just one thing to remember: NEVER try to clean a CD-I disc with Goo-Gone if it's got color!  The color on the label is soluble in Goo-Gone!

865290[/snapback]

 

None of the "Not For Resale" CDs have any color at all, they're all white labels with black text. Except one disc, called Art of the Czars, that's printed on a green label. And it's not a Philips disc, it's by American Interactive Media, labeled "Review & Test Only", and that it's version 3.04 from July 9, 1992.

 

Luckily, there's no stickers or anything on the discs I bought, so I don't have to use Goo Gone on them. I've looked at the discs, and not only do they not have any stickers, I honestly don't think many of them were ever used. There's not even fingerprints or anything on some of them, like they've never been handled. Although since I looked over the discs, I'm kinda pissed off to find that the Pinball case is empty. I guess it's not too bad, since it's one of the few games I already own, but still, I paid $3 for an empty case.

[BeerGnome]

the thrift I raped today had binded the items in nylon threaded packing tape.. while not leaving any residue on the plastic, managed to get the label on one of my brand new to me NES virtuaboy carts torn and messed up

other than that... I'm playing the hell out of it and.. no migranes or siezures so far! in fact... its pretty damn cool!

[Zonie]

Sorry, dumbass Brit question here- but could someone define 'thrift' for me?

 

I keep seeing it all over this website and curiosity has taken over!!!

864414[/snapback]

 

Second-hand store, basically. Many are, in effect, charity shops while some (like the Value Village/Savers chain) are effectively commercial second-hand stores which take donations of stuff and sell them for profit (giving a percentage to a chosen charity - in VV Thunder Bay's case the Canadian Diabetes Association).

864483[/snapback]

 

And for some reason, a lot of them smell like puke.

[yuppicide]

Yeah, we don't have "car boots" over here. I think the term is kind of weird sounding. A boot in a car?!

 

Anyway, we have garage sales/yard sales - where someone sells off their driveway or front lawn, etc. Then we have fleamarkets. People take a car full of stuff and goto a fleamarket. Some have tables set up, others you have to bring a table. You pay $8 or $10 or whatever to rent a spot or table. I guess it's really like one big car boot sale with a bunch of people.

[Wester]

I believe that "boot" means trunk over there.