How did you build it?

[Opry99er]

Your collection... How did you build it?

 

Since I started rebuilding, we are buying just a couple games at a time... "Treasure hunting," we call it--all at local shops and such.

 

I know some guys who buy up big lots amd resell duplicates in big lots until they amass a large collection, worthy of the gods.

 

How'd you build yours?

[CPUWIZ]

+

[Philflound]

It all depends on when you started. Several people here had their games from when they were children. Mine went up in smoke, literally. I sold all 48 cartridges I owned to my brother's friend in the mid-1980s and his house went up in flames and so did the games.

 

I started collecting in 1995, having a comic book, trading card, toy store, one of my customers who later became my part time employee came in one day with an Atari 7800 with like 25 games. He wanted to keep 3 and told me just give him the $20 he paid for everything else. I brought it home, played it with my friends, and the light bulb went off. That nostalgic feeling hit me and I thought others my age (I was 25 at the time) would probably feel the same way and that this would be a great collectible that could be worth something in the future.

 

Then I began doing some research on newsgroups and put a few games out for sale for $1-2 in my store and had people bringing me all kinds of systems I never heard of. I just kept accumulating at flea markets, garage sales, newsgroups with Neil Gordon from Canada, picked up like 600 sealed games from O'Shea, then bought some stuff from some real collectors out there. Next thing I knew, I had amassed at least 300 games and it just kept getting bigger. I had systems I never heard of, and some that I did hear of but never owned.

 

I don't acquire too many missing 2600 games as the majority are pretty much R7 or higher now. I lucked out with a Sir Lancelot loose for $35 shipped, which I consider a decent price. That was a couple of weeks ago, and besides getting Cannon Man (finally completed my Sears) a few months ago for like $30, these 2 games are probably the only new additions to my collection in the past 3 years. What I've been working on is getting boxes for the games I already own. My box collection has grown considerably in the past decade. When I first started, I had no room for boxes, so I never kept them. My biggest loss on boxes was when I got rid of my 32 in 1 empty box for $10. Wish I could get it back.

 

Phil

Edited September 16, 2015 by Philflound

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

Time..

 

I scooped up the majority of all my systems/games with little effort and money years ago (like 15 give or take) before everyone decided collecting old video games was 'cool'. I'm more than halfway there to completing the ColecoVision and Inty catalogs but NES, N64 and 2600 will never happen any time soon.. I should have pursued it a little more back then, when the getting was good. Thank goodness for flashcarts though! I'll get there one day though, at least a complete (perhaps Loose) CV collection for sure..

[bigfriendly]

Searching for stuff in the wild was so much fun 10-15 years ago when you stumbled across stuff at yard sales and thrift stores. These days many places overprice door stop carts like Combat and Pacman because they realize that collecting is popular but are ignorant and uninformed about what games are really worth. I still search for games when I have the time but the days of getting a 2600 with paddles and 20 games at a yard sale for $10-$20 because somebody wants to clear out the basement are pretty much gone.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

Like the others, most of my collection was built early on. I've been collecting since 1997 and have around 325 games. I hit the 200 game mark in under 2 years. Most of my games come from thrift stores and pawn shops. Garage sales were always too hit and miss, and driving all over town to hit 10 sales and find 1 game I needed got old fast. Others I got in trades. A lot of the thrifts would sell games in bundles, so I would end up with dupes that way, but I never went after big lots on ebay or anything like that. In the early days I would snatch up any old games I could find, even if I didn't have the system to play them, and those would eventually get traded for more Atari games.

Edited September 16, 2015 by KaeruYojimbo

[0078265317]

ebay

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

I did most of my collecting for the Atari back in the mid-90's at flea markets when you could run across dozens of bins of loose carts, systems and accessories for next to nothing. I also visited a lot of thrift stores during that decade and was able to find quite a bit. As time went on, I was able to find less and less and now most of my shopping is exclusively online as people are more aware of the collectibility value. I do wander through flea markets once in a while but there are mostly only common cartridges marked for well above online prices with the seller thinking they're sitting on a nostalgia goldmine. Unfortunately by now, everyone's parents from that era have cleared out their attics and basements and most of the games and systems are in the hands of collectors or sellers.

[+sramirez2008]

Purchased my first 2600 console (a 4 switch woody) in '08 for $40.00 via eBay. Came with 40 games and a pair of CX-40s and paddle controllers. Ahh, the good old days!