RetroWorld Expo Recap

[Mockduck]

Hello everyone! I had the chance to go to the first-ever Retro World Expo over the weekend, and thought I'd share a few thoughts about the Atari scene there.

 

The expo was in Wallingford, Connecticut, in a small expo hall. Attendance was somewhere in the range of one to two thousand people - nice and crowded for the venue, and full of cool gamers.

 

My personal haul was great! The best find of the day was a loose Wall Ball cart for the VCS I picked up for $10. In total, I spent about fifty dollars for (all carts loose):

 

Krull (great looking)

Reactor (also in nice shape)

Sorcerer (by Mythicon)

Fire Fly

Enduro (blue label variation)

Earth Dies Screaming

Wall Ball

Skeet Shoot

 

While I probably could have found these thrifting/flea marketing for a bit less, I hadn't seen these personally, and felt the overall cost was pretty good. Wall Ball was $10, as was Skeet Shoot, so while I probably overpaid for a few bucks for Skeet Shoot, I feel I got a good deal on Wall Ball. The rest were five dollars a cart, although I paid $6 I think for Krull and Reactor.

 

At the convention, there was one vendor who had a nice big bin full of loose carts, all about five each. Most were common, although it's where I got the Mythicon and Earth Dies carts there. The most expensive carts I saw for sale was $100 for a loose Espial, and $150 for a Mines of Minos. Additionally, there was a really nice bin of dozens of boxed Atari games, all about ten to fifteen dollars each. If I had deeper pockets I would have liked to have taken the entire box - there were probably fifty or so games in all. While many were common-ish Activision, Data Age, and M-Network games, I did see some less common games as well.

 

 

There were a couple of other vendors who were selling loose carts as well, generally in the five dollar range. There was a VCS boxed for about a hundred.

 

There was also a free to play arcade and console setup, which included the 2600 and 5200.

 

One of the other cool things in the console play was a working Vectrex in great condition, which I'd never been able to play in person before.

 

The NES dominated the vendor tables, not too surprisingly, given the current popularity of the NES collecting scene. Quite a few other games, including a Fairchild F and Intellivision voice module.

 

I got the chance to meet The Game Chasers, which was a lot of fun. Overall, I think it was a really successful inaugural event, and probably one that will return next year.

 

[teh_lurv]

Nice recap, I was there at RWX as well. The guy with the bin of boxed Atari games was a long-time collector; we wound up chatting for awhile. I wish I had taken more time to hunt for loose Atari carts during the con.

Edited October 6, 2015 by teh_lurv

[+Cafeman]

Thanks for the recap of the show.

[Grimakis]

I didn't manage to make it, but cool to see other locals on AA.

[+Allan]

Here's a few pics from the show.

 

Allan

 

[AtariTexas]

Thanks for the pics and write up. Sounded like it was a good time!