Amazing score in a free pile by the curb!

[S.BAZ]

I couldn't believe my eyes -- somebody left this out at the curb in a pile of free stuff!

I've been avidly collecting retro games & systems for 10 yrs and I never saw an Aquarius in person before 

[roadrunner]

Cool, congrats 

 

[glazball]

Grats on the find!  That's pretty exciting.  I know it's nerdy, but I sometimes have dreams of finding unusually rare stuff in thrift/game stores.  Were the 2600 games in the pile too, or just the Aquarius?

Edited March 24, 2022 by glazball

[roadrunner]

First topic in this sub-forum too.
One for the history books.

 

[Chris+++]

11 hours ago, roadrunner said:

First topic in this sub-forum too.
One for the history books.
 

 

Indeed. "I remember when this sub-forum started back in '22!"

 

 

[grownup]

Wow, same thing happened to me. This is unbelievable!  

  It's as if people are loosing respect for collectors items

[RARusk]

This truly must be the age of Aquarius.

[Cebus Capucinis]

Not quite yet. It's only....dawning.

[Keatah]

7 hours ago, grownup said:

It's as if people are loosing respect for collectors items

Not necessarily losing respect, but just not wanting to deal with the hassles of selling. I put all sorts of neat things curbside, a day or two before the truck comes by. It's usually gone the same night. Can't beat that for getting rid of stuff! No getting in the car. No ebay. No shipping. No bitching buyers. None of it. Wheel it to the curb. Gone!

[jhd]

When we were clearing my Grandfather's house (after his death), the process went something like:

 

Try to Sell the item -> Offer it to a Thrift Shop -> Landfill

 

Thrift shops will actually refuse donations if they deem the item(s) unsalable. One example was lots of fringe religious books and vinyl records by obscure religious artists. This was many boxes full of material. I am sure that someone, somewhere would have happily taken this stuff either for their own collection or for resale. The issue was finding that person. We needed to get the house emptied so that it could be sold, and we could not hold onto this stuff indefinitely. 

 

To give another example, I once had a complete run of Byte magazine, 1987-1998 (when it ceased publication). I posted an ad offering it for free as I was moving and I could not take it with me. Only one person responded, and he wanted me to deliver it to his residence. Nobody else was interested, so off to landfill it went. 

   

 @Keatah I once left a massive computer desk outside by the dumpster rather late at night, and it was gone by early the next morning. Whoever took it would have needed a truck.  

[XT]

5 hours ago, jhd said:

To give another example, I once had a complete run of Byte magazine, 1987-1998 (when it ceased publication). I posted an ad offering it for free as I was moving and I could not take it with me. Only one person responded, and he wanted me to deliver it to his residence. Nobody else was interested, so off to landfill it went. 

   

 

Heartbreaking, but understandable..

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, jhd said:

@Keatah I once left a massive computer desk outside by the dumpster rather late at night, and it was gone by early the next morning. Whoever took it would have needed a truck.  

Yup. That's the way to do it. The ol'ball & chain got rid of some vaxen from university days that way. Within 3-days it was gone. Got rid of 2 Apple ///'s myself too. I never thought to track ebay to see if it eventually showed up there.

[fiddlepaddle]

I, too, had a (mostly) complete collection of Byte magazine (1978-) and took it with me to the flea market to sell. Opened it to page "Introducing the Apple II".

Lots of people stopped to chat ("did you read all of those? you must be really smart about computers..."), but nobody wanted them, even for free, except one guy who came by in a wheel chair and said he would take them if I would deliver them to his apartment in Santa Cruz (quite a distance).

I've always felt that reading Byte cover-to-cover, and actually honestly digesting all the code was the best education I ever got. I ended up dropping them off at the Goodwill on the way home; don't even know if they were appreciated.

[Keatah]

Byte magazine! It's what finally convinced me to get into the 486 for real. No more vicariousness via brochures and pamphlets. Actually put some mystery into microprocessors - as I was still stick in the 6502 & 68K eras. Whatta jump!

[Chinese Cake]

On 10/20/2022 at 3:37 AM, Keatah said:

Not necessarily losing respect, but just not wanting to deal with the hassles of selling. I put all sorts of neat things curbside, a day or two before the truck comes by. It's usually gone the same night. Can't beat that for getting rid of stuff! No getting in the car. No ebay. No shipping. No bitching buyers. None of it. Wheel it to the curb. Gone!

 

There's also a large number of people that don't understand asset appreciation or who don't realize or want to bother to check if what they have is valuable. I've seen rare SNES and Saturn games, and Saturns, at thrift shops in the past where you could get the whole lot for $50 when the value would probably be $2000 on Ebay all together. In 2011. Now? Probably more. 

 

The only reason why they don't appear in bigger organizations o corps that have resell or thrifts is because they figured out about a decade ago that some of this stuff is valuable, so started putting them at high prices behind the case or selling them online. Unless it's a small or country Thrift you will rarely find gaming stuff on the cheap unless you want Madden or FIFA from 15 years ago, or worthless Wii/Kinect software. I don't even see the unwanted music game peripherals anymore. 

[ClassicGMR]

On 10/20/2022 at 12:37 AM, Cebus Capucinis said:

Not quite yet. It's only....dawning.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Angryupvote/

[Cebus Capucinis]

That score's a lot cooler than mine. I got this free cat in the trash, but it's foaming at the mouth and seems to be angry all the time. I tried to pet it but it just keeps trying to bite me....

 

[ClassicGMR]

That there is wutcha kawl a redneck kitteh

[HoshiChiri]

On 10/21/2022 at 5:48 AM, jhd said:

To give another example, I once had a complete run of Byte magazine, 1987-1998 (when it ceased publication). I posted an ad offering it for free as I was moving and I could not take it with me. Only one person responded, and he wanted me to deliver it to his residence. Nobody else was interested, so off to landfill it went. 

I threw out about half my magazine collection years ago in a similar situation. Luckily, a couple years ago when it was time to get rid of the rest, I'd learned about the Videogame History Foundation & set up a donation, which felt a lot better!

On 10/23/2022 at 12:57 PM, Chinese Cake said:

I don't even see the unwanted music game peripherals anymore. 

They're not unwanted anymore- a lot of those plastic guitars are $50+ secondhand now, so the scalpers are on them.

 

Which is the other unknown factor- my sister in law used to manage at a thrift store, and some resellers would stay open to close to jump on all the new stuff coming out first. So if one of them was after gaming things? You're out of luck!

[+GoldLeader]

8 hours ago, HoshiChiri said:

 

Which is the other unknown factor- my sister in law used to manage at a thrift store, and some resellers would stay open to close to jump on all the new stuff coming out first. So if one of them was after gaming things? You're out of luck!

And now thrift stores (well Goodwill anyways) sell video game stuff at auction so you Never see it...(Except for old sports games on PS1 and Kinect stuff (whatever that may be)...

[Chris+++]

 

And 47 thousand different versions of John Madden Football, of course.

 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2022 by Chris+++

[SwanSong]

A good friend and me were driving around our city and going to othe cities on weekends buying from the old mom and pop rental stores just so we could finally play some of the things we couldn't afford at release, I got some gems for the $1 range even into post Dreamcast era which I also did good on that system at best buy closing out all games $5 brand new. Fun to say I was there and enjoying all this systems I still own going back to day one.