Thrift agony

[lesboulez]

Today I drove over 200 miles to check out thrift stores in the Greenville, NC area. Came up empty. Only found two space invaders carts and a woman working at Salvation Army asking me "Where do you find Atari carts? I'm trying to get them too."

 

ARRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

 

Anyways, to get to the point here's a question to ponder:

 

What was the biggest collecting blunder you ever made? Whether it be going home to get money for a prize at a thrift or leaving something knowing "It will be there tomorrow." Or simply passing up on something because you were too stupid to know what it was.

 

My answer is this back in 1997 I was at a Goodwill in Alabama and stumbled across a Berenstain Bears Atari 2600 package.

 

Complete even

 

Also a Cabbage Patch Kids Colecovision game complete. Both were priced at $3. I had three bucks in my wallet. Not knowing what I had, I put the Berenstain Bears back and bought the Cabbage Patch.

 

Alas, when I went back the next day the Bears were gone. Probably bought by one of you guys out there.

 

Ouch.

[Joel D. Park]

Wow the Bearistain Bears story hurts. I don't have any really hurtful stories like that. Just maybe a few Ebay auctions I wish I would have bid higher on... Not much else.

[lesboulez]

Believe me I know that the Bears loss hurt. If only I'd had my DP collectors guide then...or even a reliable internet hookup. Yes I didn't have my own computer... Seven Atari's but no PC...

[ROCKINGROLL]

Ben, I actually got choked up while reading your story. Did you ever find out if the store had moved or did they just go out of business?

[ElvisDJ]

Aside from the numerous missed Ebay auctions due to Ebay being down, my computer being down, me forgetting, etc., I would have to say my worst blunder came because of a lack of knowledge of value, coupled with my stinginess at the time.

 

About 10 years ago, I came across a little shop in my area that sold all types of classic games. At the time, I was just starting to build my collection up again after being out of Atari collecting for about 6 or 7 years.

 

The guy hadcases of 2600 carts in the front of the store for $2 each, all of them common or uncommon. After looking through all of these and not finding anything I needed, I asked the guy if he had more - he told me he had some rarer carts in the back.

 

Sure enough, in the back room, he had a number of rarer carts, including "Cosmic Swarm" (not for $477, though) and others. The one that caught my eye was "Crazy Climber", which I had always wanted when I was a kid. However, in my opinion he was asking way too much - His ungodly pirce, you ask? $8! Yes, that's right, 8 measley dollars! Of course, I refused to pay such and outrageous price, as, at that time, the most I had paid for a cart was $7 and I considered *that* a bit high!

 

So I put Crazy Climber back and instead bought - a boxed Surround (flip top style box) - woo-hoo!

 

Yep, that one still haunts me to this day.

 

Bryan

[ElvisDJ]

Aside from the numerous missed Ebay auctions due to Ebay being down, my computer being down, me forgetting, etc., I would have to say my worst blunder came because of a lack of knowledge of value, coupled with my stinginess at the time.

 

About 10 years ago, I came across a little shop in my area that sold all types of classic games. At the time, I was just starting to build my collection up again after being out of Atari collecting for about 6 or 7 years.

 

The guy hadcases of 2600 carts in the front of the store for $2 each, all of them common or uncommon. After looking through all of these and not finding anything I needed, I asked the guy if he had more - he told me he had some rarer carts in the back.

 

Sure enough, in the back room, he had a number of rarer carts, including "Cosmic Swarm" (not for $477, though) and others. The one that caught my eye was "Crazy Climber", which I had always wanted when I was a kid. However, in my opinion he was asking way too much - His ungodly pirce, you ask? $8! Yes, that's right, 8 measley dollars! Of course, I refused to pay such and outrageous price, as, at that time, the most I had paid for a cart was $7 and I considered *that* a bit high!

 

So I put Crazy Climber back and instead bought - a boxed Surround (flip top style box) - woo-hoo!

 

Yep, that one still haunts me to this day.

 

Bryan

[Ze_ro]

I've never missed out on anything huge really, though there are 3 things that I regret:

 

1. I was outbid by 1 cent on a cartridge on eBay... for some reason, I had assumed no one would bother trying to outbid me, so I didn't pay attention to it (It was only Infiltrate though, and I ended up getting another copy from a different auction.. but the 1 cent still pissed me off a bit)

 

2. I passed up a Tutankham cartridge at the local flea market once... then when I got home and found out the game was actually pretty fun (well, *I* like it anyways), I never saw it there again However, my friend and I are probably the only two people who buy Atari games from the guy there, so it's possible he just doesn't have the game with him anymore... and I don't want to inquire specifically about the cart, or he might raise the price (He already charges $3 for most of them )

 

3. A long time back, I saw a Master System at the local thrift store for $5... since I hadn't run into any games for this thing, I didn't bother buying it since I assumed games wouldn't be easy to find... the next day it was gone, and a week later another one was there and I passed on it for the same reason. It was eventually sold too. Naturally, shortly after this, I started finding Master System cartridges left and right... since I figured the system wasn't too rare (finding two in one week doesn't seem rare to me), I started buying them up assuming that I could find the system shortly. Well, I now have the light phaser, two joypads, an arcade stick, and 7 games... and I *still* haven't found the actual Master System itself yet Although recently the same thrift store has a SMS bundled with all the necessary controllers and hookups for $25, all I need is the $5 system itself... so now I wait until another comes by. (I passed on a TG-16 for the same reason... however, it was priced at $30, and I really haven't found any games (none at all) since then... so I made the right choice there)

 

Oh, and I almost forgot the worst one:

 

4. I was at another thrift store across town one day, and I noticed a black system under the counter.. I took a closer look and saw that it was a CD-i, and it was priced at $30. I'd never seen one of these systems in the wild, but I remember them as being pretty crappy at the time, so I decided not to buy it... the next week I came in the middle of a half-off day, and could have bought the thing for $15 (Usually the sales don't apply to electronics, but the ColecoVision junk I was buying was marked down, so I assume this would have been too), and I passed again.. eventually someone bought it, because it's not there anymore. This wouldn't have bothered me, except for the fact that when I think back, I believe the thing was not actually a CD-i, but a TurboDuo! (Do CD-i's have only one controller port? I thought the thing said CD-i on it, but after taking a closer look at pictures of a TurboDuo, it looks an awful lot like what I saw)

 

But oh well... I still haven't run across any TG-16 games in the wild, so I'm not missing out on much... but if I get another chance to buy a TurboDuo for $15 (or even $30 I'd probably have paid if I'd have known), I'll sure as hell get it!

 

--Zero

[Nateo]

I usaually buy any thing that looks unusual at my (not so) local game shop. They sell Atari games there for a dollar each. At another place, they sell 'em for 50 cents each. We basically bought 'em out.

[Osbo]

Damn rain... it's been raining for two consecutive weekends, that means that 50% of the garage sale are "cancelled due the raid" Grrrr... and the thirft sucks either. Yesterday I scored two commons (Kangooro and Frogs and Flyes) And today nothing... but I did found two brand new, MIB teleobjetives for my camera for 8 bucks... I'm happy after all

 

[ 09-09-2001: Message edited by: osbo ]

[ATARIPITBULL]

Some times you should not tell people you think you know about a great find at a store. I once found a salvation army store in Detroit, MI that had a complete in the box, and mint condition Atari 7800 system, with about 25 games complete in there boxes for $35, and I told a person I knew since I was a little boy about this on a friday, and when I went back to the store to buy the collection on saturday, it was gone. It seems that my so called friend had gone that friday afternoon and bought it.