Philflound

I actually consider myself an expert on this. I've been doing this since 1995 and have hit at least 1000 garage sales over this time. 1. Very important. Buy a detailed street map of the county near you. These run between $8-10, but they are invaluable. It's easier to get the one that is small in spiral book form. 2. Check the classifieds in your local main paper. Not the give away crap they throw on your lawn, but the real one. 3. Look for auctions, flea markets, block sales, town garage sales, estate sales, church sales, etc FIRST! Doing this will guarantee you more than one family selling their stuff. You don't have to drive all over town trying to find 10 sellers, or 20 sellers, etc when they are all in one spot. 4. Look for key words: toys, videos, video games, comics, etc in the classified ads. HIT THESE FIRST! People like collectibles and will be knocking down the door to get to the place before you do. 5. If you are hitting individual garage sales, map your route the night before. List each one with times they open and try to go in order. 6. Avoid or leave till last classifieds that say HH (Household items), tools, baby clothes, furniture. These usually will leave you with nothing of interest. 7. As someone mentioned, try and hit the older towns, since these will most likely yield greater results. 8. Look for MOVING SALES. This is important because these people HAVE to get rid of their stuff. They don't want to drag it, so you may get a super bargain. 9. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!! If you don't see what you are looking for, ASK. I've asked countless of times. "Do you have old video games, Nintendo? Atari? Intellivision? Etc?" You'd be surprised how many people may not have put it out, but have these tucked away and didn't even think about selling it. If they want money, they may go inside and get it for you at the time, or may tell you to come back. 10. Make a flyer and give them to the garage sale seller. Put on the flyer items you are looking for and where you can be contacted. Put pictures of an atari or intellivision as an eye catcher. The seller might not have it, but they have relatives and friends don't they? So maybe they'll pass it along. In fact, ask them if they know anyone who might be willing to sell the stuff. 11. Last on my list and another extremely important rule. CHECK EVERYTHING! Look under tables, on shelves if it's in the garage, etc. People sometimes have a box of junk. Spend the time looking through. Maybe you'll find a rare action figure, or hot wheels car, etc. Sometimes you'll find something you didn't even think of, or possibly something you haven't seen since you were a kid. Look inside boxes of board games. Once I saw some lady using a Vectrex box to sell a ceiling fan. She wanted $20 for the fan. I asked her for the box. She wouldn't let me have it without buying the fan. Oh, well. 12. Ok, this isn't a rule, but HAVE FUN! I've done to 15 garage sales in a row and haven't found anything. You'll be smiling at the end of the summer when you've added 10 rarer games or so that you found in week 6 or something. You won't know what you'll stumble across unless you get out there. If you want a bargain, EARN IT! If not, just drop $100 on a Waterworld or Qberts Qubes and just sit home every Saturday. Good luck hunting. You won't be disappointed all the time. Phil

Right after I posted the previous reply, I bid $40.00 on the thing. It didn't hit the reserve. Though it would be cool to own, paying over $50.00 for the thing with the shipping isn't really worth it to me. Not sure what his reserve is, but he may be lucky if he gets it. Phil

I sometimes have a fear that 0-5 feedback bidders may dupe me out of my sale. But as I learned, I sold a Fantastic Four #1 about a year ago for $1350 buy it now. In the auction, we stated that anyone below a 10 in feedback must contact us for approval to bid. The person bought it now with a 0 feedback rating. This made us quite nervous, but we could do nothing but hope he would go through with the transaction. Everything went ok, so it was worth it for us. As for buying, sometimes the low feedback people are new to the auction thing and don't know what Atari games are rare and what aren't. If it so happens that there are only 2 E.T. games up for the week, then maybe the buyer will think it's rare. Think about it. Would you bother putting up an E.T. cartridge with no instructions or box? No, I think not. Because IT IS NOT WORTH IT TO YOU! You are knowledgable collector/buyer/seller. So you know E.T. is a common game and isn't worth the trouble to earn 50 cents on in an auction. So there is a false sense of rarity since the game usually isn't sold that often unless it is boxed or has instructions because that's the only incentive. Once in awhile I'll see a Pac-Man sell complete for over $5.00. Don't you think that this is rather high? I'd be happy if I got $2.00 or so for a complete game. It's all relative to your knowledge. Little to no knowledge will yield higher bids. When I first started collecting my Atari 2600 games, I thought maybe they made 100 or so. When I first got Joe Santulli's DP Guide, my jaw dropped to see actually how many games there were. Hell, all these strange companies, AND RATED X GAMES??? Where the hell did they sell these? These were all the things that went through my mind. But now after acquiring 625 or so 2600 games, I see almost any rare game and say, "Got it". I don't even bother bidding on it unless it is super cheap so I can resell it, or possibly if it is complete and I need the box or instructions. So don't knock a person for asking $5.00 for E.T. It's not an outrageous $20.00 or more, and he just might get it. I find there's always one crazy bidder out there once in awhile. Here's an example. I have multiple copies of brand new mint boxed H.E.R.O. for Colecovision. I bought 35 copies of these a few years ago from someone. I put them up once every couple of weeks at $9.99 minimum bid. I think I've sold about 6 or 7 so far. One time I got $35.00 for it, the other time I got $12.00. The right person at the right time has to see the auction. Most of us don't hawk over ebay looking for bargains. Ok, maybe most of you do, but I don't. Sometimes I'll go for 2 weeks without doing a search on SEALED Intellivision, or Colecovision, or Atari 2600, or Dragon's Lair merchandise, or Dungeons & Dragons vintage modules, or etc etc etc. I only have so much money and so much time to review things. People with multiple hobbies can't see every bargain at every moment. You get my point. Phil

So far I've been lucky as to not having to sell my collection. In fact, my extra stuff outweighs my collection. As for this game, I actually picked up one of these for $2.00 at a garage sale. No box though. At least not that I can remember. It's buried in storage and I haven't looked at it in 3 years. Phil

Well, let's see. A newer account with 7 feedback selling some rare games. Most people may not trust it. I didn't even do a search. But of course I have both of these games so I wouldn't have even bothered bidding on it unless it had the box. I think alot of collectors have these games. So they may remain rare, but unless they have instructions or boxes I may be missing, or possibly the label is in better condition, I don't bother unless it's for an unbelievable price. Phil

I'm sorry, but if you don't have $6,000 to burn, then you shouldn't have bought it in the first place. Unless of course, he was financially well off and something happened to force him to sell it. But then, taking anything would be better than nothing. The only way I sell things is if I get bored of them and it looks good to make some money on it. If not, I'll just keep it. I never can understand selling things at a loss unless you are desperate for money. Phil

I've been spending some time trying to get the boxes. Originally they were too bulky and I had no room for them. But I decided that boxes were the way to go. I always tried to get the instructions. I now have about 150 or so boxed games for the 2600. Maybe more. I haven't counted. I picked up most of the original ## games with boxes in REALLY NICE condition in a collection a few years ago. These things looked brand new and are my pride and joy, ok, not total p&j, but I'm proud of having them in such nice condition. I agree that the colored borders are alot harder to find. I know for a fact that the boxed games I have do have the color borders. Just can't remember how many I have. Great find. I would never spend $40 on a boxed Atari made game unless it was the rarer games, like Pigs in Space, and even then I don't think I'll spend that much. I have too much luck finding stuff in the "wild". Phil

It should be able to run all the Intellivision games if it works correctly. If not, it would still be a cool nostalgic piece. Phil

I agree that if a game is starting to get crushed due to the shrinkwrap, then slice a hole. Shrinkwrap will continue to shrink, but if something is sealed for 20+ years and it hasn't already seen signs of the crushing effect, then it should pretty much stay alright. Most shrinkwrap naturally has the small hole in it. Phil

I think this is crap. If it's made of pure gold, maybe it's worth the money. But who the hell needs more of the same old games. OOOO tournament. *Yawn* Sorry, but I'd rather a few dozen unreleased prototypes than this junk. Phil

I'm actually going to be putting on this Tennis/Le Tennis on Ebay by next week. Look for it at GPDCOMICS. I just happened to buy a huge lot from Canada and the guy had a boxed one (sorry, box and instructions are going in my collection), but I already had the game, so the extra one gets sold. Phil

Though the seller saves on the money by taking the offer, there is one positive note for using Ebay's services. You'll be covered under their policy if the seller screws you. Also, you'll have the opportunity to leave fb for the person, so if you are unhappy, negative fb it is. Any side deals, you're on your own. Of course, if they have great fb and look honest, why not circumvent ebay's fees. Ebay doesn't seem to be as great as everyone says they are. They don't always do things in your best interest. My friend right now has an asshole that was unhappy with his winning item. He uses ebay's email service to contact EVERY bidder on his auctions telling them not to bid. We've contacted ebay about this, placing complaints, even sending them a sample email from a nice bidder willing to give this info to us. Still they have done nothing to shut the bastard down. If he didn't live so far away, we'd probably pay him a personal visit. Though we do have his name address and phone number, we may be taking things in our own hands. We're contacting a lawyer who just happens to be my buddy's customer and see what kind of lawsuit we can get from this. So far, we know at least 7 people who have retracted bids because of this guy. To top it all off, EBAY HAS DONE NOTHING ABOUT THE RETRACTIONS! They state in their explanation for retraction: "seller has bad feedback" or "was told not to buy from this guy". This is AGAINST Ebay's Bidder Retraction policy, yet not one of these bidders have been suspended because of this. So, if you retract a bid. Ebay will do nothing about it 99% likely. Since they suck and don't give 2 shits because they are making tons of money. I wish the govt would step in and start regulating things. It's just going to get worse. Phil

My Ebay name is GPDCOMICS. I did want to get some boxed 2600 games on tonight, but looks like it isn't going to happen since I have to leave for Atlantic City in the morning and have some work to do for a friend. As for filling out the checkout, I don't bother. I contact them directly, and if they accept paypal, I pay within a few hours of winning an auction. Phil

I love when people waste 30 cents for nonsense auctions. Phil

Well I emailed atari2600.com 2 days ago and have not gotten a response. I'll pay $50.00 plus the shipping if anyone has an extra copy. Email me with details. Phil [email protected]

Though I do think Joe is accurate on most of his pricing, some of the games are overpriced while others are underpriced. I think he should follow an average on $$$ items instead of listing them that way. This should be something like "item sold at auction for $150" or something like that. If more than 1 comes up on Ebay in a year, then there should be a price put on the item. As for 10% more for box 10% more for instructions. Think that's total bull. Actually I should have said something to him a long time ago about this. He should eliminate this completely and if he has the time and resources, put a seperate column for box/instruction price seperately. So I would put something like this. Title Cart Box or Instr Pac-Man $.50 $.50 So if you have a complete game, your game would be worth $1.50. That is a fair price for a complete Pac-man, since it is so common. This is why I like Jerry Greiner's Price Guide more. No offense Joe. Jerry seperates the rarity of labels per Atari 2600 cartridge. While Combat is common, a 01Combat isn't, especially with the box. If I wasn't working about 3 jobs worth plus putting up with a fiancee, I'd probably contribute a little more. In fact I contacted Jerry about certain things to add to his price guide and have been helping him out. I'm actually surprised he doesn't post on this site. You can sell a Crazy Climber for $100, but are you going to get $120 for a complete one in box. 10% gets thrown out the door. Try probably $400. So I would put something like this, even seperate the instructions on this one. Title Cart Instr Box Crazy Climber $100 $100 $200 This seems to be a little more fair. But again, it's a lot more work. You might consider leaving the percent, maybe raise it with most of the games. I think a game should be at least double with instructions and box. But with the rare games, at least anything over say $15.00 should have extra notes for instructions and boxes. If I have more time, Joe feel free to contact me and if you like my idea and possibly need some help, just let me know. Also, I think everyone on this site would be willing to help you in any way they can. Seems like the Atari family is a tight one. I'm glad that I joined it those 7 years ago. Yes, folks. I started back collecting classic video games only 7 years ago. In that time I've amassed about 620 games for the 2600. So if anyone has any comments, just email me. I am going to Atlantic City till Friday, so maybe wait till the weekend to send me an email. My box will probably be full of spam over the next 2 days, even with Hotmail's junkmail filter on. Phil [email protected]

Well, I contacted the seller. He said he was going to a local store to find out the info. I also contacted the buyer and he says he will reconsider. Phil

Well, it looks like Ebay does nothing about this guy. The biggest bullshit is that I pointed out the similar buyer/seller names on the auction that started this thread. They told me there wasn't sufficient evidence for them to take action. They also let his NOTHING auction finish with the bidder being private. What a crock of shit ebay is. Phil

I usually don't take a chance on higher items without pictures. It's tough trying to buy things. Though I will buy stuff if the cost is lower. Phil

There's always one character who thinks he knows something more than he really does. I have this thing complete boxed. Maybe I should sell my SUPER RARE BOXED PROTOTYPE FOR A FORTUNE!! I'm contacting him and telling him it's not a proto. Ebay is slow today. Phil

I have to go with Imagic too. Coleco games were pretty lame compared to the Colecovision versions. Though I did love the Smurf game, regardless of which maker it was. Parker Brothers had some cool games too, Empire Strikes Back was one that I spent hours on end playing. Phil

I have an original proto of this. Haven't played it in 2 years though, so I don't remember too much about it. I might dig it out this week and see what I can do. So, was anyone able to get me a copy of the Philly Con one. I was actually going to go, but have been deathly ill since Thursday. Phil

Magic Card is super rare. How much does Malagai go for? I have one of those. Phil

DC printed the Atari Force in full size and sold it in comic book stores and newsstands. There are 20 issues plus 1 special. They guide in the Overstreet at $2.00 each, but I see them in 25 cent boxes often. Hope this helps. Phil

Ok, I lied. I found that I had a boxed one and I'm going to put it up for auction some time over the weekend. Ebay ID: GPDCOMICS. Anyone interested, go right ahead and bid. Phil