brett6400

http://www.videogameconnections.com/nesrare.txt I think it's also posted on several other sites.

Thanks for the advice, Cassidy. On Sunday I went to two flea markets and a dozen garage sales.... no Atari. I agree that NES cartridges are more plentiful. The thrift store that had only three Atari carts (including Miner 2049er) at $3 each had probably two dozen NES carts at $5 each. I just got done copying a NES cartridge rarity guide into my Palm PDA, since I'm not that familiar with NES offhand. Maybe I'll stumble across some rare NES in my pursuit of Atari.

Thanks for the congratulations guys! As I said, I'd been looking off-and-on most weekends since May and had yet to find a single cartridge for sale in the wild! I think I'll keep the $2.99 red grease pencil marking on the back of the cartridge as a reminder of my first find in the wild!

Check out my post in this same category. Today I found MINER 2049ER at at thrift store for $3. That's the first cartridge I've found in the wild, actually, since I started looking at the start of the summer. I'll play it today and see what I think.

I started looking for Atari 2600 cartridges in the wild at the start of summer, but I never found a single cartridge until today... At a local thrift store I purchased MINER 2049ER in excellent condition for $3. I passed on also purchasing MISSILE COMMAND or DONKEY KONG for $3...

REMOVING LABELS If you ever remove labels from old cartridges try using GOO GONE. It is an orange, citrus based cleaner and it almost magically removes adhesive gunk that regular soap will just smear around. CAD/ CAM That would be really cool to design an assembly model in Solidworks for Atari cartridges. What type of manufacturing are you proposing? Die casting is really cheap and ultra-fast per unit, but the die itself costs can cost $10k+. It is practical for runs in the thousands of units. CIRCUIT BOARDS I don't know the answer to this question, but do all manufacturers have the same footprint of circuit boards inside their cartridges. Obviously the ends have to be standardized to fit in the Atari console. But maybe each manufacturer places the circuit board screws in different places. This would have implications on any replacement cartridge shell.

should it be atariinvader (with two i's)? or atari-invader?

well, you didn't practice some of the tenets of safe transactions: 1. seller only has a feedback of 4, and only purchases 2. NO PHOTO. seller probably doesn't even have quadrun. 3. you conducted an off-ebay transaction so there is no recourse thru ebay 4. if you had used ebay payments or paypal you could have charged back the payment this was probably a setup from the beginning. this is from the ebay listing: "Note: This is a Reserve Auction in which the reserve price was not met. Therefore, there is no transaction between the seller and the high bidder. Since there is no transaction, this item is not eligible for eBay services that protect buyers and sellers, such as transactional feedback, escrow or insurance. Those services are available only for items listed, bought and sold on eBay in compliance with our guidelines and policies. "

Almost all of the bidding is done in the final day or two, BUT some people may add a 7-day item to their watch list on the first day it is listed. (Although I personally hate having long auctions tie up my watch list slots for an entire week.) Ten-day auctions COST EXTRA LISTING FEES, so they are definitely questionable for a seller. Unless, of course, you're one of the sellers that increases Ebay revenues with gift icons!

Wow, it would be really cool to add a bunch of avi's in the archive for all of the Atari games.

Not every page on ebay is real-time dynamic content. The search results pages, for example, are only updated every 2 minutes or so. Sometimes you will see an Atari ending in 10 min on a search page for $20. Then you click on the item, which is displayed in real-time, and the high bid is $45. I suspect that your confusion with watch list items results from a similar situation. Go to your MyEbay page and that should be your up-to-date, real-time watch list.

haha lol :lol:

How does one clean a spring-loaded cartridge, such as many Atari manufactured games, where the circuit board is not readily visible?

That's the funny part! He's going to see his counters in the 100+ range by the end of auction and think he's got some hot items! LOL Congrats to all who bidded $50, still under the reserve. That's so funny! Maybe someone should send him the URL of this thread. Nah.... maybe he'll relist them and we can continue to talk about his listing fees.

mvigor, That collection database webapp is really great! Where did you get the database that has all of the manufacturers, titles, part numbers, etc.? Also, how does the database table design handle variations? Very cool!

No, I've never finished the original Pitfall either.... but maybe this summer! Pitfall II is definitely more forgiving than the original.

So in the 1 in 18 scenario where the gold key is in the gold castle, is the game completely unwinnable? Couldn't the bat get the key out of the castle? On some site (I believe linked from the Atariage 2600 Adventure page), the bat algorithm is described in detail.

Yes, I have to add Keystone Kapers to my list of best designed Activision games. Give me Pitfall, River Raid, and Keystone Kapers and I'm all set. I really don't like Pitfall II as much as Pitfall. I think the original Pitfall graphics are timeless.

LOL, Good points MattyXB. But notice that the same seller listed this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=1368432973 It's a complete Atari system "with matching box serial number" for an opening bid of $.25. Hmmmmm.

notice that the opening bid is $50 but the reserve is not yet met! that means the reserve must be about $100 or so.

I think RIVER RAID and PITFALL by Activision are the best minimal graphics produced for the 2600. Developers didn't have much code to work with back then, and RIVER RAID and PITFALL both achieve a very memorable design, working with only a few colors and chunky pixels. In fact, these reasons are why I play the 2600 now. Who wants to move around a 3D polygon skateboarder with an XBox? I'll take RIVER RAID anyday. On the flip side, some minimal graphics were less successful. DONKEY KONG on the 2600 is almost embarrasing, I think.

Yes! I had a seller who wouldn't leave feedback until I, the buyer, left it first. He had some elaborate justification. That's just bad ebaying. I won't do business with him again.

If I see one more "Atari 2600 game *RARE* COMBAT" or "RARE PAC-MAN" listing on ebay I'm going to laugh.

i'm actually waiting for feedback from three sellers. but as lemmi suggests, maybe i'll get a bunch of feedback this sunday or a month from now. i can see a new buyer not leaving feedback. but a seller, who took the time to post the listing in the first place, should always leave feedback. my $.02

What % of people don't leave feedback on ebay? I recently bought an item, paid for it the same day, received it about a week later, and left positive feedback the day I received it. I sent the seller an email, "Hi, I got your package, left positive feedback, etc., etc. Thanks, Brett" and the seller still hasn't left feedback. What's up with that?