Dolt

At the end of the day, a cart is worth what it's worth to the two parties making a deal. Going by the "Quadrun for $1 at a yard sale" example, I found my Quadrun 5-6 years ago in the wild for substantially more...$2. I bought it for $2 because I didn't know it was worth a fortune--it was just another game I didn't have. I was happy with the deal, and so was the seller. If I'd known it was worth more, I'd still have bought it for $2, and the seller would have been satisfied. End of story. While I've had fewer cases of good fortune comparable to the Quadrun in recent times (a $12 Z-Tack by Bomb and a $15 boxed Guardian, both last year), I've collected long enough to know that if you wait, sooner or later, you'll get a good bargain. It'll fall into your lap; that's just how it happens if you beat the bushes long enough. Look at CPUWIZ's BMX Airmaster the other week that he got for what was it, $4? I'd much rather commit time than money to this hobby, otherwise I'd be wracked with buyer's remorse every time I bought something. I don't own an Eli's Ladder, and I don't vaugely think I ever will. Best of all, I don't care. But if I did wind up with it in my collection, it wouldn't be because I threw $1500 at someone. If I hit the lotto and had money suddenly falling out of my ass, I wouldn't turn around and buy every cart ever, CIB, because a completed collection is a boring, dead collection that you forget about. The perfect example is that I was going to mention that I never use the handheld game system from Milton Bradley that came out in the late 70s with Blockbuster as the pack-in game, now that I got all the games to it a few years ago. I describe it that way because I can't remember off the top of my head what it's called anymore! I illustrated my own point a little too well perhaps. Well, I guess if there's any moral to the story, it's that you shouldn't tip your hand by requesting a BIN or a side deal.

Yep, the super sweet NIB Atari 5200 Trak-Ball and the less sweet (but still charming) VCS Adaptor close this afternoon. There's also a pile of game boxes and manuals for the offing as well--and yeah, they're my auctions. My wonderful wife has given me grief about the amount of cash I spent buying the TV repairman stash (most of which I'm keeping), so buy buy buy and help me make back the cost! http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?View...5&since=-1&rd=1

That's awesome! Congratulations!

After sorting through the pile of stuff I got from the TV repairman (see the 2600 forum for the complete saga), I've started putting the stuff I don't want up on ebay. The auctions include: --A minty fresh 5200 trak-ball, NIB, with the tape still on the metal strip. --A boxed VCS adaptor --8 game boxes with 7 manuals, catalogs and other odds and ends. Here you go--bid early, bid often: http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?View...5&since=-1&rd=1

I was mildly ticked off Steven Kent's comment (below) but I have to admit it's pretty funny. If nothing else, I like his book, which my wife gave me for Christmas a few years ago. "Many who go back and play the older games are often surprised, however, at the crudeness of the graphics, said Steven L. Kent, author of The Ultimate History of Video Games. The 1982 game River Raid is a good example, he said. Players fly a fighter jet over a river filled with ships and barges but "when you go back, you see that the river was a blue rectangle with lots of gray rectangles for boats." "A lot of people look back on old games like a kind of Camelot. Only when you do, you see that the castle smelled, the food was rancid and the maidens were bloated."

A few years ago, I picked up the game and manual at a junk store that's about 45 minutes from me. When I got home, I tried it out, couldn't get it to work and (shudder) had to read the manual. That's when I discovered I didn't have the coupler. I went back to the junk store 2 weeks later, and after 20 minutes of serious digging, I found it! I had to pay another $2 for it, because the owner didn't care that it belonged to the game I'd bought previously; it was in his store so it wasn't leaving without money changing hands. I was happy to pay it

They tended to roughly match the color of the box they came in, and the color of the text on the manual cover (at least once they abandoned the lil' black book format).

Yep, all those boxes came with the games. No manuals for the numbered boxes though, for some reason. I thought the numbered Street Racer had lost its end label, but it turned out to be loose inside the box, so I reattatched it. For the record, I have no interest in selling the Basic Math box (or the game), but boy, it sure seems to be a prized item--I've gotten a slew of PMs about it...

They do pop up in odd places though. I found an Atari loaner cart in a used toy shop. I had the owner pop it in a machine to see what it was because there was no title on it. It was Dodge 'em and I thought, "Oh, I already have the real one, so there's no point in spending $3 on it." Yes, I had just started collecting and didn't properly appreciate what I'd found. Yes, I still kick myself about it. Hard.

Oh, i'm not complaining. Some of my carts had crummy labels, so to be able to replace them with ones from this stash was nice. Also, as noted, I don't have many boxed games, and there's a bunch of manuals that I needed, so over all, this was a sweet score.

I'd say that's about right, maybe $2-3 more or less, depending on what your local atari haunts would charge. Bottom line is that if you're happy with them when you get them, then it was worth it.

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Well, I bought the stash from the TV repairman for $100. Like anything you hear described on the phone for you, it's a mix of good and less good when you finally see the real thing up close, but I'm satisfied. In total, it was 121 games where the rarest game was Jawbreaker. It turned out I actually had every game. Nonetheless, I was able to replace a lot of games in my collection with ones that had better labels and I got about 30 label variations out of it too. By far, most of this collection was from the 70s era of Atari--pre-picture label Atari games. Out of 121 games, maybe 25 were third-party games. There were about 5 duplicates, as he said, but they were what you'd expect--Combat, Space Invaders, etc. Only 2 games were dead after I cleaned the contacts--Demon Attack and Asteroids, so no great loss. All but about 5 games had pink nailpolish dots on the end. I suspect that since he used to rent games, this was to ensure that people didn't rent a game and replace it with a dead copy of it at home. I managed to get the polish off of about 80percent of them but in the other cases, the dots were on the labels. At this point, I have to express my gratitude to the great people at Apollo, Tigervision and early on at Atari who laminated their labels (those Atari picture labels are not laminated ), so that I could take the polish off without huring the label. The game boxes are in great shape, and I got three of the book-styled numbered boxes with the games and manuals. I've never seen these before--someone last week commented on the boards that they have a great 'high class' feel to them, and that's certainly the case! Out of all the game boxes, I only had 4 already and they, too, were not in as good a shape as these, so I'm happy with that. Also, the 2600 system box is different than the one I already had, so I'm keeping it. It also had the inside cardboard to hold a system, which I didn't have in my 'old' system box, so that's a plus. I'm still sorting through the manuals, but there's a ton that were to games not in this pile (which is fine, because I had the games in question, so now I have manuals to go with 'em). As for the 5200 stuff, I didn't expect that. He had said there was an adaptor so I knew about it, but the trak-ball, I thought was going to be for a 2600. This is a primo find though, as it's all mint in box in its bag with the foam holding it in place, never used. The metal stripe across the top of it even still has see-through purple tape across it to keep it from being scratched. There's about 7 boxes for games, and manuals to go with them, but no games themselves. I don't plan to keep the 5200 stuff, so if anyone want to make an offer, PM me. Anyway, I'm happy with how this turned out. Thanks to everyone for their advice. Clive

Maybe this is common, but I've never seen this before. I broke out a 2600 I got in a "Service Exchange Only" and noticed for the first time that the switches on it are rounded with a mirrored chrome finish, while the other 2600s I own are shaved flat on the ends. Are these mirrored switches common and I've just never found one before?

I believe the porn star in question was Marilyn Chambers, who started out as a model on Ivory Soap boxes. Actually, I've never seen one of her movies (no, really); I know this because I worked as a page in the local library and shelved her paperback biography one day (I can't believe we had it!) and the whole gist of the cover copy was along the lines of 'she went from squeaky clean to gettin' dirty' or something equally stupid.

Multimedia 1.0 here in New York City must make a buttload of cash. They're on one of the biggest trendy streets here--St. Marks Place--and boy, are they overpriced on everything--but they also HAVE everything. Looking through the glass of their Atari cart cabinet always brings a tear to my eye.

My little brother owned Math Grand Prix, which everyone who came over had to try because no one had ever seen it before. They always realized pretty quickly that it stunk but they invariably insisted on playing a race out to the end. Yawn. Sooner or later, the "this is really your game, not your little brother's" jokes would start and for some reason, those really got under my skin.

Well, my email worked. He wound up going back up to the attic, doing a proper inventory and here's the total of what he has: 121 games, 5 of which are duplicates, and 25 are CIB. 7 empty game boxes with no corresponding games. "Manuals for just about all the games that aren't in boxes" A CIB Indy 500 set A 5200 VCS adaptor unit 1 set of paddles, 2 joysticks, 2 switch boxes 1 Atari VCS box-empty. 1 Trak-Ball mint in box A few loose 5200 games I'm going to see the stash on Saturday morning. He wants $125 for it all, and I had offered $100 previously when he estimated it was 85 games, and hadn't found the VCS adaptor, extra controllers and empty boxes. Depending on what I find when I see it all, I suspect we'll land somewhere in between. Now I'm just hoping A-that there's some good rare stuff I don't have in there, and B-that those duplicates are all Quadruns, Crazy Climbers, Chuckwagons, Eli's Ladders, Glibs, and/or Waterworlds. (Well, I can dream, can't I?) Wish me luck!

Basically I went with what y'all said, except I did offer more than $65. Here in the suburbs of New York City, everything costs an arm and a leg. People won't spit on you for less than 5 bucks, so $65 would be a slap in the face; and let's face it, it's also way below ebay value, which is likely what he'd try to compare it to. Here's what I ended up emailing to him: "Thanks for the phone call; I appreciate it that you went searching for those Atari games. I know you wanted me to give you a price before coming up there, but that’s a hard thing to do without knowing what games you have or the condition of the boxes. If it has to be a sight-unseen offer, then I offer $100, breaking it down as $1 for each of the 85 2600 games, $10 for the trak-ball and $5 for the box. I feel $100 is a lot of money to throw around without knowing exactly what I’m buying, so I hope you feel it's a fair amount. Let me know what you think; thanks again." I worded it so that it will make him think twice about not telling me the games. If he calls me up, lists the games and says the magic word "Quadrun," then yeah, I'll pay a bit more. If it saves me a trip for games I already have, then that's good too. If I don't buy the lot, I'll send his contact info on to all you folks who've already(!) PM'd me for it and you vultures can rip him to shreds. Now to wait and see what he says...

There are 2 versions of the CD around, and the more common one has all 12 games in NTSC and PAL formats, documents of the company, ad scans, manuals, history of the company, the game development software they mentioned and more. I have the earlier version, which has a ton of Vectrex stuff on there for no apparent reason other than that they could so why not. Either one is a bargain if you own a Supercharger!

That's sweet--I've been collecting 10 years and I've never even seen it, much less for 5 bucks!

As I predicted, the TV repairman dove into his attic and called me today to tell me what he found. That "100 games in their boxes" turned out to be about 85 games (no duplicates though), about 20-25 of which are in boxes. Other stuff he found included a trak-ball new in the box, an empty 2600 box and some 5200 games. That's a good stash of stuff, and if I was just starting out collecting, I'd be estatic. However, it's a tough call for me. He wants to sell it all as a lot, but I'm basically just interested in the games; I have a trak-ball (admittedly in a crappy box, but good enough that I'm not dying for a better one), don't care about the 5200 games and don't want the empty 2600 box since I'll never find the 2600 unit with matching serial numbers to go with it. I can't reasonably ask him to type up a list or read over the phone the 85 games, so now I'm in a quandry. I already own 370 games so odds are that I have the majority (perhaps even all) of his 85 already, and while I don't have many boxed games (maybe 40-50), the big dollar signs that are surely flashing in his eyes are not worth it for the handful of boxed games that I wouldn't have (unless of course there's a Eli's Ladder in there, but we all know the likelyhood of that). Odds are that 40-50 of the 85 games are common Rarity 1s and 2s which go for 50 cents anyway. So now if I want to see what the story is, I'm going to have to drive an hour and a half to his store, see what he has, I can't cherry-pick the games I want, and invariably I'll have to dicker over the price, which I hate hate hate to do. While obviously I'd resell what I didn't need, I suspect that I wouldn't be able to sell them for enough to break even. The kicker is that he's pretty insistent that he wants an offer over the phone before he drags it all out of his attic to his car and takes it to his store. I understand his point of view, as that's a pain in the butt to do all that work if you don't know if a sale will come from it, but I'm extremely reluctant to make an offer til I see the stuff, so that may be a deal breaker for either one of us. It's not a trust thing--he's a nice guy and clearly isn't looking to scam me; our deal last week went fine, even though I probably overpaid about $15-20, which is my own fault for not being more steadfast in what I was willing to pay. $20 is not going to kill me anyway. The issue is more than he doesn't know what the going rate is for this stuff and reading between the lines of our conversation, he's suspecting a windfall. The whole thing is so discouraging that a big part of me is saying that I ought to walk away from it. And yet--what if there's a few games that I've been looking for in there? So--any advice on what I should do? Obviously whatever I choose is my own decision, but some input from fellow collectors would be a big help. And if I ought to make an offer for all this stuff, given what I know about it sight unseen, what's a fair and reasonable amount to offer? Clive

When I cleaned the joysticks I discovered that there were two kinds in the pile--the ones that have the coupler ring on them (the ring that you mentioned is hard to remove without breaking) and ones that simply had tabs on the end of the stick sheath, which plugged directly into holes in the top of the stick. So does anyone know where i could score about 3 coupler rings?

Thank God I don't weigh 370 pounds!

Losing the manuals so that you had to play a variation game for a few minutes to find the right one you were looking for (especially a pain with a game like Space Invaders, with 100+ variations). Trading games with kids down the street for a few days, only to discover that their game sucked and you had loaned them your favorite game. Dumb-ass kid down the street losing the manuals.