freewheel

150 hours. That's longer than an entire PRGE (including setup/teardown). You could stream, without repetition, for the entire event. Just sayin'....

Now I feel bad. I recycled mine a while back, thinking "there's no possible way anyone would want these..."

That surprises me that so many titles came from the manufacturer shrinkwrapped. Shrinkwrapping really only seemed to become standard post-crash, from what I can remember. I'd have guessed maybe half the catalog would have been shrinkwrapped - maybe because it's so Mattel-heavy, it skews things. Unless of course the stores that I shopped in BITD removed manufacturer plastic. That wasn't unheard of well into the 90s.

No one's "surprised" by it, it's there in black and white. I guess you have to live outside the USA to understand. It's seriously frustrating to be unable to bid on 3/4 of Ebay because the shipping to your literal next-door neighbour is 3x what it actually costs the seller. And sellers miss out on my bids as a result. There are plenty of auctions that I'd gladly have bid higher than the final winning bid, if not for the insane shipping cost. But guess trying to improve things for everyone is a bad thing, so I'll drop this.

So what you Americans are saying is... NHL Hockey is rare and valuable?

ROFL. Some variation is expected, and sure, region-to-region does show some surprising differences - but there's no way in hell that any 2 places in the continental US vary by $100+ for the same small item to the same location. And when someone in the US can mail me a large 10lb package for $16, there's just no way that USPS charges someone else $30 to send me 1lb. Ebay sellers set the shipping price, and a LOT of them add ridiculous "handling fees" - everyone knows this. I can't believe this is even an argument. Hell, I've gone straight to the USPS calculator dozens of times, and it's almost never even close to the seller's quoted price (I don't bother checking when the shipping rate seems reasonable). It also doesn't help that lazy sellers seem to somehow pick the most expensive option, when they DO use actual USPS rates. I don't need 2 day express delivery on my Intellivision games, thanks A flat rate up to 4 lbs box to Canada is currently $24.95 from ANY US zip code (and there are cheaper options, given 30 seconds of research). So, yeah. CIB games costing more than that are people gouging, end of discussion.

I snuck a peek at the other thread. I think we should be able to come up with some fairly simple rules to keep this more sane next time. 1. Common carts that are basically destroyed - don't need to be shipped. I saw at least one that the label was all scratched out with pen. Unless that's a Spiker!, no one wants it. I guess it was a semi-uncommon cart, but still. There's at least one DK in there that looks like complete crap - no one wants that, I guarantee you. lol. 2. Everyone has their own definition of "common", but you hardcore collectors are a bit more severe. Kool-Aid Man, Super Pro Football, Interphase games: these aren't remotely rare or terribly valuable, sure, but I almost never see them in the wild. I'd never consider them common at all. However, I think we can all agree that re-shipping copies of Lock n Chase or LV P&BJ is a bit stupid. Perhaps we could come up with a list of 10-20 carts to never bother with, unless they're sealed/excellent condition/variants. Boxed copies would be held to a less strict standard, obviously, but I'm pretty sure at least half of those loose carts are ones that literally every collector has. 3. Maybe we could have a "quality" index of sorts. I know it will hurt some people to hear it, but a few years back I tossed several dozen VERY bad condition boxes. Like, the gatefold is half torn off, or someone's cat puked on it. I think we can safely not spend the money sending these around to 30 people. And I think it might be a good idea to set up some kind of shipping fund, for the poor bastard who sends cross-border. Maybe everyone can toss a couple of bucks into an envelope that stays with the box, and when it leaves the US/Canada the money can be used to subsidize the extra cost. We've talked about grab bags per country/region, but that would seriously make the non-US grab bags kinda boring. Maybe my "rules" above get applied when it crosses the border - whomever is the last USian to have it, gets a bunch of free junk

The more I look at it, the more I'm convinced it's almost entirely greedy sellers. I used to think it was solely some insane GSP markup, but... I was poking around at some lots of Transformers the other day, and I found a lot that probably weighs as much as an INTV console and several games. Shipping to Canada, via GSP, was like $16. Yet we often see single carts, the kinds of things that are $3 US shipping, cost $30 to ship to Canada. It makes no sense unless sellers are inflating their "international" shipping something fierce. That being said, shipping a single cart from Canada to the US now costs me around $13 USD if I include tracking. But that's just Canada Post going insane over the past couple of years (plus our dollar rising steadily). Ebay won't even let me set the shipping that high for a single cart, so I lose a bit on every sale.

That's amazing! Thanks for sharing the pics

Child's Play thanks Ignorama!

I'm busy checking for the presence of the Intellivoice and ECS. Just sayin.

I got a few, I think. You rock!

I'm a fan of the "river that catches on fiiii-re!" part. Of course that will never happen again, as the EPA is stronger than ever.

Those definitely look like EPROMs to me. Very cool. MS BASIC was on bloody everything back then - guess nothing changes.

Don't keep the rest of us in suspense!

Oscar, If you're going to add Intellivoice checking, maybe add ECS checking as well? This is the code I've been using: check_ecs: PROCEDURE ecs_on = 0 'default off, to be safe i = PEEK($F0) POKE $F0, i+1 IF PEEK($F0) = i+1 THEN ecs_on = 1 END We talked about this over a year ago, so I don't know if there's a better method. This has been working just fine for me so far.

I can think of a rarer one

Just wear a condom.

Make sure you mention Desert Bus for me I just never go on Facebook anymore.

Canadians (or anyone else after me) - anyone collecting Colecovision boxes? I'm trying to clean up a bit of space, and they'd add basically nothing to the shipping weight, so... I can't remember the last one. Were the rules "Inty only, mostly"?

It's a demo display for all of the old handheld games. Like the original Mattel Football. They'd plug one handheld onto each cord that you see.

Any magnetic tape can be copied. Even with the more unusual format that the KC has (being 4 track), standard consumer gear should be able to do it. This has been brought up many times by people much smarter than I. Either the few who own these haven't bothered, or haven't shared yet - let's face it, given that no one seems to have a working tape unit, what's the point? It sure would be nice to have them dumped for preservation purposes. I suspect they have been a long while ago, kinda like the Tutorvision ROMs that we're only now seeing come to light.

Don't take the cyber stalking too personally. When people make unverifiable claims on Ebay (especially the type that would drive up the cost of an item), folks tend to get curious. There's been a lot of scammy activity over the years.

We're adding people faster than the thing actually moves. Mayhap we should title the thread "2021" just to keep it realistic