hookem

I'd say it's easy to collect for Vectrex, but expensive. Since it was kind of recognized as something special pretty early on in the era of classic collecting, a lot of the stuff has been preserved and been in collections for a long time. Plus with the limited amount of official releases during its active lifespan, there aren't that many items needed to make a complete collection. Not like the NES or 2600. But unfortunately everything is eBay or craigslist, or speciality resellers. Most classic video game stores I've been to will have at least something vectrex, but it's just a few things.

Not necessarily, since each factory would need to have an independent count. There is no way they could know what the production number was on at one factory when they were cranking them out at another. So EP's number would be completely independent of SV, or AT for that matter. At least that's what I assume. I guess they *could* keep track of the total production number if the factories ran at independent time shifts, and passed along the last number at the end of each shift. But that seems unlikely,

Spider-Man

In the 5200 serial number thread, it's been discussed, and I do think that is indeed a date code: EP = El Paso, SV = Sunnyvale, AT = Atari Taiwan. First 2 digits of the number is the week, and last digit is the year. So EP-084 is manufactured in El Paso the 8th week of 1984. You'll most often see 3 or 4 as the last digit, but there are some with 2 and a high week number.

Yeah, he was there with the Nintendo Quest filmmakers. They screened the movie and he was on the panel afterwards. http://nintendoquest.com/?p=1959

Sprinkles are for winners.

He already sold it, this was his auction: http://www.ebay.com/itm/261952037888. He had talked about how he acquired the stuff in other threads - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/136001-starpath-date-codes/?p=3259371 and about selling it http://atariage.com/forums/topic/231631-starpath-supercharger-complete-collection-for-sale-sold/?p=3269049 Yeah, I love the Supercharger and pick up anything I find for it when I come across something... would love to get those last 2 rare games, but I'm not paying ebay prices for them.

I disagree. The side that doesn't have the label is the front side, and it looks like it does have the 5 screws. The faded label is the back-side label, where there are no visible screw holes, which is correct. The difference in fading is due to the materials; it's the same on all my supercharger carts. The white tape cases stay perfectly white, but the white labels have browned a bit over time. I also don't really feel like there is much motive to fake a supercharger tape, especially one with no front label (which would essentially be worthless, unless there was some proof it was a prototype or something). And the ink run on the numbers makes it impossible to tell a "font difference". The color of the ink, non-lining up numbers, and somewhat sloppy print looks exactly like what I see on my Supercharger cassettes (some of which I purchased originally BITD). I feel comfortable saying it looks 100% authentic to me. But it's probably just a copy of Rabbit Transit, per the date code. The front label adhesive probably dried up and the label likely just fell off, perhaps many years ago. Happens with end labels on carts all the time.

It's been so long, but I think our family got our first 2600 around Christmas 1979. I believe the first games we bought were Space Invaders and Asteriods.... so it would have been one of the two. I do vividly remember the Pac Man release date a couple of years later. My Mom stood in line to buy it for us during the day; what an incredible day that was, to come back from school and she'd gotten us the game! I suppose that was the first big video game release date? Certainly there have been many more since...

Does the power supply get warm when the unit is plugged in? Also, just to eliminate the obvious (since you said you had it in your closet for years)... Is the channel select on the right channel? Did you try using deoxit/connector cleaner on the power and channel select switches, and working those switches several times?

Since you said games, not cartridges, and I did play a lot of Supercharger BITD... here is my list of original era best games. The Official Frogger (Supercharger) Kaboom Demon Attack River Raid Yar's Revenge Escape from the Mindmaster (Supercharger) Pitfall Donkey Kong Phoenix Tac-Scan If we were to include homebrews, the list would be completely different. Probably a good 5 out of my top 10 2600 games have to be homebrews, they are just soooo much better.

Had a fantastic time both days at the fest. So nice to meet some of you... special thanks to Darrell Spice who, two sentences into our conversation, immediately starts walking me through his amazing homebrews (released and unreleased!) Amazing games indeed. And yes, Ernest Cline, Howard Scott Warshaw, and Mike Mika were willing to sign my dig cart (well, the certificate anyway. still afraid to open that puppy due to the stank) Very cool to talk to them.

Technically he is playing on a "standard" TV

Tempest is great, worth the money. Star Wars, Montezuma's Revenge, Joust, Robotron (with the two-stick control base), Qix (simple but fun), and Popeye were the ones I loved most.

I've had bad RF cables before, did you manage to try another one? Also, and this may be something obvious that you've already tried... but since you're autoscan test seems to show some signal coming from the unit, you have tried manipulating the cable while it's connected and on? I mean really jiggling it and bending the ends right at the connector. Just to see if anything changes. I also usually do the connector cleaner/deoxit on all the switches of a system that has been sitting for a long time. Power, channel select, reset etc. And switch them back and forth a lot.

Looks great! Looks like it "should" if it was from a few years earlier. Now you just have to make a Sears Telegames 7800 with darker more luxurious woodgrain.

If anyone is interested, I'm getting rid of my silver label hangman with grey 5-language manual (given up hope finding the box!) and The Official Frogger from my Supercharger collection. http://www.ebay.com/itm/252001451041 http://www.ebay.com/itm/252003327543

That's a Wico Boss. It's solid and reliable, like you'd expect from a Wico, but the button-only-on-the stick thing gets old very fast with most games.

#08390 Phoenix. Afraid to open bag and smell. I wonder if some of the special guests who were involved in the documentary would be willing to autograph dig carts at the upcoming Classic Game Fest in Austin?

Wow, that's quite a score. Original Arcadia Supercharger, too -- before they changed the name. And the Epyx mail order games... have you seen what those two go for on ebay?

Judging from reply #10 to this thread, that's probably Rabbit Transit.

The problem is that 2600 lots are just so darn common on ebay, it's hard to get a decent price. Potential bidders will be presented with a bunch of other Atari 2600 bundles at lowball prices when looking at yours. Even though they may not be A/V modded and have good working rebuilt controllers, they'll still drag your price down. Plus shipping on a big lot will scare off some buyers. Some collectors might see the value of the CIB games (even though they are common), and may bid to what those are worth, but you'll end up basically throwing in the system and controllers for way less that what they are worth. That's why I've been selling my spare 2600 systems on Craigslist instead. I'll still sell rare carts (where mine will be the only one or one of just a couple for sale at the time), or things that are easy to ship on ebay. But bulky heavy common stuff is just not worth the hassle for the price you can get. So if I have a bundle that I would hope to sell for $100 (if I'm lucky) on ebay, I just put it up on CL for $75-80. Factoring in the fees, hassle of shipping, and waiting to get the money... it's about the same and the CL buyer gets a decent deal. So if it were me, I'd take the system and a couple of the most common CIB games, plus any loose commons you might have, and put them on CL for $80-100 or so. Then put the rest of the CIB games together in a lot or two on ebay; if you are lucky, the cheaper shipping will lure bidders to pay closer to what the full value of the games are worth. But that's just me. That said, I think your absolute best case scenario would be around $200 for everything if it were split up like I mentioned. If you put it all up together on ebay, you'd probably want to start it at a decently high price or put a $199 BIN and just expect to wait awhile until the one customer who will pay that comes around. You can always roll the dice at a low starting bid, and you'll get bidders, but don't expect a bidding war on anything 2600 related unless it includes a rare cart, so it would likely go for a LOT less that what I think you'd hope for...

Arcade ports were a novelty on the 2600, rarely replicating the true fun of the original game. Original titles developed for the platform are the true gems that provided endless hours of fun. Kaboom. Pitfall. Enduro. River Raid. Easy decision = Activision

I would have thought you meant - https://www.atariage.com/magazines/magazine_page.html?MagazineID=1&CurrentPage=1

So when you say you "opened up the nm purchases", you are just talking about the zip lock baggie, right? Not the actual shrink-wrapped original box itself? Because I'm just wondering if there is any correlation to the lack of stank and any functionality to the carts. AFAIK, no dig cart has actually been found in working order... right? I purchased a Phoenix dig cart, and it not only was shrink-wrapped but came with an additional plastic external box (and pricetag) from Target... something I had forgotten for 30 years, but when I saw it I immediately recognized it as a theft-deterrent extra casing from back in the 80s. It made me wonder if that could have offered more protection to the cart itself. I have no plans on opening mine, but I still wonder if the additional covering might have provided extra protection that could result in some of these dig carts actually being functional.