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Missed deals


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Egads! I hate staying up all hours of the night. Anyhow, I was reading these posts and I got punched in the face with the ol' Missed Deals Sadness....

 

Example:

 

About two months after I bought my Atari XEGS. A very good friend (at the time) was moving and he didn't want a majority of his old 2600 cartridges. So he offered me the entire box... for free! Like a fricken idiot that I was at the time, I took one look at the cartridges, saw how big they were, and told him they wouldn't fit in my XE. I realize now, how much I blew that opportunity because he was very picky in his game selections and he made a huge effort not to obtain repeats. It was all a jumble, but I'd guess about 40 cartridges, easy.

 

Near the end of the short life of my XEGS, there was a really cool mail order company that had every single game for sell for a half dozen consoles and computers at the time. Their catalogue was extremely plain (black and white, no pictures save for logos) but very thick and dense with the listings of game titles and their prices. The last page was always reserved for their monthly specials. It was the company that I purchased my precious Lynx from :) Anyhow, for nearly a year and a half, the specials page listed four groups (lots) of used Atari XE games. The four lots were comprised of every game that was listed in their catalogue. The prices then were amazing! For each lot, the price was the same as one brand new cartridge! Of course, like a dork, I didn't buy them since my buying habits managed to land me at least two games from each lot. I didn't want to buy the lots since I didn't want any repeats in my collection. If I had purchased those four lots, I would have a near complete XEGS cartridge collection. I'd be much much further along that I am now and I could've sold the extra cartridges when eBay went online (after I got my PC of course) :(

 

My mother took me to a sealed auction one time when I was around 12 or so. A sealed auction is when there are unopened shipping boxes and crates and you bid on them not knowing what's in there. For the damndest reason, there was a very large crate that kept, "calling," to me. Every time I passed that crate, I would look very closely at the crate wondering what was in it. I had around $200 in cash on me and I kept wondering if I should even make an attempt to bid on it. Of course it was my first time at any auction whatsoever and I had spent a lot of time earning the $200 so I didn't even listen to my heart. I sat there through the auction and the crate when for around $60. Later when I went outside, I saw that the contents of the crate was being loaded into a large pickup truck. Anyone want to guess what was inside? I'll save you the trouble. The year was 1990 and the crate had boxes and boxes of consoles and games. Mostly Genesis (from what I could see as he pulled them out), mostly in Japanese, all of them apparently brand spanking new.

 

Is there a little man screaming that I can pick from? Oh here, I'll just repeat these two a few times. :o :_( :o :_( :o :_(

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I think that's part of what makes so many of us collectors, after all. It's knowing we missed the chance, and vowing to make up for it. For me it's knowing that I could have used my allowance (even a pitiful $5 a week adds up over time) to stock up on Atari games when they went on clearance at all the toy stores where I lived, and in SHEER STUPIDITY turning up my nose at them because I had a Commodore 64. :(

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yea well when i started collecting i was walking around a good will and found a BOXED COMPLETE atari pong system for 5 dollers and passed it up ( on my dads advice) because i figured id get pong a billion times over because i thought it to be super common DOH!

 

and another time i passed up a complete turbo grafix 16 for ten dollers cause i was going by my dads advice again!!!!!!!!

 

my dad was looking for me and he came home and mentioned he almost bought me an atari except he saw that it was'nt real so he left it i freaked out and managed to convinced him to drive me the hour and a half long ride out there only for it to be gone ( it was an irish fake 2600 system)

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My dad has tried to talk me out of things like that many of times, but I never believe him. Like when I came home with a boxed commodore 64 set for $2, and he said "why the hell would you spend $2 on that? You'll never play it", and when just about everything I got at Cinciclassic he said "what is that and why'd you get it". I really don't care though, because I usually buy it anyways, as he doesnt' MAKE me not get it, he just advises against it.

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It seems like parents are the reason for most things that go wrong in video gaming, whether it be them telling you not to get it, or your mom running the sweeper over your hookups and controller cord for a system.

 

BTW - my dad always thinks I got a good deal after I let him play the video game stuff I bought though. Like when I let him play my 2600 and all the games I got at cinciclassic, he had a blast.

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When I got back into Atari in the mid-90s, I was focused only on the 2600, because I didn't want my collecting to get out of hand - heh, you can tell from my sig how well that worked out in the end.

 

But anyway, while I was still 2600-only, I saw and ignored a boxed 5200 at a second-hand store.

 

Later, when I had opened myself up to all that was Atari, I kicked myself for not grabbing that 5200, especially since I had such a hard time finding one in the wild. Eventually, I did find one - ironically, I drove far out of my area to a flea market where I had remembered seeing one before, and by sheer luck found one (maybe the same one) again.

 

So that was twice I passed up on snagging a 5200. Probably why of all my Atari consoles I seem to value my 5200 the most.

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I once passed up a TurboDuo for $30... and again the next day, which was half-price day, when I could have had it for $15. Stupidly, the reason I passed on it was because (at the time) I thought that it was a CD-i... which would have been worth the $15 anyways. At least I haven't found any games for either system, otherwise I would be more pissed off for passing on it.

 

I also once went into a thrift store, and saw a guy walking around with TWO SegaCD's, both of them with a Genesis connected to it. One was an old model, and one a new model. I can't imagine the guy had been there for anything more than 30 minutes before me... if only I had gotten there sooner...

 

--Zero

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In 1984 when I was 13 and decided I wanted an electric guitar, I sold my Colecovison and Atari setups to get the $400 for the guitar. I had carts and controllers for both systems that are worth quite a bit today and hard to find. Everything had a box and instructions.

 

I still love that guitar but I curse myself each morning for decision.

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  • 2 weeks later...
BTW - my dad always thinks I got a good deal after I let him play the video game stuff I bought though.  Like when I let him play my 2600 and all the games I got at cinciclassic, he had a blast.

 

That's cool that you two can enjoy games together.

 

It's one thing to pass up a game 'cuz you have no money, but at a store that buys out discontinued or backrupt places or whatever, they had 7800 Centipede and 2600 Gravitar, and for some dumb reason I bought Centipede, which is pretty common, and Gravitar isn't...duh. (bonks head)

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BTW - my dad always thinks I got a good deal after I let him play the video game stuff I bought though.  Like when I let him play my 2600 and all the games I got at cinciclassic, he had a blast.

 

That's cool that you two can enjoy games together.

 

 

Yeah, I guess it is. We had a long session of combat the other day, he did way better than I thought he would. I killed him with tanks, and I think I won a few more games than him with jets, but he killed me using the old planes(or are they helicopters?) I was very surprised that somebody who hasn't played atari for 5+ years still could play that good.

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Yeah, I guess it is.  We had a long session of combat the other day, he did way better than I thought he would.  I killed him with tanks, and I think I won a few more games than him with jets, but he killed me using the old planes(or are they helicopters?)  I was very surprised that somebody who hasn't played atari for 5+ years still could play that good.

 

Heh, sometimes that happens...and yeah, they're planes, no helicopters in that one...

 

Oh yeah, and one other game regret was getting rid of my Microvision at a garage sale, but then again, I was a young kid at the time and didn't know any better (or at least that's the excuse I use :) )...

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Am I the only one who's thought, "Man, I wish I could've forseen the future in 1987" (re: the coming of E-Bay, I mean)?

 

I would have pooled my beanwalking money and bought surplus Atari games by the crate, and stored them all in a warm dry place on my parent's farm. Of course they would have thought I was completely insane, especially if I tried to tell them "but SOMEDAY all of this will be valuable to people - trust me!"

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A long time ago, I gave my ColecoVision away, along with a shoebox full of games. At the time, although I liked the games, I realized that I pretty much never played them. I regret that now, since I've had a hard time rebuilding the collection (Still missing some staples like B.C.'s Quest For Tires, and Buck Rogers). Luckily, I didn't lose out anything terribly rare.

 

By the way, I'm sure you've all gotten the "Why would you buy that crap?" response at least a dozen times... Am I the only one who's lucky enough to get praise for finding good deals? I'll come home and show my mom a whole computer I got for $8, and she'll be impressed that I was able to get such a good deal. Although she's still not happy that I have so much stuff, at least she can recognize the value.

 

--Zero

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A long time ago, I gave my ColecoVision away, along with a shoebox full of games. At the time, although I liked the games, I realized that I pretty much never played them. I regret that now, since I've had a hard time rebuilding the collection (Still missing some staples like B.C.'s Quest For Tires, and Buck Rogers). Luckily, I didn't lose out anything terribly rare.

 

By the way, I'm sure you've all gotten the "Why would you buy that crap?" response at least a dozen times... Am I the only one who's lucky enough to get praise for finding good deals? I'll come home and show my mom a whole computer I got for $8, and she'll be impressed that I was able to get such a good deal. Although she's still not happy that I have so much stuff, at least she can recognize the value.

 

--Zero

 

At first I get the "why would you buy that crap" then I let my dad play it and it turns into "damn, that was a good deal". So I will eventually get praise most of the time. Although I do get a lot of the "what the hell will you use that for" or "why'd you buy that" and I reply with a good "because it's my damn money so back off :P :D "

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A long time ago, I gave my ColecoVision away, along with a shoebox full of games. At the time, although I liked the games, I realized that I pretty much never played them.  

 

Uh, that probably means that you go under the obscure little-known term as "collector" :)

 

Am I the only one who's lucky enough to get praise for finding good deals? I'll come home and show my mom a whole computer I got for $8, and she'll be impressed that I was able to get such a good deal. Although she's still not happy that I have so much stuff, at least she can recognize the value.

 

Yeah, that's cool. What else are mom's (are at least open-minded people) for?

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  • 6 years later...

In 1990 there were a few people selling Atari games in Boston. Some of the venders had stacks of Atari 2600 carts all for 25 cents each. I bought Jungle Hunt from one of them. Another had about 20 orange carts, he said they were Atari 2600 games. I passed those by, I should have bargained a price with him, those might have been Activision proto carts. But my interests were to get to the arcades nearby and play games. I was not into collecting games back then.

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