My Air Raid Auction Update

[HFK]

 

 

I have some Brazil TRON t-handle carts in my watch list right now contimplating doing just that, a few CIB baby blue t-handle Air Raid repros. I'm just worried if I sell them outside of the well known collecting circles they would be abused\misrepresented for resale.

 

 

I'd be in for one. I have been kinda looking for a cheap t-handle (yeah, right, actually been looking for some time now) to dye blue. I was then gonna see if the guts of my repro would fit inside and if not send it to somebody to finish it. And mine would never leave my collection.

[homerwannabee]

Wow, this thread is over 1,000 posts!

[Shawn]

Wow, this thread is over 1,000 posts!

 

 

Ya this has to be the fastest growing thread ever. And for sure the fastest to reach as many posts without a doubt.

[fiddlepaddle]

Wow, this thread is over 1,000 posts!

 

 

Ya this has to be the fastest growing thread ever. And for sure the fastest to reach as many posts without a doubt.

...but once the auction's over, it'll die fast. The ET thread will go on forever!

[potatohead]

History in the making right now though

[Shawn]

Wow, this thread is over 1,000 posts!

 

 

Ya this has to be the fastest growing thread ever. And for sure the fastest to reach as many posts without a doubt.

...but once the auction's over, it'll die fast. The ET thread will go on forever!

 

 

Nah, that thread will die too. It will die about a month after someone digs up some Atari items from that area.

[Mr. Postman]

I stumbled across this on eBay. Man oh man....my sex fell out.

I remember buying toys at Tuesday morning as a kid. Kind of a boring "close-out" grandma shop with lots of cheap tea pots and stuff if memory serves. Since Air Raid seems to be from Los Angeles CA, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire stock of them was exclusive to Tuesday Morning. I'm quite surprised that this isn't a Mexican bootleg, being that it is just a Space jockey hack that's rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise with the sprites swapped for different ones. Same sounds, same 12 gameplay options, same general gameplay.

 

And jesus, that Men-A-Vision logo with a rainbow behind it gave me a good lol. Visions of Men it is.

Edited April 8, 2010 by ResOGlas

[+jeremiahjt]

I stumbled across this on eBay. Man oh man....my sex fell out.

I remember buying toys at Tuesday morning as a kid. Kind of a boring "close-out" grandma shop with lots of cheap tea pots and stuff if memory serves. Since Air Raid seems to be from Los Angeles CA, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire stock of them was exclusive to Tuesday Morning. I'm quite surprised that this isn't a Mexican bootleg, being that it is just a Space jockey hack that's rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise with the sprites swapped for different ones. Same sounds, same 12 gameplay options, same general gameplay.

 

And jesus, that Men-A-Vision logo with a rainbow behind it gave me a good lol. Visions of Men it is.

 

Is there anybody who remembers buying or seeing Air Raid at any other store? What about that Terry Rutt guy, did he ever mention how or where he got his copy?

 

Maybe Tuesday Morning was the exclusive retailer.

[MrAtari2600]

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

 

 

I hope someone here wins it!

im watching the auction, and danggg i go offline for few days and look what happens O_O

[SoulBlazer]

 

Maybe Tuesday Morning was the exclusive retailer.

 

I wonder if this is true? Given how the game was a pirate hack, the company may have been wondering how to get these games into stores to sell in the US. They couldn't use the major chains such as Sears, Kay B Toys, Toys R Us, and so on, due to both the pirate status and lack of resources and money. So they sold the batch of games to the first place that would take them. If the game actually came out in 1984 when the crash was going on, that would hurt sales also.

 

It's very possible something like this happened -- a pirate Taiwan company hacks a game and makes up a small batch of them, probaly ten thousand or something. They look for a place to sell the games so, and Tuesday Morning buys the games up. The crash is starting to be felt, so perhaps not all the games are shipped out to their stores. The game simply gets lost in the pile of other junk games and discount stuff, doesn't get noticed much, and very few copies are actually sold, leaving the rest to be destroyed.

[Cebus Capucinis]

I very highly doubt that it was exclusive to Tuesday Morning, simply because that's not how a Tuesday Morning store operates. Tuesday Morning is a downstream retailer rather than an upstream retailer. They are like Ross, only more discount. The way this works is upstream retailers like Macy's, Nordstrom, Kohl's, etc. deal directly with manufacturers and get product through their specific intermediary vendors. Whenever their product doesn't sell past clearance items, what they will do is something called an 'RTV', which stands for Return to Vendor. This goes back to the buyers of the merchandise rather than the producers -- after all, the merchandiser already sold the goods to the upstream retailer at a set price. That contract has been fulfilled and the middleman vendor is responsible for left over stock.

 

What happens at this point in time is the intermediary vendors pool together and sell their left-over returned stock to downstream retailers at cut rates. Buyers for Ross, for example, go to exclusive merchandise sales where they place bids on items by the pound or pallet. They don't really know what they're getting entirely but they do know that it came from an upstream retailer and that it can be sold potentially at a discount price. They know the brand, they know the vendor, but they don't know all the specifics of the merchandise. It could be overstock, it could be mismates or factory defects, etc. etc.

 

Tuesday Morning operates as a general merchandise downstream retailer. They don't buy specific items like Ross, they just are a presence at all of these retail sales. They generally purchase electronics, housewares, etc. because these items generally can resell for a consistent percentage return. Their buyers don't ever deal directly with a manufacturer in any way, they just deal with an intermediary vendor and only then on a large lot method of downstream goods.

 

It's plausible, I guess, that Men-A-Vision may have gone directly to Tuesday Morning, but I don't think they would have gotten far. Instead they probably hocked it out to a vendor who put it in one of these bulk sale lots for merchandisers to buy and Tuesday Morning got hold of a couple pallets of it (provided that many were produced) -- any other retailer would have had an opportunity to snatch it, they just got the best bid, or it may be separate lots got sold to separate retailers.

 

Basically a buyer for a Tuesday Morning chain of stores would never even see a manufacturer or first-line production directly. They deal only with the "third-level intermediary vendors" -- those vendors that purchased the items from the "second level" intermediary vendors for the big companies that deal with the manufacturers. These vendors often buy smaller lots from multiple second-tier vendors and then pool them into large sales. That's part of the reason Tuesday Morning is called Tuesday Morning -- the vendor pool sales would occur on Mondays, with stock headed to the stores for replenishment and restock on, you guessed it, Tuesday mornings!

 

The funny thing about downstream retailers is that we often think of them as a "discount" when in fact, if you follow the price point of an item, they are actually marked up. They're obviously not selling at MSRP but the cheapest point you can actually get one of these items is at an upstream retailer at the deep discounts. 75% off something at Macy's or Kohl's will actually be a lower price point than a "discount" price at a Ross store, for example. Calvin Klein Jeans at Macy's will 75% off for $7.85 or so, but when they make their way to Ross, three levels of intermediary vendors have taken a cut out of that so Ross will adjust the price point to $19.99. Sure, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than full-price at Macy's was, but it's still more than the clearance was at Macy's.

 

I use Ross and Macy's as primary examples because I have worked for both companies on a third and fourth-tier management level. The practice is generally the same for all discounted goods, however.

 

My theory is very close to yours, however -- this Taiwanese company created a few pallets of this knock-off and tried to sell it to the direct-line buyers for Toys 'R Us, Kay Bee, etc. None of them were interested in it because of the quality of the game and sales of video games were starting to slump. So Men-A-Vision hocked it to a distributor or intermediary vendor that pooled it in a sale with other items at a much discounted rate (we can assume it cost them a lot less than the $4.99 price tag on it) but still at a reasonable 5-10% profit margin. The vendor then pooled it and sold it at a large pallet sale to any bidder, and Tuesday Morning just happened to have the bid closest to that $4.99 retail price point on it that they got a pallet or two. They didn't necessarily get all the stock, in fact, since Tuesday Morning tends to deal regionally and locally for goods (which is how they got their name, since it took 1 day to get goods to storelines if I remember right) it's probable that another discount retailer ended up with some of the stock (even if that stock was 100 games per company for a total of 200 made or so).

 

If anyone managed to read that gigantic ramble without falling asleep, basically I agree with your statement, but I don't think Tuesday Morning had it as an exclusive to their retailer alone.

[Shawn]

Wowzers!! You see the details on the 41 feedback user that retracted the $13k bid? Seems all the guy does is retract bids with that account. I say "that account" as it's clear they are up to something and must have a different account to use along side this crazy retraction crazy mess (at least I assume so).

 

30-Day Summary

Total bids: 303

Items bid on: 144

Bid activity (%) with this seller: 0%

Bid retractions: 156

Bid retractions (6 months): 233

 

 

A total of 156 bid retractions in 30 days and 233 bid retractions in 6 months? That is clearly abuse of the system. I wonder how the account has not been banned?

[crunchysuperman]

We all know who is going to end up with it anyway. Everybody else might as well not bid.

[decypher]

Wowzers!! You see the details on the 41 feedback user that retracted the $13k bid? Seems all the guy does is retract bids with that account. I say "that account" as it's clear they are up to something and must have a different account to use along side this crazy retraction crazy mess (at least I assume so).

 

30-Day Summary

Total bids: 303

Items bid on: 144

Bid activity (%) with this seller: 0%

Bid retractions: 156

Bid retractions (6 months): 233

 

 

A total of 156 bid retractions in 30 days and 233 bid retractions in 6 months? That is clearly abuse of the system. I wonder how the account has not been banned?

 

 

And no it wasn't me.

[Cebus Capucinis]

Secondary note: The fact that almost all of these games are popping up in Texas would lend some evidence to the fact that it headed through an intermediary vendor through a local bulk-rate sale to discounters like Tuesday Morning. Almost all of the discount retailers will only deal in regional areas as the profit margins are too low on shipping goods cross-country. For example, the Ross stores in this area almost always get their goods from vendors located in Seattle. This way it only takes a single day (or two at most) for logistics to get that merchandise to the outer stores in the region.

 

I think this is a correct assumption from what we know so far -- Men-A-Vision (whatever form they existed as) dealt with a vendor/distributor in the Texas or at least South/Southwest region. This vendor communicated to upstream retailers in the region about the goods and none of them were interested, so it headed to more than likely Dallas/FW for a large bulk-buy discount downstream sale. Tuesday Morning was at that sale. They generally buy most video games at these bulk lots because someone's cheap grandparents, etc. will end up getting them for a kid. They put the bid, they won, and shazam! Texas chains of Tuesday Mornings end up with Air Raid carts. Chances are it probably didn't even sell at the Tuesday Morning very well, judging from the $4.99 price point I believe it has.

 

I will tell you that discount retailers will often 'damage out' items that don't sell after a certain period of time. That period is usually 6-months to 9-months. They literally go in the back and rip up all the clothing, break all the electronics, and toss them in a dumpster. I still can't fathom this decision, as writing off donations would be a good tax break, but Ross did it. I would assume it is no different for other retailers. The cost of logistics to actually move product to donation centers and whatnot probably outweighs any tax breaks the company could get or something.

 

This would also lead to the fact that only 12 have been found so far, and this is the only one with the box. Tuesday Morning got them, Tuesday Morning couldn't sell them in Texas, so Tuesday Morning destroyed them. A "lucky" (if you can call buying a bad game lucky, well, 20 years later it is ) few managed to buy 'em before they broke 'em.

[SoulBlazer]

I think you're probaly right, Cebus -- and I DID read all of your two posts. I've never worked in retail before, so I didn't know all that, but it makes sence. I recall as a young kid in the mid 80's that a lot of places that you wouldn't expect to carry games, like supermarkets, had them and at very cheap blow out prices.

 

A lot of chains do seem to destroy stuff. I recall Wal-Mart got into trouble with that last year. I think it caused them to change their policy to make donations from then on.

 

It also raises the question -- suspose there's still a pallet of these games sitting somewhere, in the back of a warehouse or something? It's not that probable, but stranger things have happened. Atari had stuff sitting in their warehouses for years they never even knew they had!

[Cebus Capucinis]

Well, if it went through my chain of events, there's definitely not a pallet anywhere. Downstream retailers are meticulous about ensuring that old stock is destroyed or moved out after a time period. At Ross they have a special team that just goes through every week and scans every item in the store on a PDT or Telxon, and if it beeps as older than 6 months it gets put in a cart, taken to the back, for the freight crew to destroy.

 

The middlemen vendors wouldn't keep anything either -- there's just no profitability in keeping a pallet of something sitting around. If it didn't get sold at the first weekly (or bi-weekly) lot sale to Big Lots, Tuesday Morning, Ross, etc. it's going to go back on the auction block the next time, ad infinitum until they either get someone who buys it for literally a penny a pallet or they will just take the steps to destroy it themselves.

 

Most everything that gets found in a warehouse is first-line or second-line. What we would have to do is figure out what distribution or vending company dealt directly with Men-A-Vision (if they are a Taiwanese hack company, finding out what merchandise vendors specifically imported from Taiwan would get you somewhere) and then you'll have your chain of events. They will have records of the merchandise they took in -- even if it's just 'XXX video games from company YYY' -- but if you were to trace all those records, you could track it back to the original Taiwanese, South American, what-have-you company that actually produced it.

 

So say, doing a search for any import companies or vendors that existed in the Texas area from 1978-1990 (or may exist even now) would list a certain number of results. Then it's just a matter of contacting each of those companies (the list may be huge and the company may now be defunct, thus rendering the search futile) and hoping they are nice enough to reveal stock information from 1982-1984 about specific product from specific countries.

 

Lots of 'ifs' there, and I doubt you'd find much. The company that vended for whoever Men-A-Vision really is likely went under right alongside Men-A-Vision, or at least didn't weather any sort of recession in the late 80s or even now. If you can't contact them, you're out of luck to find out about their stock, though perhaps a prefunctory search of intermediary vendors in that time frame would work too.

[Hornpipe2]

I use Ross and Macy's as primary examples because I have worked for both companies on a third and fourth-tier management level. The practice is generally the same for all discounted goods, however.

 

I worked as a cashier at Tuesday Morning for about 6-9 months in the mid-2000s and while I remember getting truckloads of stuff in, I don't ever remember shipping anything back or throwing it away (unless it was broken). They did go to extreme markdowns though and stuff ended up on a super-cheap clearance rack.

 

What happens to all the junk that the third-party marketers don't sell? Was I just not around when management packed up boxes of 90% off stuff and put it back on the truck? Surely there are not really homes for all the stuff every store across America produces.

[Cebus Capucinis]

Well, a downstream retailer probably won't do it. The 'Return to Vendor' process is only for upstream retailers, as they have specific contracts with their vendors to include this process. When downstream retailers like Tuesday Morning buy from a lot auction, there is no clause or contractual agreement for returning items or dealing with unsold stock. It's just "you buy it, it's yours". So your store wouldn't have actually packed anything up and sent it back or on a truck anyway, because they wouldn't be able to do anything with it short of warehousing it, which isn't productive or cost-effective.

 

So did Tuesday Morning have 100% sell-through then? Just marking it down further and further until stock was cleared? I could see that happening! Might as well sell it rather than destroy it. I do know that Ross destroys stuff and figured others were the same. Interesting to find out that Tuesday Mornings had a different approach!

 

If they didn't destroy stuff, then I bet there are more copies of this game out there!

 

Were there other associates at the store, say a stock or freight team that came in early in the morning before cashiers came in? They may have been in charge of rotating stock in this manner and as a cashier you may never have really noticed them moving goods out of stock in such a way. If it was just a general pool of associates that did all the work, then you are adding some cool light to this subject, which means there has to be more of them out there in people's houses!

 

I would think that a smaller downstream retailer like Tuesday Morning probably doesn't have much in the way of 'destroy in-field' stock if they were willing to mark down to 90%. Likely these items that didn't sell ended up on a small table with 90% signs, and there would be very few of them? I'm not totally sure, perhaps you can verify. If it was just a single table with say a max of 50 items on them, it would be very easy to eliminate stock by destroying it or donating it (which TM may very well do, Ross just doesn't) without it being noticeable. Unless they're moving pallets and pallets of stuff out it's really easy to miss something like that happening, and I'd think a retailer like Tuesday Morning that focuses on high volume sell-through (I'm sure 80%-90% is reasonable to assume) at very low profit margins (I would assume a 12% standard markup and that's it) wouldn't have much that would end up needing to be DIF or marked out of stock.

[Tanman]

1900 watcher

45000 views

 

wow!

[accousticguitar]

IIRC this is an eprom game, which could mean that there were very few made in the first place.

[Tanman]

2000 watching

that was a fast hundred. A major news site must have picked up the auction.

[Mirage]

 

They literally go in the back and rip up all the clothing, break all the electronics, and toss them in a dumpster. I still can't fathom this decision, as writing off donations would be a good tax break, but Ross did it. I would assume it is no different for other retailers. The cost of logistics to actually move product to donation centers and whatnot probably outweighs any tax breaks the company could get or something.

 

 

 

 

A lot of chains do seem to destroy stuff. I recall Wal-Mart got into trouble with that last year. I think it caused them to change their policy to make donations from then on.

 

 

In 2010, the reason that most retailers (or any other company for that matter) do not donate to donation centers rather than destroying the items is due to liability. People are just too prone anymore to sue a company if something "happens" and they know where the merchandise or equipment came from. You can look at this and think how silly it is... and it is, in a way, but that's the world we live in. Wal-Mart opened themselves up to a lot of potential liability by giving in on that issue, but I'm sure they worked it out somehow to benefit them -- probably the gains of positive publicity/image and tax breaks offset the potential liability cost in their particular case. But in the 1980s? Could have been for that same reason, or the logistics or costs of transportation as Cebus already said, I have no idea. I was just playing my Atari in the '80s!

 

Good stuff, Cebus, especially for a monkey

[Cebus Capucinis]

That may be another thing to take into consideration, and may have been a reason the upstream retailers would possibly have not accepted Men-A-Vision's game. They may have dealt with intermediary vendors for Kay Bee, Kay Bee may have wanted to buy several pallets, but the producers could only come up with 200-300 carts in total. This would be considered a violation of the contractual agreement with whatever retailer, Men-A-Vision (or whoever) would have been forced to pay a fee for violating the contract (if one was drawn up), thus causing them not to be able to make more games, and so on down the line until 200 or so games showed up at Tuesday Morning.

 

One of two things happened: The company provided big promises and in the end before the game hit upstream retailer shelves, they couldn't produce on those promises (I think this is a likely scenario, it happens frequently) or when Kay Bee or whoever asked them what they could produce they were honest and said they could only make a limited number, then Kay Bee backed out, they took it to a big lot vendor, and it ended up at Tuesday Morning.

 

If there were pallets of these games, more people would have one. They wouldn't have all gotten destroyed, especially if Tuesday Morning does have a 90%+ sell-through rate as Hornpipe knows and states. I agree -- they probably only produced a very few of these and the scenario I envision played out with one of these two options. Kay Bee or whoever wouldn't want the 200-300 games on a violated contract because it's basically toxic goods to them at that point and they can get guaranteed money charging a fee for violation of contract, so off to Tuesday Morning in the Texas region they go!

 

EDIT: re: Mirage's point he just made as I clicked 'submit' -- yeah! I forgot to add that. Macy's was this way. They wouldn't donate anything because it was a legal issue. They were up front with us about it and we had to tell our associates about potential law suits if they asked. Good call!

[NE146]

Wow, this thread is over 1,000 posts!

 

Heh.. this is the first time I even looked in here. But someone linked the auction on IRC and figured someone would be talking about it here... and sure enough!

 

I have zero interest in these crappy games, but I guess a lot here do

Edited April 8, 2010 by NE146