The Official "Thrift finds" Thread

[fakecortex]

11 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Rad Racer with manual and 3d glasses with sleeve for $15

Are those the original 3D glasses?? Pretty sweet find.

[Tanooki]

49 minutes ago, fakecortex said:

Are those the original 3D glasses?? Pretty sweet find.

Yes they are, they have a few bends in them you can see, but when they're on your face  you don't see them thankfully when driving.  I've had them once before over the years so when I spotted them in the case stuffed into the dust sleeve with the damaged manual I was all about grabbing it.  I wanted the game back anyway, but that sealed the deal in a now/later situation.

[fakecortex]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Yes they are, they have a few bends in them you can see, but when they're on your face  you don't see them thankfully when driving.  I've had them once before over the years so when I spotted them in the case stuffed into the dust sleeve with the damaged manual I was all about grabbing it.  I wanted the game back anyway, but that sealed the deal in a now/later situation.

Try playing with the glasses and the power glove if you want to get the raddest headache ever hahaha

[Tanooki]

@fakecortex I've never had or even touched a power glove, though I imagine seeing the main game that one uses it probably would.

[snorlaxnut]

2 weeks ago at a Goodwill I found a Nintendo Wii with no covers on the Gamecube ports, and came with just the power supply, A/V cable, and a badly scratched disc of NBA2K13 for $14.99. 

I bought it and it did power up. So I bought a third-party Wii controller, GCN memory card, refurbished sensor bar, and a couple of under $10 games (one each for GCN and Wii), and it worked very well.

 

In the past week:

 

At one game store, Game Freaks:

 

De Blob (Wii) $7.99

Pokepark 2: Wonders Beyond (Wii) $34.99

 

And at the other game store in my area, Lion Guard Gaming:

 

Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut (GCN, "Player's Choice" edition) $19.99

Finding Nemo (GCN, "Player's Choice" edition) $4.99

The Ant Bully (GCN) $4.99

Phantasy Star Universe (PS2) $9.99

Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness (PS2, with Hollywood Video game rental cover instead of original) $4.99

 

Had $5 in credit at that store, so $1 off the price of each of those games.

 

And finally off of eBay: The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii, "Nintendo Selects" edition with ruined manual) for $18.03 (price includes tax and shipping).

 

[fakecortex]

1 hour ago, snorlaxnut said:

I bought it and it did power up.

I was at a goodwill once and they told me I could plug stuff in there to see how it worked. I took advantage of that to test out a vcr once. Well, it did turn on...but then ate a tape at home. Good to know tho incase you want to see if something at least powers on.

[+GoldLeader]

On 12/13/2021 at 3:59 PM, snorlaxnut said:

2 weeks ago at a Goodwill I found a Nintendo Wii with no covers on the Gamecube ports, and came with just the power supply, A/V cable, and a badly scratched disc of NBA2K13 for $14.99. 

I bought it and it did power up. So I bought a third-party Wii controller, GCN memory card, refurbished sensor bar, and a couple of under $10 games (one each for GCN and Wii), and it worked very well.

 

In the past week:

 

At one game store, Game Freaks:

 

De Blob (Wii) $7.99

Pokepark 2: Wonders Beyond (Wii) $34.99

 

And at the other game store in my area, Lion Guard Gaming:

 

Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut (GCN, "Player's Choice" edition) $19.99

Finding Nemo (GCN, "Player's Choice" edition) $4.99

The Ant Bully (GCN) $4.99

Phantasy Star Universe (PS2) $9.99

Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness (PS2, with Hollywood Video game rental cover instead of original) $4.99

 

Had $5 in credit at that store, so $1 off the price of each of those games.

 

And finally off of eBay: The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii, "Nintendo Selects" edition with ruined manual) for $18.03 (price includes tax and shipping).

 

A $15 Wii?  Score!  (Even as it was).  I'd call even finding a video game at Goodwill a huge win these days!

 

They only have a few non selling sports games at ours, and a million copies of Kinect something or other for who knows what the F that even is?...And by their own admission they now take out all the good video games and sell them separately on their website.    Probably why this Topic has slowed to a crawl.

[Reaperman]

No games, but I found a Losi Micro-T in a sack in the toy section.  It's an older one--brushed motor and AM radio, but for $5.99 I can't complain too much. I used to really be into micro RC.

 

The wife also found 3 boxes of bubble lights for $5.99 each.

 

[Reaperman]

Two hits at the thrift shop the friday before last:

 

$3.99 for mario kart DS, a game which I liked until the online 'snaking' made me worried I was going to destroy my d-pad. Snaking is no fun and when I'm not having fun, it's time to play offline. Great game outside of that, though (and I'm not usually a big mario kart fan)

 

$9.99 for yet another Dell D-series, this time a Dell D610 owned by a guy named Jeff who seemed to do nothing with it but email.  But this one is special, because it has ATI graphics, and a 1024x768 onboard screen.  Sure it's only 64mb graphics, but if it runs freelancer at native resolution, it becomes my new favorite. I've never had a 4:3 monitor dell with 'real' graphics before (and I own a lot of these...)

 

I've been waiting for the pictured SD-to-IDE adapter before I did a build, and it came today. (and cost more than twice what the system did) It's getting XP'd right now. But I may build up an extra SD card for win2k, since there are drivers for it (and storage in the HDD bay filler)

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Reaperman

[Leonard Smith]

I popped into a Saver's store over the weekend and actually saw a stack of 6 common 2600 cartridges behind their glass restricted area.  If memory serves me right, the games were Combat, Defender, Super Breakout, Tic Tac Toe, Pac-Man, and Concentration.
All looked to be in great shape...clean with labels intact.

I asked the clerk to see the carts and I noticed each one had a price tag of $5.99 -- even Combat.

Needless to say, I had her put them back.  
Would have loved to have given these a good home, but not for almost $36 for the bundle.

[Tanooki]

4 hours ago, Leonard Smith said:

I popped into a Saver's store over the weekend and actually saw a stack of 6 common 2600 cartridges behind their glass restricted area.  If memory serves me right, the games were Combat, Defender, Super Breakout, Tic Tac Toe, Pac-Man, and Concentration.
All looked to be in great shape...clean with labels intact.

I asked the clerk to see the carts and I noticed each one had a price tag of $5.99 -- even Combat.

Needless to say, I had her put them back.  
Would have loved to have given these a good home, but not for almost $36 for the bundle.

A half price books near here got like 40+ 2600 carts, largely not duplicates, and they're like $2 or $3 a piece.  If I had an interest in the slightest (and a system) I would have cleared that shelf.  But I don't blame you at $6 that's laughable in most cases.

 

 

[Leonard Smith]

22 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

A half price books near here got like 40+ 2600 carts, largely not duplicates, and they're like $2 or $3 a piece.  If I had an interest in the slightest (and a system) I would have cleared that shelf.  But I don't blame you at $6 that's laughable in most cases.

 

 

Yeah man.

I was more shocked to actually see these in the store, as I rarely see any Atari stuff anymore.
I guess the $5.99 pricing will ensure that they stay on the shelf.

Would have paid $20 to $25 tops, but not $36

[fakecortex]

Prey to the ol' "if it's old, it must be worth a lot" thinking. Um, yeah...ok.

[+frankodragon]

On 1/24/2022 at 3:41 PM, Tanooki said:

A half price books near here got like 40+ 2600 carts, largely not duplicates, and they're like $2 or $3 a piece.  If I had an interest in the slightest (and a system) I would have cleared that shelf.  But I don't blame you at $6 that's laughable in most cases.

 

 

Sometimes they have them at a Milwaukee HPB when looking for donor carts.  But yeah, some of them range around $2 up to $6 for common ones.  You gotta look at the price tags.  

[Tanooki]

I'm kind of lucky I have 2 of those stores near by, one just up the main street I'm off of which is always on my way to get my kid from school among other things so they know me as I'm in there nearly every day, but the other where the mass of 2600 games were I'll try once a week as it's out of the way a bit but worth a peek.  After the whole tax crap this year I've limited myself almost entirely now to buying local so they're my go to mostly since facebook etc are a typical dumpster fire of poor options or poor pricing because old games = gold pressed latinum and they're ferengi.

[Reaperman]

Thrift shop was good today. Wii-u games, $3.99 each. Clearly the pile hadn't been picked through.

 

 

Then, not a thrift find, but an ebay one. Was looking for a new upgrade for my Avermedia Live Gamer Pro 2 HDMI capture setup, and somehow this "new other" Avermedia Live Streamer Duo (Avermedia Live Gamer Mini + Live Streamer Cam 313) was buy-it-now at ($28.55 shipped). We'll see how "other" "new other" is in this case, but if I get anything useful from this pair, it was worth it.

 

[+FujiSkunk]

On the first Saturday of every month, my part of town hosts an electronics drop-off for recycling.  Every month sees lots (and I mean lots) of electronics get cast off, from old TV's and computers to not-so-old phones and other gizmos that have already become too passe for the dedicated technophiles.  Even now in the days of eBay and retro gaming, game consoles and other potentially valuable bits also get tossed in.  So what's a person like me to do when he wants to snag those consoles before they get sent to the recycler?  Swipe them from the pile when the workers aren't looking?  Bribe the workers outright?  Establish another drop-off some distance before the official one where the good stuff can be cherry-picked?

 

Don't be silly; I'd never do anything so nefarious.  Instead, I just wait for those months when the pick-up is cancelled for whatever reason, and then watch all the bums throw their stuff into a pile in the parking lot because they're too lazy to take it back home!

 

It happened again this past weekend.  I wasn't back in town yet, but my roommate was, and thanks to him I now have another Game Boy Advance SP and original XBox!  I haven't tested the XBox yet, but the SP works fairly well, only with one broken shoulder button.  Even if that's not fixable, it can still play original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games just fine.

 

I don't condone people littering, which is what this is, but if it happens again next month, I won't be, you know, too distraught...

[Tanooki]

1 hour ago, FujiSkunk said:

It happened again this past weekend.  I wasn't back in town yet, but my roommate was, and thanks to him I now have another Game Boy Advance SP and original XBox!  I haven't tested the XBox yet, but the SP works fairly well, only with one broken shoulder button.  Even if that's not fixable, it can still play original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games just fine.

Wow nice, wish I knew if a place around here did that.

 

And to answer your question directly to the point, YES, it's easily fixed.  Super cheap, easy to fix, if you can handle doing a couple drops of solder that is.

https://retrogamerepairshop.com/products/gba-sp-nintendo-game-boy-advance-sp-replacement-l-r-shoulder-trigger-buttons-set?variant=31695838019658

 

I wasn't going to really post in here as I did have a wow moment find today, just don't usually report them anymore, but given I saw that stroke of luck there and question here we are.  For once goodwill didn't blow, and that very location even more so since it has been a sad dry well of misery for over 2 years that I've largely given up on it.  Not sure what motivated me, but went there instead of the usual on the way to get my kid at school, latent psychic powers I guess.   I only own one (CCR) of the games so that's a plus, and I'll always take another SP especially a 101 as well prices get worse and worse so another backup spare is great for me.

[+FujiSkunk]

6 hours ago, Tanooki said:

And to answer your question directly to the point, YES, it's easily fixed.  Super cheap, easy to fix, if you can handle doing a couple drops of solder that is.

https://retrogamerepairshop.com/products/gba-sp-nintendo-game-boy-advance-sp-replacement-l-r-shoulder-trigger-buttons-set?variant=31695838019658

 

That's good to know, thank you!  As coincidence would have it, my stepfather gave me a complete soldering kit for Christmas, and then walked me through a soldering project to build a guitar effects pedal, after I had earlier expressed interest in learning how to solder "one of these days."  I've already got a couple of other projects in mind now that I'm somewhat comfortable with an iron.  I'll have to add this one to the list.

 

Quote

I wasn't going to really post in here as I did have a wow moment find today, just don't usually report them anymore, but given I saw that stroke of luck there and question here we are...

 

Ha, I found one of those same cases once.  It had a lot of the same accessories inside, plus an SP, though I think for me it was a "mere" 001.

[Tanooki]

@FujiSkunk That's great, I wish I had someone next to me to show me.  I had to stumble into it, then had a friend remotely run some videos to teach me some finer points when I found myself just capable enough to do virtual boy ribbon soldering repairs a few times.  In turn the GBA button is stupid super simple, it's just 2 spots of solder you need to heat and wick or solder-suck off the board, pull the bad piece, prep/clean the area, pop the new one on, and give it 2 new clean solder blobs and your SP is working again.

 

The case sucks, I had one a couple years back when I found a few SPs nearly in a row with weeks between.  It's nice I guess to hold a few things, but it's too clunky to carry about.  The accessories were in the other case too, and it's because I do believe the blue ones came with it as a package deal for someone wanting to protect their new investment in fun back in the day.

 

Currently debating putting that SP to some good use here shortly, have some long waiting periods where I'll be stuck and bored, but also want my evercade, both...or one or the other.  SP is far easier to replace than evercade annoyingly enough.

[KeeperofLindblum]

Found a neat little gem at Goodwill...

 

In fantastic condition! Only missing the remote, but it has a full carrying case that wraps around it. Only $11~

 

Surprisingly sharp picture all things considered, and the DVD player works on it. 

For those curious, model is EWC09D5.

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

On 2/8/2022 at 11:28 PM, KeeperofLindblum said:

Found a neat little gem at Goodwill...

 

In fantastic condition! Only missing the remote, but it has a full carrying case that wraps around it. Only $11~

 

Surprisingly sharp picture all things considered, and the DVD player works on it. 

For those curious, model is EWC09D5.

 

I have a similar TV in my garage but it's a 13" tube so it's bigger... but only has mono input. 

[Asaki]

On 9/8/2014 at 1:29 AM, Grig said:

 

and opened:

 

 

"Wife" "Babe" and "Dad" should never be used in the same greeting card. NEVER

 

I wonder if I will see any "LITTEL CUPIDES" this valentine's day. Probably not.

Was reminded of this by a friend and had to give it a little bump today ?

[mmbe]

Got these recently from Goodwill for $1.99 each.

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

On 2/11/2022 at 2:46 PM, DragonGrafx-16 said:

I have a similar TV in my garage but it's a 13" tube so it's bigger... but only has mono input. 

I was wrong... it does have stereo input lol