An interesting slice of Atari shopping history.

[Robert M]

So I purchased a lot of Atari games, and it included an envelope with some warranty cards and a receipt. The interesting part (to me anyway) is that the buyer wrote the name of the game they purchased and the date it was bought on the warranty cards. Looking at the dates you can see the purchase history for a single Atari game shopper circa 1980.

 

Feb 2nd, 1980 ( Groundhog day sale?)

- Atari System

- Combat

- Video Olympics

 

Feb 9th, 1980 ( one week later)

- Air Sea Battle

 

June 18th, 1980

- Breakout (price was $16.99), and Pam bought it so does that mean someone else bought the other games?

 

Oct 25th, 1980

- Home Run

 

December 23rd, 1980

- Street Racer (Merry Xmas!) - Not a fun game in my opinion. Maybe it soured the buyer against buying more games?

 

[Rom Hunter]

Fascinating.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Tempest]

I always like it when you get the reciept for a system. My INTV IV system has the date and location it was purchased written on the manual. Turns out it was a Toys R Us not all that far from me.

 

My favorite bit of 'reciept history' though was when I found all the reciepts and sales records for my Apple IIe. My dad got it for us for Christmas 1986, but he had ordered it well ahead of time (early Novemember). The reciept has all kinds of neat pricing info on it that really makes the system seem a lot more special (I hope I was properly appreciative). Computers were EXPENSIVE back then.

[Kurt_Woloch]

That's pretty funny... my (that is our) buying history takes place in about the same timeframe, only 4 years later... we started buying Atari cartridges in January 1984 and ended at Christmas 1984 when we bought the Commodore 64. Well, not quite... we bought a "Mario Bros." cart much later, in early 1991.

And we bought other carts, of course. The first items were:

1. System with Pac-Man pack-in, Missile Command

2. Decathlon

I'm not sure about the running order of the following carts.

[pce_collector]

So I purchased a lot of Atari games, and it included an envelope with some warranty cards and a receipt. The interesting part (to me anyway) is that the buyer wrote the name of the game they purchased and the date it was bought on the warranty cards. Looking at the dates you can see the purchase history for a single Atari game shopper circa 1980.

 

Feb 2nd, 1980 ( Groundhog day sale?)

- Atari System

- Combat

- Video Olympics

 

Feb 9th, 1980 ( one week later)

- Air Sea Battle

 

June 18th, 1980

- Breakout (price was $16.99), and Pam bought it so does that mean someone else bought the other games?

 

Oct 25th, 1980

- Home Run

 

December 23rd, 1980

- Street Racer (Merry Xmas!) - Not a fun game in my opinion. Maybe it soured the buyer against buying more games?

 

 

I actually thought Street Racer was fun when you played it against a friend, kind of like Combat.

[high voltage]

Hehe I had something like this a few weeks ago

I won Copy Cart and Space Invaders.

SI had this warranty card and receipt:

 

21 Nov 1981

VCS (DM 379.00)

1 Game Space Invaders (DM 109.00)

 

Interesting on the warranty card, it mentions a 80001, now, what's that?

[Unbeliever]

That is a nice piece of history. I don't believe I have received one receipt in the games I've purchased from you folks here. I hope someday to score one.

[GrizzLee]

One of the things I love about collecting the Atari 2600 is the fact that many of the manuals I have come across inlcude Hi-Scores scribbled on them. The best ones are where they've crossed it out and updated it several times and some have several names associated with the score. You don't find this kind of thing with the newer games. I love to see these kinds of game manuals. It really demonstrates the real objective of the games of that era.

Edited March 13, 2013 by GrizzLee

[+Atarius Maximus]

Very interesting. If you look at the inflation calculator here (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/), The $17.84 for breakout would be $50.27 in 2013 dollars.

[atarian1]

Wow. That got me thinking if I kept my receipts. I know I kept most of the ones after I got my Atari MegaST4 back in 1988, but I am not sure if I kept by Atari 2600 and 8-bit computers receipts. It makes me want to rummage through my stuff now for receipts!

[Skylark68]

That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. The games I bought or my parents bought I chunked everything except the instruction manuals (and the games of course). What kid cares about keeping receipts or how much things cost? It's cool that some people kept that stuff. I don't have anything like it for my Atari, but the Odyssey 2 that I bought on ebay years ago was originally owned by a very detail oriented airman. Every game came with all of the documentation such as receipts, etc. A few of the games were even bought on the base (Florida somewhere - I don't have it in front of me). Most everything else was bought at the local Magnavox store outside of 1 or 2 games that were bought at Sears. Some of those O2 games were expensive such as Quest for the Rings and Conquest of the World. I think they were listed somewhere in the $60 to $70 range back in 1982.