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Who's given up on thrift finds (classic games)?


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For the first few revisions of the plain grey PSX I thought the failure rate was also quite high. I had a working one for years but I recall a lot of friends having to tip it on it's side and eventually it just failed. Granted it's probably just an every-day cdrom that can be replaced more easily than magic-fu to fix the later systems.

 

No idea on the PSOne. Given that these things go for like 10 bucks it's probably a worthy exploit.

 

The early PSX were prone to having alignment issue because of cheap rail that held laser assembly up. It gets worn down and eventually the laser assembly ends up a little too far from the disc, People found playing PSX upside down worked.

 

PSOne seems pretty durable, I've found only 1 that didn't work and it looked like someone tried a chip mod using a huge 50w soldering gun rather than a lower power iron with finer tip. The chip that handled laser was completely fried so I used it for spare parts. PSOne also supported LCD and if you get lucky, a snap on battery pack for portable game. (battery nowday will need rebuilding and it's usually cheap and easy to rebuild with new NiMH batteries)

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If by "given up" you mean "no longer have expectations of finding anything but keep looking anyway" then count me in.

 

Yeah, I still go looking but I have given up on the idea of finding anything good.

 

Sometimes expanding your searches to include items that might not have been on your radar initially is a way to keep it interesting, but it just blows sometimes.

 

 

So maybe a year or two back I found about a dozen Dreamcast games, but I have yet to find the system to go with them. I'm not sure if I've ever seen n64 games in the wild, maybe a controller or two but that's about it. I regularly find psx, ps2, and Xbox, but 90% of it's sports titles. A lot of the ps2 titles I do find seem to be badly scratched or over priced. Xbox games are pretty uncommon as are gamecube, but I buy most gc if complete, and/or they're cheaper than the typical 4.99.

 

 

I'm not even thinking of Atari or 8-bit anything, I feel that time has long passed, but I do read of the occasional finds like the Boxed vectrex above which still happen for some, but finds like those are highly unlikely in this day/age. I think most of the 16-bit era is mostly gone too. I'm thinking mostly the newer stuff from late 90s early 2000s I look hard through all the CDs for mixed in 3do, CDi, Dreamcast, Saturn, even games out of the original cases, that might be hiding between, but nodda.

 

Just not what it use to be.

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Oh I think a certain % is always finding the landfills, but that has always existed in a sense, not sure if the numbers have changed. I'm sure more and more resellers are out there, as well as more collectors possibly too, but even in my area there are tons of thrifts, many more than there use to be. There are also now goodwill express drop off locations popping up everywhere, so ,I think the number of donations and 'stuff' has probably gone up over the years.

 

I guess there are the goodwill auctions now too, which takes away from the stores, but why can't I find even the overpriced lots from time to time? I hit a lot of thrift stores, probably 4-5 times a month, sometimes as many as 10 stores or more in a day, but come up moostly dry..

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Eh, I don't always find good shit these days, but it's still fun to go to thrift shops. Something I suggest is to look for ones that aren't your usual Salvation Army or Goodwill chains. Some places you can find some very uncommon things. I admit I DID manage to find a very nice complete copy of Dark Cloud at a Goodwill once, but at lesser-known places like St. Vincent de Paul, I've found unique stuff like a complete boxed ISA video card by ATI (with its own special 3-button mouse). I'm honestly kind of like Clint Bassinger with these things: I just follow the wind, and pick up whatever catches my fancy that I'll play or use sometime.

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The early PSX were prone to having alignment issue because of cheap rail that held laser assembly up. It gets worn down and eventually the laser assembly ends up a little too far from the disc, People found playing PSX upside down worked.

 

PSOne seems pretty durable, I've found only 1 that didn't work and it looked like someone tried a chip mod using a huge 50w soldering gun rather than a lower power iron with finer tip. The chip that handled laser was completely fried so I used it for spare parts. PSOne also supported LCD and if you get lucky, a snap on battery pack for portable game. (battery nowday will need rebuilding and it's usually cheap and easy to rebuild with new NiMH batteries)

 

 

I was excited, after I got a couple of barely-working SCPH-1001 model PS1s, to discover that the PSOne CD transport assembly interfaces perfectly with the SCPH-1001 motherboard and even fits perfectly in the SCPH-1001 case if you swap the transport's faceplate with the SCPH-1001 transport's faceplate.

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Eh, I don't always find good shit these days, but it's still fun to go to thrift shops. Something I suggest is to look for ones that aren't your usual Salvation Army or Goodwill chains. Some places you can find some very uncommon things. I admit I DID manage to find a very nice complete copy of Dark Cloud at a Goodwill once, but at lesser-known places like St. Vincent de Paul, I've found unique stuff like a complete boxed ISA video card by ATI (with its own special 3-button mouse). I'm honestly kind of like Clint Bassinger with these things: I just follow the wind, and pick up whatever catches my fancy that I'll play or use sometime.

Agreed. I find stuff in the small "mom & pop", even for profit second hand stores more than I do in Goodwill and the like.

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I can't find the link again (was just looking for it) but someone on Reddit posted a pic of a Dreamcast with controllers and cords and stuff in a box and said they found it for one dollar at a thrift store. Maybe there are still some great finds out there??? (Or maybe the person was lying...)

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It's not like it once was, but I still find things here and there. I just picked up a CIB Microvision with one game, also complete, for $15 at a flea market.

 

That said I mostly look at yard sales and flea markets. Proper thrift shops are picked pretty clean most of the time, and I certainly don't bother with the likes of Goodwill.

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GoodWill sends all their good stuff to http://www.shopgoodwill.com .

 

I'm surprised that this even has to be stated. Good Will's auction site has been around for at least the last 8-10 years.

 

I started collecting back in the mid to late 90's. Back then you could get carts for a quarter and consoles (with cables) $3-10.00. That was all pre NES stuff. Goodwill use to be flooded with that that stuff back then. By 2004 I had 25 2600's, 5 5200's, 6 7800's, 6 ColecoVisions, 5 Intellivisions, 1 Vetrex, OD2's out the butt and a ton of carts for all the systems. I also had quite a lot of pong type system (about 20 different ones) and too many to count for controllers/accessories.

 

Unfortunately, family situation changed big time and I was let go do to down sizing. I sold off most of that collection over the next 3-4 years thinking once I get more money I'll get a lot of that back. Never happened. By 2009 I was ready to start collection again, but prices had changed a lot! Goodwill's dried up. I went to ShopGoodwill.com to buy most of what little I have now and at the time their prices were better than ebay. That's not really the case anymore. I still only have a shadow of what my collection once was. I never thought this stuff would get so pricy.

 

At this point I don't really look anymore for this stuff in the wild. As a matter of fact I gave up on home video game collecting and I'm focusing on my 7 arcade games I have (fixing them up and keeping them running). Of corse those prices are going crazy now too. :(

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I have gotten most of my stuff from shopgoodwill. The problems I have is that I have a ton of Intellivisions commons to get rid of and there is no place to at least get 50cents on the dollar for them. The other is that now that I have 90% of the 125 Intellivision it is just not worth the bid price to get that "one" game I need.

 

Example: In the last year they have had two times a Imagic FATHOM complete in box and near mint. I just could not afford it.

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So I haven't been very active on these boards for awhile now, but I still regularly hit the thrift stores and yard sales in search of vintage games. But I have seen a decline over the past few years in the amount of finds in the wild... Depressing this is. But it makes me wonder just where all the games are? I check craigslist regularly. I don't think everyone is out selling theres on ebay. So where they at?

Yes & it is indeed very depressing..I have completely gave up a couple years ago, & like someone mentioned PS2 sports games is about it....Gone are the days of the thrill of the hunt..In the late 90's when I started that was one of the things I loved about this hobby, going to thrift stores knowing there was a good chance I'd find something & the anticipation of what that might be..Same for video game stores, they were all selling Atari games $1 a piece around here which made it easy for me to jumpstart my collection..I mean that was nearly 2 decades ago but still hard to believe how good we had it at one time..And to think that i used to feel I started too late during those times even, Nowadays I'd kill to go back to the way I had it compared to today lol

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I have gotten most of my stuff from shopgoodwill. The problems I have is that I have a ton of Intellivisions commons to get rid of and there is no place to at least get 50cents on the dollar for them. The other is that now that I have 90% of the 125 Intellivision it is just not worth the bid price to get that "one" game I need.

 

Example: In the last year they have had two times a Imagic FATHOM complete in box and near mint. I just could not afford it.

Have you checked the intellivision forum? Pretty certain people are paying .50-1.00 for commons to use the cart shells for homebrews.

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Well ya' couldn't expect the incoming supply of games (to thrift stores) to last forever. They're a limited commodity. And you couldn't expect people to not notice the online auction opportunities and not take advantage of that either. It's just natural evolution. With emulation you don't have these kinds of issues. Emulation is fair to everyone across the board.

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ShopGoodwill.com to buy most of what little I have now and at the time their prices were better than ebay. That's not really the case anymore. I still only have a shadow of what my collection once was. I never thought this stuff would get so pricy.

 

I've been shocked by the price increase at SGW especially considering they don't test most things. Odd.

 

Also, Goodwill definitely doesn't send ALL of their stuff to SGW as I have had occasional success there, but it's generally not worth the time unless I happen to be in the neighborhood for something else

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Around here there's a pretty healthy market for classic games, but that's only because there's just under a dozen different family owned classic game stores in and around the city I live in. There's no flea markets to speak of, and you'll never find anything worth buying at Goodwill, but the local mom and pop game shops get very good business and tend to have large selections of quality games for the Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, PS1, N64, Saturn, and all the Game Boy variations. A few of the stores have pretty decent selections for the Intellivision and Colecovision too.

 

The prices on games for all the classic Nintendo brand home consoles are almost universally hiked up to double the going rate on eBay, and PS1 games are often slightly over priced, but I find great deals for the Genesis and Atari 2600 all the time. It's not difficult to find high quality loose Genesis carts with perfect mint condition labels for less than half the price they go for online, and a few local shops price all their Atari 2600 games at $1 per cartridge regardless of the game's rarity or online price. Just a few months back I picked up Frogger II: Threeedeep!, the Ghost Manor/Artillery Duel double ender from Xonox, BurgerTime, Donkey Kong Junior, Mario Bros., and a few other good VCS games all for $1 each. The stores just buy all Atari 2600 cartridges at $0.25 each and sell them for $1, which makes those stores great places for the couple local VCS collectors to go hunting for games every weekend. They also seem to get new 2600 games in every few weeks too, which is a little surprising given the small amount they pay for them, but I'm not going to complain. Of the 130+ different games in my Atari library I think I've gotten at least 100 of them locally for $1 per cart, which makes my hobby of collecting for the VCS (usually) really inexpensive.

 

So yeah, while there are still some rare games you have to hunt down online, most popular games for classic consoles can be found locally in the Twin Cities without too much difficulty. Just expect to pay double the typical eBay rate if you're looking for something for the NES, SNES, or N64. Fortunately I'm an Atari and Sega guy, so that's not too big of a deal to me. :lolblue:

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I have gotten most of my stuff from shopgoodwill. The problems I have is that I have a ton of Intellivisions commons to get rid of and there is no place to at least get 50cents on the dollar for them. The other is that now that I have 90% of the 125 Intellivision it is just not worth the bid price to get that "one" game I need.

 

Example: In the last year they have had two times a Imagic FATHOM complete in box and near mint. I just could not afford it.

Unfortunately the shop goodwill site always ends up being extremely overpriced. Typically worse than eBay. For that you get items that are not tested and packed and shipped very rough. I'm not sure why people seem to think they're getting a deal there, but some people must. I've bought a few things on the site, but I've never gotten it at a good price.

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Unfortunately the shop goodwill site always ends up being extremely overpriced. Typically worse than eBay. For that you get items that are not tested and packed and shipped very rough. I'm not sure why people seem to think they're getting a deal there, but some people must. I've bought a few things on the site, but I've never gotten it at a good price.

 

I never browsed it until this thread. I was surprised at the prices so I went back to ebay.

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Unfortunately the shop goodwill site always ends up being extremely overpriced. Typically worse than eBay. For that you get items that are not tested and packed and shipped very rough. I'm not sure why people seem to think they're getting a deal there, but some people must. I've bought a few things on the site, but I've never gotten it at a good price.

Yeah, I think I bought a lot of 2600 cartridges from there once at a reasonable price. Didn't take long to get turned off by the prices. As I recall, shipping was kind of high, too.

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I think shopgoodwill goes for so much is because it's a charity auction where the money goes to helping people. On eBay, most of the listing fee goes to helping the CEO keep a stockpile of $10 cigars and most sellers usually don't donate (or donates a little) of the sale to charity. Plus you got scammer, con artists, etc on eBay.

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