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

[video game addict]

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?

[Rhomaios]

Poachers and flippers have largely killed it. The professionals, who spend all day doing this. No way to compete, nor am I sure how they make enough to survive.

[The Usotsuki]

If I find something I find something... I would have done much better 15 years ago

[7800fan]

I used to find everything left and right 20 years ago. Nowday it's just sports game for PS2 and XBox. I'd be lucky to find anything by Nintendo. Excluding boxed Vectrex, finding anything pre-Nintendo hasn't happened for a long time.

 

eBay is to blame, everyone knows they are worth something and would buy everything then flip it.

[Clint Thompson]

Yeah, it's went completely to hell but it's been like this for way longer than just the past few years. I'm guessing it's only that much worse now than it was then but I've given up on finding anything out in the wild that's worth a shit and if you do, hold on tight because you'll probably end up electrocuted due to sticker shock alone. I can't believe that some commons are going for $15 or even $25 at some local game shops, it's ridiculous. Then again, I didn't think I would ever see the day when an Atari Jaguar would be going for $100 on the regular on eBay and such. It's just gotten kind of insane and out of control or we've just gotten really old really quickly and can't quite put it all into perspective properly.

[The Usotsuki]

My friend was looking for some SNES and Genesis games for me, and got some serious sticker shock from the SNES ones, especially the first-party ones.

[AtariLeaf]

All the thrifts and pawns around here take older games and put them in glass cases and use high end ebay bins to price them so even if classic games do show up, the idea of a bargain is pretty much gone now. The one Cash Converters near me is employed by collectors and flippers and the one employee brags about nabbing up expensive or rare titles and either keeping them or putting them on Kijiji or ebay. I was shocked to find a loose F-Zero for the SNES (a game on my want list) for $5 last weekend at that cash converters so it was rather exciting to find something I wanted locally. Doesn't happen much anymore.

 

Perhaps you can still get deals in yard sales but most people also know the increasing popularity of retro gaming along with the value that goes with it. I personally rarely "hunt" anymore and the only time I go to any of these places is if I'm in the area but I don't go out of my way and I certainly don't spend a day and a tank of gas on "hunts" anymore. Most of my purchases are online anymore and a big part of the reason is since my collection is essentially complete and my remaining wants are so narrowly focused the chances of finding them locally are almost nil.

 

Cassette based Tandy coco games, Starpath cassettes, or big box 80's and early 90's PC games are rarer than yeti sightings.

Edited May 20, 2015 by AtariLeaf

[The Usotsuki]

I paid $6 for my F-ZERO.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

There are a few Movie Trading Companies where I live. It is a huge store that sells movies from dvds, dvd box sets, blu ray dvds, vhs tapes, comic books, sports cards, posters, video games and systems. Late 2000's to early 2010's they had a ton of NES, Genesis, SNES, N64, Game Boy, 2600 games, etc. Since 2013, I don't see very many anymore. Still see a ton of Playstation 1 to present but nothing much before that. Except sports games for these systems. But have the higher priced games and classic novelties inside a glass case. As systems go. Used to see NES, N64, Dreamcasts, and Genesis often. But not anymore. It's PS1, PS2, Game Cube, and Xbox as the older ones. I guess time really creeped by so fast.

[ls650]

My local area has been picked clean for many years.

 

Now eBay is my only source of anything retro...

[Tempest]

Thrift stores are pretty much dead, although I hear you can still do well off Craigslist and through garage sales. The last time I found something of real interest in a thrift store was probably 10+ years ago.

[+FujiSkunk]

Support your local thrift store. Volunteer to help them sort and find value in their video game donations. That's what I did.

 

For what it's worth, I think it's also the fact there really isn't that much coming into thrift stores anymore. I've been volunteering for about a year and a half, and while there occasionally has been something nice -- I've seen a couple of small Atari 2600 sets, one small NES set and a bundle of Atari 5200 games and controllers, while just about everything else has been PS1 or newer -- it's not the mountains of old games and rarities people like to dream about. The past couple of months have been particularly dry. More people are aware those old games are valuable, more people are wanting to play those old games, and now with GameStop getting into the old game market, there are more visible alternatives where someone can actually get at least a bit of cash for their games.

[VectorGamer]

I suspect that Goodwill is putting up all the quality video game treasures up on the shopgoodwill site. The last quality item I got from my local Goodwill was a boxed Master System and that was years ago.

 

There's only one worthy thrift store around and that's Community Aid. Problem is that it's well out of the way for me to make regular visits. I've been able to pick up some NES carts from there on several occasions.

 

As I stated previously, I no longer venture out randomly to garage sales hoping that I might find video games for cheap. I regularly check Craigslist and collectors that are selling off their collections know to advertise there.

[dustygraves.]

finding good stuff in the wild has been a pain but miracles do happen)

found this lot a few days ago and only paid a wallet draining $5.00 for all!

[BigO]

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

[SIO2]

It is a shame that it is hard to find this stuff local and cheaply.

 

On the other hand, why would you want to collect things that have no value? Isn't that called hoarding?

 

People placing value on our old games might be a good thing. The stuff that is out there now gets protected in glass cases rather than burried under a box of books and some sporting equipment or recycled or trashed.

 

I had a conversation with a pawn broker many years ago. I was about to leave his store when he asked me what I was looking for and I told him Atari games. He searched around under the counter and pulled out a box with some 2600 stuff and some jag games. I was surprised and happy and got my Tempest 2000 that day.

 

I asked the pawn broker why they were under the counter and not on display. He said Atari is dead man. I won't even take them in anymore - just not worth my time.

 

People have to eat and pay rent and they can't work for free. Life is full of choices and we get to vote for the things we like, the things we want people to produce and stock and preserve. We get to vote with dollars. If we are too stingy or the sellers are too greedy then it ruins the fun.

[CatPix]

I didn't gave up, but when I go to any car boot sale, I don't hunt for anything older than the 128 bits era (game wise), and even those are getting harder to get.

Even PS1 stuff is getting scarce and expensive!

 

Used good shops? not even worth it. They all know the stuff - It's either super crazy expensive (loose NES Zelda cart 90€ my ASS) or if they are a chain like Cash Converters, they send them to larger stores for making even more bucks from them.

[CGQuarterly]

I never made a conscious decision to "give up", but I just don't really go looking anymore because it isn't worth my time. There is one thrift store near my work that I still occasionally check, and I've found a few goodies in there. But the volunteers there are guys like FujiSkunk (no offense dude) who basically intercept anything good before it hits the sales floor. If that doesn't happen and stuff does make it out, there is a guy who goes in there every day who has a barcode scanner on his phone and checks every single book/CD/DVD/etc to see if it's worth flipping. I've definitely seen stuff in his basket that I would have snagged, so it's kind of depressing. So, yeah.

[+boxpressed]

About this time last year, I got into retro PC gaming: DOS thru Win 98SE. I'm surprised that there isn't more chatter on AA about these games, given that the era--1983 to 2000--closely maps onto the retro console era (if you consider PS1 retro).

 

My point is that you can still find these games in thrifts, CIB. Other than owning a retro PC, you would need to

 

1. Not care about space too much. Big box games are huge.

2. Not care about the value or prestige of the game. These games don't sell for a lot.

3. Want to have a lot of fun playing some of the best games of the era.

 

Lazy Game Reviews got me hooked.

[jhd]

I now mostly visit thrift shops for books and, occasionally, framed art. I will always look over the video game section, but it has been several years since I saw anything interesting (i.e. non-sports games).

 

Garage sales are only marginally better. Last year, in my neighbourhood, I found a few PS 2 games (at two different sales), and I passed on an original Xbox and a stack of C=64 manuals (no hardware).

[+save2600]

Mostly visit thrifts anymore for the music. Games have been dried up for years, although a buddy did just find a box of 5200 games, with some ER titles in it. BBSB and Meteorites come to mind.

 

Flea markets are a joke anymore too. You've got these "professional" puds that forget they're in a flea market or think they're a video game store, trying to sell the dingiest crap for way too much money.

 

Saw a beater Vectrex for $250, a CV that looked like it was dragged through the dirt for $80 and a lone copy of Dino Dudes in a crushed box for $20!

 

Lots of grossly overpriced and beat up LP's and cassettes too. People must really love dragging their crap back and forth for what must amount to a very dusty and very long show and tell event!

[Tempest]

Flea markets are a joke anymore too. You've got these "professional" puds that forget they're in a flea market or think they're a video game store, trying to sell the dingiest crap for way too much money.

That's the problem with most flea markets and almost all the game conventions these days, you're not going to find a really good deal because these people are 'professional' re-sellers. The days of getting really good deals are mostly gone, unless you actually do stumble across someone just selling something they found in their basement.

[Keatah]

This whole phenomenon is made worse by using computers as tools to try and position the goods for the best possible profit. How ironic..

 

 

About this time last year, I got into retro PC gaming: DOS thru Win 98SE. I'm surprised that there isn't more chatter on AA about these games, given that the era--1983 to 2000--closely maps onto the retro console era (if you consider PS1 retro).

 

Hate to say it, but AtariAge isn't (at least currently) the place to go for PC retrogaming.

 

 

Flea markets are a joke anymore too. You've got these "professional" puds that forget they're in a flea market or think they're a video game store, trying to sell the dingiest crap for way too much money.

Lots of grossly overpriced and beat up LP's and cassettes too. People must really love dragging their crap back and forth for what must amount to a very dusty and very long show and tell event!

 

Yup a 100x. Sometimes I go to these and feel like the local landfill is on sale. Maybe they should just set up shop there?

 

I saw a flashback with an asking price of like $200. I talked to the guy and he said it was state-of-the-art in that it could play hundreds of games in one unit. It got rid of all the old school cartridges and used less power and was smaller and more reliable. Tried to sell it to me on all sorts of technical merits.

 

Another one I went to had like 2 Apple //e stock computers, each with a disk drive, a green-screen monitor, and some cables. I asked the guy to pop the top and let me see inside. He didn't want to do that. There was nothing notable about these systems and they were as non-descript as could be. If I was to sell them for a fair price, it might be $75 - $100 negotiable.

 

 

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?

 

I would make a hazard guess and say some of this stuff is ending up in landfills and just being plain'ol thrown away in the trash. I see it here in my neighborhood all the time.

[rockman_x_2002]

I myself have more or less given up on thrift stores. There are a couple here locally that, on occasion, will get the odd item in here and there, and sometimes I'll pick those up on occasion if it's something I need or feel like I might later down the road. Once I picked up a couple of Tandy CoCos (one 2, one 3), and that was a decent find (apparently old machines that were donated from a local school). But those are very few and far between.

 

Yard sales I tend to have a bit more luck, but these days, the folks who had this stuff have long since by now rid themselves of it, either through other yard sales over the years, eBay, donations, and yes, sadly, I presume even the trash. Where I tend to find the most luck, however, are stores that specialize specifically in retrogaming stuff. The prices are a bit higher than you'd find purely in the wild, but I tend to find that the prices are more fair than eBay and the like. While there's almost never anything truly rare there, I have found a few carts for various systems that I don't already have. Plus, I'm in there often enough that the owners know me and know that I collect retro stuff, so whenever something truly rare does come in that they wouldn't normally sell to just anyone walking in off the street, then they'll shoot me a message to let me know it's there before they stick it out on the shelf. The only thing that's really scored me, though, was an Odyssey 2 in its box (fairly worn but at least in decent enough shape), and a couple of carts for it.

 

I see more Atari 2600 and 7800 stuff than anything else. Then 5200, Colecovision, and Intellivision. But what truly surprises me is that, over all these years, I have seen exactly one Commodore 64 game, and one boxed C64 (practically new). For a computer that was so popular back then, you'd think those would pop up frequently, but they really don't.

[+FujiSkunk]

I see more Atari 2600 and 7800 stuff than anything else. Then 5200, Colecovision, and Intellivision. But what truly surprises me is that, over all these years, I have seen exactly one Commodore 64 game, and one boxed C64 (practically new). For a computer that was so popular back then, you'd think those would pop up frequently, but they really don't.

 

Agreed. Old computer stuff in general just doesn't seem to make the rounds, and even back in the days of easier pickings, I never found that much computer stuff, relatively speaking. One my sweetest thrift finds ever was when somebody donated a mountain of random old computers and computer bits to one of my regular stores, and the lady thought to save it all for me. I forget what all I ended up with, but eventually my trunk was full of things like Atari 8-bits, VIC-20's, an ST or two, and other such things. Some of it was in pretty bad shape, but even so, that day was Heaven for me.

 

Beyond that, I can almost count on one hand the number of times I've found games for an 8-bit or 16-bit computer. Way back when I first began thrifting, C-64 and Apple II computers weren't too uncommon, and the occasional Atari 8-bit even appeared (I found a 1200XL that I foolishly then gave up when I thought it didn't work, but that's another story), but games for them all was another matter. Three or so C-64 cartridges, a couple of Apple II original disks and a couple of IBM PC games are in my collection thanks to thrift stores, but that's a far cry compared to the benefit of thrift shopping that my NES, Genesis and PS2 collections have enjoyed.

 

Ironically, or perhaps not, I do see a lot of modern PC games donated to the place I volunteer. Of course most of them are now worthless coasters thanks to online activation and single-use installation keys.