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How did you become an Intellivision collector


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I stumbled into it by accident. I collect radioshack computers and have my basement setup like an early 80's radioshack store. I found a Tandyvision 1. Naturally I had to buy the grey ECS to turn it into a 'real' computer for my collection. Then I found out about the matching brown ECS, so I sourced one from a guy in Africa (who also sold me a videoplexer) . Now that I had the unused grey one I figured I might as well buy an INTV2, then a system changer. Things just spiraled out of control after that :).

Now I have 111/125 (not all boxed), Tandyvision, intv1,intv2,Intv3 both brown and grey Ecs, both brown and grey music synthesizer, intellivoice, videoplexer, system changer, LTO, second set if grey controllers for the intv2 ecs and pair of Wilco controllers for the brown EcS

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My son started collecting. It was one of his great memories. Weeks I'd work overtime and miss being at home for a good part of Saturday I would usually bring home a new game. About 7 years ago he started and it became a father and son thing. We have a very nice collection now. Mostly NIB. We have so much extra I have to sell off. LOL

 

We started to do a lot of overseas games...but it got a bit crazy so we've moved away from that except for the odd beautiful gem now and then.

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I was never around anyone I knew that had an Intelly back in the day as everyone in my neighborhood had the VCS. There was one kid whose folks made good money up the street that had a 5200 but he was a jerk so he didn't have any friends. A girl I knew up the street had a Colecovision as I recall but never played any games on it. Point being, I knew of the Intellivision but never played or saw one in use where I lived.

 

Many years later ( 1999 - 2000 ) and I've just gotten into retro game collecting. I found a Sears Super Video Arcade for like $2.99 at one of the local thrift stores. Turned out it didn't work but just a few days later a co-worker brings me his old Nintendo and Intellivision model 1 to me for free! I swapped out the guts of the intelly model 1 with the SVA and still have that as my main Intellivision to this day.

 

Naturally once I had a working Intellivision, I started on the quest to start picking up games for it and...there we are.

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My best friend had an intellivision and I had an Atari when I was growing up. We spent a lot more time at his house playing the Intellivision and I still have great memories of playing a full season of Major League Baseball (he was a Cubs fan and I'm a Reds fan so the colors were perfect), getting to the dragon in Swords and Serpents, counting my arrows in D&D (cloudy mountain), looking away when he checked his cards in Poker & Blackjack, marathon Astrosmash sessions, holding bowling tournaments, and playing endless games of Space Battle.

 

Later I found a box of Intellivision games for sale for almost nothing around 1990 so I bought them and started my own collection. I purchased a brand new Intellivision (Super Pro System) from Toys R Us. When I took the tag up to the register, the girl working there tried to convince me to purchase any other system. She couldn't even recall anyone buying an Intellivision. Of course I bought it anyhow, along with Super Pro Football. I remember Toys R Us carrying what turned out to be extremely rare titles like Stadium Mud Buggies and Spiker but I didn't purchase those (although I did get them a few years later at a great price). My college roommates and I had a great time playing it. Body Slam - Super Pro Wrestling - was one of our favorites due to the animation of each move. Today, I'm a happy member of the boxed 125 club and am thrilled that the system is still so well supported!

 

I sent my friend a copy of Carl Mueller's version of Donkey Kong last year for his birthday. He sent me a text to thank me and say that he needed to get his intellivision out and play it but I doubt that he ever did. It's been well over a year and I haven't heard from him since lol.

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...

 

Later I found a box of Intellivision games for sale for almost nothing around 1990 so I bought them and started my own collection. I purchased a brand new Intellivision (Super Pro System) from Toys R Us. When I took the tag up to the register, the girl working there tried to convince me to purchase any other system. She couldn't even recall anyone buying an Intellivision. Of course I bought it anyhow, along with Super Pro Football. I remember Toys R Us carrying what turned out to be extremely rare titles like Stadium Mud Buggies and Spiker but I didn't purchase those (although I did get them a few years later at a great price). My college roommates and I had a great time playing it. Body Slam - Super Pro Wrestling - was one of our favorites due to the animation of each move. Today, I'm a happy member of the boxed 125 club and am thrilled that the system is still so well supported!

 

...

That's interesting because intellivisionlives.com says intv stopped supplying the major stores and went mail order only in 1988.

 

I became a collector when I was ten years and asked my father for one. First he said no but he eventually got us one.

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I didn't know anybody with an Intellivision when I was a kid. I had an Odyssey 2 (and later an Atari 800 and then an Atari 130 XE). Many kids had a 2600, and I knew at least one with a 5200 and another with a Colecovision.

 

A little over a decade ago, my wife started talking about the Intellivision she had when she was younger and how great it was. Apparently, her Dad bought it around the end of the system's original lifespan, so he bought a ton of games cheap. I decided to surprise her one Christmas and bought her a boxed Intellivision I and as many games as I could find.

 

She was thrilled, but the unexpected outcome is I took an immediate and intense liking to the system to the extent it became my favorite console of all time. This also kindled a retro gaming passion in me, as I now also own an Atari 7800, Colecovision, Channel F, Bally Astrocode (my second-most-favorite system), Vectrex, Sega Master System and Sega Genesis.

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That's interesting because intellivisionlives.com says intv stopped supplying the major stores and went mail order only in 1988.

 

I became a collector when I was ten years and asked my father for one. First he said no but he eventually got us one.

It's possible they stopped supplying major stores in 1988 but there was still product for sale in 1990. I'm confident of my date because I lived in an apartment at the time and was only there for one year.

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Started "collecting"? After my sister gave me our old Intellivision system and games from our childhood a couple years ago. But the system and games had been in our family between either her, our parents, or myself, since it was bought new when we were kids.

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That's interesting because intellivisionlives.com says intv stopped supplying the major stores and went mail order only in 1988.

Toys R Us and sometimes even KB Toys had stock of stuff that would sit around. I think it was worse for TRU though, because of the separate secure stockroom and paper tickets. Stuff would get "lost" in the stockroom (to show-up again later) or no paper tickets out when they had stock. Then there are places where markdowns aren't done to really slow moving merchandise.

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Toys R Us and sometimes even KB Toys had stock of stuff that would sit around. I think it was worse for TRU though, because of the separate secure stockroom and paper tickets. Stuff would get "lost" in the stockroom (to show-up again later) or no paper tickets out when they had stock. Then there are places where markdowns aren't done to really slow moving merchandise.

That's fine except these two cartridges were first manufactured in 1989 so Toysrus would have ordered them from INTV Corp that year at the earliest.
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That's fine except these two cartridges were first manufactured in 1989 so Toysrus would have ordered them from INTV Corp that year at the earliest.

I was referring to their electronics/video game stock in general, and not anything specific.

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I bought my Intellivision in early 1984 when the price drop after the video game crash happpend. I was already 15 and payed it with my own money. Over the following next months I was able to get about 30 games for cheap. I kept my Intellivision and the games even after I got my C64. And I still own the stuff. The Intellivision market quickly dried out in Germany. I found over the years a few more games at local flea markets and second hand stores, but not many. It was in 1997 when I got my private Internet connection and one of the first things I did was looking for Intellivision. I discovered Keith' Intellivision site and found out how many stuff I wasn't aware of! I discovered a few second hand stores with online pages in the US and got my first US only games I didn't were aware of a few months before. Than Ebay happend..the world was my game store. No PayPal back then...sending the money cash to the sellers! I discovered the Intv Yahoo group and met for the first time virtually guys like Joe Z. and Steve Orth (he asked me if he can link to my home page, what honor). The first homebrew games, the Intellicart...

The rest is history. :)

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That was nice of you ,Thank You lol but those flaps aren't dusty anymore plus Pandora's box has been making her rounds around our community ,who knows what will come out of Pandora next... ;) lol

What came out of Pandoras box already?

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For me the "real" collecting must have started in the mid-late 1990s. Even when the system first came out, I "collected" things... Used to have all the fold-out flyers up on my bedroom walls like posters - wish they'd not gone missing - especially the old Keyboard Component ones and the posters they started including in the Intellivision Game Club newsletters. The Swords & Serpents poster got some damage, and the old Sears and other flyers bit the dust too, it seems.

 

I also have the very distinct memory of seeing Spiker and Body Slam (and the other Super Pro titles) at TRU in the fall of 1990. I'd just returned from a year abroad and met up w/ my best friend at the time - who had been working at TRU. I met up with him on his break and he pulled me over to the video games area and, much to my shame now, we made fun of all the exclamation points and and names of the games. In the 1986-1988 timeframe I'd ordered probably almost a dozen or so titles via mail order, including an INTV System III to take with me to college.

 

In the early internet days, I ran across a few websites that had great Intellivision info, including the old BSR site, steverd, Intellivision G-Spot, Intellivision Bodega, Tomorrow's Heroes and so many others. Steverd's site (if memory serves) had a little section about overlay variations and the hook was set. I dragged out all the stuff I had and started going through it, then hit thrifts, flea markets, newsgroups, you name it trying to find more stuff. I *just missed* getting anything good from the old Radio Shack binders, too.

 

Not sure if the disease has run its course or what the prognosis is. Maybe it was a preexisting condition all along.

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