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What was the best deal for a game/computer you ever had?


bluejay

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This includes all games/consoles/computers/peripherals, and both buying&selling(buying=somebody sold you an Air Raid cartridge for $0.50, selling=some idiot bought a Commodore 64 for $7000). This does not include getting stuff for free at a giveaway or something. I think mine was the TRS-80 Model 100, which game with a leather case, 2 manuals, blue fabric carry bag, Tandy Portable Disk Drive, phone/printer cables, all for $50. Pretty good deal!

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Neo Geo AES w/S-VIDEO, RCA & debug BIOS, 2 original AES controllers, the original !Arcade! MVS to AES converter, about 5 AES carts CIB and 25 MVS carts, $250.00.  This was about 10 years ago and purchased sight unseen though a friend of a friend.

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Once upon a time, in the days when  people were throwing away NESes left and right (about 2002), I found a NES with Pinball inside of it at a street trash pickup in Oakland. It was next to a Pentium 1 tower, which I also grabbed. Don't know if this counts.

 

The Pentium 1 was donated to EA, which I worked for at the time, in their tech support department. I installed a lot of old EA games on it for the occasional phone calls we got about Ultima 5 and such.

 

My favorite tho was my Jaguar and JagCD unit which literally came from a dumpster. A local postal worker, who I was good with, liked to moonlight as a literal dumpster diver. He'd find all kinds of things, many video game related, in the Silicon Valley area from the dumpsters of the developers themselves.

 

I traded him a service for the Jaguar and Jag CD... I modded his Xbox (which had only been out for a year or so then). I gave his Xbox the super-delux treatment -new hard-drive and installed every emulator under the sun. The Jaguar still was considered junk at the time, and some friends raised eyebrows, but I felt I got the better end of the deal.

 

Years later I'm still smiling. And the Jaguar and CD unit functions perfect, I've never even opened the things.

 

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Bought a fat PS2 about 5Y ago at the local HPB for like 20US$, it came with the Network adapter + HDD + a DMS3 modchip .... still have it.

I got curious about it because of the network adapter, very happy when I found the DMS3 and the HDD (it wasn't a big one but hey ...).

 

Not too long after, GameStop was dumping their used GameBoy Players for GC, I bought mine (HW + support disk) for 10US$ + taxes .... the clerk even asked me how did I find out about it (had to travel to the nerby town as the local one didn't have any).

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Enough to still look small by a lot of peoples standards at least from what I see online. ;)

 

I got a mostly *eyes out* working Virtual Boy 11 months ago for $75, came with Tennis, Mario Clash, Galactic Pinball with their boxes, AC adapter, battery box, headpiece had the visor/clip in good shape too so only missing the stand, oh and FYI Tennis had the retail display box which at the time was valued at $100 and increased since.  I came out ahead on cardboard, one piece of it.  -- Same store $100 for sealed really good condition Pokemon Red Version which is worth like 4-5x that or so now.

 

Years ago before I moved back here, I paid $50 for a NES with 17 games, pleather game carrier case, all the packed in controllers/wires/zapper, an NES advantage, and manuals for like 1/3 of the games.  Doesn't seem like much, but one of the games was Bonk's Adventure, which given the other titles were mostly the super popular common stuff like Contra, a couple Castlevanias, the Marios, couple Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden titles, Gradius, and other things Bonk was not only free I made money selling the stuff I didn't need at that point. -- And about that same time, seeing the early comment about the bought cheap sold high bit on Metal Storm, I paid $5 for Shantae, tried to love it for awhile and hated it more so I sold it for $100 which then was the going rate and I don't regret it.

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My most memorable deal I got was when I saw a very bland ad for "Atari"

Yes, the ad title was "Atari" and the text inside said "Atari game console". 5€.

I though "Well, 5€, there mgiht be a few interesting games for it.

I call the phone number, and it's a nice middle-aged lady "Oh, the Atari console? Sure, I still have it. The games? There's a lot of disquettes for it, too much and they aren't next to me".

I think nothing of it, lot of elder people call game carts disquettes/floppies here.

"is there something written on the console?

- Yes, I remember there is the number 520 written"

For those not into computer, it's the Atari ST 520 computer :D A good score for 5€.

"Well I'm interested, but you're living too far away, can you ship it if I refund you the shipping?"

She said Of course, and the next day, called me back for the shipping price "It will be 35€!"

At first, I was shocked, and tried to say I didn't wanted it shipped by Express Delivery.

And she said "Well It's because of the weight, I'm giving you the Atari television with it too!"

(This keep going good, heh? :D and it's not even done!)

And when I received it, welle here it was, the computer, the display, a box of floppies (mostly copies but heh).

And the icing on the cake : it was the more evolved (better video chip) Atari 520 STe, a system that was worth, at the time, in the ballpark of 60€ (probably more today).

BEST and funniest DEAL EVER :D

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I've had lots of lil' scores from yard sales & secondhand shops over the years. Crusader of Centy cart, $2; Suikoden 2 disc, $5; NES toploader (no hookups or dogbones), $5; PSP 3000 model in carry case with 6 UMDs (no charger), $5; and so on.

 

But, I'm gonna go with my Wii U, becuase it was a very odd set of circumstances. 

 

Gamestop had a B2G1 sale going, and the 3 Wii U games I wanted to start my collection in one store. So I asked my fiancé if we could swing by after work so I could pick them up. He waits in the car, I come out with my bag of games- and he looks confused & asks where the Wii U is. Well, there's no special sale on the system right now, so I'll get that a little later, just wanted to get the games while I could, y'know? He doesn't say anything, drives a block up the road, pulls into Best Buy & basically orders me to go buy a console. We go in- this is kind of an odd thing for him to do, so I'm just going along with it. Turns out, they were having a special (which my fiancé knew about)- buy any Wii U, get either Zombi U or Just Dance & a $50 gift card free. And- unlike the Gamestop- they had the Mario+Luigi U bundle in stock. I'm pretty pleased at this point- three more games than I expected, plus I can get a Pro controller! I make my purchase, ended up with Zombi U since Just Dance was out of stock, then run back to get the pro controller once I have the gift card. They tell me my total is $30. I am confused- isn't my gift card $50? Several minutes and 2 managers later, they've got it- there's TWO promotions going, the Wii U one, and one to get s $20 card if you spend over $100. Only one triggered. A lot of register jumping jacks happen but the end result is: My order was refunded & re-rung to trigger both gift cards, and since they couldn't cancel the original one for some reason, I got to keep it.

 

So, for the standard $300 a Wii U cost, I ended up with: the system, Mario U, Luigi U, Zombi U, a pro controller, and $40 in Best Buy gift cards. And the B2G1 from Gamestop for Rayman Legends, Sonic: Lost World, and Wonderful 101. I think it's the largest amount of unintentional savings I've ever got on a console.

Edited by HoshiChiri
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One of my most legendary finds was back in 2013. I had gone into what is now a defunct game store called Game Force to check out their selection of vintage games. On the shelf in front of me was Hagane the Final Conflict for Super Nintendo with it's manual and box for $40! Scooped that up real quick. It was 100% legit too.

 

Another really epic find was on Facebook Marketplace. Some kid posted some quick pics of a small crate full of Atari 2600 CIB games, around I'd say 10 boxes (asteriods, star raiders, indy 500 etc.) he wanted $50 for the whole lot. I drove about an hour to meet him to buy it. When I got back in my car after buying it and started going through it all I found two prototypes in the box - a Big Bird proto and a Gravitar proto!!

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