The “why the hell did I not buy this?!” thread

[jhd]

I have a non-gaming example:

 

I am an avid book collector with some 5,000 to 6,000 volumes. The majority of this collection is Canadian history and related topics. 

 

I was once at a book sale that had the complete set of Grollier's Encyclopedia Canadiana (1967) for something like $20. Alas, I was a grad student living in residence at the time, so while I could easily afford to buy the books, I literally had no place to store them. 

 

[Tanooki]

On 4/1/2021 at 6:41 AM, TwentySixHundred said:

Nintendo Game and Watch handhelds that were in a bargain bin at the local thrift store. There was like 10 of them in there along with others like Tiger ect. It was about 15 years ago, when i was one of many few still into 'retro' gaming, and i was contemplating whether to buy them or not. They were basically giving them away, sitting there like obsolete junk and my thoughts were, i would buy them and they would just sit in a draw... Nearly brings a tear to my eye whenever i think about it these days.

 

I wanted them because i had two (Turtle Bridge & Donkey Kong) as a young lad growing up and lost them over the years so they held a certain nostalgia. There is many other regrets of missing out on things but those definitely are the icing on the cake.

I feel for you as well I can semi-relate.  2005~ I had to basically be forced to sell off 80+% of my collection of gaming stuff, other odds and ends too (unemployment expired, wasn't breaking even.)  In that I had quite a few G&W handhelds (the LCDs, no tabletops/panoramas) of which only SMB I retained in the end.  Zelda, Climber, Balloon Fight, Boxing, DK, DK2, DKjr, DK Circus, DK3, DK Hockey, Mario Cement Factory, Goldcliff, Oil Panic, Bombsweeper, Squish, Mario Bros, Black Jack, Pinball, and most of the original 4-6 run of the keychain versions they did 20 years ago.  All gone.  SMB was the one, also my nelsonic Zelda black LCD watch, and in the last 6mo locally I got a pinball off someone for $20 which blew me away.  When I see how much those cost, each time I want to get them back, it turns my stomach.  Before the losses I ran one of the early web based G&W fan sites that covered all of the things with a little detail and a couple pics (still have it backed up and online in my personal webspace with a last updated date of 2000.)

[+wongojack]

I was once negotiating on a Pinbot pinball table.  The guy was willing to take a brand new Xbox 360 that I had plus $400.  I never saw the machine, so maybe it was in bad shape, but he claimed it wasn't.  Would've been nice to have Pinbot for at least a few years, but that was definitely a mistake in the value department.

[Mikebloke]

Historical: Not buying every boxed games I walked past for a £1 or less in 90's boot sales.

More recently: A PAL Neo Geo in Ireland with a game boxed etc. A copy of Volleyball for the Odyssey 1 in that stupid plastic case thing those people who "rate" quality put them in, which I messaged saying "it went for less in the US with 5 other games" and then they took it down and haven't seen it since. Shining Force CD and Suikoden 2 pretty much every time I walked past it - they are my versions of Panzer Dragoon Saga which I got for free because it was bought brand new for a B day present.

[HoshiChiri]

I picked up Solatorobo so many times at Gamestop, watching it go all the way down to $25-30ish (I forget exactly how much). I figured I'd buy it when it hit $20. Then it sold. Then the prices skyrocketed. I think I spent $100-150 when I finally did buy it. It's gone up even more, so I'm glad bought it when I did- but if I hadn't been so stingy in that Gamestop!

 

Alternatively, found a Gamecube kiosk disc in a thift store for under $10... but in a massive moment of stupidity didn't even check the price for sure, becuase people don't really want these never-available-to-the-public demos, right? WHY DID I THINK THAT?! I KNOW BETTER THAN THAT!

[+GoldLeader]

Once the Trader's (local classifieds) had a Q-Bert machine listed for $75.  I set it down or maybe threw it out...Then started thinking it would be easy to swing and I'd find room.  Went back and couldn't find the Trader's , got the next issue and it wasn't there.  I checked their online stuff but saw no listing.

 

Another week I saw a fairly well started 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner for $5500.  It only needed a little work and had nice pic included.  I didn't have the dough (and still need to restore my '74), but my job (at the time) was a better paying gig and I wondered if I should have called on it.  It sold instantly from what I understand.

[+TwentySixHundred]

3 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I feel for you as well I can semi-relate.  2005~ I had to basically be forced to sell off 80+% of my collection of gaming stuff, other odds and ends too (unemployment expired, wasn't breaking even.)  In that I had quite a few G&W handhelds (the LCDs, no tabletops/panoramas) of which only SMB I retained in the end.  Zelda, Climber, Balloon Fight, Boxing, DK, DK2, DKjr, DK Circus, DK3, DK Hockey, Mario Cement Factory, Goldcliff, Oil Panic, Bombsweeper, Squish, Mario Bros, Black Jack, Pinball, and most of the original 4-6 run of the keychain versions they did 20 years ago.  All gone.  SMB was the one, also my nelsonic Zelda black LCD watch, and in the last 6mo locally I got a pinball off someone for $20 which blew me away.  When I see how much those cost, each time I want to get them back, it turns my stomach.  Before the losses I ran one of the early web based G&W fan sites that covered all of the things with a little detail and a couple pics (still have it backed up and online in my personal webspace with a last updated date of 2000.)

That's tough and you had alot of good G&W handhelds. I know the feeling as was in a similar boat about 10 years ago. I also had to sell most of my collection due to unexpected unemployment, and bills needed to be paid. Only systems i held onto and just couldn't let go was the NES and SNES. But everything else was gone PS1, PS2 , Sega Megadrive, Mega CD and the Sega Master System. The boxes of games i just handed over from all the systems was a sad day and instant regret when sitting back in the car after. They also gave me a fraction of what its all worth. Its hard when having no choice that's for sure and wish i found another way to get the money as i want them back.

[Tanooki]

14 hours ago, TwentySixHundred said:

That's tough and you had alot of good G&W handhelds. I know the feeling as was in a similar boat about 10 years ago. I also had to sell most of my collection due to unexpected unemployment, and bills needed to be paid. Only systems i held onto and just couldn't let go was the NES and SNES. But everything else was gone PS1, PS2 , Sega Megadrive, Mega CD and the Sega Master System. The boxes of games i just handed over from all the systems was a sad day and instant regret when sitting back in the car after. They also gave me a fraction of what its all worth. Its hard when having no choice that's for sure and wish i found another way to get the money as i want them back.

That's about it.  In the end I made a line in the sand thing with some stuff, some limited stuff, created 'Top' lists of what NOT to go under on a few systems, and the rest got lined up for the firing squad basically.  The NES and SNES had the largest around 30-40 TOP games, the rest left.  It was down from there to like 10-30 at the lowest on N64, Gamecube, and Gameboy, Color, Advance.  Every other thing...all gone.  Virtual Boy, G&Ws, mice handheld/tabletops of the 80s, I had every Sega system but Pico, had all the sony hardware to that point, Turbo Duo, NGPC, etc.  Each system had dozens of games or more as I used to work in the industry and never let go of a thing, ever so it was into the 1000s of pieces.  I've since recovered what I really cared to more or less, got a few different things, but I'm probably 1500+ pieces below where I was and I don't want it again or have the will to bother.

[BassGuitari]

My all-time collecting mistakes:

 

Not buying that $20 Virtual Boy from the clearance bin at Kay-Bee Toys. I had the thing in my hands, I had the cash (which wasn't necessarily a given since I was 12). But I and the friend I was with laughed it off--the Virtual Boy was already a punchline by then, in 1997--and I put it back. I probably bought a CD from the record store instead.

 

Around the same time, when the Atari Jaguar had eight or nine toes in the grave, another toy store across town was clearancing out Jaguar stuff. I don't remember how much for systems or games, but cheap. Not cheap enough to buy on my own, though (again, I was 11 or 12), and even for the price it would have been a pretty tough sell getting my parents to buy one for me when we already had Nintendo (which still saw occasional use), Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, a rocking 486 PC, and maybe even our PlayStation. Looking back I probably could have finagled some way of getting one of their Jaguars and a game or two, but it didn't seem worth it.

 

I passed on a box of a couple dozen Atari 5200 cartridges for a dollar in 2000 or 2001. For the life of me, I can't understand why I turned that down. Whatever reasons I had that seemed to make sense at the time were just dumb in hindsight. I will say in my defense, though, that I was young, dumb, and stupid, and it was so early in my collecting career that I didn't even think of myself as a collector--all I really wanted was the Atari 2600, and I had that (and the Odyssey 2 and Intellivision I got along the way), so I figured I was good. Little did I know...?

[Eltigro]

I don't remember any prices or much of anything specific, but... back in the late 90s, there was a place called "The Atari Shop" in my town.  I went in there a couple times I think, and I remember them having tables full of 2600 games and just about everything else Atari related.  The guy who owned/ran it was kind of a nut.  I remember seeing him play Barnyard Blaster on an XE and raving about how "everyone thinks Nintendo was the first with a light gun" or something... I also remember there being a Jaguar running Alien vs Predator...  but the only thing I ever got there was my copy of Adventure.  I'm sure he had a lot of stuff that was rare or valuable, but at the time, I just didn't know or have the money.  The place is long gone now, though.

[DavidD]

4 hours ago, Eltigro said:

I don't remember any prices or much of anything specific, but... back in the late 90s, there was a place called "The Atari Shop" in my town.  I went in there a couple times I think, and I remember them having tables full of 2600 games and just about everything else Atari related.  The guy who owned/ran it was kind of a nut.  I remember seeing him play Barnyard Blaster on an XE and raving about how "everyone thinks Nintendo was the first with a light gun" or something... I also remember there being a Jaguar running Alien vs Predator...  but the only thing I ever got there was my copy of Adventure.  I'm sure he had a lot of stuff that was rare or valuable, but at the time, I just didn't know or have the money.  The place is long gone now, though.

Where was this?  It sounds like an aging Atari fan that decided to go into business at... just the wrong time.

[Eltigro]

It was in Longview, Texas.

[+thanatos]

Not a "not buying" story, but more of a missed treasure trove that wasn't realized.

 

2004, my workplace had an abandoned lab upstairs, full of old PS2s and 486/586 era beige PCs, set up neatly on shelves, that hadn't been touched in years.   My job didn't have anything to do with them, but the running servers I was in charge of were also up there in the pseudo server room.  

I thought it was all neat, but worthless at the time.  Once in awhile I would power one up and see Windows 3.1 appear.  "How neat! But glad I don't have to deal with this stuff anymore!"

 

And then we had to move buildings, so we recycled them all.  Because back then, even I was like "none of this stuff is useful!"

 

If I had pictures of this lab, I think everyone here would flog me now.  But trust me, I have many regrets! 

 

So many clicky keyboards and even monitors with BNC connectors.  Ugh!

 

 

 

[NE146]

In my freshman year of college 1987, every day before or after classes I would stop and get a snack & drink from the local Woolworths(?) in Santa Clara, CA and while I was standing in line I would often just stare at the copies of Stadium Events amongst the NES games behind the counter. I did this every single day for a long time and it was Stadium Events that caught my eye because of the cartoon graphics of the artwork.  But then again in my defense, who the heck would have known what was to become with that game.  

 

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by NE146

[doctorclu]

I work to not live with too much regret.    I've done pretty well as a Bubsy Bobcat and Zool: Alien Ninja from the nth Dimension collector.

Both of those collections I have some rare items I'm proud of...

 

 

That said, as a Bubsy Bobcat collector, there are some things that got away, but I am happy to know they exist.   Most of the time it was just timing and funds.   Or someone just wanted it more, and well, kudos to them! 

 

2011-ish

Two very rare items came up at once.   The Bubsy sunglasses as a Babbages promotional item...

 

And an invite to the promotional party at a CES for the launch of Bubsy...

 

I decided to let the flip-flop go, and went all in for the sunglasses, giving a $100 ceiling for the auction.  And lost!

Till then I never paid any great amount for Bubsy merchandise, but was shocked when someone wanted those sunglasses that much.  ?

Other Bubsy fans existed, possibly more fanatical than me?    Shock!!

 

in 2020 the Bubsy plush I showed at the beginning showed on ebay for the first time in a decade, and I learned from the above story.   I took all steps necessary to make sure to secure that plush, being up against not only Bubsy collectors but PLUSH collectors who had already deemed it a holy grail.   They could have it.. for the cost of a used car!     So gained wisdom from the lost flip flip and sunglasses.

 

2013?

Development hand drawn maps were put on ebay from Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales game producer Faran Thomason.

 

Reason for not buying them?   That I had ripped the actual maps from the game rom. 

But would have been a nice piece from the development of the game looking back.  There are such few merchandise and collectables for the Jaguar Bubsy game.  Just glad we have these shots of the maps though.  Kinda nice.

 

2021

Had just made a large purchase two weeks ago and as a collector when I use credit for large purchases I work to pay that off before another large purchase.

 

And so naturally, days later, my first sighting of Toys R' Us VidPro cards for the Jaguar appeared.  A lot of 22 of them.  $499 to buy it now, and with a $199 starting bid.  Also naturally, a Bubsy Vid Pro card was in there.  The first sighting I'd seen of this card... ever. 

 

 

I have other Bubsy vidPro cards, but little known fact...  Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales is my favorite Bubsy game.     So would have been nice to pick that up, but not for $499.   There were other cards that would have made the $199 worth it.  Probably would have resold about 19 of them.   Held off till the last minute, and in this instance, was out-sniped. 

 

Oh well, it would be boring to have a complete collection, right?   Gotta be something out there worth hunting down.

 

As they said in Pirates of Dark Water "Always the Quest!"

 

 

[BassGuitari]

On 4/5/2021 at 11:29 AM, Eltigro said:

The guy who owned/ran it was kind of a nut.  I remember seeing him play Barnyard Blaster on an XE and raving about how "everyone thinks Nintendo was the first with a light gun" or something...

I wonder if he knew Atari wasn't the first with a light gun, either. ? (EDIT: They didn't even beat Nintendo to the punch!?)

 

Loony proprietor notwithstanding, that definitely sounds like my kind of store! Reminds of the the first time I found a game shop that dealt primarily in retro stuff--must have been '98 or '99. I thought I was the only person in the world who cared about Intellivision, Odyssey, Atari, etc., and I walk into this store and it's shelves full of Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, Vectrex, Coleco, Atari 400/800, Jaguar, just all kinds of great stuff. Talk about kid-in-a-candy-shop moments, that was me. ? (They had the more recent Sega, Nintendo, Sony, and actually quite a bit of 3DO stuff as well but I wasn't as interested in that.) I remember getting a NOS copy of Galaxian for the Atari 2600 (it blew my mind that you could still get new Atari games), a loose Star Wars: The Arcade Game (which actually turned out to be the Coleco version), and stacks of commons that were just cheap as hell. I remember they had a Chase The Chuck Wagon for $300 (which was about the going rate at the time) and an Odyssey 4000 system for $60. That place was heaven on earth to me, but sadly it only lasted a couple of years before it went out of business.

Edited April 6, 2021 by BassGuitari

[Hwlngmad]

On 4/2/2021 at 6:59 PM, GoldLeader said:

Another week I saw a fairly well started 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner for $5500.  It only needed a little work and had nice pic included.  I didn't have the dough (and still need to restore my '74), but my job (at the time) was a better paying gig and I wondered if I should have called on it.  It sold instantly from what I understand.

Car wise, I wish I could have convinced my parents (or more-so my Dad) on several cars.  My Dad vetoed a (potential) purchase of a 454SS.  Other times I couldn't convince him to buy and then store for future selling purposes a 70 Challenger RT with a 440+6 and a 1970 Olds 442 with his/her Hurst shifter.  Also recall a 1973 455 Trans Am for like $7k or something like that that was in mint condition.  Man, what could have been on any one of those...

[Steven Pendleton]

Oh, I forgot the PSP go dock. They used to have those things brand-new for $10 at the PX like 10 years ago. Now they go for $100+ online used with just the dock itself. I wish I'd bought one 10 years ago, but I didn't. I did eventually buy a dock in the summer of 2019, but I ended up paying like 10000 yen for it.

[King Atari]

Aside from general "shoulda bought [new, sealed, now-valuable game/console/toy] cheap on clearance when I had the chance" feelings (we've all been there), a few specific incidents come to mind right now...

 

- Here's the biggie. 2004: There was a used game store fairly close to me that had been there for awhile, but that I inexplicably only went to once, and even more inexplicably, didn't buy anything from. And this was a GOOD used game store, with REALLY GOOD prices. Lotsa stuff, plenty of 2600 games. The items that stick out most to me are 1) a Coleco Combat dedicated console. 2) A TurboExpress handheld. And 3) a copy of Quest For Quintana Roo for the 2600. I no longer remember the prices, except Roo was, I think, $60 or $80; not exactly cheap, but a decent price for what it was going for at the time. (Still is?) I believe I posted about it on here, and was told I could have gotten more for it than the asking price - I guess I could search through my post history, but seeing/cringing at my writing from all those years ago is not something I'm prepared to do at the moment.

 

Roo was one thing, but looking back, the Combat console and TurboExpress are the ones I wish I'd have had more interest in. Like I said, I don't remember the prices, but the pricing in the place was, as I recall it, entirely reasonable, for the time then and even more so now. I probably couldn't have afforded all three things in that one visit, but certainly at least one of 'em, maybe even two. 18-year-old, part-time job me should have had more foresight! The Combat is the one I'd really love to have in my collection nowadays (though there's no guarantee I wouldn't have wound up selling it later, in those years before the current "aw, just keep everything!" mindset I have today), though the TurboExpress was the one that, from a value standpoint, I should have waltzed on out of there with.

 

That store is now long gone, but before it disappeared, it went from video games to board/card games - convenient in not having to change the name of the place, but of little help to me since the latter ain't my scene, man.

 

- Another tale, same general era (probably about a year later), this time at a thrift store: the place had a pretty decent selection of retro games, especially NES. They had a Tengen Tetris, I didn't buy it, it was gone next time I went in. Another time (same time?), they had a box full of, uh, boxes; that is, empty Atari game boxes, with a 7800 Kung-Fu Master box the standout. I didn't buy it or any others, they were also gone next time I went in. On a related note, a dude I used to work with claimed he got the 2600 Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre games there. I kept pretty regular tabs on this thrift and I absolutely knew even back then to buy those without hesitation if the opportunity presented itself, so my hope is that he was just full of it.

 

Sometimes life balances things out though: I later found a Tengen Tetris at a dedicated music/video game store for $5 - evidently they saw no difference between it and the regular Nintendo edition, but I did, and happily took the opportunity to rectify my earlier mistake. Also, at that above-mentioned thrift store, I wound up finding a complete boxed copy of 7800 Basketbrawl for a few bucks. And honestly, my amount of scores/chances took far outweigh my misses - though that just makes the missed opportunities all the more glaring to me, IMO.

 

- Actually, at that dedicated music/video game store I just mentioned, they once had NES Wayne's World for $5. I didn't buy it, and naturally wound up with the nagging feeling that I should have. Needless to say, another missed opportunity was eventually revealed. I later had to pay substantially more money for a used copy online, though in another case of life occasionally balancing things out, what I paid would be considered an absolutely terrific price compared to what the game goes for now.

 

- Want to know an odd regret that's been popping into my mind lately, despite not being THAT big of a deal? If you have Save-A-Lot grocery stores near you, you may recall that in the early-00s, in addition to the normal cheapie budget DVDs (a 'genre' I have serious love for anyway), they could also get some new old stock stuff in that they'd then sell for like a buck apiece; some cool NOS PC games popped up there, and in the waning days of VHS, I cleaned up. But what continues to stick out to me is my passing up of a carded Toy Biz Marvel figure from the early-90s that somehow wound up there. The card was pretty wasted, and to tell you the truth, I don't even remember for sure what figure it was; I'm not particularly a Marvel Comics fan (except for Spidey, I was always more of a DC guy), but it was such an odd, random, not to mention CHEAP, occurrence that I really should have just gotten it. It wasn't even with other dedicated toys; it was on their clearance (expired?) food racks. And what's more, I think this was more mid-00s, or maybe even late-00s, after that NOS clearance boom at the start of the decade, which just made the whole event all the more random.

 

Nowadays, I'd like to think I've learned from past mistakes; I generally try not to leave anything to chance. If it looks interesting, and it's affordable enough, just go for it and sort the rest out later. Better safe than sorry! Although, I do still have occasional lapses in judgement. Case in point: I collect vintage local promotional memorabilia. Mugs, glasses, keychains, businesses, restaurants, that sort of thing. Hey, I find it interesting, it's relatively plentiful, and it's usually cheap! While my main focus is on items local to me, I do indeed take an interest in things from other states too, though almost always in a "well, if it happens to cross my path while out and about..." kinda way. Anyway, several months ago, or maybe even about a year ago now, there was a little paperweight from the Chicago Leather Co. in a showcase at Goodwill. It was just a little glass thing, with some kind of leather blotter (?) with the company ID stamped on it. There was definitively some age to it, but despite that and it being in the showcase, it couldn't have been priced very high. I stupidly walked out without it, or without even asking to see it up close. And, well, of course it was gone next time I stopped in (and I hit this particular Goodwill really frequently, too). I'm honestly surprised someone besides me cared about it, truth be told. A neat little piece of promo memorabilia like that isn't likely to cross my path again, so while it may not sound like a big deal (and it really isn't, all things considered), there's still some regret there on my part.

 

On 3/31/2021 at 9:52 PM, jgkspsx said:

I think this thread needs a “why the hell did I sell that?” corollary. I recently found an IM log bragging to my wife about selling my beautiful, pristine, complete copy of Car Battler Joe for $70 in 2005 after getting it for $15. Whoops.

 

Oh boy, I've got some stories there, but they honestly hurt waaaaaaaaay more than the tales of the things I passed up. There's things I got rid of years ago that I try not to think too much about, because, OUCH. (One of the easier-to-take examples: the 7800 Basketbrawl I mentioned above. I wound up selling it for like $30 a few years after, and while that was a decent price at the time, the rarity, and more importantly, my love of the 7800, has grown exponentially since. Regret!)

 

Another quick example: my boxed, childhood copy of Punch-Out!!, the Mr. Dream re-release. It was one I had my eye on at KB Toys for awhile, eventually I bought it, and then somewhere in the early-00's I traded it (along with another now-forgotten but less-important NES game) for the unlicensed Chiller. It wasn't so much the trading of the game itself that came to bother me, but the nostalgia associated with it. Still, in yet another case of life helping balance things out, this was ultimately the catalyst for my later buying a sealed NOS copy of Mr. Dream's Punch-Out!! on eBay for, IIRC, $29.99. Yes there was a time when non-top tier sealed NES games could be had affordably. If it wasn't Mario, Zelda, or even more related to the subject here, Mike Tyson, prices could generally be pretty reasonable. This has since changed considerably, which made the purchase a wise investment on my part. (And Chiller goes for some decent bucks nowadays, too.) I'm not sure that makes up for the loss of nostalgia I associated with that childhood copy, but it's something anyway.

[toiletunes]

Sometime in the early to mid nineties, there was a junk shop near Hodgkins IL called 'R2,' (remember that reduce, reuse, recycle slogan? They were named after that).

They had some Showbiz Pizza walk around costumes- A bunch of Billy Bob, but I also remember Mitzi and Beach Bear. $50 or $100 each.

I managed to scrounge enough money to go back for a Billy Bob, but the only costumes they had left were pretty incomplete. I have the head (no eyes, no tooth) and overalls, but that's all.

Later on, I realized Beach Bear and Mitzi had to have been from the animatronics- the masks were rubber and had dirty grease stains on the inside. 

This would have been right after concept unification, but why/how would this stuff turn up at a rundown junk shop by a run down town?

[bluejay]

I found on a beater Nintendo DS (the original DS in blue) at a flea market but didn’t buy it because it was all scratched up and was missing the touch pen. It had a Pokemon Heartgold inside of it but back then I had no interest in Pokémon. It was $25. Seeing how much prices for Pokémon games have risen, I shoulda grabbed it. 

[DragonGrafx-16]

10 hours ago, bluejay said:

I found on a beater Nintendo DS (the original DS in blue) at a flea market but didn’t buy it because it was all scratched up and was missing the touch pen. It had a Pokemon Heartgold inside of it but back then I had no interest in Pokémon. It was $25. Seeing how much prices for Pokémon games have risen, I shoulda grabbed it. 

I found a copy of Wario Land 4 in a GBA at a thrift store a few years ago. I bought it just for the game. Sold the GBA and kept the game.

[thegamezmaster]

I have too many missed chances at stuff, I can't remember them all.

[Billy Beans]

I too had too many chances to remember. Kaybee liquidated so many things back in the day, and in hindsight I should have jumped on them. GameStop is another place I passed on many things.

 

Virtualboys and games, Sega CD systems and games, ADAM computers and games, collector's edition items, games for various systems at prices less than $5. Way too much to keep track of.

[amiman99]

15 -20 years ago, Ebay had $99 plus shipping Amiga CD32s for sale, brand new in a box. Guess what..., I did not buy it.

Back then I did not trust retro stuff out of China.