There has got to be a better way than eBay to get games!!!!!

[h.e.r.o]

Hello,

 

I'm trying to get my collection of 2600 games going, but eBay is a really slow and expensive process. I mean, I'd like to have Pitfall!, but $5.95 with a gunky, torn up label? No thanks!

 

All you guys out there that have about 100+ games, how do you do it? I would buy from Hozer if his repro carts weren't more expensive than the orginals. Have tried garage sales with NO luck.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I have most of my carts through Flea Market searches. There is one here in fact that has multiples of most common games and they don't run for more than a buck or so.

 

Anyway, all I can suggest is to try local flea markets. The best one here...only takes place on the weekends and is comprised of people from all around the state and some outta state who set up Booths for the stuff.

 

Much luck to you in your finds.

[bangles66]

I find yard sales, sometimes callled tag or garage sales depending on where you are from.

 

To be the best people generally just want to get rid of stuff and you can get alot of stuff cheap.

 

usually you can find a system with gmaes for between 5-15 Dollars.

 

 

I buy the local paper on my way home from work on fridays. At home I go through and pick out as many as I have time to go to and then plan a route out.

 

If I don't know the street I'll get out the map book and get all the info ready so saturday morning all I have to do is get in the car and go.

 

I find yard sales better because the flea markets (at least in my area) usually have dealers and they want too much money for the games than I want to pay.

 

Just to show you that, today at the flea matket--looking for non atari stuff-although I do keep my eye open for atari--the only games I saw were common--space invaders, chopper command and the guy wanted GET This $10.00 each.

 

also try the net just do a search for atari or classic games. There are dealers out there with a lot of games at reasonable prices.

 

Good Luck

[DanBoris]

I have always tried (and succeded) to avoid E-bay, I much prefer finding my games in the wild. I have over 250, 2600 titles and found 95% of them at flea markets and yard sales. At my local flea market I actually found a 2600 Crazy Climber and Waterworld, for $1.00 each, and just a few weeks ago a find a complete Bally Astrocade with a couple games for $10.00 at a flea. So the good finds are out there.

 

Dan

[Tempest]

I love to hate ebay as well, but some of us just aren't that lucky. I actually prefer to go through an Atari dealer or fellow collector than ebay. But sometimes you just have to break down and sell your soul to the great evil-bay...

 

Tempest

[atari70s]

hey HERo

if you get my email that woudl be start im a big venor / deal in atari i can find many items and clearing over 500 games have lots of knowledge int eh items i know i told you i had 19 but i foudna few more 26 in all. but i have many dealers on ebay if you want i can give youadress(email to talk to them . hey dan id give ya 10 for waterworld hehe. ( seriously i like to get 1 of the those 2 off of you how much,

[Atarian75]

Hey Hero. If you are interested in Atari 2600 games give me an e-mail at Atarian75@aol.com I have over a hundred titles to sell. Cheaper than ebay but probably a little more expensive than a thrift or flea.

[Joel D. Park]

I have to get most everything from Ebay now days. I bearly ever find anything in the wild. Since I sell alot of games from my atari web page www.atari2600.net I normally buy games in bulk from ebay. If I see 1 game in a lot of 50 I need alot of time I can get all the games for close to $1.00 each. When you break down the cost per game, it doesn't seem to be so expensive.

 

I normally sell and Rare-ER dupes I pick up to private guys, or I trade them or just send them to friends I know need them. Some of the more common (Pac-Man) and stuff I can sometime trade to folks making homebrews in exchange for a homebrewed cart.

 

I am beginning to get an awful large pile of Systems and stuff that is untested that I need to resell on ebay or something.

 

Later,

Joel D. Park

[Marco(2)]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tempest:

I love to hate ebay as well, but some of us just aren't that lucky. I actually prefer to go through an Atari dealer or fellow collector than ebay. But sometimes you just have to break down and sell your soul to the great evil-bay...

---

 

Speaking of which... how evil is Ebay actually? Popular belief tells us that Ebay has ruined the hobby by pushing prices through the roof.

 

Well, I just don't think that is true. As I experience it, only the really rare stuff is worth big bucks on Ebay. However, these games (I'm talking unique protos and Color Bar Generator and the likes) have been worth big bucks all along. I remember the days that Video Life and Magicard sold for $1500 each, not to mention the rumoured price of $2500 for Alligator People. So, Ebay really hasn't changed that much about that.

 

I'd say also that prices of the other 95% of games has dropped, because of Ebay. I still have some newsgroup auctions on file. If I look at the prices that people paid in those auctions 5-10 years ago, they were higher for the items we now consider (not so extremely) rare (like Waterworld and Crazy Climber). I think the popularity of Ebay has lead to a big increase in supply. Simple economics teach us that, with a demand not growing that fast, prices will drop.

 

If you're a patient man, you will be able to get every game you want from Ebay. That includes unusual rarities like a boxed Frogger II, the occasional lab loaner of a released game, MIB 1977 heavy sixers, EPROMs on hacked 2600 carts etc etc.

 

Of course, finding stuff in the wild, especially the rare games, adds a lot to the excitement of the hobby. That being said, I think that buying (un)commons on Ebay (especially in lots of 10-20 games) is just as cheap, or even cheaper, as finding them on fleamarkets. So, don't stay away from Ebay because of the price.

 

As for rarer games, well, I guess it's just a matter of your goal of collecting. If you're a completist, greedy, or live in The Netherlands (or all of the above), Ebay turns out to be a not-so-bad place after all

 

Cheers,

 

Marco

 

PS: If forgot about one other evil, the fact that Ebay has turned people into greedy *******s not willing to trade, only looking to make a quick buck. Well, that may have been true 2-3 years but if I'm right about price development, I think many of them have turned out to be quite disappointed

[Tempest]

That's true, I don't think I'd ever be able to find some of the games I found on ebay. Many of my prototypes were acquired from ebay by people who would never have sold them otherwise. Ebay has shown us the evil side of collecting, but it's also made many caches of games available that normally would not be. It's a double edged sword, that's why I have a love/hate releation ship with ebay.

 

Tempest

[King Asmo]

I personally think eBay isn't evil at all.. I'd even go as far as saying it's a good thing. Prices have dropped drastically because of eBay over the last five years for all but the most rare items, and eBay has saved a lot of games and systems from winding up in the dumpster. I buy games from eBay from time to time that I could never find locally, but I also sell a lot of my excess stuff I find at garage sales.

 

I think a great way to get a lot of stuff locally is to post an ad in a local buy/sell newspaper.. you'd be surprised how many people call you and will sell you large setups for next-to-nothing, just to get rid of it. I put an ad in a few years ago, and went from having a Colecovision with a few games to having over 100 different games Colecovision games over the span of a week. I put an ad in this year, and didn't get a great response, but I did get a bunch of Intellivision white labels I needed. So the stuff IS out there.. it's just a lot harder to find than it was 5 years ago, and you've got to be willing to do some searching.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

[Ze_ro]

Ugh... eBay... Until recently, I was happy just going through the local thrift stores, and the single flea market in town (I really wish there were more flea markets in town). I used to find quite a bit there, and had worked my collection up to about 60 games... but I haven't seen anything there in a LONG time now... occasionally I'll find a Nintendo game or two, but Atari is hard to find around my town now

 

So I turned to eBay. The good news is that I can find a lot of what I'm looking for... unfortunately there's about 500 people out there who are willing to pay more (sometimes a LOT more) than the stuff is worth. I've been trying to get copies of Secret Quest, Dark Chambers, and California Games for a while now without any luck (By the way, if anyone has these and is looking to sell them, let me know). Luckily I was able to finally get my hands on a copy of Pitfall 2 thanks to Pitfall Harry (Thanks again man!).

 

More bad news is that I'll have to put my eBay buying on hiatus thanks to my monitor burning out on me Be glad that you at least live in the United States... living outside of the States (even in Canada) cuts you out of many auctions, and makes everything cost a lot more ($20 s&h on my $5 Atari 5200... yikes... Canada Customs will probably tack on another $10 or so worth of taxes too)

 

I may not like eBay... but it's probably the easiest way to find what you're looking for... if you're willing to pay for it.

 

--Zero

[h.e.r.o]

Good points, everybody... I'll e-mail people when I get back from Wyoming next week.

 

Yeah, there's good and bad points about eBay. The good thing is eBay has some stuff you'd be searching for years trying to find (where else are you going to find a Mint Atari 2600 in the box with everything and games without searching like you're looking for the Holy Grail?)

 

 

However, as soon as I bid $4.00 on some driving paddles for my Night Driver game (oh, by the way, would driving paddles work for Jedi Arena as well or will I have to buy Tennis paddles for that?) some nut outbids me by placing an $11 bid on some Atari paddles! Geez!!!!!

 

 

Thanks everyone. I guess it's just "connections."

[Ze_ro]

quote:

---

Originally posted by h.e.r.o:

However, as soon as I bid $4.00 on some driving paddles for my Night Driver game (oh, by the way, would driving paddles work for Jedi Arena as well or will I have to buy Tennis paddles for that?) some nut outbids me by placing an $11 bid on some Atari paddles! Geez!!!!!

---

 

A similar thing happened to me recently when I found an auction for Indy 500 and two Driving paddles. It was at $5.50 at the time, and I put a watch on it, expecting to spend up to $7 or so on it (Driving paddles are hard to come by in my town it seems)... I checked back after the auction was over, and the winning bid was over $15!

 

By the way, the driving paddles are ONLY used for Indy 500 (Which makes them even less useful, and [i would think] worth less... but oh well). For any other game that says "Use paddle controllers", you need the regular "tennis" paddles. This includes Jedi Arena and Night Driver. The good news, however, is that "tennis" paddles are a LOT easier to find, and you can have up to four of them plugged in at a time for games like Warlords and Video Olympics.

 

--Zero

[h.e.r.o]

Thank you for clearing that up for me, Zero.

 

(A message from H.E.R.O to Zero) I had to say that! LOL

 

(Response from a previous message from Zero to H.E.R.O)

 

Ok, that's enough wordplay........

[Gr4ph0n]

After actually playing the games, my favorite part of collecting classic games is the HUNT! Try Flea Markets, Thrift Stores, Rummage Sales, Swap Meets, HAM Fests (Amature Radio Swaps), and collectable stores that deal in video games. Tell all your family and friends you collect and sometimes you'll find that they will dig out their old systems out of the basement for you. I have even found a local AM station that has air time for people looking to swap or sell things, and I have asked for people with games to sell, and also have heard others selling Atari there. I rarely pay more than a few dollars for a cart, most of my collection was donated to me from my friends and family.

[Ze_ro]

Woohoo, looks like my thrift store drought may be over... on today's "Value Village Run", I managed to pick up copies of Summer Games, Winter Games, and two Gemini Joysticks. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to have the Gemini itself But oh well, the joysticks are pretty nice, and have a built in paddle (no more swapping joysticks).

 

Okay, so it wasn't that big a haul... but it's more than I've found in the last few weeks. I agree, the hunt is more exciting than getting stuff over eBay... but when all you can find are Super Mario/Duck Hunt cartridges, you start to get fed up

 

--Zero

[Osbo]

Well I just got a MIB 7800 with 9 games for 32 bucks... and I sold an HP calculator for 72 bucks... ebay ain't that bad... but... I mean, I went to the thrift and flea markets for weeks... and I have only found 3-4 games and an Atari Jaguar controller.