Video Games, Movies, Comics, & Pop Culture

I screwed up with Justice League.

I had bought tickets for everyone going, as I typically do. I have the AMC Stubs membership, so buying everyone’s tickets avoids the online “convenience fee” and everyone then pays me back for their tickets. We always catch the opening night 7PM showing for these sorts of things.

Only Warner Bros and AMC flipped it on me.

The normal showing was at 6PM and the 3D showing was at 7PM, reverse of standard opening night times. I had forgotten this and didn’t check my tickets, so we wound up at the theater an hour into the movie. We got passes for later use and went to Wendy’s for a Frosty and hung out a bit before everyone headed home.

I was a bit disappointed, but figured I might see the first showing the next day. I had Friday off and had planned on getting a pizza and watching Marvel’s Punisher on Netflix that day. But Thursday night the thought nagged at me – I’m never off on Friday, so what if a garage sale has some retro games?

It’s the haunting voice for retro game hunters:
“What if I don’t look and this is where I miss out on a $5 copy of Mega Man X3 or Earthbound?”
“Was that garage sale I just passed the one with a copy of Stadium Events or Little Samson for a few bucks?”

Such as it was that Thursday night. I hopped on Craigslist to see if any garage sales were posted for the next day that had video games mentioned, hopefully with pictures to make it worth going.

There weren’t any.

Awesome, I won’t spend money I don’t have and I can get a delicious pizza and binge watch Punisher. Maybe I will go see Justice League after all as well.

Not So Fast

But then, I saw a post. A huge retro game collection for $1,000 was listed. These sort of posts are things I never think I’d go for, but would like looking at. So I looked. And it was impressive. I saw an NES with ROB the Robot complete in box, everything included. I saw Final Fantasy III’s box. A Super Nintendo. A table lined with Gameboys, Gameboy SPs, Gameboy Colors. By my estimates, only a couple dozen things in the picture were worth the $1,000 and I could see some more boxes peeking out in one of the pictures. This seemed like a treasure trove.

I hopped on Google Hangouts and messaged my friend Phil, who was now fully getting into retro game collecting as well:

Me: Got $500 you want to spend? I’m thinking about taking $800 out of savings for a game purchase >.>
Phil: What? Explain now.
Me: (Link to craigslist ad) I want to see if they’ll take 800.
Complete ROB Deluxe in box, 2 NES, a top loader, An SNES, Games CIB. Boxes and boxes of stuff. I was calculating and got down to about $350 with just some of the boxed stuff I can see + consoles
Phil: Wait… where did the $500 come from? If it’s $1k And you were thinking $800….
Me: Randomly asking if you wanted to take 500 to split 50/50 But then I thought “Wait, wonder if I can get it for 800”
Phil: There are bound to be things in there that I’d super want. I already see Mega Man. And one of the toaster NES’s.
Me: Alright, let’s look at it this way…. Are you up for going in at $500 and we split 50/50? And if I can get it lower, great?
Phil: Yeah
Me: We’re insane. You know that, right?
Phil: This is insane. ….I was just typing that.

So I emailed the guy about the ad. Phil and I waited anxiously as the night wore on, occasionally messaging each other with joke comments like “Answer the email dang it!” on Hangouts, but there was no reply. Any time there’s a too good to be true post, it’s possible it’s a prank…. Or someone’s looking to mug you for $1,000! In this case, it looked to be a prank post or someone beat us to it.

Letting Go and Moving On….But Wait

That weekend there was a Facebook group meetup, but again I had no money, so I needed to move some extra stuff I still had. Trades or selling would have been great, but I only sold Berserk Guts Rage for Dreamcast. $25 more than I started with, but not a lot to be excited about.

Sunday and Monday came and it seemed like the post was indeed a joke as it was still up and we still had no response.

Then on Monday night, I got an email back. The seller had been busy and had updated a new post with better images showing more stuff and had increased the price to $1100. I confirmed with Phil he was still good with going in 50/50 and we agreed to the price and arranged a time to pick up. I checked the seller’s address on Google Maps and it seemed like a nice neighborhood, so I was less concerned of getting mugged, or killed and fed to crocodiles (there are no crocodiles in these non-aquatic regions of Texas, but what if someone had a full pit of them in their back yard for this very purpose!?).

“Vidya gaemz? HA HA HA, You fool! It was WE, CROCODILES, ALL ALONG!” (Note: these are alligators, but they are standing in for the fictitious crocodiles. Thank you.)

Picking Up The Pickup

Phil met me at the seller’s house Tuesday morning. I had taken an early lunch to get everything loaded up and take it to my house so we could unload, then I’d go back to work. Phil was off the following day so we’d start going through it then.

The seller was a nice guy, a bit younger than us I’d say, who welcomed us into his home to look over everything and figure out how we were going to haul it all out. He started putting boxes on a table and told us to start loading up.

As we took boxes out to load Phil’s vehicle, the seller explained to us that it was all in a storage locker his mother owned and he thought it belonged to her ex originally. He knew it was worth more than $1100, but video games weren’t his thing, so he was happy putting the money in his pocket, recovering his living room, and someone else taking the time to individually sort everything, clean it, test it, photo it, and spend time selling it individually to flip it for profit.

He asked us if we were sellers or collectors and we were honest that we’d surely do both. We’d be keeping a lot of what we saw just based on the photos, we’d trade with other collectors in a group we were in online to get more things we’re after, and we’d sell some or trade for store credit at various game stores, but we’d be definitely focusing on keeping it or trading with collectors. He was happy to hear a good chunk of it would be going to collectors who would enjoy an appreciate it.

It turned out I was one of the first people to email him the day the original post went up, or at the very least the first one who was reasonable. He had emails offering him $600 for all of it and he knew he was already pricing fair and likely rather low at $1100. For everything there, we were more than happy to pay that $1100.

He also showed us his garage, which was essentially consumed by stock from a comic book shop. For the right price, that was all available as well and part of me wished I had more money to invest in that purchase too (as if my house could hold much more inventory for sorting and selling…or room for more collectibles for that matter).

Unloading & Fighting Temptation

It took every bit of space in Phil’s vehicle plus every free seat and the trunk in mine, but we were able to load everything.

Driving it to my house was a weird sensation. I had just taken $550 out of my savings account, which wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be in the first place, to buy a ton of video games. There were a lot of sports titles on SNES, though even at 50 cents each they’d add up. I told myself that the NES with ROB was worth almost $300 and I’d surely find more I wanted to keep. I’d get my $550 worth and Phil would surely find that much in value. I was sure, and reminded myself, we would at least get value equal to what we spent, if not more.

Still, this was the first purchase I’d made of this size since I started game hunting, so it was a bit surreal and exciting to think of what could be in all those boxes while also a bit guilty feeling to take money from savings at a time I was flat broke on the game hunting budget.

We saw some exciting things as we unloaded. I spotted a Chrono Trigger box in good condition. A Final Fantasy III box (in addition to the one in the photos), and an Ocarina of Time collector’s edition box which I’d been looking for! Phil saw a number of NES carts he was interested in. We wanted to take that afternoon and just start looking through everything, but we had to wait. Though Phil said I could start going through some of it that night if I wanted.

I went back to work for what seemed like the longest half day I’ve ever experienced.

That night, I decided I’d go through organizing a bit and start with the manuals, paperwork, and hardware like controllers. The boxes and games would wait for a team effort.

First Night Results

I started off going through the boxes of controllers and sorting them out. Totals were:
10 NES controllers
33 SNES controllers – some original, some 3rd party variants like asciiPad or wireless + receiver
17 N64 controllers
2 GameBoy Players for GameCube (no discs, sadly)
2 Wavebird controllers – 1 platinum, 1 gray and 1 receiver for them
3 Dreamcast controllers
Sega Genesis Model 2 with hook ups and 1 controller
1 PS1 dualshock controller
PSone system
X-Box system with 2 controllers and hook ups
NES Top Loader
3 NES systems (“toaster” models)
1 SNES system

Note: It has now going on 3 months since we made this purchase and I still haven’t found time to test all the controllers.

40 Strategy Guides from Nintendo Power, Prima, Brady Games, and Versus Books – including various Pokemon, Secret of Evermore, Nintendo Power’s Chrono Trigger guide, and more. The coolest one in terms of most unique was the Vanguard Bandits strategy guide as it is a hardcover book.

I also alphabetized the manuals, of which there were over 500 total.

Some notable manuals, some of which I eventually kept, included:
NES:
Contra
Ghosts n Goblins
Mega Man 1, 2, 3
Zelda II

SNES:
Chrono Trigger
Donkey Kong Country 2 & 3
Final Fantasy III
Legend of the Mystical Ninja
Lost Vikings
Lufia II
Secret of Evermore
Secret of Mana
Super Adventure Island
Super Bomberman
Super Castlevania IV
Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts
Super Mario RPG

N64:
Bomberman 64
Bomberman Hero
Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Ogre Battle 64
Mega Man 64
Mario Kart 64

GameBoy:
Mega Man II
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Metal Gear Solid (GB Color)

The most notable manual, however, was probably Soldier Blade for Turbo Grafx 16, valued around $100 by itself.

The fruits of this purchase were already looking exciting, but we wouldn’t really dive into it until the next day when Phil could join me in going through this. Since we were 50/50 business partners on this, I had to resist going through more, though it was tempting. It was really tempting.