The Old Nintendo Nerd

Alright, I’ll admit it, I’ve been slacking here. It takes time to write these up, and time is something I have not had as much of as I’d like. We made it to the very end of 2018 in the last blog post, and we had a whopping $103.68 in the game hunting money stash. I’ll tell you what too, it gets even better. One of my first finds of 2019 was at the Goodwill, and it wasn’t even a game, but boy did it help the game hunting money.

A decent condition TU-2 Tuner pedal from Boss. I actually have one of my own and didn’t need one at all, but at TWO BUCKS? I couldn’t pass it up, knowing it’d have to be easily $40 at minimum, without even looking it up. It was a little dusty, and had a few dings and scrapes, but man, these things are tanks. Anyone familiar with this will recognize it as really good condition. I’ve seen them with massive amounts of rust and nearly no paint left and they still work like a charm.

Little before and after for you here:

Sold that son of a bitch for a cool $58.99 on eBay. After listing fee, PayPal fee, and shipping we add $44.06 to the game hunting money, totaling $147.74. A new record high!

That was in early February. Deep winter is terrible for finds, and it wasn’t until late March, on the 22nd, until I found even SOMETHING. A Wii sensor bar for $0.99 at Goodwill. No pics of that, it’s a sensor bar. It’s... yeah. A sensor bar. I needed them though, I have like 6 extra Wiis. Been waiting to get a couple complete systems so I can sell, or mod and sell each one. In any case, totaled $1.06 out the door. We drop to $146.68. Moving on.

March 26th, once again, at the Goodwill. Knocking on Spring cleaning’s door and I spot a blue Dual Shock 2 controller. Sitting in the toys section, not electronics. Not by the video games. In the toys section. This is not the first time this has happened, finding something game related in the toys section. Last time I think it was a few actual PS2 games.

Tiny bit of dust in some of the nooks and crannies, but man is it in good condition. Sticks are 9/10 easy, and buttons are nice and crispy. My new favorite PS2 controller right now. This one set us back $3.99. Or, $4.29 out the door. This takes us to $142.39.

Great find, I only had one DualShock 2 controller when I found this, so really couldn’t have been better timing. Having two again makes the system feel whole again somehow.

Moving into April, we ran across an unusually valuable title. Now I don’t mean it is worth $100 or anything, I just mean it is one that you would liken to be being something along the lines of maybe $5 complete.

Wheel of Fortune for PS3 - Found at Goodwill 04.12.2019

Again, not a hundred dollars but it was still worth $13.95 on Pricecharting. Usually that tells me it is a least worth a play. So I snagged it. This was Goodwill again, so $2.99, and $3.21 out the door. Takes the hunting money down to $139.18.

on 04.15.2019 I hit a flea market. Really not much there, one guy had a completely obliterated Sega Dreamcast I didn’t even look twice at. That was it, other than a guy with a small bag of DS and GBA games. He wanted $30 for the whole bag, and I’d never heard of any title other than this one...

Snagged it for $4 just by itself. It looks like its going for about $12 loose, so I thought that was acceptable. I don’t have a DS to test it on (yet), but cartridges almost never fail really. So fingers crossed this one is fine. Takes us to $135.18.

A couple weeks later, it is still not yet really Yard Sale season. There has been a sprinkling, and by this time I have visited a handful, but with no luck finding anything. The next find is still a thrift store find. I’ll admit I probably paid more for this than I should have, Pricecharting has this one at $5.69 complete. I paid $3.92, which brought it to $4.20 after tax.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception - Found 04.28.2019 at VoA

I don’t mind paying a little more for games when they have been tough to find, or if they are going to my collection. This one is both. The Uncharted series, ever since I found out about it, and that it was generally well received and liked, I’ve been looking for copies. I knew they were cheap and the only time I’ve run across any copies was at GameStop, and they were $4.99, and disc only. I’m like I am not paying $5 plus tax, for a disc only game that is worth pretty much exactly that CIB. I want the box to put on the shelf! So when I saw this in the thrift I grabbed it anyway. Still under retail price, or at least what I’d pay on eBay to have one shipped. Most were around $10, give or take a dollar. So half price? Not bad, and in decent condition.

The $4.20 takes us to $130.98.

Now, we are at least into the current month. I walked into The Salvation Army store on May 9th and spotted this...

A Sega CD. Not easy to find or come by, especially in the box. However, not being a Sega guy (obviously), and because of that, not having looked at prices for Sega CD really ever, let alone recently, I guessed at it being worth about $100 to $120. I thought the condition of the box was a little rough to be asking $69.99, so I left with only the photo on my phone.

Later that evening I looked on eBay sold listings and was a little surprised. Ones without the box were going for what I thought the CIB one would be worth. I posted the shot I snapped above on my Instagram and asked my followers their opinion: Would they have picked it up?

Overwhelmingly... yes, they would have!

So I stopped in the next morning after they opened and asked to look at it. It was indeed CIB, though the box had seen better days. Even the carton inside had a few rips. but it was all there, and still held everything securely. I asked if it had been tested. The guy at the front said yes they test everything they get. I said oh, you guys have a Genesis to hook to this? Could I see it work?

That was met with a blank stare. Another guy that does the testing actually admitted that it was not tested. So I said how about $40 then, since I’m taking a risk here. They said they can’t adjust the price, only the manager can do that. I asked if the manager was in and after a little chasing, they found her and she came up to the front to talk to me. I explained that this is an add-on system, not a stand alone console and it is not tested, I’d like to get it for a little cheaper to account for the risk I’m taking if I buy it. She lowered the price to $49.99.

I bought it.

Everything is there, the extension piece, the adapter, the manual, both RF shields, and the plate used to attach the extension. There was even a game in it!

The disc is VERY rough on Ecco, but it does play. I know this because a co-worker helped me out, gave me his Genesis and it fired right up on the first try, and booted the game with no problems. I tried a few more times just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, even let it run for a while, and played a bit of it. It did struggle here and there because of the scratches, but otherwise played fine!

Could not be happier. I plan to clean it up a bit, as you can see it does have some dust and grime on it.

But once that’s taken care of I think it will be a great looking Sega CD. I will probably offer it up to Instagram first before trying it on the ‘bay. if anyone is interested please let me know on Instagram, I’m just @oldnintendonerd.

The price isn’t set yet, I am thinking somewhere between about $175 and $200. The last one that sold on ebay went for $300 shipped. better condition box though, so that’s why i’m thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 to $230 shipped. I’m open to opinions if you have them, comment here or DM on IG.

This purchase, after tax was $53.74, taking us down to $77.24. however, this was bought SOLELY to flip. I do not collect for Sega, so this is entirely for profit to help buy more Nintendo stuff. I have no problem with Sega, I do not view it as trash or anything, I just didn’t grow up with it, and my heart belongs to Nintendo. There is only so much room in my home, and in my budget, so it must go.

We’ll call it there for this one, hopefully I’ll have another post up much sooner than every three months or so. Summer months should yield higher finds so I can detail stuff here more often. I hope.

So I started collecting again in the beginning of 2017. That was two years ago, this season marks the start of the third official season I have been game hunting. I am, admittedly, a small scale operation as compared to some of the other collectors out there. I still seek to fill out my collection with as many rock solid games as possible. Including all of the classic (and maybe some not so classic) games I played when I was younger, in addition to adding games I discover along the way from the community to try out for the first time. I have no desire to go for a complete set for any console. I don’t have the bankroll, the space, or the motivation to have a bunch of games I’ll never play. But I do want a nice tight set of games for each console I love that I can go back to any time I want. That is the goal here.

As far as hunting goes, I am a little behind on the blog, I’ll admit that. I still have the final find from 2018 to detail here, and it was arguably the best find of the entire year. A small collection of a few odds and ends that a co-worker had laying around and simply... well... wanted to get rid of. I’ve also got the trickle of stuff I got though the beginning of the year. It is May already (holy. crap.) and I’ve been to just a few sales. This last weekend got rained out. The weekend before that, yup, rained out, and I was out of town the weekend before that. So we are off to a stellar start. I hope it gets better.

In any case, the co-worker score started off with him emailing me asking if I was interested in purchasing a PS4, and possibly taking a broken PS3 he had that would no longer read discs. I was interested, but, I am a cheap bastard, and I would only have been able to buy the PS4 had he been willing to offload it for something like $50. But of course, he wanted a good bit more than that for it. It had a 1TB drive in it as well, making it that much more valuable. I declined, saying that this is only a hobby, I am not looking to pay close to retail for anything, and a PS4 isn’t on my wish-list anyway. He understood but asked about the rest of the stuff he had. I told him I would be happy to take the broken PS3 to see if it could be fixed. He asked if I wanted the older stuff too, because honestly, his wife has been nagging him to get rid of it, and I would be doing him a favor if he could just give it to me.

I had no idea what “other stuff” meant.

When he told me, my jaw hit the floor.

Now, ANYTHING for free in this collecting hobby is a godsend. This day in age, everything is just so hellishly expensive. So to get donations is a rare and very welcome occurrence. I didn’t want to take advantage of his generosity unless he was certain that was what he wanted to do, so I offered him some money. He declined, saying no, I really was doing him a favor. I guess his wife had been nagging him about getting rid of that stuff for a long time, and the sooner it was gone, the better for him. So what was I to do?

I took the stuff!

Which included:

1. Broken Fat PS3 - It would not read discs. It otherwise worked. Came with one Dual Shock 3 controller.

2. NES Console with one controller and four games: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Paperboy, and Home Alone 2

3. A Nintendo 64 console with two first party controllers, one third party controller, two controller memory paks, a rumble pak, and seven games: 007 Goldeneye, Mario kart 64, Super Mario 64, Yoshi’s Story, South Park, Beetle Adventure Racing, and Glover

4. Miscellaneous hookups and cables for the two Nintendo consoles including RF switches, Composite cables and power adapters, and one super random and equally terrible third party GameCube controller.

It really was a fantastic haul for being absolutely free. If he’d have at least let me flip him $40 or so, it still would have been an absolute steal. I could have made that back instantly by selling the 007/Mario 64/Mario Kart 64 duplicate cartridges. Pick any two of the three and I’ve made money. I may still do that, but since they were free, they are sitting in a work game room right now along with a few other items from the haul. Namely the extra NES. We have a CRT there, and playing these games on a CRT really is the best. I don’t have room for a CRT at home at the moment.

One thing that did stand out and I was very pleased to get was the two tone, gray/dark gray Mario kart controller for the 64.

Probably my new favorite N64 controller, and now I have one. Sticks on both controllers are very good, I’d say 8/10 on the gray one, and 9/10 on the two tone Mario Kart one.

I thanked him profusely for this lot, I couldn’t believe it, such a nice bit of luck.

I have found VERY little cartridge based games since I started this journey. I think it consisted of a copy of Pokemon Red, and Tetris for the Game Boy, then Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Track and Field for the NES. Finally, a copy of Mario 64, that wasn’t in the wild, it was just a really good deal on Instagram. That was it up until this point. Everything else has been disc based stuff.

I really hope to find more stuff this season. However, it is already almost Mid May and I haven’t found squat at sales, because there haven’t really been any. The weather here has basically screwed me out of hunting almost every week so far. Monday through Thursday, sunny, 60′s and 70′s for temps through the whole work week. Friday? Rain. Saturday? Rain, or I’m too busy in the morning to go yard-saling. I think I’ve been able to get to maybe four sales so far this season. I hit more than that before April was even over last year.

I’ll end this post here, I’m just getting angry typing it up. I do have a few thrift store finds to detail that was pre-season, but there is nothing else of note so far.

At least not having spent anything through the end of the year, since this find was essentially a donation, we are still sitting at a nice cool $103.68 game hunting money.

Official hunting season for 2018 is long over. With another season in 2019 just around the corner. I visited what was to be the final yard sale of the 2018 season on October 25th 2018. A brave older couple was downsizing and held a yard sale when it was 36 degrees out. Unfortunately, they were not gamers. Nor did they have any games from any kids or grandchildren. They did have some stereo equipment, and a surround sound speaker system. No music, or blu rays either though. The stereo was a shelf system, not a component type unit like I would be looking for to match the Sony TC-WE805S tape deck that I got at the start of the season. An all around bust of a sale for me. I wished them luck and headed on my way.

I closed out the last post with the PS3 find from 09.01.18. Giving me access to HD console gaming. A new era for this Old Nintendo Nerd. I do primarily game at 240p being that NES, SNES and N64 are the consoles nearest and dearest to my heart. GameCube and Wii weigh in at 480p at their absolute best, still falling short of HD. But now, with a PS3, we’ve got 720p gaming (mostly, some is 1080p). I have no problem with collecting a little for this system, I’ve heard good things about Uncharted, The Last of Us, and a smattering of a few other games that I will be looking out for.

Before we get into finds for the last, freakin 5 months, I have sold a couple things since the last post, and I should hope so, since its been forever! Right? Sorry. Life.

I had a bundle of 16 total PS1 games that I let go of. Titles were the likes of Syphon Filter, Driver, Test Drive 5, Rainbow Six, and a smattering of other luke warm titles. I’ve posted all of them up here at one point or another, so you have an idea. They were nothing I’d ever want to play, and since I only paid around $16 total for all of them at $0.99 a piece, I thought if I could average around $2 a pop on eBay id be doing OK doubling my money. They all added up to a value of about $95 on pricecharting. Now granted, that is fantasy prices, even those prices aren’t the prices the sellers MAKE when sold. Ultimately they all went for $52.99 as a lot. After fees and shipping it netted me $38.44, which comes to right about $2.40 each. 40 cents higher than I was hoping to get per game. Not bad!

The end of the last post left us with $9.73. Put that in with the $38.44 for a total of $48.17.

Additionally, I sold a disc only copy of Animal Crossing on eBay that I had laying around for $18.99. This came to $13.58 in pocket after fees and shipping. Tack that on and we now have $61.75 game hunting money moving into this post.

I’ll be honest, it’s been thin, it is cold here in the winter, there are no yard sales through the cold months at all. Places like Arizona or Florida where you could sale year round are lucky. Not here. Even donations to Goodwill slow down significantly as well, making the hunting quite a bit more difficult. I had zero finds for basically all of September. Which was surprising, it is really the last warm month here with temps still reaching 70′s and sometimes low 80s. But it wasn’t until the end of the month I ran across something at the Goodwill.

De Blob - Found 09.29.2018 at Goodwill

Disc, case and Manual all in pretty good shape, but nothing to write home about. If it were June and prime hunting season and I’d been getting finds, I probably wouldn’t have bought it.

But I did, and it cost me $3.21. Takes the total down to $58.54.

Next up was the first official game for my new PS3. Again nothing fantastic, but at least it rang up at the DVD price instead of the game price. Saved me $1.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Found 10.04.2018 at Goodwill

Minty fresh.

But, again nothing special, not even a full game. But I sat and played it for an hour anyway. Probably already had $2 worth of fun with the thing. Despite being labeled $5.99, they still only charged me the DVD rate of $1.99. Hah! So, $2.13 out of the till leaves us with $56.41.

The next find was literally the next day. Different Goodwill though.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on PS2 and Grand Theft Auto IV on PS3 - Found 10.05.2018 at Goodwill

This was absolutely minty fresh as well. Both of them were. Discs, cases, and manuals / maps. I wasn’t going to buy San Andreas but when I saw that it was in as good of shape as it was, and had a bonus inside, I couldn’t not get it.

First time I’ve found a game in Goodwill with a Memory Card inside. Those are $8 to $10 each right there, and I am a little short on memory cards, so I had to get it. The game was technically the bonus, I bought it for the memory card. Heh.

Great shape for two Goodwill games, they look brand new. Plus I heard that while GTA V is superior graphically, GTA IV is better with exploration, in that you can enter buildings, and enemy AI is a lot better as well. So I thought, what the hell?

Those two ran $6.42 together taking us to $49.99.

The next find was from 10.15.2018, from Goodwill, another few halfway decent games. Borderlands, Alice, Dante’s Inferno, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3,  and a Disc only copy of Skyrim. It was actually in the same case as Alice, just under the Alice Disc for some reason. I wasn’t arguing with that so I left it there.

PS3 Lot - Found 10.15.2018 at Goodwill

Sucks about the two basically disc only games. Marvel Vs Capcom and Skyrim. One being from Best Buy pre-owned. The other hiding under Alice in the same case. not that I’m complaining about that one. Free game? Nothing wrong with that. How Best Buy even gets disc only copies of stuff is beyond me. Game system trades or returns with games still in them? I wasn’t aware they did pre-owned anything.

In any case... They are all in good shape. Minimal labels and damage.

Especially Alice. I dig the art on this one, and it is in very good condition.

As for Skyrim, well, I had a spare case laying around for FIFA 09, and I figured, why not print out a cover for it. I couldn’t give a shit less about FIFA Soccer. You can see the print lines, but it’ll do to hold the disc.

All of this ran me $12.86 being I paid for four games at $2.99 each plus tax. This takes the hunting money down to $37.13.

Moving into November, I had a spectacular find. At least, for the hunting money total. Not so much on the video game front, because it was just a Blu-Ray movie.

Wing Commander Blue-Ray - Sealed - Found 11.08.2018 at Goodwill

This thing, just looks like cheese from the cover. I picked it up, and immediately put it back down and walked around the corner to where some more shelves are. Then I said to myself you know what? No, let me check that, immediately dismissing something out of hand like that loses people money. Pulled up eBay on my phone and about pooped my pants. A sealed one was listed for $180. I thought that has to be some looney toon’s listing. I kept scrolling and no, used ones were just under $100. Check sold listings and there were real sales for $80+. Suffice to say I bought it, of course. Listed that sucker up, and I was hoping to get over $100 for it since it was sealed, but, there was some damage to the corner. The plastic was not in tact anymore.

This made the listing go for a lot less than $180. However, I was still pleased to see it sell for $85.00. For a $2 item? That’s a home run! After fees and shipping it netted us a nice cool $68.67. To be fair I will pull the money I used to buy it from the game hunting money, it was $2.12 ($1.99 plus tax) dropping us to $35.01. Then, adding $68.67 gives us...

**** DRUM ROLL****

$103.68!

We are now officially above the original $100 I started this game hunting journey with.

Not a bad note to end this post on. I’ll post up the finds for the very end of 2018 in the next post. Hopefully I can cobble that together here in the next couple of weeks and have it up much faster than I got this one up. There’s a really nice co-worker find to detail.

So it goes. Another hunting season has come to a close. I find myself a little remorseful in that the finds were not really too stellar. Aside for the Instagram score of Mario 64, and the copy of Pokemon Red that came with the GBA, we found literally zero cartridge based games this season. Everything was disc based stuff, and mostly Wii and PlayStation 2, with a small scattering of Game Cube thrown in there. I really thought this season was going to yield a lot of good stuff considering the very first yard sale I went to had three minty fresh PS2 games for 50 cents each. FIFTY CENTS! I was damn excited after that. But it was not to be. Maybe it was an omen instead that the season would be PS2 filled. Heh. It is not to say I didn’t get some halfway decent stuff this year, but I am really more a fan of the cartridge based Nintendo systems. NES, GameBoy, SNES and N64. Those are the biggest consoles and games I hunt for, and they were just not out in the wild this season.

In any case, I have the last of the finds from July and August to talk about here, taking us to the very first week of September. I’ve had a few other finds in September and the beginning of October but we’ll save those for another post, I have a feeling this one will be long already. There might be one more weekend of sales before they fizzle out completely and the flea market goes until November. So maybe two weeks there. After that it is just too cold around here, we are talking 35 to 40 degrees at 8 and 9 AM when most folks would be starting to get their sales set up. On top of that, the days are shorter so it is not light out until almost 7:30 or 7:45 now. Not really good setup conditions. It really makes them drop off fast.

First, some financial business to attend to. We had $14.96 in the game hunting stash at the end of the last post. The Lego Wii Remotes sold at $18.50 for the pair. After fees and shipping that netted us $11.88, totaling $26.84 in the game hunting stash moving into this post. Let’s get started.

So I had a really dry end of June and beginning of July. Like, nothing. Yard sales, Goodwills, flea markets, all of it was a let down. Nothing showed. Until we got to the end of July...

Wii Bundle and three Wii games - found 07.25.18 at the flea market

This bundle pictured was actually two separate transactions. There was a nice lady that had a big bin full of disc based games. Mostly XBox 360, with just a few PS2 sports games, and a couple schlocky PS1 games thrown in. However I did manage to get these three guys here for $10. She wanted $12 at first, but let’s face it, they aren’t that great of games, and I really would have left them for that price. She did have just a few other Wii games as well, but they were trash. These were in decent enough condition, and all of them complete, so at $10, I was comfortable with it. Prime 3 is like $8 or $9, Sonic is about $6 and Olympic Games is like $5. So almost $20 worth for $10, not bad. Not great. But not bad.

This takes us down to $16.84 game hunting money. Dwindling already.

It might not be super apparent in the photo, but there was some blue goo all over almost everything. The only thing that didn’t have some on it was the Wii itself and the sensor bar. Looks like it might be some kind of kid’s slime/gak product.

I asked how much and he said $20. I frowned while I popped off some of the battery covers on the Wiimotes and saw a ton of corrosion and dirt. I pointed that out, along with all the blue goo all over everything. I said this is going to take some serious work to clean up and get it working and usable. Each Wiimote will have to be completely disassembled, scrubbed, dried, and with the corrosion here, I might have to re-solder a couple battery leads to make them work. How about $10? He said aw man you are killing me, how about $15? I thought for a moment, picturing having to tear down every single Wiimote, de-soldering the corroded contacts and re-soldering them, bathing everything in soap and water, scrubbing it all. Even washing the wrist straps.

UGH.

I said I’m sorry, I’m still at $10, it’s going to be a ton of work. He said wow, you drive hard bargain, but OK.

Clearly he knew I wasn’t just making this up. He knew how dirty it was.

So another $10 comes off and we are now at $6.84.

I will announce now that I did decide to allow non video game things to fund the game hunting money. I had a pretty good response to my inquiry from last month on Instagram, and the response was all for using anything and everything. I will make one rule though, if I buy something to sell specifically to fund the game hunting money, meaning the sole intent of buying it is to flip it, the money I purchased it with, must come OUT of the game hunting money, even though it isn’t technically a game. So we will keep things consistent in that regard. I feel wrong putting money in when its not coming out.

The first official non game item that I bought specifically to flip, thereby funding the game hunting money was this. A copy of Jimi Hendrix - Stages. Found it at the Goodwill. It was in the CD section, and despite being a four CD box set, they still only charged me 99 cents. So $1.06 out the door for that one. Taking us down to $5.78.

Had a little wear on the box itself, but each Jewel case was in really good shape, and the discs themselves were all A+, so I got a pretty good margin on it selling for $34.99. After all fees and shipping it netted me $21.43 back into the game hunting money. Adding that to the $5.78 remaining we now have $27.21. Even higher than we were before the flea market Wii stuff.

Alright. I’ll take it.

Speaking of the flea market Wii stuff...

I completely disassembled all of the controllers to clean them, soaked all the plastic pieces and buttons in a light solution of warm water and dish soap, then scrubbed everything with an old toothbrush. Wound up cleaning everything up nicely. I had to re-solder some of the battery contact pieces (one had fallen off entirely, had I bothered to put batteries in it, it would likely not have worked, it works now). Some had some corrosion on them that came right off with a vinegar bath for like 60 seconds. Here’s a shot of part of that process.

You can see the battery lead that fell off there. As well as how dingy everything looks. There was a pretty good layer of dirt in all three’s battery compartments. On top of having that blue stuff everywhere. Second photo is a little while later, after the washing and the drying was complete and I was able to assemble at least one full Wiimote. Two are still in limbo while I re-assemble them. I have re-soldered the broken one, a small piece of wire bent at an angle fixed that, and the corrosion on the second one is taken car of with some creative acrobatics to dip it on the vinegar bath, no de-soldering required. They just need re-assembled and they’ll be good as new.

Next up is a find from my own backyard. There was a neighborhood sale about 3 miles from where I live, I went, and drove around to probably 6 sales. That was it. The first thing I thought was how crappy the amount of sales were in the neighborhood. Entire streets with nothing, a hundred houses or more and there were only half a dozen actual sales. Very low turnout. I didn’t find anything game related. Went and got lunch after that waste of time. Saw a sign posted at the entrance to a neighborhood. A few streets later I stop at the sale. Dude had STACKS of PS2 games. Unfortunately 95% of them were hunting games and sports games. He said another guy was there earlier and bought a bunch of games.

RATS! This sale was not in my Yard Sale Treasure map.

I did however manage to cherry pick three games that were not sports or hunting games. OK, technically one sports game. 

Outlaw Golf 2, Shadow of the Colossus, and GUN - Found 08.04.18 at a yard sale

Not sure why the guy that was there before passed on Shadow and GUN but hey, I’ll take them. All complete. Great shape all of them. Solid A on manual, disc and case. Really. Not especially valuable, but supposedly good games. I snagged Outlaw Golf hoping that I could bundle the three together and ask for a deal. I said how about 3 for $5? He accepted, discounting me $4 down from $9. So that takes us to $22.21. Not great games, but saved the day honestly. Almost got completely skunked.

The next couple of weeks were garbage really. Visited several sales, and stopped by the flea market too. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Bought some music CDs from the thrift in there somewhere, but nothing to flip, all for my personal collection.

Ran across one semi decent title at the Goodwill on the 19th.

Atari Anthology - Found 08.19.18 at Goodwill

Good shape, complete. Disc is about an A-, manual the same. That ran me $3.21, so we are now down to $19.00 remaining. Honestly I’m extremely disappointed with this. Pretty thin pickings right now, and this is peak season around here. Usually we have a big run of “spring sales” with lots of community sales in May, and then again in August as the summer winds down, so this is when it should be happening. Why I was excited for the community sale so close to home at the beginning of the month. But I found no games there at all. Not even anything to flip. What a let down.

I pressed on into the next week. Managed to squeeze a couple more games from the Goodwill on the 24th.

Casper and Doom 3 found 08.24.18 at Goodwill

Just going to bundle this in with another 15 some odd games I’ve picked up this year and see if i can double my money after fees and shipping. Only a few real near and dear games to me on Playstation, and this isn’t one. This was $1.06 taking us to $17.94.

Doom however. Oh Doom. Doom Doom Doom Doom.

So. Many. Hours. So many hours invested playing all different versions. Doom and Doom II, and Ultimate Doom. Final Doom. Doom on the Playstation. Doom 64 on the N64, Doom on the 32X. I was obsessed. Oh so good. Even had many mods and fan made maps for the PC. Source ports galore! GLDoom, Boom, PrBoom, Doom legacy, ZDoom, GZDoom, the list goes on and on. 

Then Doom 3 came out. Look at this box art.

I had to have this for the shelf. I already own it on Steam, but for $2.99. Complete. Contents are minty fresh. Box has some wear, and a nice sticker on it, but that’s ok. I dig it.

Its a blast from the past. Doom 3, the black sheep of the franchise, but still a good, creepy game that holds it’s own. Still love the satisfying *CLACK CLACK* of that shotgun, even if it does only do as much damage as a tube of toothpaste at anything further than three feet away.

It was $3.21 out the door. I feel like I shouldn’t even count it, since its really just for decoration, but it is a game, this takes us to $14.73.

For the finale we’ll talk about the best find of the year.

Probably.

Now keep in mind this year has been pretty luke-warm thus far, so, this isn’t a bin full of Super Nintendo games for $10 or a box with a GameCube, three Wavebirds and 25 games for $25 or anything, but I was pretty happy with this one in the end.

I was literally going to pick up lunch and saw a sign on the main drag. Turned down the road and found it. Walked up the driveway and spotted a PS3 slim sitting on a bench all by itself. No controllers, no games, no cables. Just the console. No other consoles or games either. Just the PS3 Slim. It was dirty, and had a bit of damage on one corner. It looked so sad. I asked if it was for sale, because it had no sticker on it. The kid said yes, he’d brought it out to a guy asking for “old games”, but the guy didn’t want it, he was looking for things like NES or SNES.

I can see though where the kid thought this qualified. He was 10 or 11 years old. To him, this console generation and many of the games probably came out before he was born. To him, it’s old.

To a guy like me though, this thing is top of the line. I mean, cmon, it has HDMI. HD graphics? What are those? 480p has been maximum capable resolution in my household since my first GameCube came home, and let’s be honest, I didn’t have the component cables, so I was rocking composite at that time anyway.

So I asked how much. He said $10. I asked if it worked and he said it did. I asked if he has anything to go with it, a controller, a game, a cable, anything at all. He said no. I looked at it for a few moments and said well, it is dirty, got some damage here, you say it works but no guarantees there, no controllers or cables, how about $5?

He took it without hesitation.

PlayStation 3 Slim - Found 09.01.18 at a garage sale

Well. I tested it. It turned on. Good start. But what do I control it with? I have no Dual Shock 3 controllers. I have a Dual Shock 2. But there are no actual controller ports. Hmmmmm. I stood there thinking for a bit and then I remembered an OLD Radio Shack brand Playstation to USB adapter I bought at LEAST 15 years ago. This thing does have USB ports. I thought it was a long shot, the PS2 controller ports don’t work like this.

I plugged it into the USB ports on the front, plugged the DualShock 2 into it. Voila. It worked, I had a working controller. All of the buttons mapped properly. Sure I was missing the “PS” button on the front, and the analog L2 and R2 buttons. But it worked. I could at least... what? What could I do?

I had no games!

GAH!

Well I looked around the interface for a minute and when the store didn’t work without the Wireless connected, I figured it probably wouldnt even be live anyway so why bother. This thing is 12 years old and they have the PS4 to support. I tried putting a PS2 game in it. “This console is not compatible with Playstation 2 games”. Bother.

Ok, quick google search turned up it WAS compatible with PS1 games. AHA! I have those. Tossed in Twisted Metal 2.

Yes!

This is awesome, I blasted my way through Los Angeles and it was loading Suicide Slide... when the screen went black.

Wait.

What?

Walk over, no lights. Nothing. I turned it back on. Played another 5 minutes, and off it went again.

Crap. I thought maybe it was just getting hot. So I cracked it open to see how bad it was inside. It. It was pretty bad.

Very dusty, smelled like cigarette smoke. Ugh, why do I always get the smoker consoles? First a Wii, now this?

So I went to work with compressed air and some Q-tips. Had to take it into the garage to blow some of it out so I could retreat into the house while the dust cleared from the air. It was horrible smelling, smoker tar toxicity. After about 45 minutes of holding my breath, spraying like mad, and dashing back in the house for a gasp of clean air, I finally got it cleaned up completely.

Got it all back together again and fired it up once more. Once again I got through Los Angeles, and as soon as I’d played maybe 1 minute of Suicide Slide (just long enough to maybe make me think it was fixed), off it went again.

DAMN! Well. At least it was only $5.

But I don’t give up easily. I went back to Google. After another 5 to 10 minutes and a half dozen searches I was tearing it back down once again hoping like hell I had a model with the two potentiometers on the power supply board. Apparently, with age, the tolerance for power draw on the PSU becomes too sensitive, even though nothing has changed, perhaps it becomes less efficient, and needs more juice to be able to play the same games it always has. The difference is minuscule, but it is just enough to trigger the over-voltage protection on the PSU and it shuts down to protect the system.

The potentiometers, shown in the following shot, can adjust that tolerance. The lines on them show where they used to align, that’s how much I had to turn them to fix the problem. Like 5 to 10 degrees.

The PS3 works perfectly fine now. I really thought maybe Sony discontinued the support for the PS3 store, and figured the machine would only be useful to play physical games at this point. But, I’m glad I was wrong. It does in fact still have a functioning store. After configuring the WiFi it connected fine. There aren’t a LOT of games still available, but there are still some there. Some games are even a Free to Play model, like DOA 5 Last Round. Which I downloaded, and played for about an hour with no shut downs at all. Took me back to playing DOA in the Arcade and on PS1, and DOA 2 on the Dreamcast. Good times.

Good to go, $5 PS3. Ending this post in HD, and taking our game hunting money total to $9.73. Just under $10 left for the next post. Which I do have some material for. I have the rest of September, and into October’s finds and sales to detail.

Now to find some PS3 games.

Spoiler alert. I found some.

Next time...

It seems to be the year of the Wii. As in people are just ditching them at an alarming rate. As of this post I now have six Wiis. I’m not complaining but I’d like to see some cartridge based Nintendo products pop up at some point. Despite the fact that I am in fact enjoying me some Mario Galaxy, I do prefer those older games.

I acquired my 3rd, 4th and 5th Wiis during the last post time frame. The 3rd and 4th ones I did not include in the post as I had not thoroughly tested them yet at time of publishing. I had made sure they turned on, checked them for games, and that was about it. So I knew they at least turned on, but had not checked to see if all ports work, if they read discs, etc. I posted about the 5th Wii, it was from goodwill, and where I got a copy of DKC Returns, and Mario Galaxy. But, I also got a black and a white Wii on May 2nd at a flea market. Those of you that follow me on Instagram may remember the post, it was from the 4th. Here is a little update. I modded the black Wii in hopes of putting it in the living room, however, during the process I found that it does not read discs. So I cannot even sell this one, I have relegated it to a spare Wii for the downstairs mancave. It can be used to play bowling with my son or something when the living room TV is occupied. I have not modded the white one yet, but it does read discs.

So far I now have:

1. The original Wii I bought in 2008 from Game Stop

2. The one I acquired last year at a yard sale for $5 that also had a disc only copy of Mario Kart Wii in it.

3 & 4. The two I picked up at the flea market mentioned above

5. The one from Goodwill in the last post and

6. One from a yard sale that gave us some financial distress as you’ll see below, but quickly paid for itself.

First order of business is funds. We were scraping up against $0 there at the end of the last post with only $3.21 remaining for game hunting. So I did some eBaying, and even some Instagramming. The first item that sold was the Game Boy game Pokemon Red. This one came with the Game Boy Advance that I paid $12 for in the last post. It sold for $18.99 on eBay. After fees and shipping this puts $13.58 back in the game hunting till. Not a lot, but it does post a profit on the purchase, and I get to keep the Game Boy Advance for free.

So, adding $13.58 gets us to a slightly better looking $16.79.

Next to sell was that disc only copy of Mario Kart Wii that I mentioned above, it was picked up last season in a $5 Wii. I still have the Wii, and I’m actually using it as my primary Wii. So you could say this is all profit. That went for $17.99, shipped. After fees and shipping we walked away with $12.71. These two transactions have reminded me just how absolutely sickening the fees are. You sold something? Fee. You received payment for that something? Fee. You just get bent over while selling on eBay these days. Then you have to ship it too, and the prices are obscene for that now! I feel like they raised the prices to compensate for the fuel prices a bunch of years ago when they were climbing into the mid to high threes and even the low fours some weeks. After the prices of fuel came back down, the high shipping costs just stayed where they were. I’d much rather sell stuff on Instagram or something to at least avoid the eBay and Paypal fees to compensate for having to ship it too.

In any case, that takes us back to a much more comfortable $29.50.

Speaking of Instagram, the third sale I had encompassed a bunch of schlocky titles that I actually haven’t even posted on here yet because they are part of the finds for this post, and they already sold!

It also included Dragonball Revenge of King Piccolo, and he decided not to get Guitar Hero III. The entire lot sold for $30 shipped, it had 9 working Wii games. The buyer has a friend with a disc buffer and I included a non working one because it was not worth me paying a game store to fix it, so he will give it a try. I think it was the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08. But he is going for a complete set, and he needs everything he doesn’t have yet, that was one he needed. Hopefully he can save it, and cross it off his list. After shipping of $10.15 we walk away with $19.85. Small amount, and probably very little actual profit, but I do like helping a community member. A complete Wii set is a HUGE undertaking.

That brings the total now to $49.35.

Keep in mind now that this is what is left of the original $100 that I said I was willing to invest in this endeavor when I started back at the beginning of 2017. Think of all we have gotten.

A copy of Super Mario 64. A copy of Super Mario Galaxy. A copy of Super Smash Bros Melee. A working Wavebird controller with receiver. A copy of Donkey Kong Country Returns. A copy of Tetris for the Game Boy (Finally!). A Gamecube with a Gameboy Player and the disc. A second GameBoy Player and disc that I was able to sell. A Game Boy Advance. A copy of Grandia II for the Dreamcast. A PS2 and about 25 games for that including:

Ecco the Dolphin Defender of the Future

Sonic Mega Collection Plus

Gran Turismo 3 and 4

An immaculate copy of Steambot Chronicles, Innocent Life, and Dawn of Mana

Kingdom Hearts I & II

Star Wars Battlefront I and II

A couple minty fresh Ratchet and Clank games

Several Need for Speed games

Multiple Wiis and several other miscellaneous items like cables, controllers and lower end games like the ones sold on Instagram earlier.

The list goes on and on an on, and for what? $50.65. All of that, everything we’ve bought on this journey so far has been $50.65 out of pocket. To me that is incredible. Especially seeing as there is also more value on the shelf that hasn’t sold yet. Though before that happens we are going to have to subtract of course, what we bought these last several weeks. Let’s get to it.

First up. Goodwill find here. CD section, Playstation games. Cannot stress enough to always check the CD section. Now I like me some old music, 90′s bands is what I grew up listening to. Green Day, Bush, Fuel, Tonic, Finger Eleven, the list goes for days. But I also dig stuff as far back as the 60′s with Eric Clapton or Creedence. Or the 70′s with older Aerosmith or Queen. Of course the 80′s with Bon Jovi, David Bowie, Metallica, etc. The point is I am digging around in the CD section anyway, I like to own copies of the music I listen to whether its from a CD player in my home (frankly the most fun way) or in the car, or from my phone through an Aux port or bluetooth connection. If I’m listening to an MP3, I want to own the album. But even if you aren’t completely crazy like me buying CDs while they are a dying medium, still check that CD section, you never know when a Playstation or Dreamcast game might pop up in there.

Playstation lot - Found 05.16.2018 at Goodwill

Nothing spectacular, but all in pretty good shape aside for one missing the insleeve/manual. I’m not really collecting for PSX, but if you’ve read past posts you know I will snag something good, or if it means something to me. Like the golf game I wanted to play with my dad, or the copy of Twisted Metal I found since I loved the TM series. These though will probably all go on eBay as a lot. See if we can get $30 or $35 for them. They were of course 99 cents each plus tax landing us at $10.74. This takes our total down to $38.61 game hunting money.

Next up is a Yard sale find of a few Wii games

Wii Games lot - Found 05.26.2018 at a yard sale

Again, nothing spectacular, mostly just filler titles here, but my copy of Wii Sports Resort is still sealed and I had planned to sell it, plus it was the cardboard sleeve version, so getting an opened, DVD style case copy that can be ripped and played for the collection is pretty stellar. Not to mention it can also be put on the shelf with the other games and look the same. I hate games, CDs, DVDs, or any medium that deviates box form factor from the 99% of others available. You know, the standard. Like when an artist releases a CD and puts it in a damn cardboard case instead of a jewel case like all 300 some odd of my other albums. It looks like crap on the shelf. Just. Stop. No need for paper sleeves, or special double boxes, or metal tins, or whatever other marketing bull-crap you want to add to make it look better or get it to stand out. I don’t care. In fact I despise that stuff. Use the standard so collectors can display it next to the dozens or hundreds of others they have and not have it look ridiculous. I find it ironic that it is often the “Collector’s editions” of different games, movies, music or other things that deviates from the normal. The boxes are often longer, wider, or shaped in such a way that make it so they don’t look right when lined up next to the rest of the released media for whatever platform we are talking about. Disgusting. But I finally digress.

These games were in a box of other DVDs, and the box said $1 ea on it. As I mentioned above I buy CDs as well, and they had a pretty nice selection of CDs there, including some that I wanted. Just for grins, here’s a shot of the ones I snagged, it’ll paint a better picture of the overall deal.

The CDs were also marked at $1 each, so at this point I had a fist full of $7 worth of stuff. I asked the lady if I could take it all for an even $5. She agreed. That puts each game above, and the CDs of course, at right about $0.71 each. Not too shabby. WWII Aces and Medal of Honor were included in the Instagram sale I mentioned earlier so they are actually already gone. Total from this sale all three games came to $2.13. This takes us down to $36.48.

Also regarding this find, you can’t really see it in the first photo, but there was some pretty severe creasing happening to the artwork sheet under the plastic cover of the Sports Resort case.

And...

Not sure how something like that happens, but not to worry, I had an empty case for Wii Sports Resort on hand that I picked up from the Goodwill for free a while back. Every so often, depending on who is working the counter, if I find empties in the game or CD section, they will let me take them for free. This one was actually minty fresh, so now my copy is even on par with Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Country Returns from last post because the disc here was very nice.

Next up we hit another Yard sale that same weekend, just the next day. The 25th was a Friday. This was Saturday morning, the 26th.

I had to drive just a little out of the way to get to this one, and I’m glad I did. I walked up to the sale and greeted her like I greet everyone at every sale “Good morning, how are you? How is business?”. Depending on the answer to the second question sometimes I can gauge how loose they will be with price haggling. If they are clearly busy I usually don’t ask because the answer is obvious, but if I am the only one, and they say they have been slow, or I am the first one, I know I have a bit better negotiation stance. Just a tip for you. It has worked for me on a couple of occasions, including this case, where indeed I was the first one to the sale.

I saw the box of video games as soon as I walked up, but since I was alone at the sale and she said there had been no business before me I took my time so as not to seem too interested in anything in particular. I stopped at the box with CDs in it first and actually picked out a handful, before finally getting into the video game box, which contained...

Super Mario Galaxy and Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword - Found 05.26.2018 at a yard sale.

Both in absolutely immaculate condition. Just the crispiest copies you ever did see. Like someone opened them up and then sold them in the sale. I will gladly pay a premium for games in this condition, and she clearly knew she had a little something with the $5.00 price tags. Nothing marked $1 at this sale.

Though their prices were not really to scale, SMG2 is maybe a $15 game while Skyward Sword is easily $25, so I didn’t think she had looked them up, or Skyward Sword would have been higher. In any case, it is a yard sale, you still have to haggle. So I did, but considering the condition, and the value I was looking at I only asked if she would take $4 each so as not to low ball. No reason to try and get 2 for $5, or something like that. She agreed. So I paid $8 for two very nice condition Nintendo IP games. Made my day. That also completes the Galaxy Series in my collection, and I am looking forward to playing these more soon. My problem is I love continuity, so I have not tried Mario Galaxy 2 yet, I want to finish the first one before opening the next chapter. I don’t dig the nunchuck/wiimote combination that they force you to use, but the star bit collection cursor mechanic might have been difficult with a controller, and it is cool to collect stuff if you can see it, no matter how far away it is. It uses the IR pointer, so a controller? Eh. Maybe not. Still would be nice to have the OPTION though. Overall it is a great series, and I look forward to finishing it. The $8 spent takes us to $28.48 remaining.

Next up is a Goodwill find. Rare to find GameCube games in the Goodwills around here these days. Not as rare as cartridge based games, but still rare.

Mario Golf Toadstool Tour, Star Wars Rogue Squadron III Rebel Strike, and Sega Soccer Slam - Found 06.03.2018 at Goodwill

Unfortunately Mario Golf was not complete, it was case and game only. Typically incomplete games in the $10 value range I would leave on the shelf unless I really wanted to play them. But I do love me some Mario, and most people do as well. So it should help me sell a bundle at some point. I do already have a complete copy so I’m not too worried about the missing manual from a collection perspective, but as a collector, when you get duplicates you want to sell them to fund the collection. I should have been able to get $10 easy for this one game, to offset the cost of all three, but the missing manual will drop that a bit. So again, it may go in a bundle instead. Although, if you notice, this copy is black label, and my copy is Player’s Choice. Yeah I swapped the artwork. As you do.

 All three games came to $9.64, which drops us now to $18.84.

Now on to the first of many Wii finds. The first one does not have any photos and I’m honestly not sure what day I found it on because it was such an awful find I neglected to document it like I usually do so I can write this later. I low balled the hell out of it because it was a community yard sale in a trailer park, and the two people running the sale were smoking like chimneys. I knew anything I picked up there would have to be disinfected, deep cleaned, and probably still let to air out for weeks before it would stop stinking. It was a Wii system without GameCube backward compatibility, it had the power and video cables, including a Wii U style sensor bar, and about four really schlocky games. Like Monster Truck something er other, and a destroyed copy of Wii Sports. They had a few Nerf accessories like tennis rackets and golf clubs, but again, all of it was coated in smoke grime. I asked how much and they said $15. I came back at $7 because it was not backward compatible to GameCube, as well as how rough it was. They agreed. It does work, and honestly I’m going to mod it and see if it will boot up a GameCube game anyway, despite not having ports for controllers. Should be fun. The only reason I bought it though was for the power brick and sensor bar to pair with other Wiis I have gotten that were missing these items. Those alone are at least $20 for a set on amazon. So that takes us to $11.84.

Next up is another yard sale Wii find.

Wii system with Mario Kart Double Dash - Found 06.21.2018 at a yard sale.

Mario Kart was absolutely minty fresh. I am going to swap it out with my copy despite mine being the bonus disc version. As you can see from the photo, there were three first party wiimotes, all the cables, two motion plus adapters, and working rechargeable battery packs with the charger cradles included. All of it was $28. This takes us to *GASP*!

NEGATIVE!

I was hoping I would never go negative, but when the deals are there you have to dip into the reserves. We are now at -$16.16. So we have officially gone over the original $100 budget. Not to fear though, I listed Mario Kart immediately and it sold for $41.99 (literally within a couple hours of listing. It was obnoxious. Very desirable game, especially with the bonus disc), leaving us with $31.12 after fees and shipping, which returns us to a positive $14.96. Whew! That was close. I will try not to do that again. I have more to sell video game wise, and I am on the fence as to include items that I find while game hunting, but are not actually video games. For example, if I run across a vintage record player or something and I sell it for $80 profit, should I add that cash into the game hunting money? I was game hunting when I found the record player after all. Or should I keep it strictly video game sales to fund video game purchases? Comment below or message me on instagram @oldnintendonerd to let me know. I’d love to hear the opinions. Up until now I have kept it strictly video games, but I see other people funding their video game collections with anything they can get their hands on. And why not? I need opinions for this please.

In any case that is all for now, I will do another post to round out the rest of the season, I have had a few more finds, but this post was getting long. The next post should be a good deal sooner than this one was after the last. Enjoy the last days of summer boys and girls, the season is almost over!

$14.96 currently in the game hunting stash.

Aw yes! Here we are folks. Yard sale season. You know what that means. Actual finds. Spring cleaning has come and gone! People are now having Yard Sales, and donating to thrift stores. We are already chock full for this post, so sit back and relax, I have pictures of everything, and it is a long one.

First up is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for Playstation - Found 2018.04.20 at Goodwill

I have never played this game, and have no intention of playing this game. Hate to start out o a bit of a negative note, but Harry Potter is of no interest to me. It was $0.99, so with tax, $1.06 out the door. Strictly resale bait. Anything I can sell for about seven to eight times what I paid for it, I’ll always pick it up.

Next up, you are witnessing the very first yard sale I was able to get to this season. It was literally within walking distance of my house. I happened to see the sign on the way out to get breakfast on the morning of April 21st. It was so convenient I really had no thoughts of actually finding anything. But of course I stopped anyway and lo and behold... three very nice condition PS2 games. Nothing earth shattering, but I’ve been wanting to try the Ratchet and Clank games for a while. Now is my chance.

Ratchet and Clank - PS2 - Found on 2018.04.21 at a yard sale

As you can see from the masking tape price tag, it was only $0.50. Those are my kinds of prices, especially for clean, well taken care of games. It is complete and in great condition.

It has instructions/poster. Which are in A condition, as well as a solid A disc, and A case. I will be looking forward to checking out this game in the near future. Not sure when, but soon. Especially since the lot came with an additional Ratchet and Clank game...

Ratchet and Clank Going Commando - PS2 - Found on 2018.04.21 at a yard sale

Another one in pristine condition for being as old as it is. Same ratings accross the board as it’s prequel. Could not ask for much more. Solid games for a very good price at this sale.

Once again, just minty fresh, and complete with instructions/poster. Definitely going in the collection, right along with Ratchet and Clank.

The third one they had may go in a bundle or be trade bait, I am not a big Star Wars, or Lego movie/game fan, don’t get me wrong, I love Legos. I just always thought the games and movies were hoakie and kinda blah. But, for $0.50, its hard to really pass up any title. I may have bought freakin Madden games for that price just to have extra cases or bundle fodder.

Lego Star Wars The Video Game - PS2 - Found on 2018.04.21 at a yard sale

Once again, just immaculate condition. A’s accross the board. There were kids at the sale, but I cannot imagine this was ever handled by them, I have a feeling the homeowner was also the PS2 owner. There were no other games or consoles out. Which is strange. Who puts out just three PS2 games. However, being the first sale, and so dumbstruck was I that I even found something, I broke my very first rule. I forgot to ask about more games. So I’m not sure if they would have had any more, or be willing to part with them if they had. Dropped the ball there, it won’t happen again.

An item that is a little off topic from the usual blog content, I also picked up a really nice Sony dual tape deck for $1 at the same sale, it says “turns on but won’t play”,  I immediately figured it needed belts. I opened it up and it does in fact need belts. They are snapped and gooey, wrapped around the flywheels and gears. I have ordered a set and I can’t wait to get those in and fix it up, and listen to all my old cassettes. Maybe even turn a few of them into MP3. Not traditional music Cassettes, these are recording I made when I was a kid, and even live concerts i recorded off of the radio back in the early 90′s. Can’t replace those. So backing up to digital would be very nice.

Well. Since that is not related to the normal content of this blog we’ll just stop talking about that one right there. Though if you don’t mind seeing a few things here and there outside of gaming for finds, I’m happy to toss one in here and there. Leave a comment if you feel one way or the other on that topic. Here is a pickup recap photo with the tape deck in it for fun anyway.

Moving quickly on, or this will be a mile long and you will be here all day reading this post. I think it may get to be a mile long anyway. Sorry about that.

A couple days later I popped back into a Goodwill and found a game I never could get to play on any of my machines at the time it came out. I think I had a demo, and it absolutely destroyed both my rigs at the time. It was unplayable. It is old enough to be on 5 CD ROM discs, no DVD ROMs here! In a nice condition double disc jewel case I found...

Far Cry - PC - Found 2018.04.23 at Goodwill

I picked it up and thought, there has to be a missing disc, or they are all scratched to hell. But nope, every disc was accounted for, and they were in immaculate condition. Ubisoft releases patches for their older games, and after a quick Google search in the store, it appears there is one that will allow this to work on Windows 10. So I bought it. $1.06 out the door from the CD bin. I haven’t tried it yet, and even if it doesn’t work, that’s a cool piece to have.

Next up is another one I had a long time ago, not valuable or rare or anything, but was a good game that I enjoyed playing in the early 2000′s.

Fable - XBox - Found 2018.05.03 at Goodwill

This was in a little rougher condition than I’d have liked, but it might still play. See the scratches on the disc below.

Worst case I can get it resurfaced for like $2. The scratches do not have a “catch” to them when you run your fingernail over them, which is a good sign. They will likely buff right out and it’ll be good as new. Unfortunately that would put it up to a total cost of $5.21 since this guy cost $3.21, and with a value at only $7.36 it doesn’t really make it much of a bargain. But I can live with that if it is added to my collection in working order.

Still a couple bucks under retail, and if I’m lucky, I won’t have to resurface it, making it even closer to a bargain at about half price. So disc is about a C. The case has a small crack, placing it at about a C+, and there is some wear on the manual. The manual though is not falling apart so it stays in the B’s with a B-. Some days later I found a minty “Platinum Hits” edition of Fable at another Goodwill, but the case was empty. I took it to the counter to ask if I could have the case, and they said no, unless I wanted to pay $3 for it. Bummer.

I don’t know why all of a sudden most of the Goodwills in the area are keeping people from taking empty cases. The one closest to my house still lets me take them if I get the right employee/manager on at the time, but the others still won’t let me take them without paying at least a little bit for them. At least they don’t want full price. Maybe they are getting a good deal on recycle material or something. It’s irritating though, glad I got the cases I did throughout last year while I had the chance.

Anyway, moving on.

This was actually the same store and trip that I found the empty Fable case. The game section had close to zero games in it, and I was about to leave (and see if the cashier would give me the Fable case) when I decided to eyeball the toy section in case some controllers or other accessories got tossed over there. For some reason three PS2 games were sitting on the shelf. Two of them were of no interest and were not valuable enough to even buy at $3. But, this one I was interested in playing. I had Defender of the Future on the Dreamcast a LONG time ago. That version is a lot more valuable than this one now of course. By about double, but if it is the same game, I’m in.

Ecco The Dolphin Defender of the Future - PS2 - Found 2018.05.06 at Goodwill

Another very good condition case and disc. Id put the case at an A-, you can see some wear on the outer plastic. Disc is a solid A, as is the manual.

I was always mesmerized playing this game on the DC, how fluid, and realistic the movements of the dolphin were through the water. If this one is as good as the DC, and plays the same, it will stay in the collection as well.

Side bonus to this one, the clerk only charged me the DVD price of $1.99, instead of the video game price of $2.99. Score! I’ll take any small discounts I can get. That $1 could be a GameCube game at a yard sale or something.

The very next day I wound up at another Goodwill and noticed a Wii bundle in the showcase. It was marked $49.99. I noticed there wasn’t a power cable, video cable, or sensor bar sitting with it, which was making me start to shy away from it. It did have several games with it, along with a first party Classic Controller, which I could use, I don’t have one, and have been on the look out for one. Additionally it had two first party nunchucks. I need nunchucks, I only have one first party nunchuck. As far as stuff that did not help the value, there was a Wii balance Board and it also had two third party controllers with it. Which were junk. Additionally it was missing flaps. So I felt at the top end, I was willing to pay maybe $25. The store manager noticed me looking at it and immediately apologized for there not being a sensor bar, power or AV cables with it. He said he usually tries to get them complete before they are put out, he wasn’t sure why this one was out, and it was definitely priced as though it was complete, so he dropped the price to $30 right there. Okay, now we are getting somewhere, but another $5 off would be better.

I said thank you, I appreciate that, that does compensate mostly for the missing cables, though I have a couple other concerns. The GameCube controller port covers are missing, and the two Wiimote controllers it has are absolute junk. How about $25? He didn’t even think about it, he immediately said yes, and dug it out of the showcase to bring it over to the register for me. I wish I’d offered $20 first now. Worst case he comes back with $25 and we end up there anyway.

Wii Bundle - Found 2018.05.07 at Goodwill

I looked closer at the games while he ran around behind the counter for a few moments, then helped a couple other employees with something, and they are all in extremely good condition. Of the games in the bundle, I am interested in adding Mario Galaxy, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz to my collection. So I will do close ups on those below. The rest are in almost as good condition and I’d like to sell off as a bundle, and get close to or more than I paid here for it. Sonic was in the DVD / Games bin and cost an additional $3.21 to get that as it was obviously not part of the Wii bundle. It was also in immaculate condition. So I couldn’t pass it by. I included it in the picture because it was all the same purchase. As he was ringing me up, and because he was so eager to get me going, I almost thought maybe he knew something was wrong with it. But when tested, it booted right up and reads discs OK. Likely it was just busy in there and he was looking to get the transaction taken care of and me on my way.

As for the games themselves, well, have a gander.

Sonic Mega Collection Plus - PS2

I have been playing Sonic games almost as long as Mario games. Maybe less by perhaps 4 or 5 years. While not as near and dear to my heart, I do hold them up as quality games. I owned a Genesis/32X/Sega CD monstrosity for a number of years and played Sonic 2, Sonic CD, and Knuckles Chaotix a lot in my later teen years. I also had a Game Gear with a Sonic game, and this title proclaims to have Game Gear titles on it as well. So I’m looking forward to that.

Super Mario Galaxy - Wii

What can I say about this find? Freaking. Perfect. Condition. Perfect. Like someone took the cellophane off, and brought it to Goodwill. So crispy. I absolutely LOVE finding games in this condition. It is nearly flawless. Close to crystal clear outer art sleeve.

Manual is an solid A, one tiny dent there in the lower right-ish corner prevented the A+, but otherwise looks like its never even been touched. So happy to have this one in the collection finally. I never owned it, even having owned a Wii since at least 2008, I’ve never played it until recently. Looking forward to giving it a proper spin.

Donkey Kong Country Returns - Wii

Wow. Just. Wow. Immaculate. It astounds me that something this old can be in this good of condition coming into a Goodwill. This game was released when? November 2010 according to Wikipedia. So it could be anywhere from roughly six to eight years old or so depending on when this copy was actually manufactured and bought. This belonged to someone who either didn’t care at all, or hated the game the first time it was played, set it on a shelf and it was forgotten until donated, or it was loved and well taken care of. Considering it was donated, I’m going to wager a guess on the former scenario as the most likely.

The crispiest of manuals. A+. Just look at that. Did anyone EVER play either of these games!? I love it. Disc is A+, not a mark on it, flawless. Case is a solid A as well, very clear jacket, no dings, dents, cracks or chips.

The game itself to play is quite good as well, good play control, the visuals are on par with the DKC series, and is updated into the “New Super Mario Bros Wii” style, by rendering everything then fixing the camera in position to create a side scrolling platformer that can be smoothly zoomed in and out, as well as create pseudo parallax scrolling by placing layers of rendered backgrounds behind the area in which you are playing. Backgrounds become the play field in this game as well. I’m enjoying it so far.

I dig this game a great deal, and will also be giving this a proper play through sooner than later.

The condition of most of these finds this month has been stellar so far. Super crispy and clean games. The exception to this is the following game.

Super monkey Ball Banana Blitz - Wii

Really good shape for the most part though, the only blemish on this game is the sticker. GAH! At least we can get that off of there with relative ease, the blog post from a while back I did shows my technique for this. It is very effective and uses nothing more than a damp cloth and packing tape. No goo gone required. So case is an A-. I do however, find the two stickers inside to be rather amusing. They appear to be actual Chiquita banana stickers, with Monkey Ball characters on them, so I think those will stay. It adds to it in my opinion. Manual is A+, very crispy. Disc is a solid A as well.

This game isn’t great because of the controls in my opinion. I much prefer the GameCube games, but my son is a big fan of the series and played the original and the second one on our Wii with a GameCube controller pretty regularly. He has tried this one, and was not as thrilled with it because he cannot use the controller easily, it is all motion/tilt control. But I can see him trying again when he understands the control better. Hes still only three, he will pick it up I’m sure.

Side tangent for a second, does anyone else hate certain games on the Wii because of the controller options? Or rather, severe lack there of? Taking a series like Monkey Ball, or Metroid Prime, that originated on the GameCube, and then make it so you HAVE to use a control scheme that incorporates the new Wiimote motion control. It infuriates me. How hard would it have been to allow fans of the series that played the games on the GameCube to plug in their favorite controller, and seamlessly pick up the game using the same control scheme they know and love. It was simply left out of the game entirely. A big middle finger from Nintendo. Nope, you have to use our new way, we innovated this new motion control platform, and we are going to force you to use it in EVERY game. Plugging in a GameCube controller to a game series that is a continuation FROM THE GAMECUBE should at least be an OPTION. Another example, a game like Twilight Princess, where it was actually a GameCube game ported to the Wii. Not just a series continued from the GameCube. But an actual GameCube game. The original control scheme with a GameCube controller should be an OPTION. But it isn’t. They even mirrored the entire game just so Link would carry the sword in his right hand to match up with 99% of people’s “sword hand”. Really? Oi.

Speaking of Zelda...

*grumble grumble*

Moving on.

To round out this month’s finds I have two more to go. First is a small find from Goodwill. A single game, but, it is on a system that I just do not see games for in Goodwills around here. Gamecube. Nothing spectacular by any stretch, but I had to grab it considering it was GameCube.

Medal of Honor Frontline - GameCube - Found 2018.05.09 at Goodwill

Relatively good shape, I’d give the case a B. Manual is an A, very crispy. Disc is a solid B, a few light scratches, but no question it will play. It will go in the collection for now, but might not stay forever, FPS games and I do not generally get along on consoles.

Still happy to get it, of course it ran the standard $3.21, it only weighs in at a little over $5 on pricecharting though. Oh well. A GameCube game is a GameCube game these days.

Last but certainly not least, my final yard sale find of the month is a Glacier Game Boy Advance, with Pokemon Red version included.

Game Boy Advance with Pokemon Red - found 2018.05.11 at a yard sale.

I’ve only ever owned an original Game Boy DMG-01. I played Tetris, Revenge of the Gator, Metroid II, TMNT, Mega Man, Super Mario Land and other games for hours as a kid growing up in the late 80′s and early 90′s. The GBA was released after I’d become an adult, and portable gaming was lower on my priority list at that time. I was doing less riding in cars on road trips because I was now the driver on road trips. I had a girlfriend/wife or friends to talk to on those trips in any case, so even if I wasn’t driving, it wasn’t like I was bored off my ass in the back seat while we drove to another family vacation. Or sitting in school or something. I had a job. Way less free time.

So, having never owned some of them when they were new, I am down to get my hands on a few of these portables at this point. If nothing else, I can give them to my son to play with on some family road trips!

I saw this one in a picture in a Cragslist ad, the person’s ad for the Sale had photos. It was on a table along with a TI-84 Plus and an Apple TV. No price tags were on any of it in the photos. I’d hoped to get all three for a steal, and flip the Apple TV and calculator for a profit to help fund the collection. My hope was about $10 for the Apple TV, $15 for the Calculator at most, and perhaps $10 for the GBA. I arrived at the sale only a minute or two after it was scheduled to start. Of course there was already a swarm of people and I thought “damn, I’m sure it’s gone by now.” However it was not gone, as you can see from the picture, marked at $20. Double what I was hoping for. Probably why it was in still there. A glacier GBA is only worth about $25 according to Pricecharting, and I would also assume that price assumes the battery cover is present. This one does not include the battery cover. So I asked the guy if the price was flexible. He said he could go $15. I pointed out it was missing the battery cover and that I was hoping for $10. He said he hadn’t noticed the battery cover, and in that case he could go as low as $12. Knowing Pokemon Red had to be at least a ten dollar bill, I bought it.

As you can see it works fine. I figure this could also be a unit I will take thrifting with me to test GB, GBC, and GBA games right in the store before buying them. Will be handy.

Incidentally the TI-84 was marked at $40, they are only worth about $50 to $60, and this one was a little rough. The Apple TV was marked at $30. But only worth $40 to $50. If I could have gotten them for the prices I was hoping for, I may have picked them up, but given the price he wanted for the GBA, I don’t think I could get him that low, so I didn’t bother even making an offer. The only item I was really after was the GBA, and I think I got a good enough deal on that.

That wraps this post up for a little more than about the last month of hunting. A lot of stuff this time around, the season is just starting to hit stride. Hopefully this continues. The finds have already been fairly good.

So now down to the official business. We had $57.46 at the end of the last posting.

Harry Potter was $1.06, that takes us to $56.40. Ratchet and Clank, Ratchet and Clank Going Commando, and Lego Star Wars were 50 cents each, taking us to $54.90.

Then we found Far Cry, another $1.06 takes us to $53.84, and Fable at $3.21 takes us to $50.36. Ecco the Dolphin Defender of the Future was only $2.13, but that still drops us to $48.50.

That takes care of most of the one off stuff and brings us to the Wii bundle with Sonic Mega Collection Plus. All of it was $30.08 out the door. A little ouch compared to what we have available for funds. But a good deal for what I got. That shrunk the total to $18.42. But it was worth it, those games were in stunning condition. Plus, I should be able to eventually make back every penny on the leftovers. Assuming I'll run across some cables at some point. A Wii bundle with the games that were left, the Wii Fit Board, the controllers, nunchucks, and all the cables should fetch at least $30 - $40.

The last one off game was Medal of Honor Frontline for the GameCube. It ran $3.21. Taking us down to $15.21. Only just enough to bring home the last item, the Glacier Game Boy Advance with Pokemon Red Edition. That $12 brings us down to what I believe is a record low. $3.21.

Ironically, just enough money to buy ONE game at a Goodwill without going negative if one turns up.

Not to fret though, I have a small pile of items I will be listing very directly, which should refill our till so we can move into peak Yard Sale season fully armed.

Slated to hit eBay soon are: Pokemon Red Sealed copy of Wii Fit Plus Sealed copy of Wii Play A copy of Dragonball Revenge of King Piccolo The Lot of 007 Games from last post.

I might list the entire 007 lot for something between $12.99 and $17.99 buy it now with free shipping. I feel like that should move fairly quick, but we'll have to see what's going for what price as I'm listing it all to really choose final pricing.

That’s all for now, happy hunting to my few readers! I love you all.

We are right on the cusp of yard sale season folks. It’s so close. But it isn’t here yet. My area typically has about 100 yard sales around town in the Yard Sale Treasure Map app on any given weekend. I have seen it over 200 in peak season. However the listings are still only in the 20′s so far, and nothing worth stopping at. Still looking at mostly thrift store stuff here.

Let’s get into it.

First up is probably the best item. It’s not an amazing deal that I got for $2 at a yard sale or a thrift store, but I did get it from an acquaintance on Instagram. He posted that he got several N64 games, I think about a dozen, for $25. So he got them for about $2 each, and said that a few were doubles, would anyone like them? I laid claim to Super Mario 64, as that has been a long sought after piece to my collection.

Super Mario 64 - Found 2018.03.07 on Instagram

It arrived on the 15th of March. Very exciting. I never had this one in my collection, ever. Not when the 64 was the main machine to have, and not even later after the GameCube came out, or even when the Wii came out. Back when I probably could have picked it up in a bin at GameStop for $5.

But it is in the collection now. He gave me a good deal, he only made about $8 on it, because he charged me $10 plus shipping, so it came to $13. This game is still going for $30 pretty much everywhere. He could have asked for upwards of $20 and still been well below what I would have paid on eBay, were I to get it there. So enormous thanks and a huge shout out to @cartcollectoranonymous for cutting me a really good deal. I love it when people get stuff for cheap, and can pass that savings on to fellow collectors. I hope I can return the favor some time. Came out to be about 60% off of retail in the end.

I had only played this on demo kisoks back in the day, I am familiar with the very first level, the Bob-omb world. But that is about the extent of it. The N64 I bought back then was either not packaged with a game, or came with Mario Kart 64. I think it was gameless though, because the box I have for my N64 does not indicate that it came with any games. I’m fairly certain I bought the 64 by itself, and then bought Mario Kart 64 as my first game. There was a time when we had 4 controllers, and we could play MK64 with two of our friends. Good times. I’m not 100% sure what happened to my yellow and red controllers, but all I have left is a gray and a green. If more hunting turns up some others I’ll gladly hang onto them for some more 4 player action again at some point.

Next up is another Goodwill find, nothing astounding, but not a bad find for $0.99.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater - Playstation - Found at Goodwill 2018.03.13

It’s in good shape, manual is crispy, case in tact. It seems to play fine. Was never much of a fan of these games, but it’s been dry, and to find a game lately that’s not Madden Something, <insert sports league acronym here> Something, or Tiger Woods something is a feat in and of itself. It was a buck. So I grabbed it. Valued at $9.84 on Pricecharting. Not bad.

There have been slim pickins lately. I have gotten somewhat crazy in my hunts, looking for possible screw ups or even miss-priced games at places like Half Price Books. Knowing full well they charge you full or even over eBay prices there, but thought maybe I’ll get lucky and spot a game someone used the wrong price on or something.

No such luck. Hey at least it was worth a few laughs.

Behold. The ridiculous price gouging of Half Priced Books (Over Priced Everything Else).

$24.99 for a $20 game on eBay. I’ll admit, I got this one for about $16 shipped a year ago, and it has gone up some. But even so, nice one HPB, have fun babysitting that one on your shelf for all of eternity.

Wouldn’t mind this one in the collection, and it was right at or maybe a COUPLE bucks below eBay, but, as you can see above with Mario 64, I’m looking for real deals, like 60% off retail, so if this was $6, it might have been bought.

None of these are “half price”. Mario Galaxy at $19.99, I can buy it now on eBay right now for $12. This is just getting greedy. The thing that irks me the most is, you know they gave someone $2 or less for this in trade.

In their defense, it is called “Half Price Books” not “Half Price Games”. They should rename the stores to “Half Price the shit no one wants, but full price on everything cool.” Even their CDs are $5, I can buy brand new copies of CDs, shrink wrapped and all, for $5.49, I saw several at a department store today in fact. Why would I buy used CDs for $5? Thrift stores have them for $0.99. Thats where I buy my music.

So we just reminded ourselves why Half Price Books is a terrible place to game hunt. I didn’t snap pics of it, but they had Mario Sunshine in a glass case at $40.00.

It is just tragic the state that the video game market has gotten to. This is 12 years after the Wii was released in 2006, and 17 years after the GameCube was released in 2001. Mario games are still going for near what they were brand new. I’d say Super Mario Bros. 3 was the biggest Mario release on the NES, as is Mario Galaxy 2 on the Wii. If I looked for Super Mario Bros. 3 twelve years after the NES was released in 1985, I’d be standing in an EB in 1997. In the corner, in a huge bin, with no order or organization whatsoever you’d find a pile of NES games. The highest price would probably have been $5, and I guarantee Mario 3, even being the great game it is, due to its overwhelming number of trade ins, would probably have been $2 to MAYBE $4. Account for inflation and you might be looking at $6. $6 at the most. Six dollars. Six. Not TWENTY, or fucking FORTY. Realistically... SIX. For a game that is 12 years old. Which might I remind you was considered ancient at the time. People buying their N64 carts looking at people rummaging through the NES bin were just feeling pity for them.

“Man look at that guy buying NES games”

“Yeah dude, guess he can’t afford a current console, like this N64.”

“Sucks to be him”

No, sucks to be you now, he has a huge pile of valuable 30+ year old games he bought in the bargain bin in 1997, and now they are worth 3 to 10 times what he paid or better. Heh.

But I must digress finally, this Blog has become a place for me to air my grievances about not finding anything good for cheap enough anymore. Hopefully that will turn around with the upcoming Yard Sale season.

*rubs hands together diabolically*

Finally, we have the last find of this post, again nothing stellar, I haven’t really found anything earth shattering yet, and the biggest find recently was probably Grandia II.

A triple find of 007 games on the Playstation. Found on 2018.04.06 at Goodwill.

So we have Racing (Collector’s Edition), Tomorrow Never Dies (Collector’s Edition), and The World is not Enough. Racing is unfortunately missing the cover in sleeve / manual, so Pricecharting has that Disc Only at $3.58. I would have liked to have at least had those two Collector’s Edition’s complete, but it was not meant to be. Honestly the difference in value is like $1 anyway. Tomorrow Never Dies is complete and in decent shape, valued at $5.13. The World is not Enough is disc only, valued at $4.25. Each were $0.99. So $3.19 spent there all said and done and total value comes in at $12.96. Not bad. Not great, I would have liked to have had them all complete, but they all work. I may sell them as a set if it comes to that, could make $7 or $8.

Official business, we had $74.71 remaining at the end of the last post. We spent $13 on Super Mario 64 (squeeeeeeeeeeee!), taking us down to $61.71. Then it was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater at $1.06, leaving us with $60.65, and the $3.19 from the 007 trifecta drops us to $57.46 remaining.

So $57.46 game hunting money left in the bank. I will be selling a few things soon to bolster the money for the upcoming Yard Sale season. I have those two sealed Wii games still, Wii Fit Plus and Wii Play. As well as a Dragonball game. I’ll fill you in on how that goes once everything sells.

Lets do this!

So these finds ranged from the end of January, to the end of February. We start off on January 29th, I had an opportunity to hit both Goodwills in the same day and still get a full workday in. Go me.

The first stop was the Goodwill closest to my house, this place... oof.

It’s just...

Wow...

Man, it is terrible, the finds are so few and far between here, I have almost stopped coming, today was no exception. This one seems to put 90% of it’s games online, and the few it does sell are in the glass case. A very small amount go in the DVD bin, but are 99% of the time schlock.

Once again, from a distance I get excited, I see a sizable lot of Gamecube games in the glass case. At some Goodwills the glass case means auction, but not here. This is a place where it puts slightly more valuable items. But they still just have a price tag and are available for purchase. I hurry over to see what they are and get this pile of garbage.

Mostly kids movie titles, Finding Nemo, Cars, etc. Nothing out of double digits for value, and I think nothing over $8 if I remember correctly. I mean, sure, if they averaged $5 each, and that’s being generous, I had a $50 lot. If there was even one game in the lot I wanted to keep, I may have bought the whole thing, the price tag was $24.99 for all of them. That is below the normal Goodwill $2.99 price per game when it is on the shelf. So I could likely have resold the 9 games left after I picked the one I wanted for around $30. But it would have taken a while, and... I didn’t want any of them. Not a one. So I was not in the mood to barely break even when I’m not even adding anything to the collection. If it had Mario Kart DD, Pikmin or Mario Sunshine. Heck I’d maybe have settled for Metroid Prime or a Monkey Ball or something, but there was no meat there at all.

The rest of the store was terrible, three or four utterly terrible games in the bin, not even any good music CDs. I left.

Later in the day I get around to checking out the much better, much bigger Goodwill by the office. A little bit better of a turn out, but not by much. I think I missed another PS2 lot in here that came in over the weekend.

Nevertheless, I managed to snag this one.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 - Found 2018.01.29

Case and manual are A- and A+ respectively, only a couple small blemishes on the outer plastics, no cracks. Manual is crispy, just one tiny crinkle in the lower right corner. Disc, I’d say a solid B. Few scratches, but not bad. Will play for sure. Not an expensive game by any stretch, but it came in at $6.79 on pricecharting. A little over double what I paid at $3.21, I’ll happily pay half price for a title I’m planning on keeping.

I wanted it because, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I had played a lot of the Need For Speed Hot Pursuit game, and enjoyed it. This was back on the original Playstation. I never had a PS2.

Here’s a question. Playstation. PS1? PS One? PSX? What do you call it anyway? I like just Playstation, I think the PS One is the small version anyway. That’s its name. PS One. I hate it when people put a 1 on the end of something after a 2 comes out. For years the Playstation was, well, the Playstation. Then all of a sudden the PlayStation 2 comes out, with the acronym PS2, and the Playstation then suddenly becomes PS1. No, it is still “Playstation”. I used to talk to friends and say I was playing a game on the Playstation, and they would be like 1 or 2? I’d be like, did I say 2? Playstation is Playstation. Whats the point of having names if everyone changes it? Stop thinking about it so much. If it was the PS2 I would have said PS2. When you talk about Metroid, if I say I’m playing Metroid, you know I’m playing Metroid, you don’t automatically ask if its Metroid II, Super Metroid, Metroid Prime, or any of those, right? Just because Metroid II came out out does not automatically turn the original into Metroid 1. It’s called Metroid. That’s its name. If I were playing a game other than Metroid, I would have called it by its name.

Anyway, well, at least Sony has the balls to name their consoles in a proper order. Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Playstation 4. Not like Microsoft’s naming shenanigans.

2001-

Microsoft: Behold, the XBox!

Everyone: Perfect. Clean, concise. Catchy. We like it!

2004-

Microsoft: Lets make a new XBox. 

Everyone: Excellent! We highly anticipate the release of the XBox 2!

Microsoft: No no no, Sony already did naming like that, we have to be different.

Everyone: Ok, then just name it something else entirely, then you’ll be different.

Microsoft: No, Nintendo already does that too, we need something else.

Microsoft: I know, we’ll still call it XBox, but we’ll pick a cool number, tack it on the end, and call it that. It’s genius!

Everyone: *blank stare*

2005-

Microsoft: Behold the XBox 360!

Everyone: Ummmmm. OK. We’re on board.

2012-

Microsoft: Now, lets make a new XBox!

Everyone: *blank stare* Yeah, we have no idea where you could go with this now. 360 is already a full circle so maybe 2 full circles? XBox 720? No that would actually make sense. Can’t wait for this.

2013-

Microsoft: Behold! XBox One!

Everyone: *face palm*

Anyway... Sorry for the rabbit hole. That’s always been a complete mystery to me, Microsoft’s console naming convention. Would have loved to have been in the room when they working working each one through.

Up next, a not so valuable game, with a... twist.

PGA Tour ‘98 - Playstation - Found 2018.02.13 at Goodwill

The only type of sports game I would ever even consider buying. Well besides NCAA College Basketball 2k3 for GameCube. Always have budget for that at Goodwill prices. Its like a $100 game. In any case. I used to play Golf games with my dad all the time. We played mostly NES Open Tournament Golf, but had also played some Links on the Sega CD, Wicked 18 on the SNES, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf on the NES, and Mario Golf Toadstool Tour on the GameCube. My dad is coming into town in a couple of months and thought I might see if this one was in good shape so we could both have a golf game neither of us had ever played to try out. I also have Hot Shots Golf III on the PS2. So that should be fun.

Case is in good shape. I opened it up, sure enough, there it is, manual is a little rough, lift it up to check the disc condition... wait...

What the? There’s another game in here?

Holy crap!

Score!

Twisted Metal - Playstation - Found at Goodwill on 2018.02.13

Love this series. I currently have copies of Twisted Metal II and Twisted Metal III. When I saw this at the store, I quickly combed the entire CD section a little more thoroughly than usual to see if the case might actually be there, just sitting empty or even with a different game in it. It was not. It came like this though so I left it in there and I brought it to the counter with a couple other music CDs. $0.99.

I’ll call that a win.

Finally, it’s actually a European game I found, at least, the packaging is very European. It has the simple black and white spine most PAL games come with, and there is what looks to be at least French and Dutch on it.

Little Big Planet 3 - Playstation 4 - Found at Goodwill on 2018.03.05

I know literally nothing about it other than Pricecharting says its around $13. So I bought it. Figured it’d be a flip for a few bucks back in the till if anything. If i get a PS4 at some point it might be a fun little game to check out.

This one is interesting in that it has 4 languages on it.

I can’t seem to find much on it, or even if it was supposed to have a manual. Because there wasn’t one, just this card with controls on it.

Which leads me to believe it doesn’t have an actual manual anyway, why bother with the card if you had a manual. Unless it was solely for being a quick reference card.

In any case, it wasn’t a shitty sports title, and it intrigued me, so here it sits.

Official Business, we started this post with $82.19. The copy of Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 was $3.21, taking us down to $78.98. The jewel case with both PGA Tour 98 and Twisted Metal was $1.06. That takes us down to $77.92, and the copy of Little Big Planet 3 was $3.21, leaving us with a total of $74.71 game hunting money remaining.

Happy hunting everyone, spring is right around the corner.

It is officially that time of year. Off season.

Ugh.

Locked in to nothing but thrifting to find anything. Not necessarily a bad thing, the browsing can be done in a nice heated store, you’re out of the weather. But it does come with it’s limitations, you are sure to never come away with any real amazing deals. The chances of finding that giant box of goodies that says “$10 - Whole box” on it is zero, because it’s a retail location. You find a stack of 10 games you want, you are paying $2.99 times 10 plus tax. Granted the odds of finding a stack that big at one time that you like is also pretty close to nil. But, you can still find some stuff at thrift stores if you happen in at the right time.

Let’s get to it.

The first thing I ran across since the end of the last pickup post was, incredibly, a Dreamcast game. Unfortunately it was not complete, I’ll get that out of the way right now. The manual was not inside. Also missing was the second disc, which, fortunately is only a bonus soundtrack disc, it is not part of the game. At least that means the only game disc is there and it can be played in its entirety.

Grandia II - Found 2017.12.28 at Goodwill

It wasn’t even with the video games, or even with the CDs, it was tossed on the shelf over with the misc electronics. Typically where you’d see a console, or controllers or something. Unfortunately no console or controllers, but this is not a bad find. After grabbing this, I went back to the CD section and combed through it more carefully, just in case there were more that actually did make it into the CD section, and I did find two more games. But they were crappy sports titles that weren’t even worth a few bucks. I can’t stand most sports titles, so I left them. I was buying some CDs that day and had this in a stack of music. She counted down the stack, saw this as a double disc CD and charged me $0.99. Not a bad deal since it wasn’t complete. A buck though? I’ll take it. Great start.

Moving on.

Sealed Wii Fit Plus - Found 2017.12.29 at Goodwill

Sealed games are ALMOST always a good bet, especially if you find them at a Goodwill. This one seemed to be no different. Paid $3.21, and Pricecharting has new priced in at $19.97. More than six times the value. I honestly almost didn’t even check it figuring it would have to be nearly worthless. I mean, it’s WII FIT. Wii Fit. I recently sold a complete in box Wii Fit, with the board (very clean) and a mint copy of the game for $2. The person even had to think about it for a second too. So it is insanely hard to get rid of these in this area. I mean look at the shelf of another Goodwill.

Just thrown around like they are old bathroom scales (hah!). Those have been there for weeks. At $3.99 they don’t move. Apparently the Plus version is a little more valuable though. I’ll take it, it’s hunting money fodder there. Nothing special.

I did run across this guy the same day.

You can even see the Wii Fit Plus box where I set it down to snap a pic of the doll. Did a quick search on my phone, didn’t turn up anything spectacular, there was one on eBay that wasn’t selling, priced at $35 that had the sword and shield. This one, no sword, no shield, and had some significant wear on it. I passed. I’m not one to have a lot of figurines in my collection either. I’m about the games.

Moving on once again.

The holidays came and went. On January 9th I went into the Goodwill that is usually the most lucrative.

From afar I saw a nice stack of Wii games that were not there the last time I was in. Like 18 games. I got excited and hurried over to the shelf.

I was immediately let down.

I posted this on Instagram that day too. Terrible titles. All schlock. I couldn’t believe it. Either they had come in early that day or the day before and had been plucked clean of all the AAA titles (AKA anything First party, Mario, Donkey Kong, etc), or AA titles (AKA third party quality from Sega or Square, that kind of thing), so all that was left was what is in that picture, or the parents just had little kids AND a budget. I mean come on, iCarly? Rudolph? Smurfs? On and on.  Cmon, buy ONE good title.

Tucked behind them all though...

Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec - Found 2018.01.09 at Goodwill

In very good shape, the reason I bought it was not just that, but it was also complete. I have a copy of this already but it is just the disc and the case, I did not have the manual. The most ideal situation here would have been if this case happened to be empty, they would have given me the case and manual for free. Honestly, I could have taken the disc out, left it in the store, and gotten a free case, but I’m not like that. If I were I could have a crap load of free games. Take the discs out and either pocket them, or put them into other cases and double up the discs. Pay for half the games you buy, walk out of the store with the other half “free cases” and then pop the games back in once outside. They don’t ever check the cases I am buying. But again, I’m not like that. It’s charity, and $3 for a game, especially when you can get them in very good shape like this, is really a good price. Had I bought this game on eBay, a quick search turns up a recently sold copy for $5.97, complete, tested, and shipped. They don’t show the disc so you don’t even know if it would be as nice as the one I got, you just know it should work. I’d rather the hunt, and ultimately, the better price.

Anyway, back to my copy of the game. My current, incomplete copy disc is maybe a B, and this disc is an A-, much better condition. The other copy can be bundled or traded at a later time. Some people don’t care about the manuals. Me, for some reason, I just love handling a copy of a game, and it having that weight of being complete.

Call me weird. Moving on.  

Went back a couple days later on the 11th. Found the stack of schlock Wii games drastically reduced in size. Someone else must have had some little kids that could be into those types of games. Who knows. Maybe three remained from the 18. There were a couple added Wii games, including this next one.

I’d actually already found this one at another Goodwill in very mint condition, so I didn’t need a copy, but figured since this one was sealed, I might as well snag it. Sealed usually fetches anywhere from double, on up to quintuple or more of the normal CIB price. 

Sealed Wii Play - Found 2018.01.11 at Goodwill

I was right, couldn’t pass up a sealed copy. Pricecharting has it at $5.25 CIB, and $15.99 sealed at time of writing. So about triple price of CIB, and almost exactly quintuple what I paid, of $3.21. Not as good as the payback on Wii Fit Plus, but I’ll take it.

On top of Wii Play, there were several PS2 games that were not there before. Which was exciting at first. But that was quickly dashed when I realized what I was looking at. Probably the tail end of a lot that was brought in the day before, and been picked over already. A lot of the games were even OK (i.e. not Madden games, or other sports schlock), but were left because they were scratched. I mean looks like someone used them for a hockey puck on a sand paper rink scratched. Horrible. There were two Dragonball Z games, and couple others I don’t remember (I will try to start snapping more pics while I’m hunting), but do recall thinking “damn, why do they have to be so scratched!?” Because I probably would have picked them up otherwise.

You really do have to hit these stores daily so as not to miss anything. I just don’t have the time to do that.

I managed to find a copy of Star Wars Battlefront among what was left that was not too scratched, and was fairly confident that my PS2 would be able to play it.

Star Wars Battlefront - Found 2018.01.11 at Goodwill

I’m not a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise in general, but these are pretty well known, and well liked games, for $3, and black label, I figured why not add it to the collection. Case and manual were at least in good shape, and the disc... I’d give it a C+. It does play in my fat SCPH 39001. Also installed to the HDD just fine. So... Winning.

I do have SWBF II in the collection as well, but it isn’t complete, so it is hovering in the void between “in the collection” and “available for bundles or trade”. As I mentioned before, I really only like to have complete games in my disc based games collection, hence why I decided to buy a whole other copy for GT3, just to complete it. Cart based is a little bit too tall of an order to want complete games. The budget just doesn’t allow for it. If I happen to stumble across a decent priced copy of Super Metroid, or Link to the Past complete, and its in nice shape, I’d get it to display. But I’m not seeking them out, its just too much.

Anyway, that’s it for this round. Nothing stellar, but not complete crap either. Which is honestly what I thought these months would bring.

Hopefully get some hunting money back in the bank once I list a couple of these items along with a couple others I have that need to be sold.

Official business. We had $96.09 after I sold the PS2 at the end of the last post. The first find was Grandia II, that was $1.06 after tax taking the total to $95.03. Then Wii Fit Plus takes us down another $3.21 totaling $91.82. After that I picked up GT3 for another $3.21, takes us to $88.61. The sealed Wii Play and Star Wars Battlefront purchase came to another $6.42, which puts the total at still a respectable $82.19.

$82.19 game hunting money remaining.

Back in the NES collection post all those months ago, I was talking about the games I didn’t have, and mentioned Ninja Gaiden. Well, I actually won a copy from a Youtube Channel, but I didn’t post about it before because when I asked the owner if he minded that I plug him on social media or tell the story I got no response. It also was not really part of the hunting theme that I had going here, it was a freebie from a contest, not a yard sale or thrift store find.

Despite all of that, I still want to share the games I received from the little contest. I will simply keep it anonymous and not mention the name of the channel, or it’s proprietor, since it seems as though he did not want to have anything to do with me after the transaction was complete. I can’t imagine why, maybe he had a bad day, or he was very busy or something and just never responded and it slipped his mind, I don’t know. That was just the impression I got from the exchange, though, I don’t hold any hard feelings. If he sees this and wouldn’t mind the plug I can certainly add that to a later post. My Instagram isn’t huge by any means but as of this writing it does have almost 500 followers.

In any case, it was this summer, and I was excited to find out that I won a couple of NES games. One being Ninja Gaiden. Cartridge only, but in very good shape. One I had been looking for for a while, happy I could finally play it at my next opportunity, but never did get a copy until now. Sadly I still havent had an opportunity, but it will happen.

I actually only first played this series on the XBox. I knew the franchise was known for being hard, but was always well renowned for being very solid games. The XBox version was no slouch, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I still have yet to fire up this little gem on the NES, but am nonetheless pleased to have it in the collection. I’m sure it will give me plenty of hours of frustration, just as the XBox version did.

Finally, the second game in the prize was Karate Champ (it was a martial arts themed contest apparently).

A little rougher than Ninja Gaiden, but still in decent shape. Infamous for being quite bad from what I understand, but, I didn’t have a copy, and I won’t shy away from adding something I don’t have at this stage in the game. Especially for free.

So thats the pair for this post. Nothing amazing, but thought I’d mention it. They are in the collection now.

In other news, let’s talk game hunting money. I had a PS2 lot up for sale on my work Classifieds and someone bought it. It was the broken PS2 from the $25 lot in “Pick up post #5 - Sony Weeks II”, where I found it would not read any discs, PS1 or PS2, and it was very dusty. I sold it with the system and wires, a controller, and 8 games. Each game was from the big lot I got in “Pickup post #7 - Sony “Wiiks” 3″. Each of them cost me 35 cents. So $2.80 worth of games. The system itself was labeled $8 at the yard sale, so we’ll call it $10.80 my cost. Of course I had to repair it, test it, etc. Flipped it for $40. So we are adding $40 back to the game hunting money.

The last post had us at $56.09, so that puts us at a VERY comfortable $96.09 game hunting money left. We are literally knocking on the door of getting back to the original $100 I started this whole thing off with. I still have a couple games to list and sell, Dragonball on the Wii from the last pickup post, and a loose copy of Mario Kart Wii. If it stays relatively sparse through the winter, like I expect it to, we should be in really good shape to start the next yard sale season.

Well, as you may have guessed, living in the mid-west, it is almost winter, rapidly approaching the official first day on December 21st. The yard sales petered out completely about 2 months ago in mid October, maybe a little earlier. If you recall I mentioned they were already slowing down at the end of August on my last post. All I have left now are thrift stores and work finds to go on. I have decided to stop checking LetGo and OfferUp as a safety measure. Some stories about folks basically being mugged or even shot at those transactions spooked my wife and I and we decided that I not use personal meet up options. This will cut down on the finds yes, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

We had a really long dry spell these last few months too. While the first game was found back in August, and the second on the first day of September,  everything else shown here were all found after November 1st. The Yard Sale scene dried up only a few weeks after the first was found, and even then was already becoming sparse pickings. Recon was showing next to nothing for video games, and what sales I would hit, wouldn’t have any out, already sold what they did have listed before the sale even scheduled to start (damn swap meet and flea market parasites! Have you no couth!?), or didn’t have any to bring out if I asked. Very discouraging. Must be the area. I see so many people with Youtube channels that can still find tons of stuff in their area, they can still put together videos around monthly. Not here. So this tells you why no posts until now, this is the first time Ive had a good amount of finds to even show.

It’s not to say I have nothing to report, the thrift stores have not been too bad at least for disc based games. This is a pretty good post in the game department, though we are going on about 3 months of stuff here, rather than just one, so that helps I guess. Unfortunately no hardware finds to report, these are all games. But quite a few, so settle in anyway, I have pictures of everything, it’s a long way to the bottom.

I’ll try to put everything in the order I found it, with the date I found it if I have it.

We are going all the way back to the end of August for the first one.

Resident Evil 4 - Wii Edition found 8.21.17 at Goodwill.

Pretty good shape. Disc has some light scratches, but plays the game fine. Some discoloration on the case, it is a little more brown than I’d like so that could stand an upgrade. Manual is pretty crispy, I like to see that.

This one supports a classic controller, which I will probably use if I ever get around to playing it. Alternatively, I may emulate it on Dolphin, both to get a better resolution, and just the ease of using a PS2 controller. Couldn’t pass it up complete in box. $3.21.

Moving on.

Next one is the first of only two Sony console games in the list, the rest are for Nintendo consoles. A little bit of a flip from the beginning of the blog where it seemed like the Sony PS2 finds would go on forever.

Need For Speed Underground - Found 09.01.17 at Goodwill

Not a HUGE NFS fan, but as I stated in a previous post, I did like the Hot Pursuit games back in the day on the PSX. So I’m giving these a chance.

Case and manual are in great shape as you can see. Disc is above average, and it plays fine. It won’t install using HD Loader though, which is weird, but I’m not that worried about it. If anything I may emulate this one as well, I can always rip an image of it with my Mac. From there I can play it that way or manually put it on the PS2 HDD. It was an impulse buy in September, I was desperate after more than a two week dry spell. Little did I know I was in for almost exactly a two month dry spell after that. Regret buying it now? Maybe a little, but we’ll see later when we get to it, maybe it will be a fun play. On to the next.

My son is a Mickey fanatic right now. He has a giant plushy that is almost as tall as he is that he carries everywhere. He watches Mickey Mouse Club House, and Mickey and the Roadster Racers, pretty much daily. So when I saw this one I had to pick it up. If for nothing else to give him a kick out of being able to control his favorite character. Even if he is still too young to even figure out how to get out of the first chamber.

Epic Mickey - Found 11.01.17 at Goodwill.

About as good of shape as Resident Evil 4, no damage to the case, artwork is in good condition, manual is pretty crisp, and the disc has about the same light scratches on it. So it plays fine. Kid loved it by the way.

One thing that made me nervous even before buying it though was this warning on the back of the case:

I do have a modded Wii, I use USB Loader GX with the Home Brew channel to load my games from a 64 GB USB thumb stick. All the games I have loaded are in my collection, I don’t download or pirate games. Everything is legit, and even the images are of MY OWN games. It is simply to make it more convenient, and so I don’t have to handle my games just to play them. So to tell me I can’t play a game on MY OWN Wii simply because it has an innocent mod seemed ridiculous to me.

Until I thought about it a little more.

It is less ridiculous than I initially thought simply because of the fact that I do understand that the mod would allow you to download games and play them, so I can’t be too upset at this I suppose. Nintendo couldn’t do much about the modding community, but they could try and make it more difficult (or so they thought) to play real games on these consoles. Just because I have an ethical line drawn doesn’t mean everyone else does. I’m sure most people would be just as happy and guilt free to download images of any game they want and load a huge drive right up with hundreds of gigs of games. Though making someone not be able to play a real game on a modded console would only encourage someone to download that game instead of buy it, so I feel this was ill advised by Nintendo. In any case, personally, I want to see the same games on the screen that I have on the shelf. Period. The benefits are two fold, convenience, I can switch games quicker, and because it is quicker, I’m not handling them and taking them in and out of the case, possibly causing them to receive more scratches and fingerprints. All good reason in my book.

Anyway, enough of that. Back to Epic Mickey. Sure enough, when I put it in to test it prompted for an update to the system menu, likely looking to reset it back to factory. Which I would not do. I’m not reverting my Wii just for one game. It took a while to get it just right, where all artwork, games, and titles showed up the way I wanted, and played properly. Instead, I opened USB Loader GX and decided to install the game anyway, see if maybe once it was an image, it would bypass this nonsense.

It did. The game plays fine when launched as an image from USB Loader GX. So this is good news. It will make me less leery of other games that have the same or similar warning. Fantastic.

Next up, Wii Play - Found 11.28.2017 at Goodwill

This one was an impulse buy. I saw it in the bin, it’s only worth a few cents more than I paid for it, which was $3.21. According to Pricecharting it comes in at about $3.79 CIB. I am not planning on selling it, and I will buy games worth a lot less, if I am planning on keeping it for myself, plus, I have heard that it can be fun, and it was in absolute perfect condition.

It looked like someone took it out of the wrapper, played it once, and then stuck it on a shelf until they donated it. So I had to snag it, I’m a sucker for games in immaculate condition. This one is perfect. Flawless disc.

Speaking of immaculate condition.

Max Shininess.

Max crispiness.

Max Payne - Found 11.30.2017 at Goodwill

This one also looked like someone took the cellophane off, played it once, then stuck it on a shelf and it sat there until it wound up at Goodwill. I’ve not tried the Max Payne series, and I figured for $3.21, might as well.

It always impresses me when I can pick up a game that is well over a decade old, and it looks like the day it was unwrapped. Just that perfect mirror shine that you can usually only get on a brand new game.

What story does this or any new condition game tell? Did it literally sit on a shelf and not move for 10 or more years before it was swept into a box and brought to Goodwill? Or was the owner just very careful with his or her games, taking really good care of them every time they were played, perhaps loading it on a HDD to play without touching the game further just as I did? Somehow I picture the former more than the latter. But you never know. Here it now sits.

This next one isn’t a great game, or even in great condition, but I was absolutely FLOORED to find any GameCube game at a Goodwill, some others might see it all the time, but I never see that. Gamecube at my Goodwills is like seeing a Unicorn. Often even if you do it is a terrible sports title. This wasn’t a terrible sports title. Maybe a terrible title, that remains to be seen, but it wasn’t sports!

Pac Man Vs. / Pac Man Adventure 2 - Found 11.30.2017 at Goodwill

Unfortunately it is in very rough shape, and is missing a disc.

DOH!

I almost put it back on the shelf, really. Especially when the one player game was the one missing. I can’t even play the game that remained unless I have two people. But I thought, well, they are usually pretty flexible here, maybe I can get it for a buck or two less if I ask.

I asked.

She offered to reduce it down to the DVD price, instead of the video game price. So $1 off. Not terrible, so about $2.13 or so for that one. I decided to snag it anyway. I probably could have argued down to $1, or maybe even free, the manager there is pretty nice. But she was unavailable at the time and it wasn’t worth that much hassle. I got a discount. Can’t complain. Maybe the other disc will turn up at some point in my future hunting.

I did also get an empty Wii Play case for free. This is something any collector should try to do. They typically throw away the game cases that have no games in them, I assume this is true at most Goodwill stores. If one makes it out onto the shelf, or perhaps gets relieved of its disc while on the floor by another, much less scrupulous patron, I bring them to the counter with my purchase. They always let me take them for spares at no charge. Wii Play is certainly not the most valuable game or case to have, especially with having picked up an immaculate copy already, I don’t even need a case upgrade. But any spare case in general never hurts when you are in this business. Beat up cases come along all the time. See the Pacman case above, wish I had a spare one of those. Though double disc cases are a little harder to come by for GameCube though. Only a handful of double disc games on that platform, I think 23 or so the last time I looked. A lot of the Resident Evil games were multidisc, a couple TMNT titles I believe, and I recall a 007 game, and I think a Lord of the Rings game in there. The bonus disc copy of Mario Kart DD had one too. So unless I come across an EMPTY case for one of those 23 or so games, I doubt I get an update for this case. One possibility is I find an empty case for JUST Pac Man Vs. *shrug*

In any case... (ha! pun intended), last from that set, a game I have not played on this platform, and one I have not played in a VERY long time in general.

A remake.

One that does actually look to have been done quite well. At least from what small amount I’ve seen of it so far.

007 Goldeneye on the Wii - Found on 11.30.2017 at Goodwill

I am not sure how I feel about this one. I have always been a very big proprietor of no first person shooters on consoles. Ever. Mouse and keyboard is natural, controllers are clunky, slow, and just generally terrible for FPS games. Because of this I was never a big fan of this game on the N64. But I did play it, I own it, and it wasn’t that bad as a single player game. When it came out, I was big into Doom, Quake and Quake II, especially Quake II death match. Which is insanely fast paced and action packed. For Goldeneye, my friends are like OMG it’s amazing, you have to try this, 4 player death match!

So we play, and I’m having the hardest time aiming, getting shot in the back taking MANY SECONDS to even turn around and shoot back where with the mouse its a twitch of the hand and I’m turned around and firing back at the person. Plus it’s only 4 people, I’m used to 12+ person bloodbaths. I just couldn’t get into it. So the death match / multi player, while what most people would say was the games best feature, fell flat on its face for me.

I had a little more fun with the single player game, the controls you can get used to, and the AI is a little more forgiving to you know, make it possible.

This game has all redone graphics, voice acting, the whole nine yards. Should be an interesting trip down memory lane.

It’s in good shape, crispy manual, case in good shape. Barely a scratch on the disc, can even see the online code that was used to unlock “Classic Conflict Mode”. Not 100% sure what that is, I would have to google it to remember.

Next up, the final two finds from just a few days ago.

Worms: A Space Oddity - Found 12.04.17 at Goodwill

I used to play Worms World Party on the Dreamcast back in the day. Always fun. Especially with friends. This one was not valued very high, even CIB, but I intended to keep this one for myself.

I think Pricecharting has it at about $4.99. So still a deal based on that, I’m sure it’ll be worth a play, and my son likes Angry Birds so he may dig this as he gets older.

Finally, last one for this post, on the same trip as the Worms find, I found this little gem.

Dragonball: Revenge of King Piccolo

Not a Dragonball fan, but when I saw it I knew it had to be at least double digit value. Those anime type games usually have good prices. Sure enough I peeked on pricecharting and it is going for $14.99. Yup, no interest in playing that one but it will be going home with me and straight up on eBay. $15 value is about the minimum I would need to buy something from a Goodwill to sell on eBay. After buying the game for $3, Paypal fees, eBay fees and shipping, even on a DVD case video game you are looking at netting perhaps $7. I’m ok with that, but anything less than that and forget it.

Good condition case, crispy manual, good disc. It should get me a good $6 - $8 in pocket after all fees and shipping. Cover the cost of at least 2, if not 3 more games from the Goodwill down the road.

So that is it for finds on this post. Here’s the recap Pic that I will probably post on Instagram as well. @oldnintendonerd.

The official business. We had eight games from Goodwill at the normal $2.99 plus tax making it $3.21 total. It was Resident Evil 4, Need for Speed Underground, 007 Goldeneye, Epic Mickey, Wii Play, Worms: A Space Oddity, Dragonball: Revenge of King Piccolo, and Max Payne at that price.

Total $25.68

Pac Man was a reduced price totaling $1.99 plus tax at $2.13. Grand total for this set of finds is $27.81.

$83.90 - $27.81 = $56.09 game hunting money remaining.

As for future funds, I still have a loose copy of Mario Kart Wii to put on eBay, as well as the Dragonball game from this post, so we have a chance to recoup at least $10 - $15 of that back. I was just asked about my PS2 bundle which caused me to retest it. unfortunately it is not reading the more beat up discs very well. This is the one I fixed. Still boots right up to games that are closer to like new condition. But it really struggles on the beat up ones. The PS2 I have at home as “My PS2″ boots up these beat up ones just fine. So the one I have for sale appears to be getting tired. I’ll see if I can adjust it some more and get more of the discs to read, if not, I may deeply discount it for her just to get rid of it. Buyer would know full well she’d have to get discs in good shape for them to play is all.

Hopefully the thrift stores keep providing some bounty as the winter months settle in. Though I’m thinking a lot of cleaning and donating doesn’t really get done this time of year, but I’m still hopeful.

I probably won’t post again until 2018 sometime. Hopefully at least once before Yard Sale season really kicks off, but I can’t promise anything. Happy hunting and happy holidays!

So like I said in the previous post, I’ve been taking it easy. A lot of life going on right now. I got a promotion at work and am now a manager with a couple of employees under me, so a lot of my focus has been there. I have not been completely slacking though, I have gotten to just a couple sales here and there, as well as the Goodwill by the office once or twice. Nothing has shown itself at the Goodwill as of late (other than someone dumping their 90′s CD collection and me buying something like fifteen CDs in one go, though that’s off topic for this blog), but I did have a couple small pickups at the Yard Sales. I’ve even gotten a chance to list one of the items I have to sell. So lets get into it.

First, is a yard sale that said they had PS2 and Wii games, as well as a Wii system. They had maybe a dozen PS2 games, all sports and shovel ware, except for one title that piqued my interest, not that it was valuable, it was just the best of the worst. With the low amount of hunting I’ve been doing, on top of not finding much when I do, I decided to buy it. Prince of Persia The Two Thrones.

It was in really good shape, I was sure it would play, and I liked the Prince of Persia games in the past so, for $2 I thought it would be a good try. It is complete, manual is crispy. Couldn't see the harm in checking it out.

The sale did have some Wii games, and the system, but they wanted $5 per game, and the games were pretty schlocky. Best one in the bunch was Wii Play. For $1 or $2 I will get Wii Play every time, but for $5, I passed. The Wii had 2 controllers and what appeared to be all the wires, but they wanted $75. Yeah. At a yard sale. $75.

What?

Anyway. Moving on.

If you follow my Instagram I put a quick post up some weeks ago about this next one. Another sale advertised Wii games. Upon arrival they had a small pile, as well as the system, and a few other accessories, including a 1st, and 3rd party Wii Wheel. Top game on the pile was some bass pro fishing thing, and I instantly had a sinking feeling, I was like here we go again. However, they redeemed themselves, at the bottom of the pile, the very last one in like a stack of 6, was Mario Kart Wii.

Too bad it didn’t spend more time at the bottom of the pile. A little sun faded, but complete. They had $5 per game on a sign and I snatched this one. At this point the wind is picking up and its getting darker... we are minutes from getting a really bad storm, and I’m thinking they probably don’t think they will get much more people this day. So I pick up the 1st party Wii wheel, and a cardboard copy of Wii Sports Resort and say “I know you have $5 per game on the sign, but would you take $5 for all of these?”. The girl looked at her mom, then said “Yeah those are fine, and the wheel should go with that game anyway.” If the looming storm helped her decision that is fine with me.

So I got a Wii Wheel...

...and Sports Resort as well!

Mario Kart was a little beat up though, which was to be expected, with as much sun as it got to fade it as bad as it was, the plastic was brittle and was broken and curling.

Fear not however, back in a previous pickup I got a schlock game called Carnival Games, it was the same pickup as the Wavebird. So a quick case change and voila!

Can still use a cover upgrade due to the faded colors, but hey, Mario Kart Wii CIB for $5, with a Wheel, and a copy of Sports Resort, I’ll take it. Here’s one to show the difference in colors. Side by side with the manual. Pretty big difference.

Closer inspection revealed that Sports Resort is still sealed as well. I was not expecting that. I was going to keep it, but now I may sell it.

The Wii wheel cleaned up pretty good with a little isopropyl alcohol. Other than the slight discoloration of the B button, id say it is in damn good shape.

That actually does it for the pickups. I know, a little lacking but, it’s been slow, and well. Life.

We did sell some items. I listed Parappa the Rapper on eBay. Was very disappointed though in how much it went for. Anticipating realistically somewhere in the high 20′s or low 30′s based on price charting having this game at $28.95 loose, and $40.00 CIB. it wasn’t loose, but it wasn’t CIB. The game was a weird one that put the instruction manual on a poster. 90% of all sales have the in-sleeve that completes the artwork, but are missing the poster. So we were in between loose and CIB. Figured itd be in the neighborhood of maybe $30 - $32. Nope. Went for $21. With fees and shipping out the window we came away with $14.96. Bit of a let down for sure, but money is money.

Additionally, we had a yard sale this weekend and I had a Band Hero set for the Wii out for $10. Had a couple minor issues, but worked last time I knew. Couple of pre-teen kids bought it for the full $10. I also got rid of a CIB Wii Fit board set, and a CIB Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party, the one with the dance mat and the game in the same big box. The Board went for $2, and the mat went for $3, totaling $5. Combined we added $15 back to the game hunting money at the yard sale.

Now, for the numbers. We spent $2 on Prince of Persia The Two Thrones, and $5 on the Mario Kart Wii game, wheel, and Sports Resort game lot. This totals only $7 spent in like a month. Good finds for the money I think though. Especially since I can now sell my spare loose copy of MK Wii and make more than that back easily.

$60.94 - $7.00 = $53.94

$53.94 + $29.96 = $83.90

$83.90 game hunting money now remaining. Way positive from where we started the month. Though it was a very laid back month. We’ll see where the rest of the summer takes us. Honestly the Yard Sales are slowing down for the season already. Not that many with video games out there in my recon that I do Thursday and Friday night.

Happy August everyone.

Been a while since a post, so this one will be pretty long, despite not having found something every single week, there are a few here, so it is pretty long. I have still made time to stop at a few places. I hit my local Goodwill, a few yard sales, and had a LetGo pickup. It hasn’t been terrible, just a little slow.

So let’s get into it.

I’ll try to go in order, and just after the last post I went into my local Goodwill and there looked to be a fresh PS2 drop off. No system, but there were about 15 games that weren’t there the last time I was in. Most of it was schlock, sports games, Guitar Hero and the like. But there was a copy of Need For Speed Pro Street that was in decent shape. I’d never played it before, and it was the best of the lot. The problem was, I’d forgotten my Game Hunting money that day. I really try not to let this hobby get in the way of normal life. I only hit places when they are on the way to a place I am already going, or if they are pretty close to a place I am already. I also keep this strictly within the game hunting money budget. So I looked for a place to hide the game in the store. I dropped it behind a row of DVDs. They were to the front of a pretty deep shelf and there was room behind it. I figured, if it’s there when I get back, fine, if they find it and it sells, I won’t be heartbroken.

Well, I was back the next day picking up dinner nearby, so I popped in, and, it was still there.

I popped it in to see if it worked and it does. Didn’t really play, but I did a quick race just to get an idea of it, and it is weird. I haven’t played any NFS series since the PSX had NFS Hot Pursuit. I did play that a lot, and enjoyed it, which was probably the only reason I gave this a go. This ran me $3.21. Still not a bad find.

It is complete. Disc is in good shape. Not great, but good. I’ll throw this in the collection to kill some time at a later date.

The next week I stopped at a yard sale that was supposed to have Wii games. It was a Facebook ad so I could communicate with the seller. I asked what Wii games she had, and she replied with Mario Kart, some hunting games, and that she wasn’t sure what else. I thought it was worth a stop, it wasn’t far from my house and I was on the way to work anyway. I got there as the sale was opening, I asked about the games, it was raining and I was the only one there. Everything was still being set up because it was still a mess. They could not find the Wii games anywhere. I was disappointed, I’ve been trying to get a copy of Mario Kart Wii for a while with no luck. People keep wanting $15+ for it on LetGo or OfferUp, not that I can blame them, I think Pricecharting has this game at $15 just for loose disc. But, I thought this might be an opportunity to pick it up for $5 or so. I hung around, poking through the pile of mess they had in the garage, hoping he may find it. They had a pile of PS2 games that I glanced through. A case with like 25 DS games in it. I wished I had more time to paw through everything, but I was on my way to work. Sitting on top was Spirit Tracks, which would have been awesome CIB, but I popped it open and saw some other schlock game. Another let down. Pawed through the PS2 games a little more thoroughly, and it was more crap, hunting games, Medal of Honor games, Guitar Hero and sports games, etc. They did have Hot Shots Tennis, and having just got a Hot Shots Golf title, I figured why not. I came here, and have killed 15 minutes already waiting for the Wii games to turn up when it was supposed to really just be a 5 minute stop, might as well walk away with something. Offered $1, and he took it.

Haven’t played it, but the Hot Shots series is nothing less than a “Me Too” Mario Game copycat series, so if it plays anything like Mario Tennis, it can’t be that bad. For a buck? Why not.

It’s in good shape, and complete. Disc is better than NFS pro Street, so this one will go in the collection as well.

The PS2 collection is starting to fill out a little bit at this point.

I have gotten the PCSX2 emulator, and Free McBoot as well, so I dumped my own BIOS and the emulator works pretty well. Not all games play, but most do. I have also ripped these to ISO and run them from a HDD on the PC (they load SO much faster) and they can be loaded on a HDD on the PS2 as well (once I figure out how, heh). You can see the HDD in the “surgery” shot from last post, along with an IDE to USB adapter. So that’s in the plan. It is an 200GB IDE, or PATA, drive and I only plan on keeping copies of games I actually own on the HDD, simply to keep me from having to handle the discs to play the games. Hopefully that proves to work out. I’m just leery of all the programs you need to install and use to accomplish it. I may build a disposable windows virtual machine to handle it in case something winds up being malware.

Anyway, enough of that. Moving on.

The following week came and went, and on that Friday, there was another sale right on the way to the office that advertised a “Nintendo Handheld” and “Nintendo Games”. So I decided to investigate. I figured it could be anything from an old Game Boy and games, on up to a 3DS XL and games. Well, it was a regular DS, looked to be an original generation. With a $50 sticker on it. After I did a double take and tucked my eyes back in their sockets at the price, I leafed through the games. All schlock little kids games. Not even an Animal Crossing. Nothing. The sign there said they want $10 PER GAME.

Per game!?

You have like 12 games here! You are telling me you want $170 for all these games and the DS? You know for $200 you can buy a brand new 3DS XL. I’d be a buyer for the entire lot at maybe $30. MAYBE. But not $170, not even $150, or even $100. So I forgot about it. Way too far apart, and I didn’t want to insult her. If I offered even $40 it would sound insanely low to her given what she clearly thought it was worth.

Moving through the sale I spotted a Wii though, all by itself. No cords, no WiiMotes, nothing. Even missing the controller port flap. The games were sitting there, also labeled at $10 each, but the Wii itself was labeled $7.50. Already a decent deal, but with everything else priced so high, this was the only opportunity to get anything out of this sale. I decided to see if I could get it for a steal. I said that Wii looks a little rough, any cords for it? She says no. I’m like man, no cords, no controllers, it’s missing the controller port cover flap, would you take $5 for it? She thought about it for a moment, and accepted the $5.

Here it is.

It’s in pretty good shape, a little dirty, nothing that can’t be washed up. Since the Wii is my newest console that I own, it is on the living room TV, it was a quick swap in to test it. It works. When it powered on I heard it spinning up a disc, before it even got past that first black screen that makes you press A. I was like oh nice, free game. Judging from the games that were on the table that they wanted $10 each for, I was almost positive it was going to be some Barbie game, or something like Carnival Games. However I was pleasantly surprised. If you follow me on Instagram I’ve ruined this for you, but for those who don’t know yet, check it.

WHAT!?

Been looking for this forever, and I finally get to play it. It’s a bummer it isn’t complete. But I’ve been looking for a Wii to try Soft Modding. I didn’t want to eff up my Wii somehow in the process and lose all of the content that I’ve paid for, so I have been keeping my eye out for a cheap Wii. This was perfect. To get a copy of Mario Kart Wii on top of that is just a nice bonus!

Finally, I had a LetGo deal with someone. We went back and forth quite a bit. The lot is for 20 PS2 games and she had it priced at “$2 each”. I was honest right off the bat, $40 is not going to happen with anyone on these titles, I said I’m usually at about $1 per game for PS2, and at first glance I see only about 11 games that are worth anything, would you take $11? I was expecting to be ignored or at least get a counter offer, that is the MO most of the time on LetGo, no one wants to hear the ugly truth about the games or systems they have. You offer a reasonable price for something, but its only half what they have it listed for and they simply ignore you. This offer being at only about 25% is like a lowball, but she had it priced WAY too high is all.

She just said “Sure”.

Since it looked like we’d make a deal I took a closer look at the titles. They were worse than I thought, the non-sports games were the likes of Guitar Hero, and Cabela’s schlock. That reduced the “good” titles down even further to more like 7. I use the term “good” loosely. In this lot good simply meant it wasnt a sports or guitar hero game. Even those 7 were luke warm, but I was still interested if she could come down some more. I said honestly, after looking closer, I’m closer to $7 on this, I apologize, but the titles are pretty weak. Plus I didn’t know if they were complete or not, though I suppose I could have asked, but since she agreed to $11 so quickly I thought I’ll just throw a price out as if they aren’t.

She said OK.

Apparently she knew they were on the weak side too. We met, and I picked them up.

I am glad I lowered my offer, NFL 2K3 is the ONLY complete title. The rest are without manuals. Which I’m OK with at a price of $0.35 each, I had no intention of keeping anywhere near all of these, I honestly wanted them to beef up the sale of the second PS2 I have, hoping to tack on an extra $10 - $15 or so with a nice big stack of games in the picture.

I’ll probably only hang onto these ones, and even a few of these are maybes:

Of those in the picture, GT3, SOCOM and GTAIII are the only ones I really wanted to actually keep, and of course none of them are complete. So who knows about even those.

I was thinking of asking $25 for the second fat PS2, power and video cables, and one controller. If I can throw all of the leftover games from this lot on top of it and get $35, I’ll be a happy camper.

Last thing about this pickup, the ATV games are wrecked, especially ATV Offroad Fury 2. The case is destroyed.

You can see ATV Offroad Fury in the background there too, with a big hole in the art on the spine. A couple more shots of the damage:

Fortunately, the find with the two PS2s in it from Sony Weeks 2 had an empty case for ATV Offroad Fury, and the Goodwill by my work had some empty cases they just went ahead and gave me that included ATV Offroad Fury 2, the last time I bought something there. Which by the way was GTA Vice City, I’ll get to that in a minute. Here are the empty cases.

So lets freshen up the ATV Offroad Fury games. Why not? Top row, from this find, bottom row from the cases I had on hand.

Boom.

There we go, both in their new homes. The ATV Offroad Fury game was even a greatest hits, so the disc and case match. Not bad. Not valuable, or perhaps even the greatest games, but they are at least complete now.

As for the mentioned GTA Vice City, I grabbed that because it was absolutely immaculate.

It literally looked like someone bought it, took the shrink wrap off, and then set it on a shelf, later to stick it in a box and bring it to Goodwill.

So down to business, we had $79.36 left at the end of the last post, so we are pretty good on hunting money. We bought two games at the Goodwill for a total of $6.42, that takes us down to $72.94.

Then we got the $5 Wii, and the $7 LetGo deal, bringing us down to $60.94 remaining hunting money.

I am probably going to relax a bit on hunting for a week or two. I’m not going to stop altogether but may back off a little bit. Maybe focus on getting a few of the games listed on eBay that I have that need to be sold before getting back out there real hard core.

Either way, $60.94  remaining is still doing quite good considering what we got in the last month. Happy hunting everyone.

Most recent pickup is for Nintendo. Yay!

I mentioned before that I had a small NES and Game Boy deal in the works with a co-worker. She accepted my offer on part of the lot so I picked up two NES games I did not have, and a Game Boy game I have been looking for a good deal on for several months.

She originally contacted me due to my listing on the work Classifieds we have indicating my interest in Retro Video Games. She stated she had The Legend of Zelda, Roger Rabbit, and Track and Field for the NES, and Tetris for the Game Boy. This picture was attached to the email.

Right in the classified ad I state that I am collecting this stuff only for very low prices. So I offered her $1 each for Roger Rabbit and Track and field, stating that is typically what I get at yard sales. I offered $2 for Tetris since I know its about a $5 game. I could have gone as high as maybe $10 for Zelda if I was adding it to the collection, but, I already have it, so I offered $4, double the typical $2 per game of yard sale lots, but much less than it is worth. I said I could not justify spending as much as $10 on a duplicate since I would probably sell it anyway and there’s no money there if I go much higher. I told her it is fine if she wants to keep Zelda, it is a low offer.

She did keep The Legend of Zelda, as expected, I wouldn’t have sold it for that either. But did take me up on the other three, so for $4 total I picked up Track and Field, and Roger Rabbit for NES, with dust covers. And Tetris for Game Boy. I’m really happy about Tetris. Loved, loved, LOVED this game, easily in my top 5 on Game Boy. So many hours into this.

A good little mini find from work, if I get one of these every other week or so I’d be happy. Probably not going to be quite that often though.

As for the update on Sony Weeks, last week we had a really good find valued at over $125 for the outstanding price of $25. It had two fat PS2s, three controllers including a Dual Shock and two Dual Shock 2s, a HDD and network adapter, memory card, and 9 games including Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, and the exceptionally valuable Steambot Chronicles. If you missed the post, go check it out by backing up one, or simply check out the recap photo from the end of the post below.

As you may know, if you read the post, the high from the find was dampened slightly when I discovered that one of the PS2s did not read discs. It powered on, and you could control menus, manipulate files on memory cards, and fidget with the PS2′s settings, but it would just not read ANY discs. Tried both PS2 discs, and PS1 discs. Neither would boot into the game. After some research on the matter and finding that a possible solution did not seem too difficult, I decided to do some surgery.

I am pleased to report the surgery was a success. I am now able to load both PS2 and PS1 games on the, now no longer broken, PS2. I have two working PS2s out of this find.

In addition to the PS2 that would not read discs, we also had an issue where the video would go wonky or cut out all together if you wiggled either of the composite cables that came with the lot. In hopes the problem was with both cables and not with the PS2s, I purchased a Monoprice component cable that fits the PS2, Wii, and XBOX 360. Unfortunately, Monoprice doesn’t make one that is just PS2. The ones that were just for PS2 were really cheap looking, and had terrible reviews of people getting defective ones. I just didn’t want to deal with that crap. So I paid a little more and got the Monoprice, which was the same brand as the one I bought just for the Wii at the beginning of the Blog. So I knew the quality was good. Like the cable for the Wii I will not take this out of the game hunting money as it is not something I was hunting for.

The good news is, the connection is true and solid with this cable and the issues with wiggling the cable and the video image going wonky are gone. So the problem appeared to be with both cables I got in the deal. Unlikely, but clearly possible. Quite pleased with these results, since now the only down side to the find that remains was that Battlefront II and Dawn of Mana were incomplete missing manuals, and ATV Offroad Fury had a different game in it. Some Rugrats game I can’t even recall the whole title. All in all though, a great outcome for a really good price.

The plan for this find is to sell the Kingdom Hearts games, Innocent Life, and Steambot Chronicles to recoup all $25 and then some for some added game hunting money.

Pricecharting has Kingdom Hearts at $7.77 and Kingdom Hearts 2 at $6.50. Sold as a set I should pocket about $10 after fees and shipping. Innocent Life is valued at $14.71, so about $10 there as well after fees and shipping. Steambot Chronicles is valued at $49. After fees and shipping we are looking at about $40. So $60 total for those four games. This more than doubles my money back for this lot, and I get to keep at least one PS2 for the collection, and any of the remaining games. I will probably keep the Castlevania game, as I am a fan of the franchise at least on the NES and SNES, so I’ll give it a go here as well. The other PS2, I feel like I could bundle the other games in this lot and get about $35 - $40 for it. That totals $95 - $100 for a $25 lot. I would be very happy with this.

On top of that, I have already sold my old XBOX for $40, along with a couple games, Ninja Gaiden Black and Dead or Alive Ultimate. Each of those were $5 each totaling the entire sale at $50. Probably a little less than I would have gotten on eBay, at least for the games, but I sold it in cash to a co-worker, so I didn’t want to rip her off, and knowing I’d lose a ton of money in fees and shipping anyway, I was more than happy to take that price. She was very excited to do some gaming over the 4th of July weekend.

So, official business. Lets add the above to the game hunting money shall we?

$29.36 + $50 = $79.36

Plans for additional funds forthcoming are to sell Parappa the Rapper for the original Playstation. Pricecharting has that valued at $38 for CIB. I wager I will get close to that since it is tested and working. After fees and shipping we should be looking at about $30 for that one.

If all goes according to plan the game hunting money will go well over $100, just adding up what we have here to the current $79.36 puts us at $109.36 after Parappa goes, then if I get all $100 for the PS2 stuff, $209.36. This doesn’t include anything I get for a local sale of the PS2 and games I don’t care to keep.

Because of this find, we will likely go completely over the original $100 we started with, and will have actually made money. So for essentially completely free, I have added an extra Gamecube to the collection, and for the Gamecube, Smash bros Melee, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, a Game Boy Player, a 251 block memory card, and a Wavebird controller. For the PS2, an actual PS2 console with controllers, network/HDD adapter, and memory card, along with a nice little collection of games including Gran Turismo 4, Hot Shots Golf 3 and Castlevania Lament of Innocence.

I’ll keep you guys posted on all of this as the next couple of weeks unfolds. Of course I will continue to hunt, combing LetGo, OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace, Garage Sales, and Thrift Stores.

Happy July 4th everyone!

So. I hate stickers. As a collector, there is nothing worse than getting your hands on a great disc based game that you have been looking for, and have it be covered in stickers. Game Stop used game price tags are most common, advertisements for coupons or bonus material inside, it is the worst. Drives me absolutely mad. It’s like, come on, you are devaluing the game while trying to sell it. It comes in just behind those people that write their name in permanent black marker on all of their games. How hard is it to keep a game in nice condition?

Apparently it is difficult, because I don’t think I have seen a used game anywhere that didn’t have at least two damn stickers on it. Buying used is a fantastic way to grow your collection without breaking the bank, but man are those used games ugly. I am a crazy person and I want all of the games that are permanently added to my collection to be pristine, clean, and complete. Basically as few scratches as possible on the disc itself, as nice condition of a manual as I can get, no stickers of any kind, and as little scuffing and wear on the outer sleeve and case as possible. As I find games and make deals with people I’ll swap cases and in-sleeves around to put the best possible ones in my permanent collection. In order to accomplish this though, you have got to remove the stickers. They are on 90% of games I find because it is rare to get a game from someone in which they are the first owner. It does happen, but its not often, the newer the game the easier it is, but collecting retro stuff, it does not happen often.

Here are two games entering into my permanent GameCube collection. As such, they will need to have those stickers removed.

Super Monkey Ball, and Mario Golf Toadstool Tour. These are games I have fond memories of, and ones I enjoy playing. They will be a part of my permanent collection, because I have no intention of selling or trading these any time soon.

As you can see, a couple of nice fat stickers on them. One, actually from Electronics Boutique. That is how long ago I bought these. If you’ve read previous posts you know I got these from my dad recently, as I had left them with him for about the last seven years or so. They were even purchased well before that. So these stickers have been on these cases for upwards of a decade.

Fortunately, I have discovered a really reliable way to remove these stickers without the need for chemicals, removers like GooGone, heat guns, or really any tools at all.

Lets walk through the process with Mario Golf. 

What you will need:

A dish/hand towel or washcloth, dampened. It does not need to be wet, just a little damp, it should be no where near wet enough to drip. Next, a roll of clear packing tape for best results, or, barring that, some scotch tape.

First thing is first, open the game up and bend it slightly backwards to get the in-sleeve / cover art out. Also take your manuals and inserts out, we are working with water here at one point so we don’t want any of that to possibly get even the slightest bit wet. It shouldn’t, again, the cloth you have should only be damp, but just in case, take them out.

Use your finger nail or other semi hard plastic object to work up the corner of the sticker. Be firm but make sure not to damage the plastic laminate that holds the in-sleeve.

Get as much of the sticker as you can, go slow, but don’t worry if it leaves a little of the paper behind, in most cases it cannot be helped. That is what we are here to remove anyway. The last bits of paper that linger from almost every sticker removal in the history of sticker removals.

I got most of this one, but a little remained. Par for the course.

Next, take your damp washcloth or towel, and rub it across the leftover sticker until the paper on top is gone, this will leave nothing but the tacky adhesive underneath.

Not easy to see here in this photo, but there is a streak of it there, it should be a little tacky and kind of grab your finger if you touch it.

Next, cut a small piece of the scotch tape, or clear packing tape. I used packing tape here, it is a little stickier, speeding the process up a bit. Take your piece and lay it down over the area...

...and simply pull it up. Gently though, be sure not to stretch or dislodge the plastic cover, ruining your case. That defeats the purpose here. We are trying to save the case and improve it.

See how the adhesive from the sticker is actually being pulled up by the tape? You may have to “blot” the old adhesive many times, but as you do, more and more will come off and stick to the tape. Eventually the case will be completely clean. With no damage to the case whatsoever.

Ah! Like new!

I hope someone finds this useful, like if you did, just to let me know this wasn’t a useless post. This is the simplest way I have found to get stickers off of DVD and jewel cases for games and movies. No GooGone required. 99% of homes have this stuff available already, packing or Scotch tape, and a washcloth or towel. Piece of cake.

Alright, I apologize to any hardcore Nintendo fans that are reading, if you follow me specifically for Nintendo content. However, this is ultimately a Game Hunting blog, and sometimes you do have to take the deals that come along. As you may have guessed from the title, this is another Sony find. Playstation 2 to be exact. Couldn’t pass it up. You’ll see why as we go through it. I’ll tell you how the deal transpired.

I peruse Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and LetGo regularly. I have been doing several searches every other day or so. Including but not limited to “GameCube”, “SNES”, “Super Nintendo”, “Wii”, and “Nintendo 64″. Of course just “Nintendo” as well. With the latest pickup of Gran Turismo and Hotshots Golf 3 I’ve thrown in “Playstation 2″ as well. I just wanted to get a feel for what they cost, and I have come to see that people, on average, want somewhere in the neighborhood of about $30 for the Fat model, and around $40 to $50 for the slims. This is generally with no games, and one controller. If you add games, memory cards or extra controllers, the prices go up from there.

A Yard Sale ad appeared in my search results for “Playstation 2″ on Facebook Marketplace the other day. I thought, that is odd, I didn’t search for yard sales, they must have a Playstation 2 listed in the listing for it to match. I read the description, and sure enough there it was. I was looking at this on a Tuesday, and the listing said “3 Days Ago”, which would have put it about the morning of the Sunday in the weekend before. So I figured the listing had to be for the upcoming weekend. Which means the swap meet reseller vultures hadn’t gotten a crack at it yet, I need to see what there is, let’s check pictures to see if they included any of the video games. You have no idea how many listings for Yard Sales will list video games, and then include 30 pictures of the stuff they are selling, but not even show the games. The one thing I want to see to gauge what they have, and they overlook it completely. This one though, had the pictures, so I could see a lot of what they had.

There’s the first one. Right off the bat my jaw hit the floor, TWO PS2 systems. The fat model, but still, two of them! The fact that they have two leads me to believe one of them might not work. Why else would they have two? What do you do when one breaks? You buy another one.

I see controllers sitting there too, three of them, and just from the pic I can tell it is two Dual Shock 2′s and one Dual Shock. They only want a buck a piece for the controllers too, which is a good sign. That is already a solid yard sale price for the controllers. At this point I laugh to myself for getting that Dual Shock from Goodwill last week for $4 by itself.

The pic is too small to read the price on the PS2s. I need to ask them how much those are to ascertain if I should try and get to this sale when they open.

Popped off a quick message asking what they were looking to get out of the PS2s. Half not expecting to even get a response. But, to my surprise, she replied pretty quickly. She said one PS2 had no power cord so they were looking for $8, and the other had the expansion on the back, and had all cords, so they had it at $10.

$18 for both?

That is less than most people are asking for just one, with no games and like, one controller. Throw in the controllers here and it’s $21. At this point I figure I might as well try to get both, to improve the odds of getting a working one. Just in case. Even the cost of both is less than most people are asking for even one. By almost half. So, no brainer.

Flipped back to the pictures to look at them further, maybe they have games for it too.

Looks like a stack of 10 or so on the back right hand side of that table. Just from this pic though I can’t really see titles, hmmm, let me zoom in, maybe...

Nope. Still just too grainy/blurry, I can’t see what they are. No matter, let me see if she would be willing to meet me before the sale and be willing to sell them before it starts this weekend. This is kind of a long shot, I’m sure she was not expecting to get a message about this, let alone be asked to sell something before the sale even starts.

I pop off another message: “Would you be opposed to selling them before the sale? Or at least one? I’m kind of starting a PS2 collection and this would be a perfect little jump start without breaking the bank. I will be too busy to come to the sale on Saturday.” She comes right back with “Well, our garage sale was last weekend so I have no problem selling them now.”

Wait. What?

Garage sale was last weekend?! They didn’t sell?! In this town where swap meet and flea market resellers are out in front of people’s houses an hour before the sale starts for video games? Even when the listing says no early birds?! Well, maybe that makes sense, if she only listed it on Facebook, and not on Craigslist, and listed it basically day of, since it was Sunday when she put it up...

No one saw it.

Good for me.

So she’s on board to sell them. I let her know I’m available to meet that same day around the lunch hour. She agrees, and asks if I want the games too. I said sure, depending on price and titles. Within 15 minutes she goes “Here are the games. We were looking for $1 each” and I had this on my screen:

Wow! a nice, high resolution picture where I can read all titles. I’m really liking this seller! So I start looking them up immediately on eBay to see what kind of value we have here. I am completely unfamiliar with the PS2 library of games. Not only is it HUGE, I know nothing about values. I start with the Kingdom Hearts games, since I recognize the title, and while not one I care to play, they go for about $20 as a pair shipped.

So about $15 in value there already. Good start. What else?

Dawn of Mana looked to be going anywhere from $13 shipped, to $20 shipped. So another solid $10 value there. Lets keep going...

Innocent Life, after looking this up it appears to be a Harvest Moon title, and is going for between $8 and $15 shipped. So another solid $10 value there. Already we are up to $35 in value and I still haven’t checked all the games. One more...

Steambot Chronicles. Never heard of this in my life.

Wait.

WHAT!?

FIFTY SIX DOLLARS?

Granted this is one of the highest ones, but this was a SHOCK. Some are $35 to $40 average. Pricecharting shows this one at $50 CIB. This auction was CIB and in great condition so it clearly went for more than the others, but at this point there was no way I wasn’t getting this deal. I immediately asked where I should be headed. Either an address, or a location if she would rather me not come to her house. She just gave me her address. I told her thank you and about when I would be there. I said I would take both systems, and all the games, $10 + $8 + $9 = $27, I asked if twenty five even would cover it. She said yes. I hit the road.

On the way she asks if I want the controllers too? No extra charge. I said sure.

This deal keeps getting better. I just bought a Dual Shock at Goodwill for $4 and thought it was a good deal and you want to give me THREE for free? Let me think about that one for about 0.0382 seconds. Yep, I’ll take them.

So I arrive, we exchange greetings, I give the stuff a quick once over, and check a couple of the more valuable games (Kingdom Hearts II, Steambot Chronicles and Innocent Life), yep all in there, complete and in good shape. I didn’t want to linger, she had everything stacked up neatly, and she said she was on maternity leave, so there was probably a sleeping baby somewhere. I gave her the $25 and she helped me out to the car with everything. I did inquire how it was they didn’t sell at the sale, and she said they only had two people show up. TWO. Ouch. As I guessed earlier, probably not advertised well. If she was on Craigslist I guarantee someone would have cleaned this out in four point two seconds.

So here it is now that I’ve picked it up and brought it home.

Now, after doing this for a couple three months, and getting a few finds, especially the one where Monkey ball 2 wouldn’t boot up, I’m used to there being bad news. I’ve come to expect something to be off with alost every deal, that’s why I look for prices this cheap. Buying like this gets you good deals, but you are also doing all the work, travelling to the seller, taking all the risk if something isn’t right. This one was only slightly disappointing, but probably because it was not unexpected. The PS2 on the left, the $10 one, doesn’t read discs. Not a single game would boot in it, even the absolutely flawless Gran Turismo 4 I got in the last post. It does turn on, controller works, I can manipulate the files on the memory card, just no disc action. This is not a huge surprise, I said that I suspected going in that there was a chance at least one didn’t work if they had two. The $8 one reads discs and plays fine, though I noticed a bit of a video issue, if I would wiggle or move the video cable, the picture would scramble and jump on the TV screen. I tried the second cable and it did the same thing. So I tried the other PS2. Same issue. I find it highly unlikely that both PS2s have the same issue, but it also seems just as unlikely that both cables have the same issue. I do hope it is just the cables.

I will probably order a component cable for one of them since I do intend to keep one, and try it again. It is only about $6 or $7. Hopefully the problem will go away with a new cable. I’ll update on that later when I have a chance to try it.

One of the Dual Shock 2 controllers has a little chunk of the rubber missing from the start button. Minor issue.

Finally, ATV Offroad Fury, is actually a Rugrats game instead. The funny thing is, Rugrats is worth more disc only, than ATV Offroad Fury complete. HA! Battlefront II and Dawn of Mana are also not complete, they are missing manuals. That devalues Dawn of Mana slightly, yes, but at least Steambot is complete, and boy is it ever complete. It is near mint condition. I’m hoping this one will fetch near $50 or more like the other very good condition one did.

In any case, I’m still very happy with the find, down to $25 from the asking price of $30, and there is a lot more value than that in this find. Especially with just one game at $40+ on eBay right now. I estimate this find at

$30 for PS2 Fat model with cables and one controller, another $10 each for the two additional controllers. Another $3 or so for the Memory Card. Add in a conservative $35 for Steambot, and another $25 total for Kingdom Hearts and Innocent Life. That comes to $103. I’ll throw $5 on the non working PS2 and maybe $10 total for the rest of the games as a lot. Grand total $118 for $25.

Winning. 

As I mentioned before, I do plan on keeping at least one of the PS2s. Probably with a component cable. I dug up an old PATA hard drive that’s 200GB, and will see if I can hack one of these things to load ISO files. Would be cool to have a permanent PS2 in the collection that can store my games without needing to keep swapping them out over and over.

I do plan on looking at the one that won’t read, it could be fixable, who knows.

Official business:

$54.36 - $25 = $29.36

$29.36 game hunting money remaining. I will be selling something soon, probably my old copy of PaRappa the Rapper.

I was never a big fan, and now that I have a PS2 and it tested good, I can sell it as working, instead of untested.

I will be posting the results of the tinkering on the non-working one as soon as I know whats up with it and if it can be resurrected.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. Talk to you all soon.

So the last couple weeks were slow after the last GameCube find at work. Very slow, so much so I didn’t even find anything else Nintendo related. I am talking to someone about a GameCube game on OfferUp, so we’ll see how that goes. There is also a possible small NES and Game Boy game lot from another co-worker that is in discussion. So I have some things simmering, hopefully I’ll have something more to post about soon, but no more Nintendo finds. Everything I found in the last couple weeks was at a Goodwill, and was Sony related.

I have no problem with this, while not really collecting for Playstation per se, I do have some fond memories of playing many Playstation games growing up. Twisted Metal 2 was fantastic both one player and two player. I would play with friends, my dad, my brother, it’s just a great game. The sound effect you get when you get a kill is so satisfying. Will never get old.

Another series of games I spent a ton of time with was the Gran Turismo series. I had the original one first, as most did, and really enjoyed the experience. Starting from the bottom, buying cars, winning races, upgrading your cars or buying new ones and moving up the ladder. I eventually bought the second one and enjoyed it just as much. Essentially a racing game RPG.

All three of the items I’m going into now were picked up across the end of the month of May, and the first week or so of June. I was hitting dozens of garage and yard sales, combing OfferUp and LetGo. Nothing. I literally hit at least 12 yard sales in an hour span one day and got “Nope, my son took all those” as an answer at 3 of them when asked if they had any older video games.

This was why I couldn’t pass it up when I spotted Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2 at a Goodwill. Just needed to get something, anything to have a find at this point, and I was so fond of the first two. So I bought it. I don’t even have a PS2.

This game is near mint. Only a couple minor dings on the outer case, still very shiny. Manual is in very good condition, and the disc looks like it’s never been taken out of the case.

Snagged this one for $2.99.

Just immaculate condition, I was stunned for a $3 game sitting in a thrift store. I mean just look at the disc, look at it! Absolutely pristine.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a huge fan of the PS2, even badmouthed it on numerous occasions. Maybe even right here in this blog saying I’d never collect for it. It all stemmed from when I played Twisted Metal Black back in 2001, and the steering for driving in reverse was backwards from the first 4 games on the PS1. I loved those games. However, on Black I got so frustrated going the wrong way every time I tried to back up. I’d try to turn one way, the car would go the other and screw up what I was trying to do. Did you ever see those videos of the guy trying to learn how to ride a bike when the steering is inverted? It’s a Smarter Every Day episode. Click here if you are curious. Essentially what it comes down to is muscle memory. You’ve done something so much you now no longer THINK about having to do it, you just do it. While not as complicated as riding a bike, doing a rookie turn in Twisted Metal was something I’d done over and over again. It was automatic. Having it reversed, completely broke the game for me to the point where I almost couldn’t function. I know backing up is maybe 20% of the time in that game, but that still puts me at 80% effectiveness, because I was useless backing up. You have to be able to move in reverse, and aim at the same time. Not easy with steering opposite from everything you’ve known for the last 5 or 6 years in a series.

It crushed my love of the Twisted Metal series. The developers completely ruined the game with one simple direction change that was counter intuitive. Turned me off completely. Never had a desire to buy a PS2 after that. Because that was the ONE game at the time I was anticipating on the system.

Now though, heh...

In the thick of a retro gaming hunt, I figured there was a real possibility I could eventually get one, if for nothing else, to play my old PS1 games, and test any PS1 or PS2 games I pick up and intend to flip. I thought it couldn’t hurt to have a few choice games in the collection for the PS2, it was the best selling game system of all time for a reason.

Don’t get me wrong I am still a Nintendo fan boy at heart, and the vast majority of the content you should see in the blog will still be for Nintendo, but, good games are good games. Might as well enjoy them. If I find a good deal on a system or game that is not Nintendo, I’m going to go for it, whether I intend to sell it or keep it I’ll still post it up here for everyone to read about. Heck, I’d even be willing to give Twisted Metal Black another play if it comes along for cheap. Overall, I am game hunting, and Nintendo is not the only manufacturer and developer of video games. So with that out of the way, on to the next bit of the find.

Next up is Hot Shots Golf 3, I have played the earlier ones on the PS1 back in the day. They are good. Not blowing anyone away, but good fun games.

It is essentially a platform agnostic Mario Golf. So I figured it couldn’t hurt to have. I love my copy of Mario Golf Toadstool Tour. This one reminds me of that a lot, right down to the “Nice Shot!” it says after getting the markers lined up for  a swing. When the girl at the Goodwill rings you out at the DVD price of $1.99, instead of the video game price of $2.99, no complaints here either. Especially since it was a little bit of a gamble. Admittedly, because it was pretty scratched. But I didn’t see any real deep ones, so it should play. If it doesn’t, eh, it was $2. Still, it was complete, and in good shape otherwise. Would I have bought it had I not been on a dry spell? Probably not.

Lastly, the Goodwill by my work had a PS1 on the shelf in the electronics section. If you read my blog regularly I have mentioned this one before as being the more robust in the video game department of the two I normally visit. Had the PS1 come into the one by my house it probably would have went in the auction case. If it was cheaper I may have picked it up, but it was a relatively high $14.99. This for a stand alone PS1, just the system, no cables, no games, no included controllers, no guarantee it works, nothing. However, it did have a dual shock 1 controller sitting there with it, with its own price tag of course. The sticks and buttons all felt great, tight and responsive. So I snagged it.

$3.99.

I took it home, cracked it open, and cleaned it up. It was in really good shape under a bit of the grime that was there. I hooked it to my PS1 to USB adapter and tried it with ePSXe on the PC. Works fine. Even the joys don’t have any grooves worn in them or anything. They did have that plastic “dust” under them that comes from use, but it cleaned up and looks fine.

The shoulder buttons are responsive and clean as well. Just an all around good controller. I couldn’t pass it up.

So $9.61 total for two games and a controller.

Apparently Goodwill is charging tax where I live. I’ve seen it be no tax before, but I think it depends completely on the region they are in. Wish it was tax free here, but alas it is not.

Kind of terrible that it took almost a full two weeks of hunting just to come up with that. I’m struggling for content on this blog as far as hunting goes. But, I’ll take what I can get. I’m going to keep at it, I’ll keep hitting yard sales, garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores as often as time allows. Obviously when winter hits, yard and garage sales wont be options. Those will certainly be slower months. Though, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t found anything at a yard sale or garage sale yet, so, what difference do those make, at least thus far? Dozens of sales this season under my belt with not a single find at even one of them. The prices are always much higher on other avenues, like OfferUp or LetGo. Everyone always checks eBay before listing anything, and usually wants close to that number.

The luck I’m having with co-workers and Goodwill I may just stop going to yard/garage sales.

I’m kidding, you won’t know whats there until you get there. So I won’t stop going when the opportunity arises.

Official business:

$11.09 - $9.61 = $1.48 game hunting money remaining.

YIKES!

Knowing we were very low on funds, like critically low, I sold the Game Boy Player from the last find. The auction was running when I bought Hot Shots Golf 3 actually, so I had a plan for funds. Even though we never actually went negative. YAY!

I had to use eBay, I had no other choice. Here’s the completed auction.

As you can see, it sold this weekend and it went for $67.00, plus $3.99 shipping. Totaling $70.99. Ebay is kind of terrible to sell on, you really feel like you get fee’d to death. But it works for quick sales on desirable items. Generally you get a little more than you could do in cash face to face with someone so it evens out somewhat. Not all the way, but somewhat. I figure if I sold this to someone locally for cash, I would get somewhere between $45 and $50 since they will likely want to haggle. On the auction, it sold faster than it would to find a buyer on a local site, and after Paypal took their fees, eBay took their fees, and I shipped it, I actually walked away with $52.88. So a couple bucks more than I figure I would have gotten. It feels like you are getting bent over, but in most cases the prices are higher BECAUSE of how much you get bent over and it sort of evens out. Lets put that back into the game hunting money...

$1.48 + $52.88 = $54.36

Whew! Close one, almost went negative. I mean I don’t mind if we go negative. You can’t know what’s going to happen though, if the right deal comes along, it may force your hand. As long as there is something to sell in that lot, or on hand from a past one to bring it positive again, I’m OK with extending myself some credit if I have to.

$54.36 game hunting money remaining. Happy June guys. Hoping to find something else soon so I can post some more content.