Another day of thrifting (A proto NES cart was found)

I frequent one thrift store nearby that regularly turns up oddities if you go often enough. Living in an area adjacent to almost every big name technology and video game company has its advantages.

Though I've been to a few in San Francisco and found them to be subpar. Will have to try the San Jose area at some point. Given they gobbled up Sunnyvale I'd anticipate finding Atari hardware at some point.

 

Wow, isn't that Bee 52 cart considered as uberrare and holy grail of unlicensed games? Though, I have to admit that I have no clue.

 

Lol, you guys seem to be forgetting that this individual is supposed to be in Ireland (I'm guessing the republic), so that wouldn't be valid there. It would be gumtree.ie

 

Pretty much everything you said has nothing to do with gaming (the reason for being on this site and the context my post was made in).

Any Charity shop I've tried has only ever been old clothes, records, tapes and old telephones.

For the amount of time wasted, id rather just pay the extra else where.

I think this is probably the issue, there is not much around where I live and anyone who's going to get rid of gaming stuff will put it on eBay or in cash generator/converters. I should move to somewhere with more wealthy people

 

My personal experiences clearly differ from yours greatly.

And yes, there are plenty here all full of clothes.

Nothing wrong with Cash converters (much more likely to get a bargain there IMO) - but its not a charity shop, which is what this thread is about.

Also gamestation in Burton don't really sell any retro stuff anymore, except maybe a few gameboy carts as they take up little space. PS2 is as "Retro" as they go now.

They used to have loads of cool stuff, even Vectrex's :crying:

 

Actually, this thread is about thrifting (one user's experiences, in particular) ;-). Whilst thrift stores in the US are similar to our charity shops, they're not exactly the same - for profit companies similar to Cash Converters can come under this banner. To put it another way, they're still called thrift shops, but the people who work there are paid, not volunteers.

A lot of Gamestations don't sell retro now - all the stuff (that I didn't get!) from my local stores went up to another store that dealt in retro, I was told. Never had the opportunity to get up there, sadly.

The best time was around 2000 when Game were selling NOS Atari Jaguar and Lynx stuff. I wish I'd picked up more - at the time, it was fairly pricey compared to what you could get the games for elsewhere, though. They were still selling Nintendo 64 as part of their main stock, of course, and the second hand bins (they used giant baskets back then) were usually full of PlayStation and Saturn games... plus a fair few older games (NES etc.).

 

I actually remember Game selling all the NOS Jag stuff here too.

But I swear I remember it being stupidly cheap (like under a fiver for the consoles) and much later... maybe 2003-2005??

edit:

Seems someone says they were a tenner, maybe they dropped them even more in Burton due to lack of interest?

http://www.gamesmastertv.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1632&sid=3045eebfa42350564b1995c5f7332557

 

My gamestation occasionally puts retro games out. Do you think If I asked they'd let me look in the backroom? Game trading also has a top floor I've got a hunch is full of retro goodies too.

Cash Converters is a total joke here. If you find anything cheap it's normally beaten to crap. and £4 for Mario 64 and Mario/Duckhunt? No thanks.

Back around 2000 the gamestations (we had two less than 100m away from each other) were ripe for cheap Mega Drive games. Now it's a total joke and your lucky to see anything retro.

I can't remember the last time I saw a game in a charity shop to be honest. Everytime I enter one I step out with VHS and boot sales that are here are generally crap and much too far for me (Don't have a car)

Hunting here is really not worth it. Whenever I'm in town I always check but theirs just no point anymore to be honest.

 

Wow you got some cheap charity shops down your way retro, most games are about £3-£5 round here in the charity shops. Best deal I ever found though was Saturn Bomberman for £3.

 

Unlikely. One of my good friends is a game station manager and even then I dont get access. I just have to ask him to keep his eye out for me.

 

someone else here lives in vegas!

anyway i have yet to find anything half decent in our thrift stores

 

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It was £20 for the console, still with the Jaguar seal on the box. Games were £8 each. Lynx games were £5. I think they wanted £10 for the Lynx PSU... or it may have been the weird external battery thing. It was very strange, as it was in conjunction with Telegames, who were known for being pricey. However, I'm sure they went down to £15 when I got one.

It was definitely when I was at college (so 2000-2002), and I think was just before they rebranded from Electronics Boutique (which happened in 2002). Interesting, after this happened:

http://www.britishcaselaw.co.uk/ata...e-stores-uk-1997-ewca-civ-2098-15th-july-1997

Just found this:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/3928-jaguar-consoles-for-999/

Guess the old memory isn't failing me totally... yet! ;-) Yeah, it seems it went down to £10 - nice! I have a feeling the games dropped to £6.

Looks like the Lynx might have been £10, too! Wish I'd picked one up!

No chance. You're not an employee, there's no insurance for you being out the back and the stock out there probably won't be priced up. Also, you'll find with retro stuff that they just put out what they have. Anything in the stock room is duplicate stock.

£4 for Mario 64 isn't bad! If it's boxed, it's very good! There's a loose cart on eBay with 6 bids, currently at £4.70... plus £1.95 postage! When I worked in a video game store with good prices, £4 was the absolute lowest price for an N64 game... and you can be sure that Mario was more. And yes, they sold. Often.

Yeah, they can be. Some of them overvalue things, though. I've seen some really dire games (e.g. PS2 sports titles) for £3 each. The shop up the road sells CDs for £1 each and doesn't differentiate between albums and singles - good for albums, bad for singles. You get lucky sometimes, though

 

Shame they won't let me in the backroom. I figure all the good stuff is in there because all that is out is the generic games (Sonic etc) and sports games.

I'm forgetting some of my favourite thrift store finds that came recently. From a charity shop I got a FUJICA 2T605 with a carrying case attached to a neck strap and a few lenses, a polaroid pdc 3070 and a Polaroid film camera which made a nice present for my friend.

 

No, all they have LEFT is sports games. They want to sell - why do you think they'd stash stuff away in the stock room instead of putting it on display? Of course they wouldn't!

Shops like these haven't sold "retro" games for quite some time now. They probably got told to move all their stock onto a particular branch. I know people who worked in GAME, and they were told to get rid of all their GC titles - I think they were picked up and taken away. So anything you see on display is just what they get in - it's not a case of them sitting on stock like it's going to be valuable in the future. They are a business, not collectors - it doesn't make good business sense.

 

They used to have boxes of "unsorted" stuff which was just waiting for someone with half a clue about retro stuff to price it up, but with how little probably gets traded in now (especially when it only trades in for £1 on most retro stuff) I doubt there are any piles of sorting boxes these days.

(as per my friend who is gamestation manager etc)

 

I can state categorically that GAME didn't stock any Atari NOS until 2002 at the earliest because I worked for them from Jan 1998 til the tail end of 2001, shop in question was classed as a flagship store too, top (then) floor in the Potteries Shopping Centre, next door but one to HMV.

 

The reason why thrift stores don't have games anymore is simple: most people put them up on eBay or similar places. It seems like a lot of people think every old game is worth money nowadays, compared even to the early 00s when retro games would just be dumped into thrift stores.

 

They have one or two shelves to display it thats less than a meter long. About a year ago I went in a bought some of the retro stuff. I go back the next day and its full again with more retro games. They have them in the back but just don't display everything they only put more out when some have gone.