I have been remiss in keeping up with the Weekend Thrifting posts, which is especially tragic when you consider that I have been all over the place recently: The rare (or at least collectible) (or at least old) videogames featured herein come not only from thrift stores but an Oakland flea market, the California Extreme arcade game show, and even the infamous eBay.
My dalliances as of late with that auction house of ill repute have been spurred on by the fact that it is a buyer's market right now; for what I assume are obvious reasons people seem to have dialed back on the frivolous purchasing of old videogames. So it was that I obtained an Odyssey, the first home game console ever, for about $10 before shipping.
But that's another story. This story is everything else, a new pile of Nintendo, Sega, and even a bunch of Atari 2600 games, plus some other miscellany and oddities. On our last episode of Weekend Thrifting, a commenter suggested that I tally up the prices that I paid for everything and the actual collector's value of each. He suggested this rather rudely, yes, but it was a good idea, and as a person who often suggests good ideas rather rudely I have a soft spot in my heart for some of these adorable little scamps, these ragamuffins.
So we'll total up the cost at the end, which hopefully should give you some incentive to read through the whole thing. (No fair skipping to the end first!)
We went on a wine tour this weekend, which has nothing to do with this column, but I did think I could class up the photos by taking them on top of my wine rack.
Anyway, these first items present a challenge for our little math problem. The Digital Press Collector's Guide is generally considered to be a modest, conservative estimate of game values, perfect for the level-headed collector who wants to keep his expectations in check. In the guide, NES game prices assume that the game lacks a box and manual, since that's how you find most of them.
Loose copies of Slalom -- Rare's first NES game -- and the wonderful Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers would only fetch $4 and $6 respectively. I paid $5 each, which would be breaking even. But these are complete, and so we have to ballpark the value. Probably between $10-$20 each. The boxes are banged up a bit, Slalom's in particular, proving once again Kohler's Law of Videogames You Find, which states: If you come across a bunch of games, the one worth the most money will be in the worst condition.
What is it with Genesis owners and bad taste? Every game cost the same fifty bucks, so why is it that whenever I come across a pile of Genesis games, it's all junk? These, at $3.49 each, bucked the trend. There's Raiden Trad, from the once-popular series of side-scrolling shooters, the action game Wolfchild, and Outlander, which combines first-person racing with side-scrolling shooting. Weird!
Since Genesis games, with their hardy plastic boxes and helpful manual storage slots, are most often found in complete condition, that's how the Digital Press guide rates them. They're worth $15, $12, and $15 respectively.
Okay, I take back what I said about Genesis owners. It's really the Sega CD owners with the terrible taste. What Sega CD games do you find in every thrift store? It's the ridiculous full-motion video games like Dracula, Sewer Shark and Kris Kross Make My Video. None of which are featured here. Same store, same $3.49 each: The anime FMV game Revenge of the Ninja and live-action rubber suit adventure Masked Rider illustrate capably that the Japanese were also infatuated with this silliness for a time. Worth $12 each.
And I wouldn't have paid $3.49 each for the three games at right, but they were sealed: Ecco the Dolphin, Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, and Prize Fighter. Digital Press gives these values of $4, $5, and $3. But in sealed condition? We'll just have to guesstimate and add a few bucks to the price of each.
These were not, technically, purchased at a thrift store but at the California Extreme arcade game show. There are a couple of dealer tables there selling arcade and pinball parts, and when I saw that they had Neo Geo MVS cartridges selling at 3 for $10, I felt a Hamilton just burning a hole in my pocket and had to get rid of it.
These cartridges are for Neo Geo arcade machines -- you'd buy the machine separately and swap out the games. And since I had fond memories of playing Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, and World Heroes back in the day, I thought it would be cool to own them -- even though I couldn't play them without an MVS machine. Well, unless I paid $300 for what's known as a "consolized MVS", a modded arcade board that plugs into a TV. And who knows, maybe I will one day!
Until then, these are useless as anything but conversation pieces. DP says they're worth a total of $35.
I finally made a pilgrimage out to the Laney College Flea Market a while back, where writer Alex Handy made a pretty awesome find: ROM chips with unreleased Atari and Colecovision games. I did not expect anything so amazing to happen to me. What I did find, in the flea's absolutely incredible piles of salvaged garbage and dirty broken things, were these Atari 2600 videogames from the third-party maker Data Age.
Sssnake, said Digital Press cofounder Kevin Oleniacz, was the "worst game ever made." Maybe he liked Bugs and *Warplock *more. Digital Press says these are worth a total of $23. I paid $7 for the trio.
Later, I found some more Atari 2600 games. Actually, the thrift store in question had a massive box of them, and at $3.99 each I wasn't exactly going to buy them all and figure out later which were worth it. So I pulled out my phone to look them up, and of course I couldn't get any reception at all. So I just took the ones that I was sure were on the uncommon side, paid, and left the store to go look up the rest.
And, of course, I then found that I'd left the rarest game of all in the pile: Subterranea, a latter-day release from Imagic, which DP says is worth $30 by itself. So I slinked back into the store to buy it. Whoops.
Anyway, the rest of them were no slouches either: Quick Step ($10), Planet Patrol ($7), Shark Attack (paid $1.99, worth $8), Solar Storm ($12), No Escape ($9), and Fast Eddie ($8).
Moving from the Golden Age back to the Silver Age of game collecting, we circle back around to NES games, acquired from three different Goodwills for $2.49 each. Since these are loose, we have more exact values: Final Fantasy ($18), Kid Icarus ($10), *Adventure Island II *($9), Short Order/Eggsplode ($5), Little Nemo ($7), and The Last Starfighter ($6).
These were an eBay purchase that I'm not counting in the total, since I paid market price for them. I'm just amazed that you can still buy brand new 3D0 controllers, a pair of them for $13. I needed one for the controller-less console that I found a few months ago. (I think the D-pad on these is better than the piece of junk on the standard controller, too.)
If you enjoy black and white Game Boy games, now's the time to poke around your local GameStop, because they're still clearing them out at 75% off. This copy of Catrap, a neat little puzzle game with a time-rewind function (take that, Braid) was just 75 cents. Lode Runner 64 was two bucks at a Half-Price Books outlet. And the awful CD-i game Link: The Faces of Evil was $3.49.
Now, all of these present a slight problem with value, since they're either damaged or in incomplete condition. Digital Press prices N64 releases as "complete," so although Lode Runner is worth $10, this one ain't. Erring on the side of caution, let's assume it's at least worth the $2 I paid. Catrap? Let's take it from $4 to $2. And Link is worth $15, but this one is missing the outer cardboard sleeve, so let's knock off a few bucks and say $13.
With that, we can run the final tabulations!
Total amount of my hard-earned money spent on frivolity: $102.03
Digital Press Guide Value of salvaged collectibles: $302
Net "gain" if somebody ever bought it from me at that price: $200.03
Opportunity cost of me wasting my time doing this: Probably like $200
Profit: $0.03
Well, that about wraps it up for this weekend. And of course you don't need to read the final page. But in case you want to keep reading Weekend Thrifting:
- Weekend Thrifting: It's Yard Sale Season
- Weekend Thrifting: Spinning Bird Kick
- Weekend Thrifting: The Best Kind of Yard Sale
- Weekend Thrifting: I Think I'm a Famiclone Now
- Weekend Thrifting: 'New' Super Mario Bros.
Photos: Chris Kohler/Wired.com
NO SKIPPING TO THE END.
