We’re having a bit of nice weather here in San Francisco, which doesn’t exactly happen that often. Good thing it was beautiful out today, as otherwise the Fair Oaks Street Fair would have been spoiled.
Once a year, the residents of one of SF’s nicest little tree-lined streets all hold yard sales in tandem, the result being a five-block stretch of treasures, tamale sellers, and eager bargain hunters.
Can’t say there was much in the way of videogames there, but the good thing about flea markets versus thrift stores is that you can bargain with people. So it wasn’t especially difficult to get the Atari Video Pinball dedicated machine down from $15 to $10.
(Longtime readers will note that this actually brings the number of Atari Video Pinball machines in my studio apartment up to two, the first having been acquired in the same neighborhood about a year ago.)
It was slightly more difficult to get some videogames at a more reasonable price, but here’s your bargain-hunting lesson for the day: Gather everything you want into a pile, then make an offer for all of it. That’s how I got a guy who originally wanted about $5 each for his boxed video games to give me five of them for $10.
Those games were Activision’s Beamrider and River Raid for Intellivision, B-17 Bomber, and Lone Ranger and Championship Bowling for NES. All of them are in excellent, complete condition, except (of course) the best one, Lone Ranger, which was previously owned by a Blockbuster Video and thus of course has a whole mess of giant stickers on it.
And the rest of everything? Acquired from thrift stores after I was done with the flea market. I’m especially excited to have a copy of *B.C.’s Quest For Tires *for Colecovision, as I have fond memories of that game from back in the day. Plus, it’s rather rare as Colecovision games go, especially with the box and instructions.
Defender, Nova Strike, and Front Line round out the Coleco finds. These were $4 each.
Oh, and everything’s sitting on a CD-i. $7.50! Always check the piles of VCRs in thrift stores, kids; never know when one of them is going to end up being a CD-i. (Or a Laseractive, if you get really stupidly lucky.)
And yes, to test out the CD-i, I did indeed watch…
That’s right. Dances With Wolves. In glorious 1993 digital video Artifact-o-Vision. On three discs.
See Also:
- Weekend Thrifting: The Best Kind of Yard Sale
- Weekend Thrifting: I Think I’m a Famiclone Now
- Weekend Thrifting: Along Came a Spider
- Weekend Thrifting: Thanks, NPR!
- Weekend Thrifting: Sally Jumps The Shark
- Weekend Thrifting: Halloween Goodwill Crush