This week’s thrifting adventures happened mostly by proxy.
In the middle of recording another exciting installment of Game|Life The Video, I got a rare midday phone call from my parents in Connecticut. It had to be urgent.
“Chris,” said my mom, skipping the preliminaries. “Do you have a minute to talk to Dad?” I did.
“We’re at a Goodwill,” he said, “and there’s a Vectrex here.”
“Oh,” I said. I had never had much luck with Vectrex stuff. Released in 1982 by General Consumer Electronics (soon acquired by Milton Bradley), it was a really cool concept that was never going to end in anything but failure: It had a built-in vector graphics monitor, meaning that the crisp, clean, monochromatic lines of games like* Asteroids* could be brought right into your home.
Milton Bradley’s timing couldn’t have been worse, because the videogame business went over a cliff less than a year into its lifecycle and the Vectrex ended up being blown out of stores for $15 or $20 by 1984.
But the combination of the rarity of the console and the total awesomeness of the concept makes Vectrex one of the most sought-after retro game machines. A bare console is worth about $100, and some rarer games and accessories fetch many times that.
I never came across a working one. Once, at a flea market, I found a copy of the Star Trek shooting game with a Toys R Us clearance label price tag still on it. Later, we found a Vectrex on the side of the road with a busted display.
Still later, we found another at a thrift store with a busted joystick — and since the thing was hard-wired, that meant the whole unit was useless (cf. SG-1000).
All this is to say that I actually still needed a working Vectrex for the collection.
“So, does it work?” I said.
“Well, here’s the thing,” said my dad. “It’s ninety-five dollars.”
“What the hell,” I said. Sure, a Vectrex is worth $95 — if it’s bought in working condition from a knowledgeable dealer. But from a thrift store that got it out of a donation bin?
“They’ve got a picture of an eBay auction next to it, to prove it’s worth the money,” said Dad.